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Their names are Yelizaveta and Mykhailo. She was born 16 years ago in Simferopol (Crimea); he, 12 years ago in Makiivka (Donetsk). Both were born in a free Ukraine, but have lived for more than a decade in territory occupied by the Russian army. Last week, Ukrainian lawyer and international law expert Katerina Rashevska showed their photos before the United States Senate. She denounced that the organization she works for in Kyiv, the Regional Center for Human Rights (RCHR), has documented 165 camps where Ukrainian children are subjected to a process of Russification. The case of Yelizaveta and Mykhailo is particularly noteworthy. Moscow temporarily sent the two children to the Songdowon camp in North Korea. They are the first identified Ukrainian minors to travel to the Kremlin’s major Asian ally as part of its campaign of child indoctrination.
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She [Yelizaveta] resided at the Songdowon camp, on the Sea of Japan, during July and August of 2024. She did so through the Russian youth organization Movement of the First, successor to the Soviet Young Pioneers. Yelizaveta traveled to Kim Jong-Un’s iron-fisted dictatorship as a participant in this nationalist movement. “Although she was born in Crimea, Ukraine, at first glance it appears that her identity has been completely erased and replaced with a Russian one,” the RCHR maintains.
Mykhailo visited the Songdowon facility from July 21 to August 1 last summer as part of a program between Moscow and Pyongyang. The boy is also a member of Movement of the First. Mykhailo was just a baby when the Russian army took over his hometown in the Donbas region. “He didn’t even have time to form his Ukrainian identity,” the RCHR stated.
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With due caution, the RCHR, which originated in Crimea but moved its offices to Kyiv after Russia’s conquest of the peninsula, acknowledges that in neither case would we be dealing with an “illegal deportation because the coercion consisted of 11 years of propaganda within the occupied education system.” We would, however, be at the final stage of a long process of “indoctrination and militarization” that could constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity. Last Thursday, a day after Rashevska’s testimony before the U.S. Senate, Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets accused Russia of sending “abducted” Ukrainian children to North Korea.
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The RCHR has located 165 Russian indoctrination camps across occupied territory in Ukraine, Russia itself, its ally Belarus, and now North Korea, which in the last year has sent soldiers and weapons to Moscow to support the major offensive against Kyiv ... Behind this network allegedly is Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. She and Vladimir Putin are subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes.
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Yelizaveta and Mykhailo learned at the Songdowon camp, among other things, how to “destroy Japanese soldiers.” They also met North Korean veterans who, in 1968, attacked and captured the U.S. spy ship Pueblo in the Sea of Japan. “The militarization and Russification cause severe trauma and violate the dignity of children,” [human rights lawyer] Rashevska stated ... “The ultimate goal,” the lawyer continued emotionally, “is for Ukrainians to kill each other.”
Yelizaveta and Mykhailo were sent to the camp as a reward for their “proactive” attitude, according to the RCHR. The investigation names other Ukrainian children, including some from the occupied Luhansk province, but it is unknown whether they were ultimately selected to participate in the program in North Korea. There is no evidence that the children who did travel were unable to return home after their stay in Songdowon ended.
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