On 11 March Meduza published an investigation by Lilia Yapparova ‘They could start to resist’. How the Russian authorities are working to indoctrinate and digitally surveil deported Ukrainian children.‘ The investigation, based on interviews with officials, teachers, pedagogues, and intra-departmental correspondence, proves that Russia is creating a targeted state policy to assimilate Ukrainian children, destroy their identity, and control their private lives and views on the ongoing catastrophe that is happening to them.
Meduza’s investigation significantly complements existing reports on violations of the rights of Ukrainian children – some of them submitted as alternative information from civil society to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which considered Russia’s state report in January 2024 (see the ADC Memorial and Kharkiv Human Rights Group report, 2023). In its recommendations, the Committee harshly criticised violations of the rights of Ukrainian children by the Russian Federation, both those who found themselves in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and those deported to various regions of Russia. Earlier, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (91st session, April 2023) drew attention to practices of the widespread hatred and propaganda of racist stereotypes against ethnic Ukrainians. (See the alternative report by ADC “Memorial” and the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia (2023).)
The cards illustrate the violations of international conventions relating to children’s rights that have been detected.
