Politico: Three Ukrainian teens Russia deported stage rebellion in ‘re-education’ camp

Three Ukrainian teenagers – Vladyslav, Denys, and Rostyslav – were forcibly relocated by Russia from occupied Kherson to Crimea for “re-education” and staged a rebellion at the camp. 

Politico shared their story.

The boys were taken to the Druzhba camp on the occupied peninsula at different times in 2022. Denys, for example, was brought there in October, just a month before Kherson was liberated. Along with him, there were around 300 other children at the camp.

The children endured abuse, beatings, confinement in the basement, and threats of being sent to psychiatric hospitals, the boys reported.

“As soon as Vlad and his friends realized the Kremlin would not return them home, they staged an open revolt,” the article states.

The boys tried to avoid singing the Russian national anthem every day, escaped to a local store to avoid the camp food, and later locked themselves in their room, refusing to come out despite threats from the camp authorities.

“As Russian authorities moved them from institution to institution, telling them that Ukraine would be part of Russia and that their parents no longer wanted them, the teenagers did what they could to resist,” the text reads.

The boys were often brutally punished for their defiance, but they stayed resilient, deliberately breaking the rules – both for survival and for defiance, the journalists wrote.

Eventually, the organization Save Ukraine helped bring the boys back to Ukraine through Belarus. The last few kilometers along the Belarusian-Ukrainian border were traveled on foot.

“These sorts of camps date back to the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, who used them to indoctrinate or ‘Russify’ Soviet children of other ethnicities,” the article reads.

Today, Kremlin ruler Vladimir Putin is reviving part of this infrastructure to destroy the national identity of Ukrainian children, claiming to provide so-called patriotic education, the journalists explain.

“Ukraine says that almost 20,000 Ukrainian children from the ages of 7 to 18 have been illegally taken from their homes in occupied territory. Russia, which has defended its actions as a humanitarian effort rescuing children from a Nazi-ridden Ukraine, has boasted of ‘accepting’ more than 700,000 children,” the article reads.

Ukraine has repatriated 1,234 children since the beginning of the full-scale war, Politico adds.