Moscow Urges Schoolchildren in Occupied Luhansk to Sign Army Contracts

Moscow has offered schoolchildren to become contract soldiers in the Russian Army in the occupied Luhansk region, said Ukraine’s regional authorities.

Ukraine’s Luhansk Regional State Administration said Friday that “representatives of [Russian] military enlistment offices” encouraged schoolchildren to join the military during local career guidance events at the Lutuhyne district in the southern Luhansk region, which is currently under Russian occupation.

“At career guidance events organized for schoolchildren of the former Lutuhyne district, meetings are held with representatives of military enlistment offices. 

“The latter offer a promising, in their opinion, offer for young people – signing a contract with the Russian army. They tell the young men exclusively about the advantages of the ‘profession,’” the institution’s Friday update says. 

The reports, if true, would constitute a war crime – both by recruiting children and compelling locals from occupied territories to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces, voluntary or not.

“The Occupying Power may not compel protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. No pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment is permitted,” Article 51 of the Geneva Convention states. 

While Kyiv Post cannot independently verify the current claims, there have been similar reports and allegations of Moscow recruiting Ukrainian children for its war efforts against Ukraine. 

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In 2023, documents from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), one of the Ukrainian regions annexed by Moscow, showed the Kremlin’s plans to conscript children born in 2007 for its mobilization campaigns at the time.

Earlier, Bohdan Yermokhin, a Ukrainian orphan from Mariupol taken to Russia, received a draft summons into the Russian Army ahead of his 18th birthday. He was subsequently returned to Ukraine.

Moscow has also utilized militaristic youth organizations as a means to indoctrinate Ukrainian children, as per a December report by Radio Liberty.  

Russia announced the annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in October 2022 after holding what it called referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine, even though it had not occupied all of the four regional territories at the time. 

At the time of publication, Moscow controls nearly all of the Luhansk region and is pressing toward remaining key hubs under Kyiv’s control in the Donetsk region.