Evidence has been found for the first time that abducted Ukrainian children were used by Russia to assemble military equipment, according to the head of a Yale University team investigating the fate of nearly 20,000 minors reported to have been kidnapped or forcibly displaced.
“It's the first time we've seen any such description of children involved in making devices for military operations,” Nathaniel Raymond, head of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, told RFE/RL.
Raymond said his team had seen Russian government documents which detailed how children aged 13-17 were given a class on assembling drones and other military equipment in April last year.
The incident, mentioned in a new report by Raymond’s team, took place at a beachside camp on the Black Sea called Change.
Run by Russia’s Ministry of Education, the camp has reportedly hosted at least four groups of some 300 Ukrainian minors between 2022 and 2025.
One of these groups was involved last year in the “production of military equipment, including UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], drones, mine detectors, and basically quick loaders, which are pieces of metal for fast loading an assault rifle,” said Raymond.
'Flagship Of Childhood Education'
“If this is verified, it represents a shocking new escalation,” Daria Herasymchuk, an adviser on children’s rights to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told RFE/RL. “We call on the international community to treat these revelations with the gravity they deserve.”
On its website, the Change camp describes itself as “the flagship of childhood education and recreation in Russia” with “round-the-clock protection” by “National Guard troops.”
The website also confirms findings in Yale’s research that a militaristic youth organization called Yunarmia, which RFE/RL reported on in December, organizes events at Change. It also lists Yunarmia among its partner organizations.
The Yale report says Yunarmia has held an annual event called YuNTEKh between 2022 and 2025 which the kidnapped Ukrainian children attended. It was at this event in April 2024 that the military assembly work apparently took place.
The Change website makes no mention of drone manufacture or assault rifles. But its list of this year’s activities does include YuNTEKh.
“The goal of the program: to develop the model of a modern specialist of the Russian armed forces through practical problem-solving,” it says, adding that the program was for children aged 14-17.
This year’s YuNTEKh ran from April 14 to April 27. The Yale report contains satellite photography of the Change camp, dated April 16, that appears to show people drilling in organized formations on a sports field and at another open space at the site.
International Justice -- But Not The ICC
Raymond said his team’s findings have been offered to Europol and the Ukrainian authorities to help them with war crimes investigations, but not to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has been sanctioned by the United States.
“We don't know whether support to the ICC on Ukraine is prohibited underneath the Trump sanctions regime. We don't know. And so, at this point, we're being conservative,” he said.
The ICC could request the material from Europol or Ukraine. It has already issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country's children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for war crimes over the mass child abductions.
In any case, Raymond said the Yale team has not revealed open-source official Russian documentation behind its allegations, so courts will be able “to use the original sources that we use with the lowest risk that they'll be altered or removed.”
The new research also contains further details of how Russian camps are being used to militarize abducted Ukrainian children.
Raymond cited “horrifying” satellite images of summer camps with trenches dug in Z shapes as a way of avoiding drone strikes.
“Seeing trenching facilities at some of these training locations that are consistent with the current trench formations on the front line was chilling, because that was the clearest evidence we had to date that at these facilities they're being trained for current frontline combat conditions,” he said.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Herasymchuk said this fitted a documented pattern.
“Children are being placed in so-called ‘patriotic’ reeducation programs, trained in military drills, taught to use weapons, and prepared for future service in the Russian armed forces,” she wrote in e-mailed comments to RFE/RL.
Previously, RFE/RL has also reported on efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian children.
The Yale team says it has mapped at least 210 facilities across Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine where Ukrainian children have been taken, of which, 156 were newly identified in its latest report.
“What we found is that 50 percent of all the facilities were directly incorporated by the Russian federal government…directly within the Kremlin command line. And that's an important breakthrough,” said Raymond.
“We had not (previously) had specific evidence in the form of incorporation documents that had directly tied these facilities to the Kremlin,” he added.
