Thousands of children kidnapped from Ukraine and brought to Russian territory are being forced to work in factories that produce drones and other weapons, according to a report from Yale University.
The Yale School of Public Health’s humanitarian research lab found in a study released on Tuesday that Russia has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children since invading the country in 2022, many of whom have been forced into adoption by Russian families, or taken to re-education centers and munitions factories.
In the Krasnodar Krai region in southern Russia, the study found that hundreds of children who passed through the “All-Russian Children’s Centre ‘Change'” were eventually put to work on drones, mine detectors, and loading mechanisms for assault rifles.
“More than 300 children from Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were taken to this facility between 2022 and the present day,” the report stated.
Satellite imagery from as recently as April 2025 shows that Ukrainian children have gone through “re-education and military training” at a center called “Young Patriot” near Moscow, which “opened for the explicit purpose of re-educating children from Ukraine and exposing them to military training,” according to Yale’s report.
“While at the centre, they underwent lessons that present a Russian state-aligned view of history, prepared for the national standard fitness test, assembled and disassembled weapons and underwent military-technical, drill and medical trainings,” the report added.
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a statement: “This report demands action. Children are always the most vulnerable victims of armed conflict. Not only have these children undergone trauma and displacement, they have also suffered systemic deportation, illegal adoption, and forced assimilation.
“It’s now clear Russia plans to use Ukraine’s own children as a ‘weapon’ against us and Europe more broadly. This report provides irrefutable evidence contradicting Russian denials and misinformation about their handling of Ukraine’s children.”
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