VLADIMIR Putin is kidnapping Ukrainian children and shipping them off to fellow tyrant Kim Jong-un in North Korea – where they are brainwashed into hating Japan, experts claim.
Youngsters are being abducted and forcibly sent over 9,000 kilometres away to remote camps inside the hermit kingdom as part of the Russian despot’s bloody war in Ukraine.
At least two kids taken hostage by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have been sent to Kim’s pariah state, legal expert Kateryna Rashevska said.
Speaking in front of a US congressional subcommittee, she said: “12-year-old Misha from the occupied Donetsk region and 16-year-old Liza from occupied Simferopol were sent to Songdowon camp in North Korea, 9,000 km from home.”
She added: “Children there were taught to ‘destroy Japanese militarists’ and met Korean veterans who, in 1968, attacked the U.S. Navy ship Pueblo, killing and wounding nine American soldiers.”
Her shocking testimony was part of the US hearing on Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children.
Since megalomaniac Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and sent to hundreds of facilities inside Russia and occupied territory.
These sites range from summer camps and sanatoriums to a military base, and, in one case, a monastery, according to research by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).
But the astonishing new development shows just how far Putin’s increasingly strong bond with Kim has become in recent years.
North Korea – currently Russia’s largest supplier of arms and a staunch backer of Putin’s bloodthirsty invasion – has deployed tens of thousands of troops to fight in Ukraine.
And this summer, more than 100 Russian schoolkids visited Songdowon camp – where Ukrainian children are now said to have been sent – in another symbol of the two regime’s close ties.
Rashevska also said: “The Regional Center for Human Rights documented 165 re-education camps where Ukrainian children are militarized and Russified.
“These camps exist in occupied territories, Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.”
Russia is known to have engaged in the deportation, re-education, militarisation and forced adopting of Ukrainian children since at least 2014 from the occupied territories of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk.
But since Putin ordered his troops in more than three years ago, researchers say these barbaric efforts have significantly expanded.
Yale Humanitarian Research Lab head Nathaniel Raymond said some 35,000 children still remain in Russian custody.
This huge number includes some who have been sent to fight against their own country on the front line.
But Kyiv claims the number is even higher – with some estimates reaching up to 300,000.
There are an estimated 1.6 million Ukrainian children still living in Russian-occupied territories as of 2025, according to Kyiv Independent.
The International Criminal Court has even ordered arrest warrants for Putin and his twisted top aide Maria Lvova-Belova – who holds the ironic title “Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights” – over the stolen kids.
Russia attempted to denounce the warrants as “outrageous and unacceptable”.
Lvova-Belova has attempted to portray the forced deportation of Ukrainian children as a Russian rescue mission since being appointed Putin’s children’s commissioner in 2021.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said only 1,859 of his country’s stolen children have been brought back as of December.
Some youngsters have been held temporarily before returning home – while others have been held indefinitely.
As part of Putin’s callous regime to indoctrinate these children, many have been pushed into a network of so-called family centres.
Others have been pushed into Russia’s programme of coerced fostering and adoption – seeing them eventually placed within a Russian family.
For those who return home, Ukraine authorities have been told of the drastic work that has to be done to undo the damage.
Children used as ‘weapons’
Exclusive by Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)
RUSSIA is using abducted and brainwashed children as “weapons”, one of Zelensky’s staff battling to rescue Ukraine’s kidnapped kids warned.
Daria Zarivna told The Sun earlier this year that no peace deal will be brokered until Moscow agrees to return thousands of kidnapped youngsters home.
She warned Vladimir Putin‘s thugs are indoctrinating these youngsters and those living in Ukrainian territory under Russian control.
Bring Kids Back Ukraine operations director Daria said Moscow will push them into joining Russia’s army to use them as a “weapon” against Europe in the future.
Since Putin illegally invaded Ukraine three years ago, tens of thousands of children have been kidnapped and taken into Russia.
Kremlin stooges then disturbingly try to rid the youngsters of their Ukrainian heritage and brainwash them into becoming Russian citizens.
Sinister camps have been set up in Russia where children are sent 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.
Mariana Betsa, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, told The Sun how some children have been abused and suffered sexual violence.
She said: “It’s not just a statistic, 20,000. It’s a life behind every person, behind every statistic.
“We have so many families who were separated. We have so many children who were abducted.
“We need to return every single child.”
Presidential advisor Daria meanwhile warned Russia will use the children as a “weapon” against not only Ukraine, but the rest of Europe.
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.
“They’ve been indoctrinated, they’ve been militarised.”
The Sun previously spoke to one teenager who fell victim to Putin’s evil scheme.
Nastya, then 15, was abducted from Kherson Oblast when it was seized by Putin’s fighters at the beginning of the war in March 2022.
The terrified teenager was placed with a woman who also had ten other children in her care.
She told how she was abused and beat her until she was sent back to the police station where she had originally been held.
Nastya was then enrolled in a college, where she said she was routinely humiliated by soldiers who told her: “You are nothing.”
Eventually, Nastya was able to find a phone and make a call to her mother, who tracked down volunteers in Ukraine to help get her home.
