A top Moscow official and his colleagues were directly involved in forcibly deporting Ukrainian children, who were then placed in Russian military training programs, it has been reported.
The independent Russian-language news outlet Vertska said that Alexander Bastrykin, who heads the Russian Investigative Committee in charge of examining serious crimes, helped coerce children into Russia's cadet corps.
In March, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said there was evidence of the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia and that the forced deportation to areas under Moscow's control was a war crime.
The Commission's report said that grants of Russian citizenship and placing children in foster families were aimed at setting up a framework "in which some of the children may end up remaining permanently" in Russia. While the transfers were supposed to be temporary "most became prolonged" the investigators said.
In March, the reported removal of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territory to Russia itself triggered the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
Verstka said in its report published Sunday that following Putin's full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Investigative Committee "took patronage" over the children taken to Russia from the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Bastrykin personally visited Ukrainian children in Russia and told them that his committee would support them and that they were needed for Moscow's victory.
Cadet corps are educational institutions that give children initial training for military or public service. Verstka reported on how the cadet corps had been promoted to Ukrainian children from the occupied Donbas region.
It said during the first year of the war, 78 Ukrainian children entered educational institutions, including the cadet corps and academies affiliated with the Investigative Committee, which Newsweek has contacted for comment.
Verstka also said that Bastrykin ordered the cadet corps in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Volgograd to prepare to receive Ukrainian children from the occupied Donbas region as early as February 25, 2022, a day after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Children told the outlet that they felt compelled to join the cadet corps and by September 2022, more than 40 from the Donbas, including those who were orphans, were wearing cadet uniforms.
Verstka highlighted statements from Ukrainian children who said they felt compelled to participate in the Russian cadet corps because of educational opportunities.
In reporting the story, the Institute for the Study of War said "the coercion" of Ukrainian children legally unable to consent to their deportations and participation in such military-patriotic re-education programs, "is likely part of an ongoing Russian campaign to eradicate the Ukrainian national identity and militarize youth who have been forcibly deported to Russia."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
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