I recently asked how you would feel if someone were simply to take your home away from you and give it to a bully who had no legal claim to it, but merely wanted it for his own greedy purposes.

And now I ask: What if it were not just your property . . . but your children . . . who were snatched from your arms, or their beds, or their schools, and whisked off to a secret location to be “re-educated” — indoctrinated into a new way of life, completely alien to anything they had ever known?

Don’t dismiss the idea as some dystopian work of fiction, because it is happening, now, in Ukraine.

While Vladimir Putin continues to drag out negotiations for a peace treaty in Ukraine, gaining a few more miles of territory, and taking a few hundred more lives each day; and while Donald Trump continues to placate Putin while accusing Volodymyr Zelensky of having “allowed” the invasion to happen in the first place . . .

. . . while all of this goes on, and on, and on, now into its fourth year . . .

. . . an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children, kidnapped from their families, are being held prisoner in towns and villages in Russia and in Russian-held Ukrainian territory.

But now, some have been helped by a Ukrainian NGO and others to escape; and one — Vladyslav Rudenko — has spoken out about his nine months in captivity.

In October of 2022, when Rudenko was just 16 years old, three armed Russian soldiers came unannounced to his home in Kherson.

“They came to my apartment and said I had 30 minutes to pack my things, and I had to go with them,” he says. [RFE/RL, April 24, 2025.]

He and hundreds of other young Ukrainians were told they were being evacuated. They were boarded onto buses and transported, with a military escort, to a former health spa in Yevpatoria, in Russian-occupied Crimea. The spa had been transformed into a training camp for indoctrination of Ukrainian youths in all things Russian.

“We were told to get rid of everything Ukrainian, so that there was absolutely nothing Ukrainian, or there would be problems,” Rudenko said. [Id.]

During his nine-month stay there, he underwent Russian military training, and intensive studies in Russian language, culture, and patriotic ideology.

He describes the Soviet-inspired regimen as follows:

“First, we woke up to the Russian national anthem. Then we raised the Russian flag. After breakfast, we had an hour of education about what had happened during the evening in Russia. Then we were taken to a cinema to watch Russian films. It was constantly a vicious cycle where nothing changes.” [Id.]

The youngsters were given military uniforms, including the Russian nationalist St. George’s ribbon,** and were made to take shifts standing guard. “This is a very large pro-Russian machine,” Rudenko explains, “and it was very difficult.” [Id.]

** The Ribbon of St. George is a widely-recognized military symbol, consisting of a black and orange striped pattern, commemorating the veterans of the Eastern Front of World War II (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War).

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Not all of the estimated 20,000 children are in camps like the one at Yevpatoria; some have been placed with Russian foster families or in boarding schools. But the camps are described by Mykola Kuleba, Ukrainian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, as a form of “cultural genocide”:

“This is the technique that the Russian Empire used in order to quickly assimilate the population after conquering new territories, to make them obedient to the regime. The main thing is to resettle [them] and start reeducation. That is, to see what needs to be done in order to get these children obedient to the [Putin] regime as soon as possible. Make them ready to live in the Russian Federation and continue to send them to Russia, to families, to boarding schools.” [Id.]

And, of course, to forget who they truly are, where they came from, and that they once had blood relatives who loved them.

* *. *

Thus far, according to Yale Humanitarian Research Lab estimates, more than 8,400 Ukrainian children have been relocated to more than 50 known facilities . . . 13 in Belarus, and 43 in Russia and Russian-occupied territory . . . clearly making Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko complicit in yet another of Vladimir Putin’s crimes against humanity. [Id.]

Only about 1,300 children have been returned to Ukraine by various means.

A recent statement released by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said:

“ . . . without the return of the children abducted by Russia, the war cannot truly be considered over.” [Id.]

While President Zelensky has made previous public demands for the return of the children, and it most likely has been a subject of discussion in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, it is unclear whether the matter has been given priority by the members of the Trump team. We hear plenty about land rights, security guarantees, rare minerals, and NATO membership.

As important as those issues are . . . don’t the lives of these children matter even more?

If their immediate, safe return hasn’t been made a non-negotiable condition of any settlement with Putin, it damn well should be.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/28/25