Russia is using a military youth organization, Yunarmia, to shelter teenage loyalists in the occupied territories of Ukraine and prepare them to fight in Moscow's war against their homeland.
Yunarmia's development amid the full-scale occupation is also evidenced by previously unpublished documents from the Russian occupation authorities, which were obtained by the Ukrainian hacker group KibOrg, which provided these documents to the Ukrainian Intelligence Service's investigative unit. Radio Free Europe, Schemat, and its media partners.
Yunarmia, or the Youth Army, was created in 2016 at the initiative of the then Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu. This organization claims to have 1.3 million members. Children, from the age of 8, can join this organization by filling out a questionnaire in a phone application.
The organization claims to facilitate the spiritual, moral, social and intellectual development of so-called Yunarmia cadets. It also says that it "forms a positive motivation to fulfill constitutional duties and prepares young men for service in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation".
In 2017, Yunarmia cadets marched alongside soldiers in the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow, a ceremony led by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This year, children of the Yunarmia organization from the Russian-occupied Luhansk region took part in military celebrations in the Russian city of Novosibirsk.
Russia has opened Yunarmia's first branch in the occupied Ukrainian territories of Crimea, a few months after the official formation of the organization. By September 2016, Yunarmia had spread throughout the Black Sea peninsula, according to Oleh Okhredko, analyst at the Civic Education Center, Almenda. This center consists of a group of Ukrainians documenting the violations of children's rights during wartime.
In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and supported the war in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, also known as Donbas.
Yunarmia "was created with specific ideas of military re-education not only for Russian [children], but also for Ukrainian children from the occupied territories," said Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer from the regional Center for Human Rights, which has been forced to relocate from Crimea in Kiev, after the Russian invasion.
By January 2022, a month before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yunarmia had 29,000 members in Crimea alone, according to Russian Defense Ministry data.
Ukrainian law enforcement authorities have accused the leadership of the Yunarmia organization in occupied Crimea of violating the protection of civilians guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, citing an article of the convention that prohibits "propaganda aimed at the voluntary registration of civilians."
Iryna Sedova, expert of the Group for Human Rights in Crimea, supports the accusation made by the state.
"We consider that the activities of this organization violate international humanitarian law and the leaders of this organization are committing war crimes against the people of Crimea, in particular, against children and teenagers who are being zombified and de facto involuntarily including them in Yunarmia," he stated. that for Radio Free Europe in 2022.
In response to these accusations, the head of Yunarmia's branch in Sevastopol, Volodymyr Kovalenko, said that he considers the current Government of Ukraine illegitimate and denied having committed any crime.
However, since the invasion some former Yunarmia members from the occupied areas have joined the Russian army to fight against Ukraine.
Among them: Illya Zozulskiy, 23, from the Crimean village of Poltavka, who is an artilleryman decorated with the prestigious Zhukov medal, according to Russian media. Russian media, Mash, reported in January 2023 that he was one of 50 "mentors" from Yunarmia who were fighting.
Zozulskiy did not respond to calls and messages sent by Radio Free Europe and its media partners.
On November 19, Britain announced that it had imposed sanctions on Yunarmia, describing it as "a Russian paramilitary organization central to Putin's efforts to forcefully deport or indoctrinate Ukraine's new generation." Britain said the organization "is involved in Russia's systematic attempt to erase Ukrainian cultural and national identity".
The sanctions announcement came amid reports that the Russian military has for the first time recruited residents from occupied parts of Ukraine.
Yunarmia began operating in Donbas only after Putin, without providing evidence, claimed in September 2022 that the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, along with Zaporizhia and Kherson, were part of Russia. Since 2019, a similar group called the New Guard - Yunarmia has been operating in Donbas.
In 2023, Yunarmia "houses" - school facilities adapted for shooting and sports training - were opened in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. According to documents provided by KibOrg, Yunarmia uses school buildings free of charge, and receives financial and other assistance from the Russian federal government and from Yunarmia's headquarters in Moscow.
Schemes received dozens of school documents from KibOrg of children living in occupied areas. Most of the children were listed as being members of Yunarmia or participating in the activities of this organization.
An example is an eighth-grader from one of the Russian-occupied towns in the Donetsk region, whose identity is not being made public to protect him, as he is a minor. According to a social media account from his hometown, he participated in a training camp called Defenders 2024, and won a bronze medal for disassembling and assembling an AK-74 rifle.
The participants "were trained to use weapons and received basic military training, studied modern tactics and methods of warfare," the post said. It also said that "more than 300 students" from Russia and the regions of Donetsk and Zaporizhia "took the oath of loyalty to Yunarmia".
Former members of the New Guard-Yunarmia from the occupied parts of the Donetsk region are fighting in the war against Ukraine.
Stanislav Sikorskiy from Horlivka, who graduated from high school in 2018, was a member of both Yunarmia and the New Guard-Yunarmia, according to the latter's account on the social network Vkontakte. After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was "in the ranks" of the Russian army and fought in the battles that took place in the Kherson region.
Sikorskiy demilitarized in 2023. He did not respond to requests for an interview from Radio Free Europe.
Hanna Lisovenko, also from the Donetsk region, joined the New Guards-Yunarmia unit called the Spartans. She joined this unit in 2017, when she was 17 years old. Posts on her social media accounts suggest she is now fighting against Ukraine as a drone operator as part of a Russian military intelligence tactical group made up mostly of militants from the Donetsk region who have been involved in the war since 2014.
"I was in Yunarmia myself and now I serve in the army. Almost half of those who studied with me chose the path of the army. Unfortunately, many of them have already died. Some of them are seriously injured and cannot continue their military service", she told Skemat. "This is the reality in our region".
Lisovenko said the "weapons skills, physical training and history lessons" she received from the New Guards-Unarmia came in handy during the full-scale war against Ukraine.
Zozulskiy, Sikorskiy, and Lisovenko are from parts of Ukraine that have been under Russian control for a decade. But Yunarmia also operates in areas that Russian forces occupied after the start of the full-scale war in 2022.
Last summer, its newly opened branch in Mariupol held seven sessions at a camp on the Sea of Azov. Among many things, the children were taught how to shoot rifles.
One of the organizers of the camp was Valeriy Onatskiy, the head of the Department for Family and Children Affairs in the occupation administration in Maripol. A Radio Free Europe investigation in 2023 found that Onatskiz was involved in the relocation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories to a Russia – activity that prompted the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin on suspicion of war crimes.
Occupation authorities said in November 2022 that Yunarmia branches had also been opened in parts of Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, which are under Russian control.
The head of Yunarmia in the Zaporizhia region is Fidail Bikbulatov, a Russian national whom Ukrainian intelligence accuses of involvement in mass kidnappings, illegal deportation and forced transfer of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia.
In a statement to Radio Free Europe, Bikbulatov said that Yurmania sees "its members as people who connect their lives with military service in the future."
"We see potential in them, we expect them to become military personnel", he said. "We train them, we work with them and we want them to become soldiers - the Ministry of Defense even offers benefits to ex-Yunarmia members when they join [the army] - but all this is done on a voluntary basis."
Evidence suggests that Yunarmia's leadership judges the performance of its branches, at least in part by looking at the number of former members who have joined the Russian military. In October, Yunarmia's deputy head, Viktor Kaurov, sent letters to regional branches regarding the mandatory annual "review" and said the assessment would include two parameters: "the number of Yurmania cadets who have been called up for military service and who have registered in army universities" and "the number of Yurmania cadets enrolled in army training centers"./REL (A2 Televizion)
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