Russia remotely recruiting Ukrainian children for bomb hoaxes - Lubinets

Russian invasion forces have been recruiting Ukrainian minors as assets who would issue fake bomb threats for schools and other facilities.

Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets appealed to the Ministry of Education and Culture with a request to run an awareness and prevention campaign among schoolchildren and students, Ukrinform reports.

"Ukrainian children are being recruited from the territory of Russina and forced to perform bomb hoax stunts in schools and other institutions! This has become a mass phenomenon. How can we counter this? We need to carry out awareness campaigns with minors in educational facilities. They need to be clearly informed: the Russians seek to exploit you for their crimes," Lubinets wrote.

The ombudsman added he would send a letter to the Ministry of Education and Science with launch such a campaign.

According to official UN statistics, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has forcibly deported 2.8 million Ukrainians, of whom almost 20,000 children have already been identified. Only 386 children were returned to Ukraine.