Oleksandra Matviichuk, Ukrainian human rights lawyer, says Ukrainian children living under occupation will be ‘forcibly recruited to the Russian army’ when they turn 18.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Ukrainian human-rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk says Russia is building an army out of Ukrainian children living under occupation and that it’s “naïve” to think that they would only be used to fight against Ukraine.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and has taken them to facilities inside Russia and occupied territory in Ukraine. Researchers have found evidence that the children are being militarized and trained to fight against Ukraine. There are also more than a million children living in Russian-occupied territory, Ms. Matviichuk said, and they too will be forced to learn how to fight at a young age.
“These children are militarized starting from kindergarten,” she said in an interview on Tuesday, adding, “We have 1.6 million Ukrainian children under occupation who are trained as a new generation of Putin’s soldiers because at the age of 14 they will receive a Russian passport and at the age of 18 they will be forcibly recruited to the Russian army.”
“It’s very naïve to think that Russia is preparing them just for war with Ukraine. They will go to fight and die in any country which Russia sends them to go to fight and die.”
Ms. Matviichuk, the chair of the Center for Civil Liberties, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was in Toronto this week to attend a fundraising event for Gen.Ukrainian, a non-governmental organization that provides mental-health support to children affected by the war. Before returning to Ukraine, she will deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York.
On Monday, The Globe and Mail reported on a pamphlet that’s distributed to children at camps in Russian-occupied territory, which tells them how to act around former Russian soldiers who guard them, evidence, researchers said, of Russia’s program to militarize the children.
In March, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova over their alleged responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Carney accuses Putin of abducting thousands of Ukrainian children
Ms. Matviichuk said Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children is “just part of a genocidal policy which Russia imposed against Ukraine.”
“When they take Ukrainian children to Russia, they put them in Russian re-education camps. They told them ‘You are not Ukrainian. You are Russian children.’”
She said you don’t need to be a lawyer to understand that if a state’s intent is to destroy a national group, it’s not necessary to kill everyone: “You can just forcibly change their identity.”
“An entire national group sooner or later will disappear and that’s why Russians are targeting deliberately Ukrainian children. Because for any nation, their children are their future, so Russia stole Ukrainian children in order to steal the Ukrainian future,” she said.
Ms. Matviichuk said that in addition to the issue of abducted children, is the fact that Ukrainian children living under Russian occupation will be militarized and forced to attend special military camps.
“The identity of these children is being erased. They teach only Russian textbooks and in Russian textbooks, Ukraine does not exist as a state.”
Ms. Matviichuk said she does not think the international community is responding strongly enough to the issue of children under Russia’s control.
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She said one of her goals is to bring the “human dimension of this war” to the political conversation, saying that while politicians talk about natural minerals, Russia’s territorial claims and Mr. Putin’s vision of Ukrainian history, people in Ukraine are dying, children are losing their childhood, and human beings need to be considered at the negotiation table.
And when it comes to Russia’s growing army of Ukrainian children, she said, there’s not a lot of time. “Childhood has an expiration date,” she said. “That’s why we have to do everything in which we can now.”
“The war is horrible and people in Ukraine dream about peace, but peace doesn’t come when a country which was invaded stops resisting to Russian occupation. That’s not peace, that’s occupation and occupation is horrible.”
“If we are not able to stop Putin in Ukraine, the Russian army will go further and will attack next European countries and these children who now suffered in occupation, deportation, they will be part of this army in the future.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky co-chaired a session at the United Nations General Assembly on efforts to bring home Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.
The Canadian Press
Ms. Matviichuk said she wanted to tell one story before we wrapped the interview and she prepared to go to New York.
This summer she met a five-year-old girl who had been living with her mother in an area that became occupied by Russian soldiers. The little girl’s mother was abducted by Russian soldiers, and now she’s in Russian captivity. Ms. Matviichuk guesses that the little girl’s relatives who organized their meeting told her that she was about to meet someone important.
“This five-year-old girl, she hugged me and started crying and started asking me, please return my mom,” Ms. Matviichuk recalled, as tears swelled, “And I feel broken because being a professional lawyer with this noble status, I have no legal tools to return her mom.”
“We are speaking not about some abstract numbers, not about some territories under occupation, but a concrete human life. And such small girls who are waiting for her mom.”