PUTIN will banish 60,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children to remote camps in the wilderness this summer, according to a terrifying Russian update.
Tens of thousands of kids have been abducted and held in brutal re-education camps – where they are brainwashed by Russia’s twisted regime.
A Zelensky advisor revealed that young prisoners are being trained to serve as “weapons” in the Russian military, with efforts made to erase their Ukrainian identities.
Escapees from these camps, which are disguised as schools, have reported instances of physical abuse, starvation, confinement in basements, placement in isolation rooms, and coercion to sing the Russian national anthem.
Now, Putin’s government has revealed that thousands of the kids will be transferred to special “summer” camps.
Russia’s deputy education minister, Alexander Bugayev, announced plans for approximately 60,000 children from four regions to participate in these camps by 2025.
He added the chilling reminder that “this figure increases every year”.
The swarm of kids being herded into camps have come mainly from the Donbass and Novorossiya regions, Moscow said.
Almost the entire Donbass region has been overrun by the marauding Russians since Putin invaded in 2022.
Russian troops have tormented Ukrainian locals with a range of heinous crimes as they invaded their land.
That includes snatching the young kids from their homes and carting them into tyrannical Russia.
The Sun spoke to Daria Zarivna, one of Zelensky’s advisers, who warned that Putin is “weaponising” the stolen youngsters.
She said: “We are working on keeping this matter in the spotlight and we think that it is extremely important that it be a part of these talks because the Ukrainian children which Russia keeps under its control.
“It’s a threat to global security, to Ukraine’s security.
“There are 1.6 million Ukrainian children currently staying in the temporarily occupied territories under the control of Russia.”
Zarivna, 35, the operation director for the Bring Kids Back Ukraine campaign, added that no peace deal will be brokered until Moscow agrees to return the children.
Sickening details have emerged about the evil practices in the “zombie” camps where the kids are held.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner, said that Putin is responsible for the “genocide” of Ukrainian children.
He revealed that the kids are often told their loved ones have abandoned them, and that they are now part of the Russian Federation.
And 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, to prep them to fight for Russia, the MP warned.
Vitaliy Mukharsky was just 14 when Putin’s thugs snatched him off the street as he strolled through his home village in Ukraine.
Along with his uncle Oleksiy, 27, he was blindfolded and thrown into a pit of pork intestines – before being taken to jail and starved for four days.
Vitaliy said: “I was scared of gunshots because they were playing Russian roulette.
“They were shooting randomly with their eyes closed. I saw blood coming into our cell through the door.”
‘I was snatched by Russian soldier’
ILLIA, 11, was deported from Mariupol after a Russian missile strike killed his mother and left him with horror shrapnel wounds when he was nine.
His neighbours buried his mum’s body in their back garden before he was snatched by Vlad’s soldiers and taken for surgery at a camp in Donestk.
The shrapnel was removed without any anaesthetic and he was forced to write and speak Russian and repeat “Glory to Ukraine as part of Russia”.
He says Russian forces tried to turn him into a “propaganda tool” but that he is not “one to be duped so easily.”
Illia’s grandmother had been searching for her grandson ever since losing contact with her daughter in March 2022.
It wasn’t until they spotted the young boy in a video from Russia that she realised he was alone and that her daughter had been killed.
His grandmother never gave up hope and set about getting her injured grandson back home where he belonged.
Months later, Illia returned home to Ukraine and had further surgery to remove more fragments from his leg, while 11 remain.
His grandmother Olena said: “He had a school, he had a home, he had a mother and he lost all of that – his entire childhood.
“He kept to himself, he was afraid of noise, he was afraid of sirens. He had no memory.
He now has dreams of becoming a doctor so that he can help fighters on the frontline as a combat medic.
Vitaliy thankfully made it out, dodging the one-way ticket to Russia.
Many his age have not been so lucky.
Vitaliy Vertash, 16, spent six months in a camp in annexed Crimea after being told he was going on a two-week holiday camp with his school.
He feared he would never see his mum Inessa again but was released in March this year after she got help from an organisation which works to free children.
Vitaliy, from the Kherson city of Beryslav, described how children were forced to live in basements, banned from speaking their native language, get up for 7am parades and listen to the Russian national anthem for hours.
He told the Ukrainian Children of War state portal for missing and displaced children: “There were absolutely zero conditions for living there.
“They (camp bosses) told us we needed to forget the Ukrainian language. They said ‘you are here like in an orphanage, your parents don’t need you’.”
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’.”
