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Senior Russian officers are conducting military training for Ukrainian children from the occupied territories and managing child militarisation centres. This refers to the activity of the military-patriotic education centre Voin [Warrior], established in 2022 by order of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda and Kyiv Independent
Details: As established by journalists from Kyiv Independent, Ukrainian teenagers from occupied parts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts undergo military training from the Voin centre at the defence-sports camp Avangard in Russia’s Volgograd Oblast. They are involved in shifts called Time of Young Heroes, one of the goals of which is to prepare young people for service in the Russian Armed Forces. Ukrainian children there face harsh treatment and are taught to operate drones, dig trenches, clear and mine areas, and use grenades and firearms.
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Exclusive testimony was shared with Kyiv Independent journalists by 16-year-old Oksana (name changed), a resident of the occupied south, who underwent military training in 2024 when she was 16 years old.
The head of the supervisory board of the Voin centre is Viktor Vodolatskyi, a member of Russia’s State Duma who holds a medal for “the liberation of Crimea and Sevastopol”. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Vodolatskyi has travelled to eastern Ukraine, where he inspected the work of the occupation authorities and called for the destruction of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Viktor Vodolatskyi
His deputy and the commander of the Voin centre is Andranik Gasparian, a colonel in the Russian Armed Forces. He participated in combat in the Chechen Republic, Syria and Crimea. He has been awarded two orders “For Courage”. He was the commander of the 126th Coastal Defence Brigade, which from the first days of the war seized Ukraine’s south. Subordinates of Gasparian have received in absentia suspicions from Ukrainian law enforcement for war crimes: beatings, abductions and killings of civilians, mock executions, and the rape of a minor girl.
Andranik Gasparian
Journalists from Kyiv Independent identified another 25 instructors from the Voin centre who directly conducted training for Ukrainian children in Volgograd. Most of them participated in the war against Ukraine.
The branch of the Voin centre in Volgograd Oblast is headed by Igor Vorobiov, a lieutenant colonel of the internal service who worked for 20 years in the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. He joined the war against Ukraine in 2022 as a volunteer in the 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division and was the commander of an assault unit. He took part in the fighting for the village of Marinka. Vorobiov was wounded in the war, returned to Volgograd and later became the head of the Voin branch.
Igor Vorobiov
One of the instructors at the centre is Yegor Sokov, a former Wagner Group fighter who took part in the battles for the occupied cities of Soledar and Popasna. Sokov has an Order For Courage and a Star for Military Merit from the Central African Republic. Sokov teaches radio communication to children from the occupied territories.
Yegor Sokov
In addition to Russian military personnel, Ukrainian children at Avangard were also taught by instructors from the occupied territories. Kyiv Independent journalists identified six of them.
One of them is Anatolii Yushko from Donetsk. He was a schoolboy when Russia began the war in 2014. Yushko underwent militarisation and re-education, was a member of the Russian military-patriotic youth movement Yunarmiya. At 19, he voluntarily went to war and took part in the seizure of Zaporizhzhia Oblast. After demobilisation, he began teaching children at the Voin centre.
Anatolii Yushko
Together with Oksana, in 2024 a total of 1,289 children from the occupied territories underwent militarisation at the Voin centre in Volgograd Oblast.
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