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Ukrainian children abducted by Russia have been held at more than 200 facilities across the country and in occupied territories, where they are routinely subject to indoctrination and forced military training, according to research released on Tuesday.
A report by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified 210 sites, including summer camps and health resorts, cadet schools, medical facilities and a military base where Ukrainian children have been held since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“Russia is operating a potentially unprecedented system of large-scale re-education, military training, and dormitory facilities capable of holding tens of thousands of children from Ukraine for long periods of time,” the report said.
Publicly available Russian company data reveals more than half of the locations identified in the report are managed by federal or local government bodies, including the defence ministry and the presidential property management department, according to the research findings.
Ukrainian authorities estimate nearly 20,000 children have been taken to Russia during the war, with only a fraction being returned. A number of Ukrainian children have been found on Russian adoption websites, although the total number remains unknown.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and one of his top officials over the forced transfer of Ukrainian children.
The network of sites identified by the Humanitarian Research Lab report is far larger than its researchers anticipated.
“The network of locations, and it is a network, is at least double what we thought its maximum size would be,” said Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director.
The lab’s researchers used publicly available sources including social media, Russian government statements and news reports as well as commercial satellite imagery to reach their conclusions.
Efforts to “re-educate” the children in line with Moscow’s worldview had occurred at almost two-thirds of the sites identified, the report found, while Ukrainian children underwent military training and indoctrination in at least 39 locations.
“What’s happening in terms of the militarisation of the children is more organised and more involved than we ever expected,” said Raymond.
In some instances described in the report, Ukrainian children have been placed in camps that develop equipment for Russia’s military, including drones, mine detectors, robots and rapid loaders for assault rifles.
The Humanitarian Research Lab is a leading authority on Russia’s mass transfer of Ukrainian children during the war. During Joe Biden’s administration it shared its data with the International Criminal Court.
It has since stopped sharing data with the ICC out of fear of running afoul of the sanctions imposed on the court by Donald Trump’s administration.
The lab was established in 2022 with about $6mn of US federal funding but its future was thrown into jeopardy earlier this year when its funds were suspended in the Trump administration’s drive to reduce spending. Tuesday’s report was the first to be produced since the cut.
“We are running entirely on fumes,” said Raymond, who warned that the lab could go out of business next year if it were not able to secure alternate sources of funding.
It is now largely supported by small donations from private individuals.
“I’ve been doing war crimes investigations for 26 years,” Raymond said. “I never expected to get emails from Ukrainian-American grandmothers on social security basically saying ‘I only have this much to give but if you are trying to get the kids back, here you go’.”
The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Berlin