Russia trains investigators on children abducted from Ukraine

After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation "took custody" of the children taken to Russia and sent some of them to the cadet corps in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Volgograd to train them as investigators.

As reported by Ukrinform, this is stated in the investigation of the "Verstka" publication and the "Kidmapping" project.

As noted, SC employees began to come to social institutions, where Ukrainian orphans and children left without parental care were temporarily placed, to bring humanitarian aid and gifts. The chairman of the committee immediately instructed the departmental cadet corps to prepare for the reception of schoolchildren from the so-called "DPR" and "LPR".

Cadet corps are educational institutions where, in addition to the school curriculum, children undergo initial training for military or civil service. Cadets not only study but also live in the SC corps. For orphans or children left without parental care, separate quotas are allocated in the cadet corps of the SC.

The investigative committee became interested in children after 2014 when hostilities began in the east of Ukraine. Schoolchildren from the Donetsk region, for example, could apply for places in educational institutions of the SK - teenagers from socially vulnerable groups passed a competitive selection and entered the Khimki boarding school of the Investigative Committee. Children who needed medical help were sent to the Roshal clinic in Moscow. But after the full-scale invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine, the Investigative Committee took over the children of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the investigators write.

The ombudsman of the Russian Federation herself repeatedly thanked the SC for help with the removal of children. For example, for the fact that they transported a group of minors from Mariupol, including her future adopted son, Philip, to the Moscow suburbs.

According to the data published in the printed journal of the SC, from February 2022 to March 2023, employees of the department took out 323 children from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions, including 181 orphans. 78 children, including 28 orphans, entered educational institutions of the Russian Federation, including cadet corps and academies of the SC.

In September 2022, the SC reported that 43 children from the east of Ukraine began studying in all departmental cadet corps in the fall of 2022. Most of them were not included in the official lists of children who arrived, published on the website.

"Verstka" identified 12 teenagers from the occupied territories who stepped onto the square and studied the basics of law in Moscow, Volgograd, and St. Petersburg.

The publication tells the stories of 8-9 grade children from Donetsk and Luhansk regions who were taken to the Russian Federation and sent to cadet corps.

Lawyer and international lawyer Olga Gnezdylova, who got acquainted with the extracurricular activities of SK cadets, called such education "indoctrination" (imposing ideas that do not involve critical perception - ed.) and a violation of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

At the beginning of the new academic year, specialized cadet classes under the leadership of the SC should open in occupied Luhansk and Skadovsk in the Kherson region.

Author - Serhii Kolomiets, 14/08/2023