Russia’s war in Ukraine also affects the youngest children: Ukrainian children and young people are being specifically indoctrinated and re-educated in holiday camps in the occupied territories.
An image film by Yunarmiya, the “Young Army of Russia”, shot in the Artek holiday camp on the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula, which was already well-known during Soviet times. In the Junarmija, children learn to assemble firearms, shoot and rescue the wounded. At the holiday camps they also meet Russian soldiers who fought against Ukraine.
The children and young people are destined to serve Russia, says a voice off camera. The film shows how children march and practice combat. A captain from the Russian Black Sea Fleet addresses the young people lined up in rows: “After this camp, I want you to understand that our homeland must be protected so that you and your future children can recover here in peace. That’s why, first of all, you must have real ones Become patriots.”
Children deported under a pretext
It is a perfidious system of manipulation, criticize Ukrainian human rights activists. In the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia since 2022, thousands of children are said to have been kidnapped to holiday camps for military indoctrination, says Olha Skrypnyk, CEO of the Crimean human rights group.
“The children were taken to camps under the pretext of evacuating them from regions such as Kherson, Zaporizhia or Mariupol. Many children were taken away from these regions,” said Skrypnyk. “These camps have nothing to do with health or help for these children. It is essentially about forcing the children to serve in the army and destroying their Ukrainian identity.”
Re-education since 2014
This works primarily through propaganda, lessons in history and politics. A practice that the Russian occupation authorities have been using in the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine since 2014, says lawyer Kateryna Rashkeva. And with success. Together with her colleagues from the Regional Center for Human Rights, Rashkeva was able to reconstruct cases of children and young people who grew up under Russian occupation since 2014. As young adults, these children joined the Russian army, went to war against Ukraine – and were killed there.
“I’m sure some people took part voluntarily. Because of this policy of re-education, because of the policy of militarization,” says Rashkeva. “For eight years the Russians have been telling these children that Ukraine is a Nazi state that is bombing the children of Donbass and killing all these people.”
Parents can hardly protect their children
In the newly occupied territories, it is hardly possible for parents to protect their children from the indoctrination of the Russian occupying forces, says Rashkeva. In many cases, employees of the occupying authorities or armed men would put pressure on families to send their children to holiday camps.
“Of course they don’t call it re-education. They don’t call it militarization either. They simply say: ‘Other children have also visited these camps, they come back with gifts. They are doing well,'” Rahskeva explains the Russians’ actions. “2023 In fact, we have not documented any cases in which Ukrainian children from occupied territories were not returned from these camps. So they have adjusted their strategy so as not to provoke a reaction from the international community. They bring the children back, but with brainwashing.”
“Patriotic education” as preparation for the army
According to Ukrainian sources, thousands of children have been trafficked from Ukraine to Russia in the past two years. They often receive new birth certificates and identification documents. Therefore, it has only been possible to return Ukrainian children to their families in a few cases.
But militarization and propaganda do not only take place in holiday camps for young people, reports human rights activist Skrypnyk: “In institutions such as kindergartens or schools, various measures and programs were immediately implemented. Everything that has to do with children in a certain way is covered by so-called patriotic education combined.” This patriotic education has one goal, says Skrypnyk: “To prepare the children for service in the Russian army. To create a reality in which they would die for Russia.”
This is how Russia creates facts in the occupied territories of Ukraine. The longer the war lasts, the more difficult it will be for Ukraine to regain control of the occupied territories.
Rebecca Barth, ARD Kiev, tagesschau, May 9, 2024 12:39 a.m