New findings shed light on how Russia systematically indoctrinates and militarizes thousands of Ukrainian children taken by force since the start of the full-scale invasion. Researchers have mapped 210 Russian and Russian-occupied facilities used to house, reeducate, and in some cases militarize the abducted Ukrainian minors.

Russia operates 210 child facilities across 59 regions

France24 reports that a new report by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, published on 16 September, identifies 210 sites in Russia or Russian-occupied territories used to detain Ukrainian children and teenagers forcibly removed from Ukraine. These include hotels in Krasnodar, monasteries in Rostov Oblast, military schools in occupied Donetsk Oblast, and facilities near Volgograd. In total, the network stretches over 5,630 kilometers — from Crimea’s Black Sea coast to Russia’s Pacific shore.

Map: Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at Yale School of Public Health.

The program spans 59 administrative regions and occupied areas. According to the researchers, 23% of the identified facilities were either built or expanded after 2021, seemingly to accommodate the surge in forcibly relocated children. For example, two cadet training centers in the occupied Donbas were constructed and enlarged since that year.

While many of these sites existed prior to the full-scale invasion and serve other purposes, a significant portion has been repurposed or developed for this mass-scale operation. Some establishments act as transit points, like orphanages for children awaiting adoption. Others, such as military schools, serve as long-term indoctrination institutions.

Indoctrination and militarization of abducted children

More than 130 of the facilities identified by the Yale team impose “patriotic” education programs rooted in Russian propaganda. Children are made to sing the Russian national anthem, recite Russian poetry, and wear Russian clothes — all in Russian. In many cases, they are stripped of their Ukrainian identity, names, passports, and language.

This form of indoctrination was further detailed in a separate report released days earlier by the British NGO War Child UK. The group interviewed 200 Ukrainian children who had returned from Russia since 2022.

Explore further

“Stayed indoors for nearly three years”: Ukraine brings kids home from jaws of occupation — yet 19,546 remain abducted by Russia

Helen Pattinson, CEO of War Child UK, said their testimonies reveal “a clear pattern of indoctrination.” She explained that the children are torn from their homes, stripped of their passports, and forbidden from speaking their native language. They are assigned new names and identification papers, made to sing the Russian national anthem, recite Russian poetry, and wear Russian clothing.

“They may even be adopted into a Russian family,” said Pattinson.

The report warns that this approach could create an entire generation of Ukrainian children devoid of their national identity. Nearly half of those interviewed by War Child UK exhibited signs of post-traumatic stress.

In 39 of the sites documented by Yale, children receive combat-related training. These include weapons handling, grenade throwing, trench digging, demining, and even parachute training.

“They’ve been asked or forced to join paramilitary groups, shown how to throw a grenade, dig a trench, hold a gun or handle firearms, clear mines, and essentially trained to fight against their own country,” Pattinson added.

Others were involved in the production of military equipment, including drones and munitions, for Russian forces.

Russia denies deportations, promotes adoptions

The scale and organization of this operation have drawn international condemnation. Ukrainian NGO Bring Kids Back estimates that at least 19,000 children have been taken by Russia since 2014. The International Criminal Court has charged Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, with war crimes for the illegal deportation of civilians.

Explore further

210 Russian facilities identified in systematic “re-education” of Ukrainian children, Yale study reveals

Moscow disputes these accusations. It denies any deportation program, claiming instead to have “evacuated” children from combat zones.

Demographic conquest under imperial logic

Andreas Umland, a Russia-Ukraine expert at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, calls this a strategy of “demographic conquest.” He argues that Moscow aims not only to occupy Ukrainian territory, but to assimilate its population — starting with its most vulnerable.

Russia abducts Ukrainian children to “counteract the problem of demographic decline that Russia already had before the large-scale war, which is only partly solved by immigration from Central Asia and the Caucasus,” Umland explained.

The logic driving this strategy echoes Soviet-era practices, where the children are“seen as units to be made to function in a totalitarian society [. . .] and the fate of the individual child was unimportant”,” Umland said. “The higher goal used to be communism, now it’s the Russian Empire. It’s therefore the same utilitarian approach toward children.”