cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11858165

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“If you’re a man and you turn 18 years old, they almost immediately draft you,” said Chos, 19, who enrolled at a Moscow university to avoid conscription and later escaped Russia with the help of a Ukrainian non-profit.

But he says the brainwashing and militarization started much earlier. Chos says they began having special cadet classes in 2020, when he was a sixth-grade student. They were trained in a range of military techniques — loading and reloading weapons, marching, tactical medicine — a co-ordinated effort, Chos says, to create future soldiers to fight his fellow Ukrainians.

“What Russia is doing is occupying territories, kidnapping children and turning them [into] Russian soldiers,” he said.

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Daria Fursova, 23, remembers how quickly her elementary school curriculum changed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 when she was 11.

“The administration said that there will no longer be Ukrainian books in school, in classes,” she said, recalling the start of fifth grade.

Not long after, Fursova’s school stopped teaching Ukrainian and instead began instructing them in Russian history and the Russian language.

Speaking Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar — a language considered “highly endangered” by UNESCO — was forbidden, even during breaks, according to 18-year-old Daria Tomashova, who says the indoctrination was “everywhere,” from textbooks in school to what was broadcast on TV.

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Beyond the Russification of occupied Crimea, the international community has raised particular concern with how Russia has forcibly separated tens of thousands of Ukrainian children from their families and taken them into Russian territory — an act Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as “mass kidnapping” amounting to genocide.

Many of those children have shared stories of abuse while in Russian custody, including being placed in isolation cells for not being co-operative in Russian re-education camps. Other children are given new identities, naturalized as Russian citizens and forcibly adopted into foster families in Russia.

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The co-ordinated campaign has led to charges at the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.

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Chos was eventually able to escape Russia with the help of Save Ukraine, which gave him food, shelter, mental health support and documentation.

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“I managed to escape,” Chos told the room of delegates, “but a lot of children are still left there.”

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