When Russian military personnel arrived at Vladyslav Rudenko's home in Kherson, in October 2022, they told him that their purpose was to take him to a "holiday camp" in Crimea, away from a town affected by the war. He was 16 years old at that time. They didn't give him many options either. As the boy recalls, he was ordered to pack his bags in a few minutes and was taken to a group of buses where hundreds of boys were waiting for him.
"The first thing they told us was to get rid of anything Ukrainian: bracelets with the colors of the flag, pins... anything. I hid a small flag that I had. They told us that Ukraine did not exist and that we had to speak Russian," the boy comments in a conversation with EL MUNDO via Zoom.
Rudenko remembers that he spent three months in similar facilities. According to his account, they followed a daily routine that started early in the morning by listening to the Russian anthem and watching the raising of the country's flag. After breakfast, they discussed the events that had occurred in Russia during the previous day, including the progress of the war in Ukraine. Later, they watched Russian movies that recalled the exploits of the Soviet army in World War II.
But the real indoctrination began at the end of that same year when he was sent to the naval academy in Lazurne, a location in the Kherson province. "They woke us up every day at 7:00 and made us march. We had regular classes but they also taught us how to handle weapons. They took us to a shooting range where they made us crawl with wooden AK-47s. The older ones [of legal age] could shoot with real AK-47s. We must have been hundreds of Ukrainian boys," Rudenko points out.
The ultimate goal - they told him - was for him to eventually enlist in the naval forces or the Russian army "to fight against Ukraine", his own country, but the young man managed to avoid that possibility when his mother showed up in Lazurne and, after a complex negotiation with the military establishment, managed to convince them to let him leave with Vlad. "My mother was interrogated, they put a bag over her head and locked her up for two days in an underground room. They finally agreed to let me go, but only after I recorded a video saying that I didn't like Ukraine," he adds.
Vladyslav Rudenko, who managed to return to Ukraine on May 29, 2024, is one of the Ukrainian boys who have gone through the Russian indoctrination system established in the territories occupied by Moscow's forces since 2014, which according to various human rights organizations in Ukraine has intensified its efforts in recent months as local authorities in those regions announced a new mandatory military mobilization of their residents at the end of last year.
Although there is no reliable statistic, Daria Zarivna, head of the organization Bring the Children Back to Ukraine, estimates that there are currently up to 1.6 million minors in the areas of her country occupied by Russia. As Mariia Sulialina from the Almenda Human Rights Center explains, the Russians have exported to Ukraine the structure of educational centers linked to organizations that combine classical and military instruction by opening branches of movements like Yunarmia, which try to "turn these children into loyal citizens willing to defend the regime."
"There are special military classes, called 'cadet classes,' for children over six years old, promoted by different military units. In Kherson, there are nine of these classes, and in Zaporizhia, there are 13. The children wear uniforms similar to those of these military units and become familiar with weapons. They have also opened a Nakhimov naval school in Mariupol, with the purpose of having the children end up in the Russian navy," Sulialina adds.
A recent report from the same organization warned about the "drastic changes" that the educational environment in the Russian-controlled territories has undergone, experiencing a "deep militarization." The photos collected in the investigation "resemble scenes from Soviet films: children in uniforms, games from the Soviet era, military events," the document adds.
The Russians have even revived the so-called military games Zarnitsa, popularized from the 1960s onwards, with thousands of young Ukrainians participating in the current edition. Participants engage in military tactics drills, train with real fire, demonstrate their camouflage skills, or their knowledge of first aid. "They are taught to fight against their own state," denounces the Almenda text.
Russia's systematic effort to indoctrinate Ukrainian children began from the very beginning of the aggression against this country in 2014, especially in the Crimean Peninsula, which was occupied in March of that year. Schools in that territory immediately began implementing the "patriotic education" program followed in Russia, and starting in 2022, children began receiving "basic military training" - as Mariia Sulialina defines it - incorporated into the curriculum of those centers.
According to the Ukrainian, the next step in the Russian campaign was the introduction in Ukrainian territories of groups like the aforementioned Yunarmia. This movement was created in Russia in 2015 under the initiative of the then Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and now claims to have 1.3 million "cadets," who have been seen marching in the traditional May 9 parade - the so-called Victory Day against Nazism- in Moscow. The organization was established in Ukraine after the occupation of Crimea, and in January 2022, a month before the general offensive of Russian troops, it already had 29,000 members only on that peninsula, according to data from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
These paramilitary teaching structures, dependent on the Ministry of Defense, were established in Russia as heirs to the spirit of groups like the Young Pioneers or Komsomol created by the Soviet Union from the early years of its existence.
Pro-Russian channels do not intend to hide these activities. Russian social media have been incessantly posting videos and photographs for months promoting the paramilitary activities of Ukrainian minors residing in occupied territories like Kherson. On February 23, a nursery in the city of Henichesk, in that southern province, released photos of young children engaged in a "military training" - as described - where they were taught to "throw grenades," "rescue wounded," or overcome "minefields."
In April, another educational center in Melitopol - occupied since March 2022 - the Yevgraf Komarovsky school, named after a well-known former general of the Russian Empire, posted on its Telegram page information about the visit of a Russian military commander stationed in Zaporizhia to the facility, as part of the campaign for the children to "have the opportunity to communicate with modern heroes." At the same time, the school displayed photos of dozens of young children in military uniforms and, at the same time, peace doves.
The complaints from human rights organizations in Ukraine coincide with publications in independent Russian media such as The Moscow Today. The latter reported in April on the increase since February of visits by Russian security forces to schools located in the Ukrainian regions that remain occupied under the pretext of holding "career guidance sessions" - as they call them - where they, of course, urge them to enlist in their units.
Meanwhile, the official Russian news agency Tass acknowledged that the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) - a military group independent of the army that answers to Putin himself - has joined this campaign and established its first educational institution for minors in the controlled Ukraine, in Zaporizhia, at the end of 2023. There are now 12, just in that region, Tass added.