Paris: Amnesty International informed that Russian authorities are largely targeting children and families of critics of the Kremlin and the invasion of Ukraine. Following the invasion in February 2022, the administration had intensified its crackdown on dissenters, using children to pressure their parents, Agence France-Presse reported.
Russian authorities threatened the dissenters, saying their parental rights would be removed or their children would be put in institutions, Amnesty reported.
Following this, many parents were forced to flee Russia with their children so as to stay with their children.
Amnesty researcher in Russia, Oleg Kozlovsky, said that though the Kremlin brags about the value of the family, it shamelessly exploits the bond between children and their parents to crush dissent.
He continued that in this politically motivated assault, children, schools, and teachers become tools of persecution and arbitrary interference by the state. He added that the schools were indoctrinating children with government-moderated false narratives.
One of the instances in which children were targeted was 10-year-old Varvara Galkina getting questioned in October by Moscow police over her WhatsApp profile picture, a drawing that supported Ukraine. Police threatened her mother, Elena Jolicoeur, and ran a search at her home. Out of fear, Jolicoeur and her two daughters fled the country. She told Amnesty that she did not want her children to pretend that they agreed with the government’s discourse and supported the war.
In September 2022, police in Ulan-Ude, eastern Siberia, arrested opposition activist Natalya Filonova at a protest. She was placed in pretrial detention after several months under house arrest, while her disabled foster son Vladimir Alalykin, then 16, was placed in an orphanage.
In September 2022, authorities arrested an opposition activist, Natalya Filnova, at a protest and was placed in pretrial detention following many months of house arrest. During her pretrial detention term, her foster son, who was disabled and was 16 then, was lodged in an orphanage. Filonova was sentenced to jail for two years and ten months while her son remained in the orphanage. He complained that other children abused him there.