Russia has sent some of the thousands of Ukrainian children it abducted from occupied territory to North Korea for “re-education,” according to Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets on Thursday, December 4th.
Citing testimony published by a Kyiv-based human rights group, Lubinets said there is a network of 165 “camps” where Russia is attempting to re-educate children—located in occupied Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and North Korea.
Previously, a representative from the Regional Center for Human Rights (RCHR) told the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, December 3rd that at least some of the children were sent to the Songdowon summer camp on North Korea’s eastern coast.
The Ukrainian government says Russia has abducted or forcibly displaced nearly 20,000 children since 2022. Russia has acknowledged moving some children but claims it did so for their safety and is trying to reunite them with their families–an assertion Ukraine rejects.
