01 June 2024

Occupied territories: childhood stolen by Russia

For more than 10 years, Crimea has been under Russian occupation. Since the beginning of the occupation, Russia has been implementing a policy of destroying Ukrainian identity in all spheres of children’s life.
On the occasion of International Children’s Day, the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the Office of the Crimea Platform, and the War Childhood Museum prepared material with evidence of how Russia implements a policy of militarization, deporting children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to or through the territory of Crimea to its lands. Despite the intimidation and persecution by the occupation regime, Ukrainian citizens, including children, are resisting the occupation in ways that are within their reach.

The testimonies of children and youth from the occupied Crimea, collected by researchers of the War Childhood Museum, tell what they are going through and how their lives and education have changed since the beginning of the occupation.

“The Invincible State” (Safiie, born in 2000, Simferopol)

Until 2014, I had a bright life. Then I stopped participating in any social activities, going to clubs. At school, they often said that the Crimean Tatars were the helpers of the Third Reich and that the same thing was happening now. Our class teacher sincerely believed that most Crimean Tatars were collaborators. I prepared a report, gathered information from all the available sources, and told her that this was all false information, but that there was an unspoken oppression of children at school.
When the Russian authorities came to power, they took away all our textbooks and issued new ones. I remember a history textbook with Putin’s face on the cover. Our teacher abruptly changed her mind and started telling us that Russia was a great state. There was an extremely strong dissonance in my head, because before they were saying one thing, and now they were saying another. Everyone realized that brainwashing was going on. There were excellent students in our class who knew history well, and they were outraged.
But a year or so passed, and I began to notice that these girls themselves began to believe that Russia was an invincible state. They started talking to us in the same words as the history teacher.
Safiie, born in 2000, Simferopol

Ukraine behind the viewport (Arslan, born in 1998, Simferopol)

My parents’ generation was born in places of exile. I was born in Simferopol, in the Ukrainian Crimea of independent Ukraine.
In 2013, during the Maidan, I went on a school trip to Lviv. In my childhood, Ukraine was like behind a viewport somewhere out here, not in front of me. Before the trip, we had only studied Ukrainian language and literature: Lesya Ukrainka, Taras Shevchenko, “Oh, I eat lard, I sleep on lard because I love it so much,” and television were the only sources of information I knew about Ukrainians. People dancing in embroidered shirts, bread and salt, a boy and a girl with a wreath and an embroidered shirt on the cover of the textbook “I and Ukraine”. I realized that the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, as we wrote in our notebooks, is one of the regions of Ukraine. But I thought that just as we speak and write Russian in Crimea, it is the same all over Ukraine. And everything that was Ukrainian was only on television.
I arrived in Lviv and saw real Ukrainians. They are not drunk, they are sane, and they smile. They go to church, and when they pass a chapel, they take off their hats and make a sign of the cross. They are different, they are people first and foremost. I have not heard them say such words to me as Russians do. I returned to Simferopol a different person.
We have to make sure that children, no matter what region or nationality, have Ukraine here, not behind the glass. Otherwise, we will lose our land again. Just as we did not hear after the 14th, we will make the same mistakes in 2022.
Usually, Crimean Tatars take a handful of land with them, but I took shells.

Militarization of childhood

Since the beginning of the temporary occupation of Crimea, Russia has extended the application of its legislation to its territory. The occupation regime is actively militarizing the educational sphere, implementing its ideology aimed at changing children’s identity to Russian and educating them in the spirit of Russian patriotism.
Teachers, educators and representatives of religious organizations are involved in the process of “national-patriotic education”.
According to the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Russian propaganda of “military-patriotic education” affects all children and youth in Crimea. At least 10% of them are actively involved in various paramilitary military-patriotic movements.

The Crimea Recovery Strategy after De-occupation emphasizes that children are the main victims of the temporary occupation of Crimea.
“Born in the occupied territory, children are exposed to Russian indoctrination and militarization, starting with preschool education. In kindergartens on the peninsula, it has become common to hold military games, themed concerts, and shows with the participation of the Russian servicemen. For all the children on the peninsula (approximately 500,000), childhood in such conditions has become a preparation for future military service, devoid of life prospects,” the document says.

According to the Crimean Human Rights Group, there is a whole system in place in the temporarily occupied Crimea to promote military service in the Russian army among children. It includes

• kindergartens (for example, kindergarten No. 36, where three cadet classes were opened by order) and schools
• summer camps, where children are taught the basics of military affairs and how to handle weapons; political parties
• Church organizations (the Brotherhood of Orthodox Scouts camp),
• other structures, in particular, the Russian youth military-patriotic military organization “Yunarmiia”, the Regional Center for Preparation for Military Service and Military-Patriotic Education (Krympatriotcenter), a voluntary society for the support of the army, (DOSAAF of Russia), the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of Crimea, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation (army hand-to-hand combat, military applied sports, military sports all-around, shooting with standard or service weapons), the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

In addition, the occupation regime uses religious organizations to force Ukrainian children to serve in the Russian armed forces. For example, with the participation of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Brotherhood of Orthodox Scouts camp was created, where children and youth are trained as reconnaissance men under a religious focus. According to the Representative Office of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, by 2021, 29,000 children in Crimea and approximately 7,500 in Donetsk and Luhansk regions had been recruited into the Yunarmiia. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, numerous cases of forced recruitment of children from the newly occupied districts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions have been documented.
In addition to destroying Ukrainian identity, militarization is a violation of international humanitarian law.

Deportation of children

Another experience of Ukrainian childhood in the occupied territories is forced displacement or deportation to/through the occupied Crimea.
According to the Children of War informational portal, 19546 cases of deportation and/or forced displacement of children have been verified. However, it is not yet possible to establish the real numbers.

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova. Both are accused of illegally transferring Ukrainian children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia and Belarus. Russia began this practice in 2014, with the occupation of Crimea. This policy was based on the forced passportization of Ukrainian citizens in the temporarily occupied territory. The most vulnerable group of these unlawful actions are orphans and children deprived of parental care, who were unable to refuse imposed citizenship and protect their rights because they could not make decisions on their own.
Russia is displacing or deporting Ukrainian children, disguising it as a charity, humanitarian initiative, or rescue, using a series of manipulative statements: “Donbas children” are Russian children; Ukraine and the West are killing “Donbas children”, so they need to be “saved”.

The analytical brief “Forcible deportation of Ukrainian children to/via occupied Crimea” notes that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the first reports of forced deportation of children to Russia and the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea were published in March 2022, during the battles for Mariupol. At the time, Ukrainian authorities announced that more than 2,300 children from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions had been abducted by Russian troops. A map of the camps where Russians resettled and continue to resettle deported Ukrainian children was also created based on open data.

On April 27, 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution (2495) stating that the forced displacement and Russification of Ukrainian children constitutes evidence of genocide. In late January 2024, PACE unanimously adopted another resolution on the situation of children in Ukraine, a new document containing additional provisions for the protection of Ukrainian children.
According to the international expert group Bring Kids Back UA, which was established to return Ukrainian children abducted by Russia during the war, 388 of the 19,546 cases identified have been returned.

Resistance of Ukrainian citizens against the occupation

Despite the occupation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia, Ukrainian citizens, adults, and children, are resisting the enemy in all possible ways, risking their safety and lives.

We know about whole movements, as well as individual cases and initiatives of single persons. There are also cases of children’s resistance in the occupied Crimea. For example, a 14-year-old schoolboy traveled alone from Kerch to Yalta and poured red paint on a banner with Putin’s portrait.
Another example is the story of an 8th grader from Kherson who was illegally brought to Crimea during the occupation. She did not stand up during the performance of the Russian anthem in class and wrote in her notebook: “Glory to Ukraine” and “Victory will be ours”. For this, the young Ukrainian girl was accused of having a negative attitude towards Russia and openly demonstrating it.
Another proof of children’s resistance is a video shot in Crimea. In the video with Crimean landscapes, a child can be heard saying the slogan “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!

Residents of the occupied Crimea are waiting to return despite the pressure and the possibility of arrest, and are raising their children with love for Ukraine.