Russian authorities have created a new pathway to deport Ukrainian children from temporarily occupied territories, the National Resistance Center (NRC) reported.
The occupiers transported 45 children from the temporarily occupied part of the southern Zaporizhzhia region to Russia’s neighboring Rostov-on-Don city under the guise as “cultural trip,” the statement said.
This trip is part of the “Cultural Map 4+85” program, managed by the Russian Ministry of Culture and Rosconcert, the Russian state agency for cultural events and propaganda.
According to the NRC, the children are being subjected to “spiritual indoctrination,” militarization, and Russification under the pretext of museums and exhibitions. The stated goal of the trip is “patriotic and spiritual education.”
Such trips are a deliberate part of the Kremlin’s systematic policy aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity among children.
“Children are isolated, re-educated, and prepared to serve the empire. […] This is not tourism,” the NRC said.
Earlier reports indicated that Russia has recruited over 5,500 Ukrainian children from occupied territories into its militarized youth organization, Yunarmiya, or Youth Army.
The occupiers deported another 119 Ukrainian schoolchildren from the temporarily seized city of Mariupol in January.
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