The Janissaries of the Russian World
How Russia Seeks To Weaponize Ukraine’s Children

4,449 words

In the shadowed corners of the internet, a Russian website emerged like a grim auction block, eerily resembling an online slave market, where profiles of Ukrainian children – kidnapped from Russian-occupied territories – were advertised for “adoption.” Accompanied by descriptions of their physical builds, eye and hair color, temperaments, and ages, these listings reduced Ukrainian children to commodities, dangling them before prospective Russian families eager to claim a piece of the spoils.

This is one of the most disturbing aspects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While Russians have unleashed countless other savageries upon Ukrainians, the systematic kidnapping and forced relocation of Ukrainian children deserves far more attention than it has received. Russian officials have not only acknowledged these abductions but boasted of them, framing the forced relocation of tens of thousands of minors to remote Russian territories as a “humanitarian rescue.” In reality, it is a calculated erasure, a bid to sever these children from their heritage through “re-education” camps where Ukrainian identity is demonized and branded as treason. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, on charges of unlawful deportation and transfer—crimes against humanity that echo across more than 200 such facilities documented in Russia.

Knowing all this and especially seeing that website, where Ukrainian children are advertised as property by Russians, reminded me of a painful parallel in history – the devshirme system in the Ottoman Empire. From the 15th to 17th centuries, Turkish raiders scoured the Balkans, snatching European children – often the brightest, the strongest and the most beautiful – from Greek, Slavic, and Albanian families. These children were marched to Istanbul, stripped of their names and faiths, converted to Islam, and moulded into either bureaucrats serving the Ottoman state or fearsome Janissaries—the sultans’ elite troops that were being unleashed against Europe and became the nightmare of European armies. Those children of Slavic, Albanian and Greek origin were forever separated from their families and were made to forget their roots, inculcated with Islam and with enmity towards Christian Europeans – their ancestors. Their physical fitness and cognitive talents were not only forever lost to their peoples of origin but were weaponized against them.

Russia’s playbook today mirrors that barbarity with chilling precision. By abducting Ukraine’s youth, Russia firstly tries to solve its own demographic problem. And secondly, it aims to utilize the aptitudes of those Ukrainian children against Ukrainians themselves later in the future. In fact, some Russian officials have already talked in the past about the children that they “relocated” from Ukraine to Russia, and how they are “re-educating” them to become good Russian patriots and abandon “Ukrainian nationalism” (code word for any flicker of pride in their origins).

Within this context, it is necessary to mention the blind spot afflicting the dissident right in the West. While they correctly recognize that Turks are not a European people, in fact people inimical to Europe, they lose this clarity of thought when thinking about Russia. The truth is, among many different peoples on Earth, Turks come the closest to Russians.

These two peoples are very similar: in their historical trajectory, in their self-perception and, most importantly, in their attitudes towards Europe. Both Turkey and Russia can be called para-European realms – i.e., not originally European, in fact hostile to Europe, but through their close contacts with Europe strongly affected by its civilization. But being thus affected didn’t make them European. If anything, it made them resentful of Europe even more due to their inferiority complex.

Because both peoples know deep inside that they will never be European, never be as great as Europeans.

Moreover, within their similar historical trajectory one common feature that stands out is that both the Ottoman Empire and Russia owe their longevity and successful conquests to the ingenuity of Europeans that they had subdued during their expansions. Those conquered Europeans outmatched their non-European conquerors in IQ, creativity and other critical character traits. Their intelligence and talents became the very foundation of these empires’ strength.

In the Ottoman case this was achieved by the devshirme system. This process ensured that the empire’s most capable statesmen and generals were not Turks by birth, but Europeans uprooted from their identities and pressed into the service of a foreign power that was inimical to Europe.

The list of prominent figures who rose through the devshirme is long and impressive. Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, perhaps the most famous, was born into a Serbian Orthodox family and taken into Ottoman service as a child. He rose to become Grand Vizier under three sultans, effectively running the empire from 1565 to 1579. Later, his relative Sokolluzade Lala Mehmed Pasha also rose to the rank of Grand Vizier in the early 17th century.

The devshirme produced not only individual statesmen but entire ruling dynasties. The Köprülü family, of Albanian origin, gave the empire a line of powerful Grand Viziers beginning with Köprülü Mehmed Pasha in the mid-17th century. His successors, including Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha and Köprülü Hüseyin Pasha, revitalized the Ottoman state during a period of crisis, introducing reforms, reorganizing the army, and leading successful military campaigns. Their impact was so great that historians often speak of a “Köprülü era” in Ottoman politics.

Other notable examples abound. An earlier emblematic figure is Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha, a Christian-born boy from Parga in Epirus who was taken to the Ottoman palace household and rose to become Suleiman the Magnificent’s closest confidant and Grand Vizier (1523–1536). As grand vizier and commander, he directed Ottoman conquests in the Balkans and beyond, culminating in the 1533 Truce of Constantinople, which solidified Ottoman suzerainty over Hungary and required Ferdinand I (Archduke of Austria) to pay an annual tribute to the Ottoman Empire.

It is fair to say that the Ottoman Empire owed much of its longevity and power to these people of European extraction. Their intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity enabled the empire to flourish in ways that would have been impossible without them. The 16th century – the empire’s peak – was shaped above all by the work of these European-rooted officials. Their command of administration, military organization, and diplomacy allowed the Ottoman Empire to dominate much of southeastern Europe for centuries – a kind of longevity that was historically unusual for a Turkic state.

But the tragedy lies in what this meant for their peoples. The very talents of these European children, stolen from their families, were turned against their kinsmen. Janissaries marched into battle against the Balkans from which they themselves had been taken. Bureaucrats administered a state that brutalized the very peoples they had once belonged to.

Some of those devshirme remembered their roots and used their standing to help the peoples they were forced to leave behind, extending patronage to kinsmen. For a while, southeastern Europeans had such clout in the Ottoman administration that everyday language at the 16th century Ottoman court was Serbian. Part of this can be attributed to preferential treatment of their kinsmen, but the most determining factor was that people of European origin were simply smarter and more capable than their Turkish conquerors. The most consequential case is Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, who, while serving as Grand Vizier, helped secure the 1557 restoration of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć and the appointment of his relative Makarije Sokolović as patriarch.

However, even when devshirme officials used their influence to aid their peoples and regions of origin this was done within the framework of Ottoman rule. From a broader historical perspective, their genius was not serving the flourishing of Balkan peoples and formation of their nations, as was happening contemporaneously in Western Europe, but was instead diverted into sustaining a power fundamentally hostile to them.

The result was that the human capital of the Balkans was drained into Ottoman service. The process of nation-building that reshaped Western Europe in the early modern era was disrupted and delayed in southeastern Europe, because the brightest and strongest children of those societies were absorbed into a foreign system that used them not to empower their own peoples, but to keep them subjugated.

A similar story can be told of Ukrainians under Russian rule. Just as the Ottomans drew on the human capital of the Balkans to power their empire, so too did Muscovy and later Russia lean heavily on Ukraine’s human resources. Ukrainians were the earliest vectors of Russia’s pseudo-Europeanization, a process that began under Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich in the 17th century – well before German settlers took over that process starting from the rule of Peter I onwards in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Seventeenth century Ukraine was a vibrant intellectual hub, home to philosophers, theologians, and writers educated in a dense network of schools and academies. The jewel of this system was the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which provided a humanist education steeped in European learning and philosophy – precisely the kind of knowledge Muscovy lacked. After Russia’s conquest of Left-Bank Ukraine and Kyiv in the aftermath of the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), Muscovy suddenly found itself ruling over a highly cultured and educated population – a population smarter and more talented than in the rest of its realm. This acquisition profoundly altered Russia’s trajectory.

The influence of Ruthenian/Ukrainian intellectuals on Muscovy was immense. One can, for example, reliably state that what is today known as “Russian literature” took its roots in Ukraine. Its main vector was the poet and churchman Simeon Polotsky. Although born in Polotsk (today in Belarus), he was educated at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and carried its intellectual spirit with him when he came to Moscow. There he founded the first Latin school, introduced elements of Western thought, and even laid the foundations for Russia’s first academy. He also became tutor to Tsar Aleksey’s children, among them the future Peter I (the Great). While technically Belarusian by origin, his formative education and intellectual identity were products of Kyiv’s intellectual milieu – making him a vessel through which Ukrainian learning Europeanized Muscovy.

He was not alone. Epifanii Slavinetsky, another Kyiv-Mohyla alumnus, led church reforms in Moscow and translated key theological texts into a more standardized Church Slavonic. Other Ukrainian theologians brought rhetorical and pedagogical traditions unknown in Muscovy. Above all, Feofan Prokopovych, Archbishop of Novgorod and advisor to Peter the Great, became one of the chief architects of the Russian Empire’s ideology. A graduate and later professor of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Prokopovych provided the intellectual scaffolding for Peter’s reforms, blending Western political theory with Orthodox theology to legitimize autocracy and empire. Through him and his circle, Ukrainian thought became the backbone of Russia’s imperial self-conception.

Even the Russian Orthodox Church bore Ukrainian marks. It was mainly the Ukrainian theologians that were the driving force behind the large-scale church reforms that took place in Russia in the middle of the 17th century. Moreover, 17th century Ukrainian heavily shaped the Church Slavonic used in Russian worship. In this sense, the “Ukrainization” of Muscovy’s spiritual and cultural life is no exaggeration: the imprint of Kyiv was everywhere.

This pattern reemerged centuries later under the Soviet Union. Once again, Ukraine became the empire’s place of innovation—only this time in science, engineering, and technology. Ukraine was the most industrially and technologically advanced of the Soviet republics, hosting key centers of research and production. The Dnipro and Kharkiv industrial regions became hubs of heavy industry and aerospace development. The Yuzhmash plant in Dnipro produced intercontinental ballistic missiles, while design bureaus in Kharkiv and Kyiv spearheaded tank, aircraft, and radar technologies.

The Soviet Union’s nuclear and space programs also bore an unmistakably Ukrainian stamp. Serhiy Korolyov, born in Zhytomyr and educated in Kyiv, became the chief designer of the Soviet space program—the man behind the launch of Sputnik, the first animal in orbit, and ultimately Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight into space. The legendary Antonov Design Bureau, founded in Kyiv, produced some of the world’s largest and most advanced aircraft, from the An-2 utility plane to the colossal An-225 “Mriya”. Ukrainian engineers were behind the development of the R-36 ICBM – later modified into the “Satan” and “Sarmat” missiles that Russia brandishes today. Even the Red Army’s most iconic weapons, from the T-34 tank of World War II to postwar armored vehicles, were designed by Ukrainians and mass-produced in Ukraine.

In short, the Soviet Union’s rise as a global military superpower rested squarely on Ukrainian shoulders. Yet in 1994, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine was forced to renounce its nuclear arsenal and nuclear-capable conventional weapons, all of them designed and built by Ukrainians on its own soil, in exchange for guarantees of sovereignty and territorial integrity – guarantees that proved to be meaningless, as events of the last 11 years had shown. Moreover, another bitter fact is that the ballistic missiles that especially in the first year of full-scale invasion Russia was firing onto Ukrainian cities were the ones that Ukraine had transferred to Russia according to that infamous agreement.

Also, as in the case of devshirme under Ottoman rule, the subjugated Ukrainians did not merely toil at the margins – they came, at times, to run the empire. Under late Soviet rule, a dense network of cadres from Dnipropetrovsk (today’s Dnipro) rose with Leonid Brezhnev – himself originally from the region, forming what observers called the Dnipropetrovsk clan: a tightly knit circle that placed allies in the KGB, the interior ministry, the Council of Ministers, and other key posts in the Soviet administration. However, just like the ascent of devshirme, their ascent also took place within the framework of the foreign (i.e., Russian) rule. Just like the talent of the Balkan peoples was channeled to entrench Turkish power, Ukrainian talent was channeled towards fortifying Muscovite-Russian rule.

Their clout was visible also in favors poured back home. In March 1982, the USSR Council of Ministers elevated the Dnipropetrovsk Metro to the list of first-priority construction projects – an unmistakable signal of the clan’s sway near the end of Brezhnev’s tenure. Financing faltered after his death later that year, but the decision itself shows how Soviet-level levers could be pulled for regional gain. The specific order came from the Council of Ministers (not a personal decree by Brezhnev), yet few doubted whose network made such prioritization possible.

And still, the pattern mirrors the devshirme story. Like Sokollu’s carefully brokered favors to the Balkans (e.g., the restoration of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć) that never escaped the logic of Ottoman rule, the Dnipropetrovsk cohort’s interventions improved conditions “at home” only within the Soviet system. Patronage flowed, factories thrived, a metro was promised – but the broader direction of Ukrainian talent remained outward, into the advancement of a power that was inimical to the Ukrainian people and the European Civilization as a whole.

In truth, this pattern reaches even deeper into Ukrainian history. In the 17th century, Ukraine was alive with intellect and passion—that vital force of national awakening which was then reshaping much of Western Europe. A European nation was beginning to emerge on the Dnipro, rich in scholars, theologians and writers. The cultural foundations were being laid: Kyiv-Mohyla Academy stood as a beacon of learning in Eastern Europe, and a distinct Ukrainian identity was taking shape. But just as this nation was beginning to crystallize, its trajectory was hijacked. The talents of Ukraine’s brightest minds were redirected, not toward building a Ukrainian nation, but toward strengthening Muscovy-Russia, an empire fundamentally alien and hostile to Europe.

This historical interruption would repeat itself. In the aftermath of World War I, the moment once again arrived. Ukraine briefly declared independence in 1918, just as other new nations were being born across Europe. But while Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, and others secured their place on the map, Ukraine was pulled back into the Russian fold. The Soviet regime crushed the nascent Ukrainian state, and when it could not erase the nation’s soul, it tried to annihilate its body: the man-made famine known as the Holodomor followed. Millions were starved to death, and yet again, those Ukrainians who survived were redirected into serving a power that was inimical to them and the rest of Europe.

As with the Balkan nations under Ottoman rule, Ukraine’s path to modern nationhood was not only delayed but forcibly rerouted. The human capital that could have built a flourishing European nation was, time and again, siphoned off to sustain an anti-European empire. Only in 1991 did Ukraine finally achieve independence. Only then could its people begin to harness their own potential for their own future. And now, amid the crucible of war, Ukraine is not merely defending its sovereignty – it is forging the very mythos that modern nations are built upon. This struggle, waged against the imperial force that long sought to suppress Ukraine’s soul, may well become the foundational myth of a fully sovereign, European Ukraine.

Seen against this historical backdrop, Russia’s current abduction of Ukrainian children takes on an even darker meaning. This is not only about erasing Ukrainian identity or solving Russia’s demographic crisis. It is also about seizing the very human potential that has sustained Russian imperial power for centuries. Zbigniew Brzezinski once quipped that with Ukraine Russia is an empire, without Ukraine it’s not. Most interpret it in a rather shallow way, as Russia needing additional territories to extend further into Europe. The true meaning of that statement, however, is much deeper. Russia needs not as much the Ukrainian territory but the Ukrainian people to become a powerful state. It needs their ingenuity, industriousness and creativity. Russia has been an empire only to the extent that it has absorbed, exploited, and redirected the talents of Ukrainians. Without them, it falters. Much like the Ottoman Empire depended on the Balkan people for its perpetuation and military successes, imperial Russia needs Ukrainians to perpetuate itself.

Russia therefore badly needs Ukraine’s human potential. As we have seen, in various historical periods it was the aptitudes of Ukrainians that made Russia a powerful state to be reckoned with. Thus, the kidnapping of Ukrainian children by Russia is part of a far-reaching strategy: to capture the ingenuity, industriousness, and creativity of Ukrainians, uproot them from their heritage, and redeploy them as tools of its future aggressions against Europe.

In many Western policy circles – and among the public at large – there persists a dangerously misguided idea: that Russia is too big to fail, that any serious defeat of Russia, let alone its potential disintegration, would unleash uncontrollable chaos on a global scale worse than any alternative. This line of thinking is not only morally indefensible, but also completely wrong from a strategic perspective. Because the truth is quite the opposite: it is Ukraine that is too big to fail.

Ukraine has already proven itself indispensable, not just as a frontline defender of European civilization, but as a leader in the future of warfare. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of drone technology. In the span of three years, Ukraine has become the world’s foremost innovator in drone warfare. Its integration of artificial intelligence, real-time reconnaissance, and adaptive battlefield tactics has set new global standards, so much so that even the United States is now seeking Ukrainian expertise. Ukrainian military personnel will soon train Polish troops, and potentially other NATO forces, in cutting-edge drone operations.

Let that sink in: it is the West that needs Ukraine now. It needs Ukraine’s know-how, innovations and expertise. All results of Ukrainian ingenuity and industriousness. Moreover, it needs the very human capital that Russia is trying to steal. Ukraine has made itself indispensable for the West.

Now imagine what happens if Russia succeeds. Imagine what it would mean if all that Ukrainian ingenuity, all that field-tested innovation in drone technology, autonomous warfare and electronic interference falls into Russian hands. The technology Ukraine developed to defend itself would be turned against the West. Russia, a country whose military was widely exposed as dysfunctional in 2022, would suddenly become formidable, powered not by native ability but by stolen talent and technology.

And it’s not just about hardware. In the age of artificial intelligence, data is the new gold. And Ukraine has something no other country on Earth possesses: an immense, real-time dataset of drone warfare under conditions of large-scale, high-intensity conflict. Every flight path, every target signature, every AI decision under stress – this is the raw material from which future battlefield systems will be built.

Ukraine’s battlefield is also the world’s most advanced live lab for military AI. The combat data Ukraine has gathered, much of it proprietary and irreplicable, is of immense strategic value. Nations around the world, first and foremost the United States and its NATO allies, are competing for access to it, to train the AI systems that will dominate tomorrow’s wars.

If Russia were to seize this data, it would gain a generational leap in capability. It would control the algorithms, training environments, decision models, and performance logs that currently give Ukraine its asymmetric edge. And unlike Ukraine, which uses this power to defend the West against barbarians, Russians would wield it against the West.

That is the real threat. Not that a weakened Russia might collapse, but that a revived and rearmed Russia, empowered by Ukrainian innovation, would rise again – not as a sclerotic empire but as a technologically augmented one. One animated by deep resentment against the West and now armed with tools designed by the very people it seeks to erase.

Moreover, a hypothetical Russian conquest and subjugation of Ukraine – even if limited to currently occupied territories – would pose a long-term existential threat to Europe for another reason. Such a conquest would grant Russia access not just to land, infrastructure and innovation, but to something far more valuable: a reservoir of highly capable, talented, and intelligent human capital. This is the very asset Russia, just like Turkey, has historically lacked and has always sought to extract from others. The danger lies in how that human capital is reprogrammed.

While a person’s intelligence and behavioral predispositions are largely shaped by genetics, the direction in which that potential is channeled – whether it serves good or evil – is strongly contingent on education, upbringing, and cultural environment. In other words, it depends on who seizes the child’s formative years. A brilliant mind can become a defender of civilization – or an architect of its destruction. The same spirit of courage and innovation that now protects Europe can, if twisted, become a weapon turned against it.

A grim recent precedent already exists: Chechnya. In the 1990s, the Chechen people fought with ferocious valor against Russian imperialism. They resisted Moscow’s rule in two brutal wars, enduring the carpet-bombing of Grozny, mass killings, torture, and unspeakable atrocities—all hallmarks of Russian conquest. They were, by any historical standard, heroic defenders of freedom.

But they were defeated. And within a generation, that same bravery, that same warrior spirit, was hijacked and corrupted. The children and grandchildren of those who once fought Russia were moulded into “Kadyrovites”: Chechen paramilitaries doing Russia’s bidding. It took just one generation to turn Chechens from heroic fighters who resisted Russian rule into Russia’s foot soldiers, murderers, torturers and rapists.

Now imagine the same being done to Ukrainians. Imagine Ukrainian children stolen from their homes, told their parents are dead or abandoned them. Imagine them being taught to hate the very idea of Ukraine, to view the West as their deadly enemy. Imagine Russian “teachers” and propagandists inculcating them with shame, with guilt, with the belief that only by becoming “Russians” can they find redemption and belonging.

This psychological manipulation has historical precedent. Ottoman slave traders told kidnapped European girls that their capture was their own fault, because they were infidels, because they professed the wrong faith. Boys taken through the devshirme were subjected to a systematic campaign of isolation, guilt, and religious indoctrination. They were told their families had abandoned them, that their people were sinners, that their salvation lay in rejecting their roots and embracing Islam. The goal was to achieve their devotion to an alien creed, born of severed identity.

Russia is now attempting the same. Everyone can see that Ukrainians are among the best fighters and most ingenious engineers in the world today. But what happens if that talent is re-moulded and turned in the opposite direction, not in defense of Europe, but in service of its arch-nemesis? What if the next generation of Ukrainians, brought up under Russian indoctrination, become the janissaries of the “Russian world”?

Imagine Ukrainian engineers building missiles and drones for Russia. Imagine these talents being used to create super-weapons for the Russian military industrial complex, just as they were during the Soviet Union, only now with the added edge of AI and 21st century warfare. Imagine Russia possessing not only Ukrainian know-how, but also Ukrainian human capital to turn it all against Europe. The West would be in great trouble.

This is why the West must make a decisive choice. It is in its vital interest, not just moral imperative, but also strategic interest – to ensure that Ukraine not only survives but wins. Not a partial victory. Not another frozen conflict. But a crushing defeat for Russia, the full liberation of all occupied territories, and the return of every Ukrainian child stolen from their homeland and identity.

Because Ukraine is too big to fail. Too central. Too indispensable. It cannot be allowed to slip back under the dominion of a power that seeks to erase it. For centuries, Ukrainians were compelled to lend their strength, their intelligence, and their creativity to sustain a foreign adversary, an entity fundamentally hostile to Europe. That time must end.

Now, for the first time in generations, Ukrainians have the opportunity to use their extraordinary potential not in the service of others, but for themselves – for their own future, for their own nation that is an integral part of European civilization.

In just three years of full-scale war, they have shown what that future could look like: martial excellence, technological innovation, and a will of iron. They’ve held the line for Europe not only on the battlefield, but in spirit. They’ve proven that they are not Europe’s periphery. They are its front line, and increasingly, its vanguard.

That is what is at stake. Letting Ukraine fall, or even partially succumb, would not only mean condemning millions to renewed subjugation, it would mean allowing Russia to reclaim the very fuel it needs to resurrect itself as an empire. It would mean letting history repeat itself, with Ukrainian genius once again hijacked, indoctrinated, and turned against Europe.

But when Ukraine wins – truly wins – it will be the reversal of centuries of theft, a reclamation of human potential stolen time and again. It will mark the rise of a European Ukraine, standing on its own feet, and finally, building a future for itself, not for its conquerors.

This is not just Ukraine’s fight. This is a fight for Europe’s future.