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Forced deportation is one of the forms of genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

“Re-education camps” on the territory of the russian federation

The researchers found out that in such institutions they are engaged in the “re-education” of young Ukrainians. More than 6,000 children between the ages of 4 and 17 are known to attend Russian camps, although the exact number is unknown and could be much higher.

The occupiers created at least 43 child care facilities in boarding houses and boarding schools. The geography of the camps extends from the Crimea to moscow and siberia. The most remote is in the Magadan region in the Far East of russia. The main goal of the camps is political re-education. Children are exposed to scientific, cultural, patriotic and military education focused on russia. In the russian federation, this is called the “integration program”.

How exactly do children get into the camps?

As a rule, russians steal orphans whose parents they killed. But there are known examples of when, in captured cities, the occupiers took a child from their parents in the process of filtering. One such case happened in Mariupol – a mother with her grandmother and a 4-year-old boy came to the border. The invaders, checking the documents, discovered that the woman served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. She was immediately taken prisoner, the grandmother was sent back to Mariupol, and the child was sent to an unknown direction. According to Daria Gerasimchuk, the authorized adviser to the President of Ukraine on children’s rights, the russian federation has abducted and continues to abduct children from all territories temporarily occupied by it.

There are other options for kidnapping. At the beginning of October last year, the occupying authorities postponed the holidays in the schools of the Kherson region and began to take Ukrainian children to the previously occupied Crimea to ostensibly recuperate. As the Crimean officials themselves stated, they expect to receive 5,000 Ukrainian children. Later it became known that in two camps, “Artek” and “Medvezhonok”, the return of children was suspended indefinitely. The children’s parents said they were unable to get information about their child’s status or whereabouts after her return was suspended. The occupiers put pressure on parents to agree to take their children away for so-called “rehabilitation”. The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, told “News of Priazovya” in a comment that more than 300 children were taken from Energodar, Kamianka, Vodyanyi under the guise of a vacation to the Krasnodar Territory. They were not returned. Instead, they simply said: “Give us winter clothes for them, until they don’t come back,” the mayor said. It is known that the occupiers take away children’s phones and do not allow them to report their location. It is very difficult to find a child. The russians scatter Ukrainian children across their territory and constantly move them. As soon as something becomes known about the whereabouts of the children, they are moved to another part of russia.

How is the state going to return the children?

russia has deported more than 16,000 children from Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, and that number is growing every day. The Ukrainian authorities do not stop trying to reach both international political leaders and russia itself at a wide variety of platforms – from the UN to the High Commissioner for Refugees. Also, at the press conference on February 24, 2023, the President stated that it will be possible to return every child after the liberation of all our territories. But the authorities are already successfully carrying out operations to return Ukrainian children home. As of the end of April 2023, it was possible to return 361 children to Ukrainian soil.

The person responsible at the federal level for the abduction of our children is Maria Lvova-Belova – the president’s representative on children’s rights in the russian Federation. On January 7, 2023, the leader of the occupiers, putin, instructed Commissioner Lviv-Belova to “take additional measures to identify minors” living in the TOT.

Punishment awaits every collaborator who contributed to the abduction, as well as every occupier who took away and kept Ukrainian children. According to the Rome Statute, the abduction of children is aimed at destroying their self-identity and is one of the signs of the Genocide of a nation.