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Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
I grew up during the Iran–Iraq War. Though I was very young, I still remember too much. I know the feeling of fear that sits in your chest like a stone, waiting for the next bomb to drop, wondering if you’ll make it to the shelter in time, wondering if your mother will come back, wondering what happens if everyone dies and you don’t.
War doesn’t only tear apart cities, homes, and borders; it tears into children. It rewires their minds, breaks their sense of safety, and steals pieces of their identity they will never get back.
But at least in my generation, the trauma came from being caught in war. No one told us to pick up a weapon or salute a flag; the bombs and the bodies were enough to rob us of years.
What is happening today in Russian-occupied Ukraine is something far darker:
The intentional, systematic militarization of children.
Not just collateral trauma, unintentional damage, and the natural consequence of war, but a project, a program, a system.
A recent BBC Persian investigation exposes how, inside Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine, places like Kherson, Mariupol, and Donetsk, children as young as eight are being absorbed into a militarized youth movement called Yunarmiya (“Young Army”, Russia’s nationwide youth-military system created in 2016).
According to the report:
- Children receive military uniforms, red berets, medals, and privileges.
- Those who refuse to join face punishment, including lowered grades.
- Some are forced to change schools multiple times as Russian-run administrations expand these programs.
- In many schools, membership is not “voluntary” at all; parents are pressured, threatened, or denied services if they don’t comply.
One 12-year-old Ukrainian boy told the BBC that children who joined Yunarmiya were rewarded with the highest grades, even if they understood nothing in class. Those who refused were punished.
Under this system, Ukrainian children are taught to:
- Kiss the Russian flag
- Sing the Russian national anthem
- Assemble and operate firearms
- Participate in mock combat
- Prepare for “battle against Ukraine” if “Ukraine attacks Russia.”
- Accept the idea that Ukraine is a “Nazi state” with no legitimacy
This is identity erasure. It is teaching children to turn against their own nation, their own history, and ultimately, their own people.
The BBC Persian report states:
- Around 1.8 million children are members of Yunarmiya inside Russia.
- At least 43,000 children are living in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.
- In Donetsk alone, 180 official units are operating under this program.
These numbers alone show this is not an isolated abuse but a national program. This is a state-run system designed to manufacture a new generation of fighters loyal not to their homeland, but to Moscow.
Ukrainian authorities say at least 19,600 children have been forcibly transferred to Russia since the invasion began. Many have been placed in facilities where they undergo “patriotic training,” military drills, and indoctrination. Some, upon turning 18, are reportedly sent to the Russian army.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for:
- Vladimir Putin
- Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Children’s Commissioner
They are accused of the forced deportation and re-education of Ukrainian children, which qualifies as a war crime under international law.
The investigation confirms that children, both Russian and Ukrainian, are being trained in:
- Rifle assembly
- Shooting
- Grenade handling
- Drone operation
- Field medicine
- Tactical movement
- Military engineering
Some of the training takes place in camps named “Warrior” and “Avangard.”
Others are framed as school programs, after-school clubs, or “patriotic competitions.”
In one eight-month period (Jan–Aug 2025), Yunarmiya held 1,275 military-style events in the occupied Donetsk region alone.
This is a crime against children, a crime against identity, memory, heritage, and the right of a nation to raise its next generation in its own image.
These children’s childhoods are stolen with permission, with structure, with uniforms, and with the approval of a state that sees them as future soldiers, not future adults. And the most horrifying part is this: the world is watching it happen. Nations monitor it. Intelligence agencies know about it. Diplomats discuss it. Human-rights organizations publish reports about it. And yet the machine keeps running because the global response is tepid, fragmented, or politically convenient to ignore.
Some countries quietly look the other way for economic reasons. Some do nothing out of fear of provoking Russia. Some condemn with words but refuse action.
Some even enable it through back-channel cooperation, cheap energy deals, or strategic neutrality.
And the international media, the same media that claims to protect the vulnerable, covers this story in brief spurts, with cautious language, before moving on to the next headline. Major outlets avoid calling it what it is: the organized militarization and cultural erasure of children, carried out in broad daylight by a nuclear power.
Worst of all, human society, everyday people across the world, have adapted to this story as if it’s just another tragic inconvenience of war, something inevitable, something “complicated,” something that will sort itself out.
War can destroy childhood, but what Russia is doing is manufacturing the destruction of childhood.
And before anyone tries to weaponize my words: this is not about defending Ukraine’s government. This is not about politics, alliances, or choosing sides between corrupt administrations.
This is about children, God’s children, whose innocence is being shattered for the ambitions of men who see them not as souls to protect, but as tools to use.
I say this as someone who watched jihad use children as shields, messengers, fighters, and martyrs. For decades, the world dismissed it as “their culture,” “their region,” or “their conflict.” And now here we are watching a modern, nuclear, supposedly sophisticated nation adopt the same tactics.
When evil goes unchallenged long enough, it stops looking like evil.
It starts looking like policy, and it becomes the norm.
This is not about geopolitics. This is about a truth every parent understands instinctively:
Children are not soldiers.
Children are not propaganda.
Children are not nation-building tools.
Children are off limits!
If the world cannot defend the most innocent, then the world has already chosen its future, and it is a dark one.
Great article. What makes me sick is the fake conservative alternative media response to this. Silence. The same conspiracy QAnon crowd that have flooded the internet with tales of supposed CIA child trafficking, underground tunnels and whatever else are tight-lipped about the mass kidnapping of kids by Russia. Seems it is only a conspiracy when America does it. Pro-Kremlin, Duginist shills posing as Patriots. Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Stew Peters, David Icke, Russell Brand, Whitney Webb, James Corbett. All frauds.
The BBC cannot be trusted to report without bias.
You are right. The indifference of these Woke Reich influencers to the evils committed by Russia and their defense of Russia is sickening. You cannot be America-First if you defend Russia.
I do not understand Putin’s invasion of and war in Ukraine. This coming
February it will be four years since the invasion. Super power Russia
has not been able to conquer Ukraine and it drags on and on – for
hundreds of thousands of deaths. Thousands of Ukrainian people
displaced and troops on both sides – mostly members of the White
race, I might add – continually dying. Are the Russian people really
okay with this?
And now – in what seems like desperation – Russia is tearing young
Ukrainian children from their parents to recruit them as future fighters
in the Russian army. Those poor kids – and their poor parents and the
agony they must be enduring. And Russian parents – do they want
their own beloved children yanked from them for a life dedicated to
endless fighting and attempts at conquest?
Knowing Putin, I guess they don’t have much choice.
Meanwhile, the past three generations of American children were taught that their nation was illegitimate and racist, and to spit on the flag and the Constitution and to reject their heritage.
Russian society is and always has been totalitarian. While it is sad for these kids they will at least have enough to eat and a warm dry place to sleep. We cannot and should not attempt to use Ukraine to enforce our values upon the Rus.
This has been done before, and may still happen in parts of the mid-east, to some degree.
Isn’t this what Hitler did when defeats began mounting up, while Germany was being pounded to dust?
Is Putin showing some sort of, victory at all costs, phobia?
It looks like desperation on Putin’s part. But if he starts sending children into battle, how is he going to reveal that to the Russian people without looking like a mad dog?
Mass removal if children is part of the definition of genocide. Oh, but wait… they aren’t Palestinians. So that’s all right then.
Last comment should say “mass removal of children”, not “if”
You people act surprised! This has been going on for probably 100 years or more. Child soldiers are quite common both in Africa and South East Asia. It has been abhorred for at least that long but as mentioned in the comments no one does anything about it!
Aynaz Anni Cyrus, you really have a talent for communicating an experience and making it personal for the reader. I almost felt like I had experienced war or at least knew somewhat what it was like to experience the psychological effects.
My parents lived through the depression and even though my sister and I would laugh at them for letting it affect them to such a great extent and so ridiculously long after it was clearly no longer a danger to them, it was clear how they would always have a different perspective and a quiet demon. My dad could never turn down overtime or an extra shift. They never felt economically safe even into their 70’s.
As far as the communists, it has always been their playbook. The young are perfect targets. If you start them early enough you’re not restricted to the idiots, psychotic evil loons and oily, soullessly corrupt. Communist enthusiast Putin is still an evil communist who can probably only bring true pleasure and joy into his life by doing things like grooming Ukrainian children to kill their parents and relatives. There is also the physical need, since there are not replacement births in Russia.
It is nice to see them named as the creep he is.
Pretty soon they will be exploding themselves and killing innocent civilians, yelling allahu hu akbar.
Just imagine the Feeding Frenzy of t he M.S. Media Bottom Feeders and Sewer Dwellers if they tried that here
Ask the Russian Immigrants in Israel. In the USSR they received military training in school. and it was mandatory.
I deplore this war, but this has been going on for a long time ( on and off) between these two groups.
I also find it odd you speak of the trauma of Saddam’s scuds where only a few actually died, but don’t talk about loosing about 2000 to terror ( mostly bombings) from 1993- 2005.,