This theme covers how Russia uses schooling, youth programmes and the removal of children to reshape a generation in occupied Ukraine. Control of children is the occupation's longest game. Of the roughly 1.6 million Ukrainian children living under occupation, some 615,000 are of school age and more than 100,000 already sit inside Russian military-patriotic youth movements. A further 20,610 have been officially identified as deported to the Russian Federation and, in part, Belarus — a figure that Russia's own claimed totals put as high as 744,000 — while only 2,495 have been returned. Those who remain feed into Yunarmiya, the 1.3-million-strong "Youth Army" backed by roughly USD 80 million a year in state funding. Having already absorbed 29,000 children in Crimea and 7,500 in Donetsk and Luhansk by 2021, Yunarmiya has, since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, expanded into occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab has now mapped 210 facilities across Russia and occupied territory — more than half of them run directly by the Russian state — and estimates that up to 35,000 children have been deported or forcibly displaced. This theme follows that pipeline from the classroom to the paramilitarisation programmes, and asks what the resulting cohort means for the years ahead.
The pipeline this theme follows is not a single institution but a layered system. At the base sit curriculum programmes with no membership or premises of their own: "Orlyata Rossii" for primary schoolchildren, "Razgovory o vazhnom" and OBZR (Fundamentals of Security and Defence of the Motherland) taught to every pupil in every occupied school. Above that runs a dense network of military-patriotic clubs, cadet and Cossack classes, and field camps operating inside the territories: in Crimea alone, cadet classes grew from 12 in 2016 to 244 across 78 schools by 2023/24, feeding graduates disproportionately into Russia's security-ministry universities. A parallel, less-mapped layer of Russian Orthodox Church-affiliated clubs, at least 150 of them, reaching an estimated 25,000 minors a year, runs the same weapons and tactical training under a "service to Russia" framing. All of it funnels toward federal structures, Yunarmiya, the Movement of the First, DOSAAF and the "Voin" military-sports centres rolled out across all four mainland occupied regions since 2022, that exist explicitly to prepare children for service in the Russian armed forces. A mapping exercise conducted for this hub identified at least 66 distinct organisations, programmes, camps and facilities across the six territories under this typology, with a documented historical precedent in Donbas going back to 2014 to 2019; it is published as the Youth Militarisation and Patriotic Education Dataset. A separate strand of camps, Artek, "Smena" and the re-education centres in Gudermes, Snegiri and Sochi among them, physically removes children from occupied territory altogether, which is why this theme's findings feed directly into the Accountability and Legal record on forced transfer and deportation.
Questions we ask
- What is Russia teaching children in occupied Ukraine, and to what end?
- How does the militarisation pipeline work, from classroom to youth movement to conscription age?
- Which organisations, camps and programmes make up this pipeline, and how are state, party, church and veteran structures divided among them?
- What happens to Ukrainian children deported into Russia?
- Why does this matter beyond the occupation itself, and what does the militarised cohort represent?
Fact-check of statistics
All figures have been verified against primary sources as of 25 August 2026. The Yale HRL figures have been updated: the earlier count (43 facilities / approx. 30,000 children) has been replaced with the lab's report of 16 September 2025 (210 facilities). Note that the ~35,000 estimate refers to children deported or forcibly displaced, not the number held within the 210 facilities. The source and link for each figure are listed below.
| Figure | What it means | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.6 million | Ukrainian children aged 0–18 currently living in the temporarily occupied territories (TOT) | Almenda, 2025 | ukrinform.ua |
| 615,000 | Of whom are of school age | Almenda, 2025 | ukrinform.ua |
| 100,000+ | Children in the TOT enrolled in Russian military-patriotic youth movements | Almenda, 2025 | ukrinform.ua |
| 20,610 | Officially identified cases of deportation / forced displacement | childrenofwar.gov.ua, as of 25 August 2026 | childrenofwar.gov.ua |
| up to 744,000 | Open-source estimate, including figures reported by Russia itself | childrenofwar.gov.ua, as of 25 August 2026 | childrenofwar.gov.ua |
| 2,495 | Children returned (Bring Kids Back UA) | childrenofwar.gov.ua, as of 25 August 2026 | childrenofwar.gov.ua |
| 1.3 million | Members of "Yunarmiya" ("Youth Army") | Havrylov, Georgetown CGCI, 17 June 2025 | globalchildren.georgetown.edu |
| USD 80 million/year | State funding for "Yunarmiya" | Havrylov, Georgetown CGCI, 17 June 2025 | globalchildren.georgetown.edu |
| 29,000 | Children enrolled in "Yunarmiya" in occupied Crimea as of 2021 | Havrylov, Georgetown CGCI, 17 June 2025 | globalchildren.georgetown.edu |
| 7,500 | Children enrolled in "Yunarmiya" in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions as of 2021 | Havrylov, Georgetown CGCI, 17 June 2025 | globalchildren.georgetown.edu |
| 210 | Facilities identified for holding / re-educating children in Russia and the occupied territories (updated from 43) | Yale HRL, "Ukraine's Stolen Children," 16 September 2025 | ysph.yale.edu |
| ~35,000 | Estimated children deported or forcibly displaced (updated from ~30,000) | Yale HRL, "Ukraine's Stolen Children," 16 September 2025 | ysph.yale.edu |