On July 9, ODIHR OSCE published the Report on violations and abuses of international humanitarian, human rights, and criminal law related to the militarization and indoctrination of Ukrainian children by Russia, prepared by professors Hervé Ascensio, Elīna Šteinerte, and Stefan Wolff in the framework of the current OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism.
Report stress special attention to the situation in the Russia-occupied Crimea, stressing that “the Russian legislative architecture governing Ukrainian children in occupied territories constitutes a system of purposeful design, first implemented in Crimea since 2014”.
It adds that the pattern of gradually erasing Ukrainian children’s Ukrainian identity and imposing a Russian one on them follows a trajectory first developed in Crimea after 2014, what has been called the “Crimean scenario.” In such a framework, the Report researches “the use of both textbooks and teachers from Crimea” in the mainland-occupied territories after the full-scale invasion.
The Report also adds that the trajectory of the suppression of the Ukrainian language in Crimea is the most fully documented, referring to relevant judgments of the International Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights.
Reports point out that 1.6 million school-age children in the occupied territories of Ukraine are subject to a comprehensive system of Russian state indoctrination and militarization. It also describes the growth of systems of aggressor’s “cadet classes”, “Movement of the First,” and “Yunarmiya” structures in Crimea and its role in “cannon fodder” mobilization to the Russian army.
The Report points out that the Russian “educational programme” in Crimea “developed over years and encountered friction” including initial resistance from teachers, parents, and students, describing also Russian illicit policy with citizenship obtaining.
It adds that in 2022, Russia’s immediate ban on Ukrainian-language education in mainland territories and “the active coercion of teachers through dismissal, harassment, and similar practices of intimidation reflect the application of this lesson”, “adapting experience gained in Crimea”.
The Report describes Russia’s illicit practice of transferring Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied mainland territory to “summer camps” in Crimea and points out that such tools of militarization and indoctrination were funded by the.”Gazprom” and “Rosneft”, also as the “Rostec”, regarding “Artek”.
It gives the example that in Crimea, “summer-time military training was required before a student could pass into the next grade at the beginning of the new school year.”
Also, the examples of transferring the Crimean youth to military training in the “Voin” (“Warrior”) facility in Primorskiy Krai and to Songdowon camp in North Korea were described in the Report, as well as the relevant “Crimean republican legislation” on “military-historical activities,” “defense-sports camps” and meetings with participants of aggression against Ukraine, “Hero corners,” “Hero desks,” etc.
It also points to the “drone operator cadre of Crimea’s strategic project” initiated by Sergei Aksyonov and on the drone training programme enrolling Ukrainian children in the occupied territories from the age of eight in branches of the aggressor’s “Nakhimov Naval School” in Sevastopol and Mariupol.
Regarding the school curriculum in Crimea, the report points on the anti-Ukrainian narratives of the current “Concept for teaching the history of Russia” and of the relevant Russia’s “unified history textbook”.
Crimea provides the earliest and most extensively developed example of Russian illegal policies against youth in occupied Ukrainian territory that was “replicated in all the territories occupied by Russia,” the Report summarizes.
It stressed that from the perspective of international humanitarian law, the transformation of an education system on a large scale may entail a violation of Article 43 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, and of Article 50(1) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949, with reference to the ICRC Commentary, 2025 on this latter.
Let us remind, that relevant issues were the subject of systematic informing of the OSCE bodies by ARC’s experts, such as Borys Babin, Anna Prykhodko, and Olesya Tsybulko, including relevant reports at ODIHR Meetings and Conferences in Warsaw and Vienna.
