Young boys line up in neat rows wearing ironed shirts and peaked military caps. Their faces are blank, their feet and arms pump in unison as they march in formation. A white, blue and red flag is raised and they begin to sing the Russian national anthem.
It is the start of term at Volgograd’s military cadet school, 560 miles from the Ukraine border.
Vladimir Putin’s future soldiers start young, but some of these 300 cadets are not Russian. They are in fact Ukrainian.
Cadets at the school take part in a parade as the Russian national anthem plays. (Video: vkk-sk.sledcom)
The video can be seen on the cadet school’s website, where instructors explain that among their 314 students, 98 are “orphans and children left without parental care”.
The website adds: “The Cadet Corps students included students from across Russia…and the new regions.”
The “new regions” are how many Russians now refer to occupied areas of Ukraine. The cadets are believed to include some of the the estimated 19,500 Ukrainain children Kyiv says have been abducted and taken into Russian territory. They have been torn away from their parents, siblings and friends, their towns destroyed and occupied, and their childhood abruptly ended.
Abducted children have told researchers and journalists how they have been forced to speak Russian, learn about the country’s version of history and march to the beat of Putin’s propaganda machine at military schools and camps.
The video of Volgograd’s military school parade, uncovered by The i Paper, sheds light on a Russian policy that ramped up soon after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now, the large scale scheme by Russia to seemingly prepare Ukrainian children for combat against the country of their birth has been further exposed in a comprehensive report from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).
The team’s data is often used by the Ukrainian government to help rescue abducted children and build cases of criminality against Russian leaders. But its latest investigation almost did not come to light. The Yale unit was initially stripped of its US government funding by the Trump administration. However, after The i Paper revealed these cuts, prompting outcry in America and Europe, the US government changed its mind. The research facility is now generating funding from individual donors.
How the world’s press followed The i Paper’s revelationsNathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of HRL, said: “We now know that the true scale of Russia’s network of facilities militarising, transferring, and re-educating children taken from Ukraine is massive.”
This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a call for more nations to join efforts to pressure Russia through diplomatic channels to return abducted children. The UK is among the 40 countries working on this goal.
It’s an overwheming task ahead. Raymond called the abduction of Ukraine’s children “the single largest kidnapping since World War Two.”
Re-education camps — and military training
Children take part in a parade marking the start of the academic year at a Russian cadet school. The school says Ukrainian children are among the cohort undergoing military training. (Photo: Volgograd Cadet Corps)The latest report reveals that Ukrainian children have been taken to at least 210 locations, 156 of them newly identified by researchers — across Russia and occupied Ukraine. The report states these are military schools and bases such as the one in Volgograd, universities, medical facilities, churches and monasteries, and specially built or expanded children’s camps. Investigators found evidence of systemic re-education at 62 percent of sites, and military training at 19 percent, including shooting, grenade throwing and drone assembly. The Yale report states the numbers could be even higher.
The report also says children receiving military training are between the ages of eight and 17.
Mariana Betsa, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister, told The i Paper the findings provide “further indisputable evidence of Russia’s crimes against the children of Ukraine”.
A mother holds her daughter and son, who were taken by force to a camp in Russia. They are among nearly 2,000 children who have been rescued or returned. (Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko)Highlighting the military programmes Ukrainian children are subjected to, she said: “To force Ukrainian children from their homes, indoctrinate them in Russian war propaganda and to train them with the intention of sending them to fight the nation they call home is abhorrent. Ukraine will continue to do all it can to bring our children home.”
However, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, saying Russia is helping “abandoned” children and “saving them from a warzone”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismisses the research as fabricated, and claimed Moscow is prepared to verify any information about the children.
She told Russian media: “We are ready to look into every fact. If you have information about these 210 educational institutions we will look into all the facts. This is truly a priority for us.”
‘Russia to use Ukraine’s own children as a weapon’
Roughly a quarter of the facilities children are taken to have been expanded, according to the study, prompting concerns Russia is planning to step up its efforts to absorb Ukrainian children into its own military.
“Russia is operating a potentially unprecedented system of large-scale re-education, military training, and dormitory facilities capable of holding tens of thousands of children from Ukraine for long periods of time,” the report states.
HRL used satellite images in their evidence gathering. Individuals can be seen in formation at the ‘All-Russian Children’s Center “Change’ in April 2025. (Photo: Yale HRL/Maxar)The internationally recognised team at Yale University said their latest findings come from open-source evidence. This includes Russian press statements and social media posts, as well as commercially available imagery, such as this satellite image of individuals in formation at a Russian children’s center in April 2025 (above). The centre was confirmed by the researchers to have held more than 300 children from Ukraine since 2022.
The report does not establish a definitive number of Ukrainian children affected, and in some cases it is unclear whether children remain at the facilities, or whether expansions are being carried out with the explicit aim to boost the number of Ukrainian children held in them.
Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, said: “This report demands action.
“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.”
Vladimir Putin meets with Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for both of them. (Photo: Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via Reuters)The work of HRL has has paid off. The researchers have unearthed evidence for the International Criminal Court, which in March 2023 issued an arrest warrant for President Putin and the children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, for alleged war crimes relating to the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.
Lvova-Belova is among those who believe the Russians are doing the right thing for these children. She wrote on her social media: “No sanctions or arrest warrants will stop us.”
Putin has long insisted the Ukrainian children are being rescued by Russia “out of the conflict zone, saving their lives and health”.
A satellite image captured by Maxar Technologies showing the first evidence of a Russian filtration camp in Ukraine as revealed by The i Paper three years ago. (Satellite image copyright 2022 Maxar Technologies)In 2022, The i Paper revealed that Russia had built a tented camp for Ukrainians on the country’s south-east coast, amid claims of abductions. Satellite images showed up to 30 blue and white tents had been erected in a camp in the coastal village of Bezimenne, in separatist-controlled Donetsk, only 11 miles east of the outskirts of Mariupol.
Now, three years on, nearly 2,000 of the estimated 19,500 stolen Ukrainian children have been rescued by Ukraine and returned to their families. But for those who remain in Russia, these latest findings show that some face cultural “re-education” and military training.
Children stand to attention at a Russian cadet school. (Photo: Volgograd Cadet Corps)A snapshot of their new reality can be seen among the children lining up in the Volgograd’s military school for their first lesson of the year, as they march into class and shout: “Russia is my pride!”
Children hold in grenade throwing competitions
Across the 39 facilities where Ukrainian children are taken for military training, the researchers discovered youngsters were required to take part in shooting and grenade throwing competitions, as well as undergo training in drone control and tactical medicine.
The report also found that children participated in a military training programme called “Warrior”, rolled out across 21 Russian regions, including the occupied Ukrainian territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Ukrainian children rescued from Russia receive specialist care at support centres to help them get over their ordeal. (Photo: Gen.Ukrainian)Children are also reportedly developing equipment for Russia’s military, including drones, mine detectors, robots, and rapid loaders for assault rifles under a project identified by researchers as the Yunarmiya Camp of Innovation and Technology (YuNTEKh).
The i Paper discovered a group connected to this project on the messaging app Telegram. Around a 130 members used the app to organise events in September last year for children, including in Russian occupied Crimea. Their messages revealed details about a gruelling boot camp schedule, which ran from 7.30am to 11.30pm.
Lesson plans and timetables seen by this paper show children were taught programming training and information security, with sessions listed as “developing Chatbots using Python and the Telegram API” and “the basics of Ethical Hacking”.
Children also were drilled on how to “design and assemble simple drones” and “autonomous flight programming”.
Zelensky’s appeal to ‘bring our children home’
Volodymyr Zelensky has been putting pressure on his fellow world leaders to assist Ukraine with repatriating his country’s lost children. (Photo: Thierry Monasse/Getty)Their greatest hope of returning home is an international coalition created by President Zelensky and other world leaders, which intends to pressure Russia to hand back these children. This week, at the UN General Assembly, he urged international partners to increase pressure in every sanctions package on Russian officials, judges, propagandists, and others involved in the abduction and psychological manipulation of Ukrainian children.
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