Over 10,000 men forcibly mobilized to Russian army from Ukraine’s TOT last year – Kovalenko

This was stated by the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation Andriy Kovalenko during the presentation of the analytical report “Militarization of Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“10,000 are Ukrainians who were mobilized during the last year, 2024, in the temporarily occupied territories, that is, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, partially Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Kovalenko said.

He added that people from the temporarily occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions have been “conscripted” into the armies of the so-called LPR and DPR since 2014.

“Since 2014, people have been recruited to the army of the so-called LPR and DPR under contracts. There were more than 500,000 people, and according to some reports, about a million people have passed through this army. 10,000 are the people who were mobilized to the Russian army from the temporarily occupied territories in the last year,” said the head of the Center for Public Policy.

Kovalenko noted that the “mobilization” was “very quiet,” and one of the reasons for this is the constant ideological work of Russian special services with children in the eastern regions of Ukraine, which began in the mid-2000s.

“This Russian system began to work very actively after [Leonid] Kuchma’s presidential term in the eastern regions of our country. There were various public organizations funded by the Kremlin and directly by the regions and governors of Russia, for example, Kuban. These organizations regularly organized free trips for children from Donetsk and Luhansk regions to various camps and events, to the Kuban, to different regions of the Russian Federation for vacation. Of course, there was ideological processing and children with leadership qualities were identified. They were taken “on pencil” in order to further recruit them for integration into various cultural, governmental and party structures – pro-Russian parties in Crimea, the Party of Regions in Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” said Andriy Kovalenko.

According to him, the current task of the Center in this area is to identify the key persons responsible, as well as the perpetrators of the forced abduction of children, the perpetrators of re-education of children, and their ideological processing. Among them, to identify Russian agents and people working directly for various structures of the Russian special services.

Part of the results of this work can be seen by the public. The War and sanctions portal has a section called “Child abductors” that lists individuals and legal entities involved in such crimes.

“The War and sanctions portal is a joint effort with the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine. It contains a significant amount of information about weapons, weapons components, the shadow fleet – everything that is subject to sanctions. But there is also a section called “Child abductors”. This is about the names of those people and legal entities [involved in child abduction]. In total, at the moment there are 314 individuals and 162 legal entities. Full information about each person, how they are involved in abductions, what their role is in ‘re-education’, in crimes against our country,” Kovalenko said.

He noted that in total, more than 500 people and legal entities fall under the term “kidnappers” in the temporarily occupied territories, while in Russia there are more than 2,000 of them.

As reported by Ukrinform, on December 4, the UN Security Council held a meeting to consider the issue of Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian children. Daria Zarivna, Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Chief Operating Officer of the Bring Kids Back UA initiative, demonstrated to the Security Council members how Russia forges documents about Ukrainian children to destroy their identity.