DISINFO: Ukraine has camps to train 10-year old soldiers like Nazi Germany

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

DISINFO: Ukraine has camps to train 10-year old soldiers like Nazi Germany

SUMMARY

Against the backdrop of heavy losses in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Ukraine has begun training children in secret camps. It's not enough that they have already lost several generations. Now they have organised secret camps to train children aged 10 to 14! How will they be affected psychologically? It's literally a Volkssturm (a Nazi militia that recruited children to fight), like Nazi Germany. Such things cannot take place without the tacit approval or even support of the country's leader.

RESPONSE

Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative discrediting President Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s government and armed forces.

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.

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.

This claim is also an attempt by pro-Kremlin media to deflect attention away from Russia and the massive militarization of Russian children taking place over the last decade, the Younarmia organisation or the kidnapping and so-called 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.

Moreover, Russia recruits minors in Ukraine exploiting them through deception and coercion to carry out sabotage and terror attacks. This practice violates international law and constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute. While some minors face criminal charges, many are also victims of Russia’s systematic weaponisation of youth as part of its broader hybrid war strategy.

The abduction and forced transportation of unaccompanied Ukrainian children to Russia was documented as early as several months into Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified aggression by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

See similar cases that Kyiv uses the same methods as ISIS to recruit children, that Ukrainian secret services are actively engaged in child and organ trafficking, that Ukraine lost so many soldiers that next step is to enroll children, and that Secret child trafficking network operates in Ukraine.

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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