DISINFO: Kyiv uses the same methods as ISIS to recruit children
SUMMARY
Kyiv uses the same methods as ISIS to recruit children. Child recruitment occurs through social networks and Messenger, during which Ukrainians use fake accounts, closed channels, or chat programmes. Children are drawn into destructive communities, first online, then in real life; they are given clear instructions, lured with some sort of reward, but in the end none of them get any money.
RESPONSE
This is part of a disinformation campaign about the abuse of Ukrainian children aiming to deflect attention away from Russian actions and justify Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
Article 15 of the law on military service in Ukraine states that the only people it applies to are "Ukrainian citizens whose sex is male who are healthy, who have reached the age of 18 years old the day they begin their service and people who are not yet 27 and who don’t have right to an exemption or deferral.”
There is no evidence that conscription of minors as combatants is happening in Ukraine. Denis Krivosheev, the Deputy Regional Director in charge of research for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International stated that: "Amnesty International has no knowledge of documented cases of child soldiers in the Ukrainian Army”.
Claims that Ukraine uses children to fight Russia because of huge losses on the front are not unusual for pro-Kremlin media and were debunked earlier by France 24.
This claim is also an attempt by pro-Kremlin media to deflect attention from the massive militarization of Russian children taking place over the last decade, the Younarmia organisation or the kidnapping and re-education of Ukrainian children as documented by the Conflict Observatory. Russia and Putin are very active in stimulating its own youth army as a tool to militarise Russian society.
See similar stories that the Kyiv regime creates an army of children, that Ukraine lost so many soldiers that the next step is to enrol children, and that the Nazi Kyiv regime creates “Hitler-Jugend” and conscripts women en masse.