By Ludmila Denisova, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights
The aggressor country is militarizing children in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
In the city of Starobilsk it is planned to open the largest in the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk region Cossack cadet corps with 400 seats. This decision was made at the end of March in Luhansk during an extended meeting on the support and development of the Cossack component in the education system "LPR".
In addition, the invading power plans to open cadet corps and classes in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
As of the end of 2021, there were 62 cadet classes in the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk region, with more than 1,200 children, and two cadet corps with 417 children.
Among the graduates of the cadet corps are already dead. In particular, in early April 2022, Andriy Degtyarenko, a graduate of the Republican Cossack Cadet Corps named after Marshal of Aviation Alexander Yefimov (Luhansk), a 2017 graduate, died while performing the "combat missions" of the occupiers.
By promoting the entry of civilians into the army, including children from the temporarily occupied territories, Russia grossly violates the laws and customs of war under the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on Armed Conflict.
I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during Russia's Military Invasion of Ukraine to take into account these facts of violations of children's rights in Ukraine.
