MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday dismissed a Yale’s School of Public Health report about the forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children as anti-scientific propaganda that was full of fabrications and based on questionable data.
Yale’s School of Public Health said in report it had identified more than 210 sites where Ukrainian children have been taken for military training, drone manufacturing and other forced re-education by Russia, as part of a large-scale deportation programme.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that the report appeared to be propaganda and that Russia had questions about how the data had been collected.
Zakharova took particular issue with Yale’s June estimate that Russia had illegally deported or forcibly displaced around 35,000 children.
“These are fake fabrications, it’s a pity that the Yale School of Public Health did not scorn them,” Zakharova said. “No one bothers to provide any facts and no one bears any responsibility.”
Zakharova also said the data in the report appeared “fabricated” and that she suspected the report was part of a Western propaganda drive to justify the seizure of Russian assets.
Ukraine says Russia has illegally deported or forcibly displaced more than 19,500 children to Russia and Belarus in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Zakharova said that the only official list ever handed to Russia about the children was a list sent to the Russian delegation during negotiations in Istanbul in June 2025. She said there were 339 names on that list.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Maxim Rodionov; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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