According to an investigation conducted by the Russian opposition media outlet Medusa, since the beginning of the invasion, the Russian authorities have been actively developing methods of "re-education" of forcibly taken Ukrainian children and establishing a system of digital surveillance. According to the documents that came to the attention of the publication, they are trying to form a Russian identity in these children on the basis of Russian values and traditions.
They note that Ukrainian teenagers can be exposed to "destructive ideology", and teachers and social workers are tasked with reorienting their worldview.
The investigation also shows that the Russian Ministry of Education views these children as potential terrorists capable of opposing the Russian authorities with the support of their relatives from Ukraine.
In addition, the Russian authorities have created teenage centres that "integrate" children from different regions of Ukraine, including the occupied territories. These centres offer patriotic seminars and military sports activities to create an image of a "friendly Russia" among them.
In addition to these efforts, the Russian authorities plan to open "information security centres" in the temporarily occupied territories to monitor Ukrainian children.
According to the investigation, they will monitor children's activity on social media, analyse it and determine the "destructiveness coefficient" and "opposition coefficient" of each child.
According to Medusa's sources, this will help identify "resistance activists" among Ukrainian teenagers in the occupied territories.
The system that will track children's online activity is called Big Brother.
In March last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Children's Ombudsman. They were accused of organising the abduction of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories.