Since Russia militarily occupied territories in the south and east of Ukraine, Ukrainian parents have accepted that their children leave the country by the thousands to attend free summer camps in Russia, Belarus and Crimea. . Others consented to their children being taken to Russia for health care. But many children have still not returned, which worries the Ukrainian authorities.
Last summer, at least 6,000 Ukrainian children went to holiday camps in Crimea and more than 2,000 children took part in camps in Belarus, reports Kateryna Rashevska, lawyer for the Regional Center for Human Rights, a organization formerly based in Crimea, but which had to be relocated to Kiev after the annexation of the peninsula by Russia in 2014. “And how many left for Russia? We don’t know,” she said.
In a report titled “Russia’s Systematic Program for the Rehabilitation and Adoption of Ukrainian Children,” published last week, Yale University researchers say they have identified at least 43 locations in Crimea or Russia where Ukrainian children stayed. These camps serve a purpose of “re-education”, they write, to make these children “more pro-Russian in their personal and political views”.
The Ukrainian government does not know how many Ukrainian children attended these camps, nor how many returned. The young people who were taken are mostly from the four territories that Russia says it annexed last fall, namely Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
“The local occupation authorities have created a kind of society that is very difficult to leave and they have ‘proposed’ parents to send their children to rest in camps or seek health care,” says Daria Gerasymchuk , Commissioner to the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, for Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation. “But after months of this so-called rest, when the parents tried to get their children back, they said it was not possible for some reason,” she adds, outraged.
Pressures
When they left for these camps, the children were in groups and were due to return a few weeks later. “We don’t know what pressure the parents may have been under to accept,” replies Kateryna Rashevska when asked about the reasons that may have pushed parents to accept such an invitation in times of war. Without forgetting the weight that Russian propaganda can have, she recalls.
Before the war, many of these vacation camps were prestigious and expensive, also underlines the lawyer, who herself made a stay at the Artek camp, in Crimea, when she was a child. Young Ukrainians now stay in this camp located on the edge of the Black Sea. “I had won my place in a competition. There were children who came from other European countries who wanted to take part in this camp,” she says. In recent months, Ukrainian parents may have wanted to take this opportunity to send their children to these reputable places for free, she believes.
Oleksandra Romantsova, executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, also says she understands the parents who made this decision to send their children to a place safe from fighting. “But they have big problems now to bring them back to Ukraine. And if these children become orphans while they are in the camps, Ukraine has no information about them [pour les rapatrier]. »
To recover their children, mothers had to leave Ukraine to go to Poland, then transit through the Baltic States or Belarus before reaching Russia and going to the camps themselves.
Course in Russian
Children who returned from these camps (some returned with their group) reported that lessons in Russian history and language were offered to them. Culture was also promoted there through Russian films shown to them and Russian patriotic songs taught to them. Before returning to Ukraine, children reportedly received gifts.
Interview requests from Duty to the Russian government have remained unanswered. But state officials have left several traces on the Internet documenting the participation of Ukrainian children in these holiday camps.
On August 6 and 7, Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights to the President of the Russian Federation, posted on her Telegram account a series of photos and videos of children from Donbass participating in a camp in the Krasnodar region, in Russia, in the company of Russian children. A video showing teenagers waving Russian flags and singing patriotic songs was posted online. The commissioner writes that she hopes these young people will see “the possibilities available to them in Russia”.
” I like Russia “
In October, the Kherson regional authority posted on Telegram a series of photos and videos of local children staying at holiday camps in Crimea and Krasnodar, calling it an “unforgettable holiday”. “. In a video, young people are gathered to listen to the Russian national anthem. On February 15, one of the publications mentions that 30 children from the region, who won the “I love Russia” contest, were able to stay at the Artek camp in Crimea.
There are also reports of sick Ukrainian children being treated in Russia. On August 12, Maria Lvova-Belova posted a photo on Telegram of a boy from Donbass who suffered a serious eye injury and was taken to Moscow for treatment. The care was financed by a Russian humanitarian fund, she said.
keep the power
For Oleksandra Romantsova, “Putin’s main objective at the moment is to keep power in Russia, which means that he must offer the people daily new stories about the greatness of Russia”. By showing that it “rescues” Ukrainian children, the Russian government seeks above all to present to Russians a humanitarian vision of the actions it is taking in Ukraine, she analyzes.
Like other stakeholders interviewed, Kateryna Rashevska believes that the majority of these children will return to Ukraine. But before their return, the Russian government is trying to “Russify” them, she believes. “He wants to create this loyalty to the Russian Federation so that after this war these children are not convinced that Russia is the aggressor and that it is a bad country,” she says. A strategy that could bear fruit, she fears, and shake the Ukrainian political and social spectrum for years to come.