cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10526454

Opinion piece by Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham, UK; Elīna Šteinerte, Visiting fellow, Human Rights Implementation Centre, University of Bristol, UK; Hervé Ascensio, Professor of international law at the Sorbonne Law School, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.

It is based on their research of Russian indoctrination of Ukrainian children in Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory.

The full report can be downloaded here: Report on Violations and Abuses of International Humanitarian, Human Rights and Criminal Law related to Militarization and Indoctrination of Ukrainian Children by the Russian Federation - (pdf)

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Two of us [researchers] grew up in what was then Soviet-occupied Latvia and East Germany. We were already familiar with the Soviet approach to “upbringing”.

But when we went to Ukraine, what we found still shocked us. There was plenty of evidence of the systematic and coercive nature of the Russian federation’s policies attempting to erase the identity of the Ukrainian children under its control.

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The witness explained how the headteacher of the local school, accompanied by heavily armed soldiers, went from house to house to question parents who do not send their children to school and had not yet applied for Russian passports. He threatened them with the removal of their parental rights. He also said their children would be placed in institutions if they didn’t yield to the pressure to do so. In the face of such a display of government power, the parents eventually gave in.

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The coercion of Ukrainians in the occupied territories to take Russian passports is also significant when it comes to what we refer to in our report as the “conscription pipeline”. Children are being systematically prepared for future armed service. By being forced into Russian citizenship, boys also become eligible for conscription as soon as they turn 18.

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The use of the Ukrainian language is prohibited in schools and significantly obstructed in public and private life. Ukrainian children are subject to education under the Russian state curriculum. This now involves high levels of historical falsification and ideological indoctrination.

To give just one striking example, the history textbook for Grade 11 devotes 29 pages to the so-called “special military operation”. It frames the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive response to western aggression. Versions of this textbook for lower grades, starting in grade five, have been used across schools in the occupied territories since the beginning of academic year 2025-26.

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Ukrainian children are exposed to the full toolkit of Russian militarisation techniques. For example, since the beginning of the 2023–24 academic year, the course entitled “Fundamentals of Security and Defence of the Motherland” has been compulsory in all schools in the occupied territories.

Russian media reports say this means the “return [of] initial military training as part of life safety lessons”.

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The patriotic youth organisation Movement of the First, created in December 2022 by Vladimir Putin, has revived a Soviet-era military war game, which has been rolled out into the occupied territories since the beginning of the 2024 school year.

As part of the game’s simulated military activities children are divided into armies. They are trained in assembling weapons, operating drones, acting as “storm troopers” and completing “military-tactical” obstacle courses. They also practice cyber warfare and information operations.

The Institute for the Study of War describes this game as part of “a wider Russian ecosystem operating throughout occupied Ukraine with the explicit purpose of militarising Ukrainian children, indoctrinating them against their Ukrainian identities, and training them to fight for the Russian military”.

Russia does not deny this is being done. On the contrary, senior Russian officials are on the record justifying the indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children. For example, Yana Lantratova, formerly deputy chair of the State Duma’s committee on education, now Russia’s human rights commissioner, noted – with specific reference to children in Russian-occupied Ukraine – that the Russian Federation “must first of all take care of the main thing – our children. To develop and enlighten them, to instil in them a sense of the Motherland”.

Except that these are not Russian children, they are Ukrainian. The evidence we collected for our report left us with no doubt that Russian occupation policies amount to grave violations of international law when it comes to the indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children living in the territories under Russian control.

For example, the unlawful transformation of the education system in the occupied territories is a clear breach of Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and of Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

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This led us to call on all parties to immediately and meaningfully recognise the plight of Ukrainian children for their safety, identity and family life in the ongoing war and in all negotiations. In the words of one of the interviewees we spoke to in Kyiv: “Any deal to end the war cannot just be about kilometres.”

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