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4 December, 13:19
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Kyiv accuses Moscow of sending abducted Ukrainian children to "concentration camps" in North Korea

Russia has sent some of the Ukrainian children it abducted from occupied areas to North Korea for “re-education,” according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets.

Speaking on Thursday, Lubinets did not specify how many children were taken to North Korea, which has strengthened its ties with Moscow. Russia has not publicly responded to the claim about the abduction of Ukrainian children. Lubinets cited testimony from a Kyiv-based human rights organization describing a network of 165 camps used to indoctrinate the children across occupied Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and North Korea.

According to the Regional Center for Human Rights, some children were sent to the Songdowon summer camp on North Korea’s east coast, where they were reportedly taught to “destroy Japanese militarists” and met veterans involved in the 1968 seizure of a U.S. spy ship. Kyiv says nearly 20,000 children have been abducted or forcibly displaced by Russia since the full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. Moscow admits relocating some children but claims it acted to protect them and seeks to reunite them with families, a justification Ukraine disputes. In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner over the alleged deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled areas.