Artem Hutorov was 15 years old when a convoy of Russian soldiers and minibuses pulled up to his school in the Ukrainian town of Kupiansk.

The soldiers were armed, the Ukrainian teenager recalls, and their faces were hidden under balaclavas.

In the above excerpt from the FRONTLINE documentary Children of Ukraine, Artem describes what happened next.

“The Russians surrounded the buses, and we were taken out under the control of armed men,” Artem says.

In that moment, he adds, he feared “that we would be shot from all sides.”

Artem is among the Ukrainian teens who speak about their wartime experiences in Children of Ukraine, which is available to watch online now. With Russian President Vladimir Putin facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the alleged war crime of unlawful deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine, the documentary examines how thousands of Ukrainian children have been taken and held in Russian-controlled territory or Russia since the 2022 invasion began.

The Kremlin has dismissed the ICC charges as “outrageous,” and Russia said it has been relocating Ukrainian children to ensure their safety and to provide medical care and education. But the documentary follows investigators with an NGO, the International Partnership for Human Rights, as they travel through Ukraine and collect accounts — including Artem’s — that tell a different story.

In the above excerpt, Artem tells the IPHR that he was held at the Perevalsk Special Correctional Boarding School in Russian-controlled Luhansk after being taken from his school, and that he was subjected to Russian propaganda.

“We were forced to wear a Russian uniform,” Artem recalls, describing a green camouflage uniform with a Russian flag and a pro-war “Z” motif. “When we were singing the [Russian] anthem, we were forced to put on the uniforms … But I didn’t sing it.”

What Artem says he experienced in Russian custody was not unique, according to other accounts gathered by the IPHR.

“The main purpose is to erase our national identity by this ideological, political, cultural and sometimes even military re-education,” Ukrainian investigator Anna Lishchynska, who works for the IPHR, says in the excerpt. “Obviously, they want us to lose our identity and obey to their narratives. And that’s what Artem was, like, he refused to do that and he tried to confront them. But obviously, he’s just a child, and he was really scared.”

Artem’s phone was confiscated, he says, and he couldn’t call his parents. But after six months at the Russian boarding school, he received some unexpected news: His mother had managed to make the difficult journey to Luhansk with the help of a humanitarian group called Save Ukraine. School officials handed Artem over without protest.

The Russian government said in a statement that Artem and his fellow students had been relocated to protect them from Ukrainian shelling, and that Russia had tried to contact the children’s families. The government said it’s “hardly surprising” that a Russian school would have “due regard for national symbols, including the country’s flag and anthem.”

With more than 19,000 children still being held illegally by Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities, the documentary is a powerful look at a little-known dimension of the Ukraine war. It continues FRONTLINE’s extensive coverage of the conflict, including the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol.

For the full story, watch Children of Ukraine:

The documentary premiered on April 16, 2024. It is available to watch on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, the PBS App and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Children of Ukraine is a Basement Films production for GBH/FRONTLINE in association with Channel 4. The director and producer is Paul Kenyon. The producer is Maxim Tucker. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The executive producer of Basement Films is Ben de Pear. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

This story has been updated.

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