Britain on Wednesday announced new sanctions against Russian officials and youth organisations linked to what London called Moscow’s policy to ‘deport, indoctrinate and militarise Ukrainian children’.
Moscow has been accused by Western governments and activists of forcibly deporting Ukrainian children to Russian territory after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2023 over the abduction of Ukrainian children.
The UK government said it would sanction ‘eight individuals and three organisations affiliated with the Russian state’.
The foreign office said its defence intelligence showed that Moscow was pursuing a ‘long-standing Russification policy in illegally temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, seeking to eradicate Ukrainian culture identity and statehood’.
According to the UK government, over 19,500 Ukrainian children have been ‘forcibly transferred or deported’ to Russia, including around 6,000 who have been relocated to a ‘network of re-education camps’.
‘Once there, they are subjected to indoctrination efforts which seek to erode their Ukrainian identity and instill pro-Russian sentiments,’ the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement.
Those sanctioned include Anastasia Pavlovna Akkuratova, an education ministry official, and Valery Maiorov, head of the ‘Teenage Programs Center’, a state-funded organisation which London accused of aiming to turn children in occupied Ukrainian regions against Ukraine.
Organisations sanctioned include the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation and its president Aymani Kadyrova, the mother of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who himself is already blacklisted.
The UK government accuses the foundation of running re-education programmes for Ukrainian children, making them undergo ‘militaristic training’.
‘The Kremlin’s policy of forced deportations, indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children is despicable,’ said UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
It ‘demonstrates the depths of depravity that President Putin will reach to erase Ukrainian language, culture and identity’, he said.
The UK imposed sanctions on 10 other officials and organisations linked to the deportation policy in November 2024.
Activists say Russian troops have taken many of the children during the war from orphanages or centres for disabled youth, while others are from poor families whose parents have been duped by invading forces.
