Russia’s war machine is trying to turn Ukrainian teenagers into soldiers

Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

Russian forces deported Bohdan Yermokhin from the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the spring of 2022, flew him to Moscow on a government plane and placed him into a foster family. He was sent to a patriotic camp near the capital where flag-waving staff praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and tried to teach him nationalistic songs.

The Ukrainian teenager was given a Russian passport and sent to a Russian school. And then, in the fall of 2023, not long before his 18th birthday, he received a summons from a Russian military recruitment office.

Yermokhin, who’s now back in Ukraine and recovering from his ordeal in Kyiv, told CNN he believed this was the last step in Russia’s attempt to bully him into submission – a bid to sign him up as a soldier to fight against his own people.

“(I was told that) Ukraine was losing, that children were used for organ donations there, and that I would be sent to war right away. I told them that if I was sent to the war, at least I would fight for my own country, not for them,” he said.

Yermokhin was part of a group of children known as the “Mariupol 31,” who were taken to Russia. Ukrainian authorities estimate that 20,000 children have been forcibly transported to Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022. More than 2,100 children remain missing, according to official statistics, but the government says the real number could be much higher.

Last March, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, for their alleged role in abducting and deporting Ukrainian children. Russia has publicly acknowledged the transfer of Ukrainian children without guardians, despite some having guardians or parents.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said his office was convinced that Russia’s efforts to turn Ukrainian teenagers deported to Russia – or living in occupied areas of the east – into soldiers were part of a wider drive by Putin to erase the Ukrainian identity. It is also an opportunity for Moscow to replenish its forces on the front lines.

“It’s not theoretical,” he said. “We now have examples of forcible mobilization of Ukrainian people. All Ukrainian teenagers held in Russia, when they turn 18, they are put on a (recruitment) list of Russian military,” told CNN.