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.

Two weeks of drills, drones, and indoctrination

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.

From occupied schools to the Volgograd pipeline

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.

Ukraine attempted a missile strike on a bridge connecting Henichesk to the Arabat Spit early on 10 June 2026, according to Vladimir Saldo, Russia's installed head of the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, who posted the claim on social media.

The strike is the latest in a series of Ukrainian attacks targeting road links between Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and Crimea. The Chonhar bridge—the main overland route—was first struck on 7 June, after which traffic resumed in reversible mode; a second Ukrainian drone strike on 9 June halted movement again. Saldo had advised drivers to use alternative routes through Armyansk and Perekop.

Traffic across the Henichesk–Arabat Spit bridge has been temporarily closed, Saldo said, with emergency services on site establishing the circumstances.

Power outages across eight districts

In the same post, Saldo reported that eight municipalities were left without electricity following a separate overnight Ukrainian drone attack: Henichesk, Novotroitske, Chaplynka, Kalanchak, Ivanivka, Hornostaivka, Kakhovka, and Nova Kakhovka. Utility and emergency crews were working to restore power, he said.

Broader logistics pressure

Russian pro-war bloggers have in recent weeks reported an intensified Ukrainian drone campaign against military transport in southern Ukraine, Hromadske reports. On 30 May, Russian-occupied Crimea imposed limits on sales of A-95 petrol, citing drone strikes on Russian oil refineries; occupied Luhansk Oblast followed with similar restrictions shortly after.

Ten Russian soldiers from a single regiment are accused of hunting civilians in Kherson with attack drones, and now face war-crimes charges filed in absentia, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported. Investigators say the operators tracked people through the streets and struck ambulances and rescue crews. The 10 are among those participating in a Russian long-lasting terror campaign against Khersoners known as a "human safari." 

The drone hunters of one regiment

Counterintelligence officers built a case against 10 drone operators from the 404th Motorized Rifle Regiment, a territorial-defense unit in Russia's "Dnepr" Group of Forces, the SBU reported. The investigation found that the men tracked residents as they moved along Kherson's streets and launched drones at them. The drones carried shaped-charge and high-explosive fragmentation munitions.

Residents and rights monitors call this campaign a "human safari," the hunting of people going about their ordinary days.

The 10 named operators

The SBU published each suspect's name and military call sign:

• Tsolak Grigoryan, call sign "Boroda"
• Nikita Gubar, "Drovosek"
• Nikolai Denisenko, "Gami"
• Vladimir Klimov, "Klim"
• Vyacheslav Kornenkov, "Skif"
• Viktor Nizhnikov, "Flyaga"
• Ruslan Nugaev, "Dok"
• Vladimir Orlov, "Yakut"
• Ivan Prusachenko, "Prus"
• Oleg Pukhlyakov, "Pulya"

Ambulances and a double strike on rescuers

The documented episodes include attacks on civilian cars and residential blocks, the SBU said. Operators dropped explosives on ambulances at a city hospital. They also carried out a "double" strike on State Emergency Service (DSNS) rescuers who were clearing the aftermath of an earlier Russian shelling. 

UN investigators have described this Russian method in Kherson: a first strike, then a second aimed at the people who come to help. Victims suffered shrapnel wounds, burns, and concussions, and civilian infrastructure took significant damage.

Charged in absentia

Based on the evidence, SBU investigators notified all 10 of suspicion under Article 438 of Ukraine's criminal code, which covers war crimes. The notices were issued in absentia. SBU officers in Kherson Oblast led the investigation with the 79th Border Detachment of the State Border Guard Service (DPSU), under the oblast prosecutor's guidance. The agency said efforts to hold the operators accountable continue.

The case fits a wider pattern Ukrainian prosecutors have documented across the oblast in thousands of proceedings.