Integration of Crimean children into Ukrainian society will take ten years

The integration of children born during the occupation of Crimea into the Ukrainian cultural space may take more than a decade. This process involves restoring their Ukrainian identity and mental return to Ukraine.

This was stated by MP Tamila Tasheva to Suspilne.

The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories decided to create a working group. It will develop a national policy on de-occupation, restoration and support of Ukrainian identity.

According to Tamila Tasheva, the head of the subcommittee, the idea to create the group came from previous work on the Strategy for the Cognitive De-occupation of Crimea, which was aimed at integrating Crimeans into the Ukrainian space.

The work of the group will cover not only the restoration of infrastructure, but also the restoration of trust, identity and security of people who have long been under the influence of Russian propaganda.

The group will cooperate with international partners and will be guided by the recommendations of the European Union. Representatives of all occupied regions and the Ministry of Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine will join the group. Particular attention will be paid to the geographical, security, and socio-cultural peculiarities of the east and south of the country, and separate subgroups will work on legal and institutional issues, education, humanitarian policy, information security, communications, and memory policy.

During the Russian occupation, more than 200,000 children were born in Crimea and grew up in conditions of information isolation and under the influence of propaganda. The Mission of the President of Ukraine believes that the integration of these children into the Ukrainian cultural and information space will take at least ten years.

According to the British Ministry of Defense, the occupiers have taken at least 19,500 Ukrainian children to Russia and the occupied Crimea, although the actual number may reach hundreds of thousands. Some minors were sent to re-education camps and later to military centers.

Анна Бальчінос