Russia operates "ideological re-education" centres for Ukrainian children
more than 6,000 Ukrainian children have been admitted to these camps since 24 February 2022.
The actual number of children may be much higher, according to a report by the Humanities Research Laboratory of Yale University's Faculty of Public Health.
There is a network of at least 43 institutions in Russia and annexed Crimea, most of which provide "ideological re-education" for children from Ukraine between the ages of 4 months and 17 years, the Yale University researchers claim.
Most of these institutions are located in Crimea, but 10 camps are near major Russian cities such as Moscow, Kazan and Yekaterinburg. There are also camps in Siberia and the Far East.
Most of the camps are repurposed health camps for children. Experts report that Ukrainian children are taught how to handle firearms and military equipment and this is recorded in the centres in Crimea and Chechnya.
Most of the children are deported from Donbas, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, before these territories were de-occupied by the AFU.
Yale University experts. stressed that the Russians were pressuring parents to agree to send their children to the camps:
Some of the parents interviewed said that they did not agree to send their children to such institutions, but they were sent.