The war is not simply territory but erasing a sovereign state’s national identity

 Samuel Ramani

26 September 2025 12:12pm BST

New research from Yale University’s School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab has revealed the staggering scale of Russia’s abuses against Ukrainian children. While the Ukrainian authorities estimated that 19,000 children had been abducted by Russian forces, the HRL’s research pegs this figure at 35,000.

Many of these children are subjected to re-education to eviscerate their Ukrainian identity and, even more alarmingly, to forced labour in Russian drone factories.

The Kremlin has launched a barrage of propaganda to undermine the credibility of these harrowing reports. In June, Russian foreign ministry ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik accused Ukraine of exaggerating the number of abductions “with the goal of accusing Russia of near genocide of Crimean children” and used Kyiv’s truncated list of 300 missing children to substantiate his point.

Russian officials have also repeatedly argued that their military forces are temporarily relocating Ukrainian children out of frontline areas to Russia to safeguard them.

While Russia’s fervent denials may mislead apologetic voices and dilute the coherence of the international community’s response, they patently contradict realities on the ground. Moreover, Russia’s conduct underscores that its war of aggression in Ukraine is not only about territory.

It is aimed at erasing Ukraine’s identity as a sovereign state and incorporating it into the Russkiy-Mir civilisational orbit. This campaign of culture erasure involves brainwashing Ukrainian children into becoming Russian patriots and turning Russian youths into neo-imperialists.

When Russia occupies cities in southern and eastern Ukraine, its ultra-nationalist education system comes along with it. A June 2024 Human Rights Watch report revealed that Russian schools limit Ukrainian language instruction and describe the Russian war effort as a just crusade against Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi” regime.

When a child in Melitopol dared to speak Ukrainian, for instance, Russian enforcers placed a bag over his head and left him stranded dozens of kilometres away.

Military service is an equally integral part of Russia’s ultra-nationalist education. In Luhansk, Russian conscription officers begin scouting 16-year-old boys for military recruitment. Once they turn 17, they are obliged to register for military service; once they turn 18, they become eligible for military contracts. These recruitment efforts intensify amongst university students, and salaries of $2,150 per month are dangled to sweeten the deal.

This has proved to be sinisterly effective. Forced conscription in occupied Ukraine helped Russia avoid the unrest that followed its September 2022 partial mobilisation announcement and provided the Russian military with cannon fodder for its human wave attacks on Donbas.

The involvement of Ukrainian children in arms manufacturing provides Russia with new potential conscripts for future revanchist campaigns.

It also aligns with Russia’s broader efforts to convince its young generation of the sanity of neo-imperial thinking. While Russian war propaganda is enthusiastically consumed by older generations of Russians, millennials and Generation-Z Russians are much more sceptical.

In an April 2025 Levada Centre poll, only 35 per cent of Russians aged 18-24 “definitely approved” of Russia’s military actions and followed the Ukraine War closely. Just 10 per cent stated that Russian military actions should continue at the expense of possible peace negotiations.

Through the proliferation of patriotic songs like “Soldiers are Coming” and promoting draconian tales of Ukrainian abuses against ethnic Russians in Donbas, the Kremlin is trying to turn its 15-18-year-olds into a new generation of ultra-nationalists.

Russian officials hope that these efforts will convince youths to accept their increasingly dire economic prospects and reverse their country’s demographic downward spiral. By framing Ukraine and its Western partners as eternal enemies, Russia is priming the next generation for future expansionist wars in Eastern Europe.

President Donald Trump’s peace formula hinges on the assumption that territorial concessions will lead to a lasting peace. This neglects the ideological foundations of Russian neo-imperialism: it could fuel even more devastating wars in the years ahead.

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