More than 900 Ukrainian children completed military training at a Volgograd camp, the resistance movement Yellow Ribbon reported on 11 June. The two-week shift drew teenagers from occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts.
The session, Yellow Ribbon argued, is evidence of "systemic policy" rather than isolated cases. The documentary record supports that framing. Russia's Warrior Center is a creation of Vladimir Putin's 2022 decree. It ran 1,290 Ukrainian children through the same Avangard base in 2024 alone, a Kyiv Independent investigation found. Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab has separately mapped 210 facilities across Russia and occupied Ukraine that hold or militarize children.
The "Time of Young Heroes" session at the Avangard defense base ran for two weeks. Teenagers aged 14 to 17 trained in basic military preparation, drone operations, tactical medicine, and physical drills. The program also featured meetings with Russian war veterans and events built around loyalty to the Russian army, Yellow Ribbon said.
"The scale of such programs is striking. We are no longer talking about isolated cases, but about systemic policy." — Yellow Ribbon resistance movement, 11 June 2026
Avangard operates as a network of military-patriotic centers under Russia's Defense Ministry. The United Kingdom sanctioned the camp in November 2024 for deporting and indoctrinating Ukrainian children. At the same site, Ukrainian teenagers practice trench-digging, mine clearance, and weapons handling. The Kyiv Independent first documented that training pipeline in October. Ukrinform also reported the Yellow Ribbon findings the same day.
The 900 teenagers arrived at Volgograd from a re-education infrastructure built across the occupied territories. Schools in the occupied Donbas have made military training a mandatory subject from fifth grade onward. Occupation authorities enroll children as young as six in the Yunarmiya youth army for drills and pro-Kremlin lessons.
More than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since 24 February 2022, Yale researchers estimate. Up to 1.6 million more remain under Russian occupation. Ukraine has returned just over 2,000 through its Bring Kids Back UA initiative.
In March 2026, Yale's lab tied Russian energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft to the camps. The two firms helped transfer at least 2,158 Ukrainian children across Russia, the report found.
Three months earlier, a Ukrainian rights lawyer told the US Senate of further escalation. Russia had sent teenagers to North Korea's Songdowon International Children's Camp—9,000 kilometers from home.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. Both face charges for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. The court classified the practice as a war crime.
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© Photograph: Lourdes Balduque/Getty Images
© Photograph: Lourdes Balduque/Getty Images
© Photograph: Lourdes Balduque/Getty Images
The UCL study also found physically punished children were more likely to struggle in school
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© Photograph: Jack Sullivan/Alamy
© Photograph: Jack Sullivan/Alamy
© Photograph: Jack Sullivan/Alamy
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