For years, Vladimir Putin has been stealing Ukrainian children as a weapon of war.
The horrifying practice isn’t just meant to inflict psychological terror, however. As Russia’s invasion continues to cost it tens of thousands of soldiers every month, the aggressor state is training many of its stolen Ukrainian children to fight against their motherland.
These crimes call out for justice, and any deal to end the war must include accountability for those involved.
Russia started targeting children soon after it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Although its takeover was nearly bloodless, Russia decided to intimidate Crimeans into recognizing their new overlords so that internal resistance would not obstruct its larger plans for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Believing that it would control Crimea in perpetuity, Russia developed plans to pacify not only the existing population but also future generations, and quickly started building the requisite infrastructure to cement its hegemony.
A network of “youth centers,” “recreation camps,” and “children’s health camps” soon dotted Crimea, including its largest city Sevastopol. In them, Ukrainian children are forced to reject their heritage and embrace Russian culture, sovereignty, and militarism.
At one such “International Children’s Center,” “Artek,” children are forcibly integrated into Russian youth movements like Yunarmiya, a Ministry of Defense-funded organization that trains children for future military service (including weapons training), and Movement of the First, a Putin-founded and controlled organization that indoctrinates children as young as six into the Russian state-sanctioned worldview. Ukrainian parents from elsewhere in the country who sent their children there to escape the 2022 invasion have mainly been unable to contact, let alone retrieve, their offspring.
Another “Youth Center,” “Selet – Ak Bars,” in Yalta, holds around a thousand Ukrainian children who were stolen from regions occupied by Russian forces. There, they weave tactical bracelets, make amulet medallions, and write letters of gratitude and support for the very Russian military personnel who continue to assault their homeland. There’s even an outdoor festival called “My Hand of Support for the Special Military Operation” – Russia’s euphemism for their invasion.
If that sounds Soviet, it should – camps like Artek were originally established by the USSR for indoctrination purposes, and organizations like Movement of the First were directly modeled on Soviet youth movements like the Pioneers.
Russia has since scaled this model across occupied Ukrainian territory and into Russia itself, providing for the brainwashing of tens of thousands of children far from their homes and families. The “All-Russian Children’s Center,” “Ocean,” houses 30 Ukrainian children from the Kherson region 4,500 miles away in Vladivostok, Russia’s largest city on the Pacific.
More than 200 of these camps now exist, and the number is growing. Recent Russian policy mandates and funds the preparation of youth to fulfill their "constitutional duty of defending the Fatherland," and develop "high patriotic consciousness".
In practice, that means prohibiting captive children from speaking Ukrainian, building school curricula around blind patriotism, injecting militarism into every subject, and teaching that Ukraine is an illegitimate and ahistorical nation whose own actions necessitated Russian intervention.
This effort is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been aligned with Putin for decades. Since the invasion began in 2022, priests have collaborated with state authorities to present militarization as a moral and spiritual duty for young people, claiming that “sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins".
In 2023, the Church even published a children’s booklet, "To Live is to Serve the Motherland," that includes material telling young readers it is their duty to fight in the country’s armed forces.
The theft of these children is a war crime. Their placement and confinement in “re-education” camps constitutes a clear and ongoing crime against humanity, which the Senate Appropriations Committee acknowledged in a recent hearing.
As its leaders have made clear, Russia’s goal is not merely to defeat Ukraine – it is to erase the very idea of Ukraine. Putin claims that Ukraine is a nation without a history that rightfully belongs to Russia, averring that “modern Ukraine was wholly and fully created by Bolshevik, communist Russia.”
Putin’s henchman Dmitry Medvedev characterized Ukrainians as “people without any stable self-identification,” and disgustingly compared President Zelensky’s defense of his people to Jews volunteering to serve in the Nazi SS.
For him and Putin, Ukrainians are no more than wayward Russians, misbehaving children who need a strong parental hand to bring them back in line.
Their crimes cannot stand. America, the European Union, and nations of conscience around the world must sanction and prosecute everyone involved in the theft, imprisonment, and indoctrination of Ukrainian children.
President Trump’s proposed peace plan mentions returning these children, but without enforcement mechanisms there is no reason to think Russia will comply. If they remain in Russian hands, it will signal acquiescence to the disturbing annexation of not just Ukrainian territory, but Ukraine’s very future.
Father Patrick Desbois is the founder of Yahad-In Unum.
