RIVNE/LONDON: US-funded research has identified more than 210 sites where Ukrainian children have been taken for military training, drone manufacturing and other forced re-education by Russia, as part of a large-scale deportation program.
Yale’s School of Public Health said in a report published on Tuesday that more than 150 new locations had been discovered since it published findings last year, when it alleged that Russian presidential aircraft had been used to transport children.
The latest research by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), based on open-source information and satellite imagery, said roughly half of the locations are managed by the Russian government.
It “represents the highest number of locations to which children from Ukraine have been taken that has been published to date,” the report said. “The actual number is likely higher, as there are multiple sites still under investigation by HRL and additional locations may exist that have not yet been identified.”
Ukraine says Russia has illegally deported or forcibly displaced more than 19,500 children to Russia and Belarus in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In June, Yale estimated that figure could be closer to 35,000.
Russia denies it is taking children against their will and says it has been evacuating people voluntarily to remove them from the war zone.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest report.
Yale researchers “can conclude that 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 latest report said.
Yale’s program, which has been defunded by the administration of US President Donald Trump, had previously tracked 314 Ukrainian children to Russian-government websites, where they were put up for adoption by Russian families.
The number of Ukrainian children taken and the network of facilities where they are being held has jumped since Yale first published findings in 2023, when it estimated 6,000 children had been taken to 43 camps.
The findings underpinned arrest warrants issued in 2023 by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of unlawful deportation of children, a war crime.
“The good news is we now know the scope of what we’re dealing with fully,” Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told Reuters. “The bad news is that addressing it, bringing these kids home, depends on absolute total global unity.”
Yale says that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian children have been taken to locations spread across 3,500 miles (5,600 km), including cadet schools, a military base, medical facilities, a religious site, secondary schools and universities, orphanages and most frequently, camps and sanatoriums.
Military training of Ukrainian children took place at at least 39 locations and at least 34 of these facilities are newly identified, it said.
Ukrainian children aged eight to 18 were taken to camps and a military base where they underwent militarization programs, including combat training, ceremonial parades and drills, assembly of drones and other materiel, and education in military history.
They also did shooting competitions, grenade throwing competitions, tactical medicine, drone control and tactics training.
In one case Yale detailed children from the Donetsk region receiving “airborne training” at a military base. They were brought to the base on an aircraft managed by the Presidential Property Management Department within the Russian Presidential Administration, it said.
Over 1,600 deported children have returned, Ukraine’s commissioner for human rights said this month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram on Monday that 16 more children had been brought home after spending “years of being under pressure under Russian occupation, in fear and humiliation.”
Russia expands forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children, US research shows
https://arab.news/7mcyc
Russia expands forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children, US research shows
- Ukraine says Russia has illegally deported or forcibly displaced more than 19,500 children to Russia and Belarus in violation of the Geneva Conventions
- Yale researchers “can conclude that 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”
With Iran war exit elusive, Trump aides vie to affect outcome
- Aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East
- In taking America to war, US President Donald Trump offered little explanation
WASHINGTON: A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving US President Donald Trump’s shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war, as aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East.
Some officials and advisers are warning Trump that surging gasoline prices could exact a political cost from the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, while some hawks are pressing the president to maintain the offensive against the Islamic Republic, according to interviews with a Trump adviser and others close to the deliberations.
Their observations to Reuters offer a previously unreported glimpse inside White House decision-making as it adjusts its approach to the biggest US military operation since the 2003 Iraq war.
Shifting messages, various internal viewpoints
The behind-the-scenes maneuvering underscores the high stakes Trump, who returned to office last year promising to avoid “stupid” military interventions, faces nearly two weeks after plunging the nation into a war that has rattled global financial markets and disrupted the international oil trade.
The jockeying for Trump’s ear is a feature of his presidency, but this time the consequences are a matter of war and peace in one of the world’s most volatile and economically critical regions.
Shifting from the sweeping goals he framed in launching the war on February 28, Trump in recent days has emphasized that he views the conflict as a limited campaign whose objectives have mostly been met.
But the message remains unclear to many, including the energy markets, which have lurched in both directions in response to Trump’s statements.
He told a campaign-style rally in Kentucky on Wednesday that “we won” the war, then abruptly pivoted: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”
Economic advisers and officials, including from the Treasury Department and the National Economic Council, have warned Trump that an oil shock and rising gasoline prices could quickly erode domestic support for the war, said the adviser and two others close to the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.
Political advisers, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief James Blair, are making similar arguments, focusing on the political fallout from higher gas prices and urging Trump to define victory narrowly and signal the operation is limited and nearly finished, the sources said.
Pushing in the other direction are hawkish voices urging Trump to sustain military pressure on Iran, including Republican lawmakers such as US Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, and media commentators such as Mark Levin, according to people familiar with the matter.
They argue the US must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and respond forcefully to attacks on American troops and shipping.
A third force comes from Trump’s populist base and figures such as strategist Steve Bannon and right-wing television personality Tucker Carlson, who have been pressing him and his top aides to avoid getting dragged into another prolonged Middle East conflict.
“He is allowing the hawks to believe the campaign continues, wants markets to believe the war might end soon and his base to believe escalation will be limited,” the Trump adviser said.
Asked for comment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “This story is based on gossip and speculation from anonymous sources who aren’t even in the room for any discussions with President Trump.
“The President is known for being a good listener and seeking the opinions of many people, but ultimately everyone knows he’s the final decision maker and his own best messenger,” she said. “The President’s entire team is focused on ensuring the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully achieved.”
Other people named for their roles in the deliberations did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions.
Looking for an exit
In taking America to war, Trump offered little explanation, and the administration’s stated war aims have ranged from thwarting an imminent attack by Iran to crippling its nuclear program to replacing its government.
As he seeks an exit from an unpopular conflict, Trump is trying to juggle competing narratives that some critics say have complicated an already difficult situation, with Iran defiant despite the devastating US-Israeli air assault.
Top political aides and economic advisers, whose warnings before the war of the potential economic shock were largely ignored, appear to have played a major role in pushing Trump’s efforts this week to reassure skittish markets and contain rising oil and gas prices.
His public shift to downplaying the war’s impact, describing it as a “short-term excursion,” and his insistence that gas price hikes would be short-lived appeared aimed at calming fears of an open-ended conflict.
Some top aides have advised him to work toward a conclusion to the conflict that he can call a triumph, at least militarily, the sources said, even if much of the Iranian leadership survives, along with remnants of a nuclear program that the campaign was meant to target.
Wave after wave of US and Israeli air strikes have killed a number of top Iranian leaders among some 2,000 people overall – some as far away as Lebanon – devastated its ballistic missile arsenal, sunk much of its navy and degraded its ability to support armed proxies around the Middle East.
But the military achievements have been seriously undercut by Iran’s stepped-up attacks on oil tankers and transport facilities in the Gulf, driving up oil prices.
Trump has said he will decide when to end the campaign. He and his aides say they are far ahead of the four- to six-week timeframe Trump initially announced.
The shifting reasons for launching the conflict, which has spilled over into more than half a dozen other countries, have only made it more difficult to predict what comes next.
For their part, Iran’s rulers will claim victory, analysts say, for simply surviving the US-Israeli onslaught, especially after demonstrating their ability to fight back and inflict damage on Israel, the US and its allies.
Venezuela miscalculation
Critical to the war’s final trajectory will be the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world’s oil shipments, which normally traverses the narrow waterway, has come to a near-standstill. Iran in recent days has struck tankers in Iraqi waters and other ships near the strait, and the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to keep it shut.
If Iran’s stranglehold on the waterway pushes US gas prices high enough, that could increase political pressure on Trump to end the military campaign to help his Republican Party, which is defending narrow majorities in Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump has recently refrained from pushing the idea that the war seeks to topple the government in Tehran. US intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is not at risk of collapse anytime soon, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
At least some of the confusion over the war’s trajectory appears rooted in the quick US military success in Venezuela.
Since the start of the war, some aides have struggled to convince Trump that the Iran campaign was unlikely to unfold in the same way as the January 3 Venezuela raid that captured President Nicolas Maduro, according to another source familiar with the administration’s thinking.
That operation opened the way for Trump to coerce former Maduro loyalists into giving him considerable sway over the country’s vast oil reserves – without requiring extended US military action.
Iran, by contrast, has proved a much tougher, better-armed foe with an entrenched clerical and security establishment.
Experts have rejected claims by Trump aides that Iran had been within weeks of being able to produce a nuclear weapon, despite the president’s insistence in June that US-Israeli bombing had “obliterated” its nuclear program.
Most of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed to have been buried by the June strikes, meaning the material potentially could be retrieved and purified to bomb grade. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons.
If the war drags on, American casualties mount and the economic costs multiply, some analysts say it could erode backing from Trump’s political base. But despite criticism from some supporters opposed to military interventions, members of his “Make America Great Again” movement have so far largely stayed with him on Iran.
“The MAGA base is going to give the president wiggle room,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
