IT’S DIFFICULT TO JUSTIFY “DENAZIFYING” A NEIGHBORING COUNTRY WHEN YOU KEEP ACTING LIKE NAZIS: Russia deports thousands of Ukrainian children. Investigators say that’s a war crime.

The Russian government is operating a systematic network of at least 40 child custody centers for thousands of Ukrainian children, a potential war crime, according to a new report by Yale University researchers in a collaboration with the U.S. State Department in a program to hold Russia accountable.

The report, “Russia’s Systematic Program for the Re-Education and Adoption of Ukrainian Children,” describes a system of holding facilities that stretch from the Black Sea coast to Siberia.

“This is not one rogue camp, this is not one rogue mayor or governor,” says Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. “It is a massive logistical undertaking that does not happen by accident.”

Raymond’s team of researchers is tackling one of the most explosive issues of the war. Ukrainian officials say Russia has evacuated thousands of Ukrainian children without parental consent.

Russian officials do not deny Ukrainian children are now in Russia, but insist the camps are part of a vast humanitarian project for abandoned, war-traumatized orphans and have been surprisingly public with social media messaging aimed at a Russian audience. Russia does not, however, acknowledge how many children are in Russia or where they are housed.

Potemkin childcare.

Previously: Hitler’s Lebensborn Children: Kidnappings in German-Occupied Poland.