WASHINGTON (CNN) The Russian government operates an extensive network of dozens of camps where it has held thousands of Ukrainian children since the war against Ukraine began last year, according to a new report released on Tuesday.
The report contains disturbing new details about the extent of Moscow’s efforts to relocate, re-educate, and sometimes military train or forcibly adopt Ukrainian children – acts that constitute war crimes and could provide evidence Russia’s actions amount to genocide, it said.
The report was produced as part of the work of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab’s Conflict Observatory, sponsored by the US State Department. The observatory was set up last year to collect evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
“All levels of the Russian government are involved,” Nathaniel Raymond of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab told reporters on Tuesday.
“Think of this report as a giant yellow alert that we are issuing on the children of Ukraine,” he said.
The report found that more than 6,000 children – ranging in age from just a few months to 17 – were in Russian custody at some point during the nearly year-long war, although the “total number of children is not known and is likely well over 6,000.” “
It identified 43 facilities that are part of the network that “stretches from one end of Russia to the other,” including Russian-held Crimea, the “eastern Pacific coast — closer to Alaska than Moscow” and Siberia, Raymond said.
“The primary purpose of the camps appears to be political re-education,” he said, noting that at least 32 of the facilities identified in the report “appear to be involved in systematic re-education efforts that expose children from Ukraine to a Russian-aligned academic, cultural, patriotic and in two cases specifically military education.”
CNN has reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington for comment on the report.
Children learned how to use firearms
According to Raymond, a camp in Chechnya and a camp in Crimea “appear to be specifically involved in training children to use firearms and military vehicles,” but the researchers have seen no evidence at this time that the children were trained in these military camps were sent into the conflict.
The report noted that “many children who are placed in camps are, with their parents’ consent, sent for an agreed duration of days or weeks and returned to their parents as originally planned,” but noted that “in many cases the Parents’ ability to give meaningful consent may be considered doubtful given the conditions of war and the implied threat from the occupying powers.
“Other children have been held in these camps for months, including hundreds of children whose status is unknown; at the time of this report it is unclear if they have been returned to their families. This report has identified two camps where the children are scheduled to return. The date has been pushed back by weeks. In two other identified camps, the return of the children has been postponed indefinitely,” it said.
Still other children were considered “orphans” and were placed with Russian families.
“It’s also critical to understand that these are children who – the lack of contact they have, or the only intermittent contact they may have, with their parents, are doing very real and potential harm on a daily basis,” he said Caitlin Howarth, also of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.
The report said it identified “several dozen federal, regional and local figures directly involved in the implementation and political justification of the program,” and “at least 12 of those individuals are not on U.S. and/or international sanctions lists.”
Raymond observed: “We are not here today to draw the conclusion on genocide, but we do say that this system complies with the legal basis of both the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention prohibiting the transfer of children by a group into another matches. “
US says relocation of children is part of effort to ‘suppress Ukraine’s identity’
State Department spokesman Ned Price said that “Russia’s system of forced relocation, re-education and adoption of Ukrainian children is a key element of the Kremlin’s systematic efforts to deny and suppress Ukraine’s identity, history and culture.”
“The devastating effects of Russia’s failed aggressive war will be felt for generations to come,” he said at a State Department briefing on Tuesday.
The US State Department said in a media release that “the unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons constitutes a serious violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilians and constitutes a war crime.”
“The fact that these are transfers and deportations of children is unscrupulous in every respect,” the statement said. “Russia must stop forced renditions and deportations immediately and return children to their families or guardians. Russia must provide registration lists of resettled and deported children of Ukraine and allow independent outside observers access to relevant facilities in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and within Russia itself.”
“The growing evidence of Russia’s actions exposes the Kremlin’s goals of denying and repressing Ukraine’s identity, history and culture,” she continued. “The devastating effects of Putin’s war on the children of Ukraine will be felt for generations. The United States will stand with Ukraine and take responsibility for Russia’s appalling abuses for as long as possible.”