Ukrainian teen says Russia brainwashes children in occupied territories to become soldiers
Matvii Chos says he was forced into military training as a child in Crimea, part of a campaign experts call a war crime.
TORONTO — A Ukrainian teenager who escaped Russian-occupied Crimea says children there are being brainwashed and trained to become soldiers for the Russian army.
"What Russia is doing is occupying territories, kidnapping children and turning them [into] Russian soldiers," said Matvii Chos, 19, who spoke at the Pathways to Peace international conference in Toronto last month.
Chos said the militarization started for him in 2020, when he was in sixth grade, with special cadet classes that taught weapons handling, marching and tactical medicine.
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He enrolled at a Moscow university to avoid conscription upon turning 18 and later escaped Russia with the help of a Ukrainian non-profit.
Fifty countries signed a pledge at the Toronto conference on Sept. 29, expressing concern about the militarization of children in occupied territories and calling for the "immediate, safe and unconditional return" of Ukrainian children forcibly transferred into Russia.
"Childhood has an expiration date," said Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian human rights lawyer who heads the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties.
"The children from occupied territories, they're losing their childhood. We lose these children."
Other young Ukrainians described the imposition of Russian culture after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Daria Fursova, 23, said her elementary school removed Ukrainian books and stopped teaching the language, switching to Russian history and language instruction.
Speaking Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar was forbidden, even during breaks, according to 18-year-old Daria Tomashova.
"We started to learn [the] Russian anthem at school, learn Russian songs, learn Russian poems," Chos said. "They said to us, 'You're Russian now. You lived all of your life in Russia.'"
Fursova, who left Crimea to study in Kyiv in 2021, said the situation has become "way worse" since the full-scale invasion, with her old school posting lessons defending the war.
The international community has raised particular concern about Russia forcibly separating tens of thousands of Ukrainian children from their families, an act President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described as "mass kidnapping" amounting to genocide.
Ukrainian officials estimate Russia has unlawfully deported 20,000 children since February 2022, with only about 2,650 returned so far.
The campaign has led to war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand said she holds Putin personally responsible for the policies that have led to Ukrainian children being "stolen" from their families.
"My hope is that we ensure the full return of all Ukrainian children, and every single person who has committed an injustice in stealing these children face the consequences that international law requires," Anand said in an interview with CBC News.
Anand said Canada has committed nearly $7 million to support organizations that work to bring Ukrainian children home and fund psychological support.
One such organization is Save Ukraine, a charity that identifies kidnapped children and conducts rescue operations.
Its founder, Mykola Kuleba, said he is grateful for Canada’s leadership but emphasized the urgency, with some young Ukrainians now presumably fighting as Russian soldiers.
"We should understand that we're running out of time for these children, and we're losing every day someone who's taken forcibly to the Russian army," said Kuleba, the former commissioner for children’s rights in Ukraine.
Kuleba said the children they bring home tell him they just want to live in peace with their families in their hometowns.
Chos escaped with help from Save Ukraine, which provided food, shelter, mental health support and documentation.
The process required travelling to the Ukrainian consulate in Belarus twice, and Chos said if Russian authorities had searched him and found anything pro-Ukraine, he would be facing over a decade in prison.
With files from CBC News