“Rain” found 24 Russian boarding schools where Ukrainian children were taken
More than 400 orphans who were taken out of the occupied territories of Ukraine were distributed to 24 Russian orphanages and boarding schools, the Dozhd TV channel reports , citing the correspondence between the Ministry of Education and regional guardianship authorities.
In 21 of them, children are brainwashed with “military-patriotic education” – they are forced to listen to briefings by the speaker of the Russian Ministry of Defense Igor Konashenkov, make trench candles for the front line, put on military performances, write letters to the military at the front. Children are also taught how to handle a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Dozhd notes that only those children who the Russian authorities managed to take out of the occupied territories shortly before or immediately after the start of the war are kept in these boarding schools.
First, the children were taken to temporary accommodation centers in the Kursk and Rostov regions. Then from there, they were sent to boarding schools. At the end of August, Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, said that there were 600 children in this group.
The Russian authorities are instructing boarding schools to “place children in the families of citizens.” By mid-January, out of more than 400 children known to Dozhd, 36 were in foster care. Ukrainian human rights activists say that about 6,000 children have been taken to Russia since the beginning of the war.
