SPECIAL REPORT: Brussels sanctions a camp called Peace and the judges who struck off the peace party

Romashka, Sputnik, Raduga, Mir

The Official Journal of September 28

Romashka, Sputnik, Raduga, Mir, Leto, Vita: the Official Journal of the European Union published these names of children’s camps on September 28, with their addresses and their tax numbers.

Daisy. Satellite. Rainbow. Peace. Summer. Life.

Somewhere else, a summer smells of pine and sunscreen. Here, it is a register.

Vacation words. Sand in the shoes. The dining-hall bell. The flag run up the pole in the morning while the little ones yawn.

Mir means peace

One camp is called Mir, in Taganrog. One camp is called Vita, in Anapa. One camp is called Solnechny Bereg, in Dagestan. One camp is called Raduga, in occupied Crimea. One camp is called Romashka, in the Rostov region.

Mir, in Russian, means peace.

The Council of the Union lists it for what it does, according to its entry: the forced assimilation of Ukrainian children, including their indoctrination.

Mir: a vacation name, a sanctions entry.

Thirty-seven names

Two regulations, one Monday

That same Monday, the Council adopted two implementing regulations. Thirty-seven listings in all.

The first, 2026/2184, targets 10 individuals and 17 entities. The Council holds them responsible for what it calls the unlawful deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia and within the occupied territories, then their forced assimilation.

The second, 2026/2193, targets 10 individuals for the repression of the democratic opposition in Russia. All of them tied to the barring of the Yabloko party.

Twenty individuals. Seventeen entities. One Monday.

Asset freezes. A ban on making funds available to them. For the individuals, a ban on entering or transiting the Union.

The president’s signature

Both texts close the same way: done at Brussels, September 28, for the Council, its president, M. Heydon.

The press release on the children links to the page of a meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, on September 28 and 29. EU sanctions do not choose their room.

Two lists. The same day. No written link between them.

The link has to be found in the entries.

Thirty-seven names, two regulations, one signature.

For peace, in marker

St. Petersburg, September 20

Eight days earlier, on September 20, in St. Petersburg, Nikolai Rybakov voted.

The Yabloko chairman wrote on his ballot, in marker: “For peace.” An AFP photo, published by the Kyiv Independent, shows him doing it.

One ballot. One marker. Two words.

His party’s box no longer existed on the federal list.

Yabloko, Russia’s oldest liberal party, was the only registered party to campaign for peace in the 2026 parliamentary elections, The Moscow Times writes.

Its candidates still admitted in the districts faced interference, detentions and disqualifications, according to the same paper. The party was kept out of almost every regional election. Only in Novgorod did it clear the 5% threshold and win seats.

One region.

The same word, twice

Peace has a camp. It no longer has a ballot line.

That is what the Brussels Monday connects, without saying so. A camp where Ukrainian children learn loyalty to Russia under the name Peace. A party struck from the ballot for asking for peace.

This report stands with the children sent to these camps and with the Russian voters stripped of their ballot. Against the signatories the Official Journal names, one by one. Because on September 28, the Union listed, on the same day, a camp called Peace and the judges who struck off the only peace party.

Two lists, one confiscated word.

August 10, at the Supreme Court

Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov

On August 10, 2026, Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov of Russia’s Supreme Court barred Yabloko from the State Duma elections, according to the Official Journal.

The grounds, according to the same text: alleged breaches of copyright, extremism, other misconduct. The Moscow Times adds foreign funding and material posted on restricted foreign platforms.

On April 9, 2026, the same judge had designated the rights group Memorial as extremist and banned its activities in Russia.

April, Memorial. August, Yabloko. The same signature.

The Rodina party’s application

The barring came on an application from the Rodina party. Two officials openly backed it before the court, according to the Official Journal: Sergey Sakharov, of the Central Election Commission, and Ilya Rusakov, of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

On appeal, Judges Igor Zinchenko and Denis Tyutin upheld the decision. Their entries add one more ground: support for the LGBT movement.

Rodina asked. The prosecutor’s office backed it. The court struck it off. The appeal confirmed.

A peace party, struck off over copyright.

Copyright was enough to strike peace off.

Eleven years and one month

Pskov City Court

Lev Shlosberg led Yabloko’s Pskov branch, The Moscow Times recalls. The European regulation calls him the party’s deputy chair.

Judge Viktoria Malyamova of the Pskov City Court sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison. For discrediting the Russian army and spreading “fake news” about the war of aggression against Ukraine, her entry specifies.

Prosecutor Anna Goryachova had asked for 12 years and one month.

Eleven years. For words.

Four hundred forty hours

It was not their first encounter. In an earlier “foreign agent” case, the same prosecutor had asked for 440 hours of compulsory labor. The court granted 420.

Twelve years asked, eleven given. Four hundred forty hours asked, four hundred twenty given.

The court trims a little. It throws nothing out.

On August 19, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said he was alarmed by Yabloko’s barring and by that sentence, the regulation recalls.

Eleven years for words against the war.

Bucha, seven years

Maxim Kruglov’s posts

Maxim Kruglov, one of Yabloko’s leaders, wrote on social media about Bucha and Mariupol.

For those two cities, the Official Journal speaks of the war crimes committed there.

Prosecutor Yulia Guznyaeva asked for eight years. Judge Elina Babayants, of Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court, gave him 7 years in a penal colony, with three years without internet access.

Eight years asked. Seven given. The same trimming as in Pskov.

A photo of Navalny

Nikolai Rybakov, for his part, posted a photograph of Alexei Navalny. Judge Elizaveta Truskalenko, in St. Petersburg, fined him. In practice, the ruling barred him from the Duma race, according to the Official Journal.

The Official Journal also gives dates of birth. The prosecutor in the Shlosberg trial was born in 1998. The one in the Kruglov trial, in 1996. The judge in that trial, in 1995.

This is not a complaint about age. It is a span of time. These signatures could still be in use thirty years from now.

Seven years for naming Bucha.

What the lists cannot give back

Forty days after the alarm

Now we have to write what troubles our own side.

No listing frees Lev Shlosberg. No listing gives Yabloko back its ballot line. No listing brings a child home.

The UN High Commissioner raised the alarm on August 19. Brussels signed on September 28. Forty days, during which the polling stations opened, then closed.

The list waiting for October 12

For the elections staged in the occupied territories, the list does not exist yet. A first draft of 77 names, candidates and members of Russia’s electoral commission, has been discussed, according to diplomats cited by the Kyiv Independent.

It still has to pass legal review by the 27 member states. Adoption is targeted for October 12.

And the press release says nothing about what has been frozen. No amount. No account.

True. And yet without the register, these names would exist nowhere outside Russia, with a date, a function and a reason.

No list sets anyone free. Every list remembers.

Twenty thousand five hundred

The Council’s estimate

Since the start of the war of aggression, Russia has reportedly deported and forcibly transferred more than 20,500 Ukrainian children, according to the Council’s estimate.

An estimate. It counts only what could be counted.

The Council writes that these transfers aim to erase Ukrainian identity and undermine its future generations.

The listings came down a few hours before an international conference on the return of these children opened in Toronto, the Kyiv Independent notes.

The City of Discoveries program

The register describes the routes. The Moscow City Tourism Committee, founded by the city government, brings children from the occupied territories to Moscow through its “City of Discoveries” program.

Museums. Tours. A story in which the occupied regions become Russia’s “new territories,” according to its entry.

A child from Donetsk visits a capital. He is told he is at home there.

School follows. Aleksandr Kalyagin, education minister of the Zaporizhzhia occupation administration since April 2025, signed an agreement with DOSAAF, the Russian organization that supports the army. Oleg Trofimov, acting minister in Donetsk, is preparing a unified history textbook on Donbas and “Novorossiya,” according to their entries.

Erasing an identity starts with a guided tour.

Summer camps

What the bylaws say

The defense of these camps writes itself. It is spelled out in their own bylaws.

Sputnik is registered as an organization for children’s recreation and health improvement. So is Art-Quest, in occupied Crimea. Vita offers 21-day summer sessions for children aged 6 to 15. Raduga, four 21-day sessions for ages 7 to 16.

A vacation, some will say. The sea, sports, rest. For children from regions at war, where is the harm?

That is the defense these camps would sign. It has bylaws on its side, websites, phone numbers.

What the listing says

And yet the Council’s entries tell another story.

Raduga’s entry describes daily flag ceremonies, Russian history lessons, projects centered on the “defenders of the Fatherland.” The entry for New Wave, a center run by the Otdykh-71 group in Tula, describes the Russian anthem, flag raisings, messages about Russia’s “future victories.”

Vita’s entry speaks of loyalty to Russia and of military-historical themes. Sputnik’s entry states that the transfers are organized by the occupation authorities and paid for by Russian regional governments.

Art-Quest’s describes flag raisings and a patriotism built around a Crimea presented as Russian.

A vacation does not require an oath.

A summer camp does not raise the occupier’s flag.

Assembling a Kalashnikov

Zarnitsa 2.0, in Sevastopol

In Sevastopol, Anna Molchanova heads the local branch of the Movement of the First. Under her leadership, new units opened in schools, according to the Official Journal.

Her branch co-organized the military-patriotic game Zarnitsa 2.0 for schoolchildren. One of the tasks: assembling and disassembling Kalashnikov rifles.

The cold metal of a bolt. A child’s fingers learning the order of the parts. The click of a spring pushed back into place.

Otkrytoye Highway, in Moscow

In Moscow, on Otkrytoye Highway, the Preobrazhensky center takes in children from the occupied territories. According to its entry, they undergo weapons training, tactical exercises and airborne instruction there.

In Karachay-Cherkessia, the Adel camp takes in up to 130 children each summer, aged 7 to 17, including children transferred from the occupied territories, with activities geared toward military service.

And a state center, CISM, monitors children and young people in the occupied territories online, on behalf of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs.

A child taken from an occupied Ukrainian town has already lost his street, his school, his friends. Then he is taught to handle the weapon of the army that occupies his town.

That cannot be paid back. A childhood summer does not come again.

I will stop there.

They took his town. They teach him the weapon that took it.

Gazprom, Tatarstan, Kremlin

Signal, owned by a Gazprom subsidiary

The register also says who owns what.

The Signal camp, in Kabardinka near Gelendzhik, is mainly owned by Gazprom Dobycha Yamburg, a subsidiary of the state group Gazprom. It hosts children from the occupied Donetsk region, with a program called “Great Russia 2.0.”

Raduga, in occupied Crimea, falls under the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, according to its official name.

Minnikhanov and the Miras camp

Rustam Minnikhanov, president of Tatarstan, is facilitating the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to camps in his region, according to the Council, including the Miras camp in the Zelenodolsk district.

The Council counts him among the senior Russian regional leaders involved in these deportations.

It also lists Irina Kravchenko. Her title: commissioner for children’s rights in the Kherson occupation administration. Her entry: she implements Russian policy on the transfer and ideological re-education of Ukrainian children.

A commissioner for children’s rights.

A state company. A presidential administration. A regional leader.

This is not camp counselors gone astray. It is an organizational chart.

The indoctrination has an owner, and he signs.

Songdowon, in Wonsan

A North Korean state camp

The register reaches as far as North Korea. The Songdowon International Children’s Camp, in Wonsan, is a North Korean state institution.

According to the Council, it takes part in programs transferring Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to North Korea, in coordination with actors linked to Russia, under the label of “cultural exchange.”

The children are selected and moved by youth initiatives affiliated with the Russian state and by the occupation authorities, the entry specifies.

The entry speaks of exposure to pro-Russian narratives, and of elements of militarized or state-directed training.

Two capitals, one annex

Moscow and Pyongyang, in the same annex. The register does not comment. It lines them up.

A child from Kherson or Donetsk, sent to North Korea to learn to love Russia…

The North Korean people have nothing to do with it. The state that runs this camp does.

Pyongyang runs a camp for Moscow too.

2,120 entries since 2014

The regulation of March 17, 2014

The seventeen entities enter a register opened on March 17, 2014 by Regulation 269/2014, against actions undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

The new individuals carry the numbers 2111 to 2120. The entities, 993 to 1009.

More than two thousand numbers for individuals. More than a thousand for entities. Twelve years of entries.

The regime of May 2024

The judges and prosecutors in the Yabloko case enter a younger register, created on May 27, 2024 against repression in Russia. Their numbers run from 99 to 108.

With them, this regime now covers 108 individuals and 7 entities, according to the European External Action Service.

A register is not a court. And yet it keeps everything.

It keeps the names. It keeps the dates of birth. It keeps the tax numbers and the addresses. Everything a prosecutor will one day want to find again.

On October 12, 77 more names could join the registers.

The register will not forget what we will.

Peace on the register

Two uses of one word

In Taganrog, Mir is a camp where children from the occupied territories make long stays, with meetings with military personnel and war games, according to the Official Journal.

In St. Petersburg, “For peace” is a marker inscription on the ballot of the leader of a party struck from the list.

The same word. A camp bears it. A court punishes it.

I read the seventeen entries in one sitting. Around the tenth, I stopped reading the addresses. That is exactly what a register should never let us do.

Seventeen names to remember

Which of these seventeen names will we be able to recite on the day a court calls them?

Romashka. Sputnik. Raduga. Mir.

The register keeps them all.

Peace has a camp in Taganrog. It no longer has a ballot line.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Council of the EU — 10 individuals and 17 entities sanctioned over the deportation of Ukrainian children, September 28, 2026
• Official Journal of the EU — Implementing Regulation 2026/2184, entries for the camps and officials, September 28, 2026
• Official Journal of the EU — Implementing Regulation 2026/2193, judges and prosecutors in the Yabloko case, September 28, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Kyiv Independent — Yabloko and children sanctions, draft list of 77 names for October 12, September 28, 2026
• The Moscow Times — grounds for barring Yabloko and the EU sanctions, September 28, 2026
• European External Action Service — overview of both regimes, 108 individuals and 7 entities, September 29, 2026