A BABY is among 53 children who were kidnapped and shipped to Kremlin camps by four ruthless abductors, prosecutors have said.
Those suspected of orchestrating the plot include an ex-Russian minister and three Ukrainians who formerly ran children’s homes.
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Prosecutors say they each played a distinct role in carrying out the barbaric abductions.
Dmytro Gartsev, identified as health minister for the illegal “Donetsk People’s Republic” in 2022, is suspected of masterminding the operation.
Svitlana Maiboroda, who headed the occupation authorities’ children’s service, allegedly arranged the children’s transport and placement.
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The directors of the children’s homes, Viacheslav Vysiagin and Viktor Honcharov, are both accused of organising their collection and accompanying them during the transfer.
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Russia is believed to have deliberately targeted exceptionally vulnerable children such as infants, toddlers and small children in specialised units.
Among those kidnapped were kids between the age of nine months and five years old, with many requiring medical supervision.
The abductions were plotted before Putin’s illegal 2022 invasion, when the children were taken from homes not facing imminent attack.
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The sick scheme went high up the chain of command, with senior Russian officials moving the kids on their planes and receiving them at military airfields.
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Kidnapped children were then shipped off to Russian families and foster homes, advertised for adoption and fast-tracked for citizenship.
Despite being vulnerable and requiring care, the victims were taken to family centres rather than hospitals and appropriate medical facilities.
These accusations undermine claims that the children were moved for medical treatment or protection from an immediate military threat.
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Prosecutors say the children were taken from three specialised children’s homes in occupied Donetsk and Makiivka on October 7, 2022.
They were first driven by bus to Russia before being transferred to a special flight used to transport senior officials.
The aircraft flew the children to the Moscow region, where they were met by leaders including governor Andrey Vorobyov and children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova.
A video identified by Ukrainian investigators as footage of the transfer appears to show the aircraft at Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow.
Investigators say the plane was a Tu-154M bearing registration B5843 and marked with an “Army of Russia” ladder.
A journey involving “more than fifty” children described five-year-old Nadia looking out of a window with a bag around her neck because of nausea and a name tag on her hand.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) says that 28 of the children were eventually transferred into the custody of Russian families.
Children were reportedly subjected to measures designed to formalise their status in Russia, including expediting citizenship.
Questionnaires for some of the children appeared on adoption platforms, per a statement from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
It continued: “No child from this group has been returned to Ukraine. They stole children to make them Russians.”
The office described the process as a deliberate attempt to sever their ties with Ukraine.
It said: “This is not a side effect of the deportation. This is its continuation: the purposeful state policy of Russian-ising Ukrainian children.”
The SBU’s evidence against the four suspects includes orders, meetings, documentation and records tracing the children’s route from occupied Donetsk to Russia.
They have been notified in absentia that they are suspected of war crimes, but remain outside Ukrainian government control.
If confirmed, the operation would violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of civilians from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power.
It is part of a much wider Ukrainian investigation into the removal of children from occupied territory.
Investigators say they have collected information concerning more than 6,000 children and carried out procedural measures involving more than 1,200 minors and 1,100 parents.
The latest case offers a detailed trail from the initial planning and collection of the children.
Prosecutors say it is proof that this was not a temporary wartime evacuation, but a calculated plot to remove Ukrainian children permanently and assimilate them into Russian society.
Earlier this year, three top Russian officials were unmasked after orchestrating the kidnap of 200 children from the Donetsk region.
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Putin is “weaponising” them against Ukraine, according to one of Zelensky’s staffers fighting to save them.
Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Daria Zarivna previously told The Sun no peace deal will be brokered until Moscow agrees to return thousands of kidnapped youngsters home.
Putin’s ‘zombie’ camp plot
by Rebecca Husselbee, Assistant Features Editor
VLADIMIR Putin is using “zombie” camps to brainwash Ukrainian kids in a chilling three-stage plan to replenish his Russian army, a top MP has revealed.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner, said the Russian tyrant is responsible for the “genocide” of Ukrainian children being forcibly deported across the border.
He described the Kremlin’s disturbing three-stage plan to rid the youngsters of their Ukrainian heritage and brainwash them into becoming Russian citizens.
The plan involves placing children in sinister camps where they speak Russian and sing the national anthem before having their official documents altered and being placed in Russian families.
Often the children are told that their loved ones have abandoned them and that they are now part of the Russian Federation.
But Dmytro revealed that children who refuse to accept their Russian captor’s demands are then being tortured in special rooms within the “re-education” camps.
The snatched youngsters are also forced to take part in the Kremlin’s youth military organisations and train with weapons – part of Putin’s scheme to create a new generation of fighters for his dwindling army, the MP warned.
Ukraine says the young hostages are forced to spend days in windowless torture chambers, without food and water, until they surrender and accept that they are now Russian citizens.
Traumatised Ukrainian kids who have been able to make it back home spoke of the horrific conditions while being held at the camps.
They say they were taken to isolation cells, beaten, and forced to watch as their captors burned the Ukraine flag in front of them and sang the patriotic song “Onward, Russia”.
Dmytro told The Sun: “Sometimes after children return, they tell us about torture, even a special place for children who don’t want to use the Russian language.
“Russians even created special camps for these Ukrainian children…they told us it was a special room torture chamber for children.
“If you don’t want to sing the anthem, the Russians hold you in this room without light, without food, without water, for one day even more.
“Next day, they ask, ‘Do you change your mind or not? Are you ready to sing the Russian anthem or not? If not, okay you can stay longer’.”