Russian has been declared the only ‘state language’ in the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ which Moscow controls but has never recognized

Through systematic militarization and indoctrination, children at preschool and school level are being taught that they should love and defend Russian proxy Donbas ‘republics’ and that Ukraine is essentially the enemy

Even physical exercise is on a war footing in Russian-occupied Crimea, with children training to be ‘young soldiers’ like their grandfathers or grandfathers and mass efforts at indoctrination

Since 2016, the Russian occupation regime has spent over 100 million roubles on efforts to turn children into so-called “new citizens” and “patriots of Crimea”

The self-proclaimed and Russian-controlled ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ has announced that Ukrainian will no longer be a ‘state language’ in the pseudo republic, and has claimed that this status will be held by Russian alone

Russia is glorifying war and teaching children how to kill in occupied Crimea, and no lessons at all have been drawn from the mass killing in Kerch on 17 October 2018, in which 20 students and teachers were gunned down

A week after the anniversary of the first ever mass shooting of students in occupied Crimea that left 21 people dead, Russia has recruited 1500 children and young people from Sevastopol to its ‘youth army’ or Yunarmia

Although Russia repeatedly claims that Russian speakers were under threat in Crimea and Donbas, it is the Ukrainian language that has come under attack as soon as Russia took actual or effective control, as well as Ukrainian history and culture

There is no information as to what amendments the President has sent back for parliament’s consideration, but any review of a fatally flawed bill adopted at high speed for election campaign purposes is already welcome.

A new Russian textbook in verse for children claims that Ukraine “has stirred up war and vengeance” and that people have been prohibited from speaking Russian

Human rights groups have called on President Zelensky to veto a disastrously ill-considered bill introducing chemical castration for sex offenders which they, and specialists in this area see as a cheap populist move aimed at winning votes in the coming parliamentary elections

Less than a quarter of Russians believe that military parades and processions are an appropriate way to mark Victory Day, yet thousands of children, even of pre-school age, have been decked out in military uniforms and sent onto the streets for elaborate 9 May events

The self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ has announced the formation of a militarized ‘army’ for children and young people - essentially a copy of the Russian ‘Yunarmia’ or ‘Youth Army’ which is being used to militarize childhood in both Russia and occupied Crimea

Almost two years after the UN’s International Court of Justice ordered Russia to “ensure the availability of education in the Ukrainian language” in occupied Crimea, there is not one school teaching all subjects in Ukrainian

Russia’s Defence Ministry is reportedly seeking the creation of ‘Yunarmia’ [‘Youth Army’] units at all defence industry enterprises in its drive to get one million children and young people ‘enlisted’ by 2020 in a structure that has been compared to the Nazi Hitlerjugend

In a recent ‘military game’ in occupied Crimea, Russia’s Defence Ministry had children pretending to be military intelligence agents and gathering information about ‘the enemy’

Over 50 years after the Soviet Union formally refuted the lies about Crimean Tatars that Joseph Stalin used to justify the 1944 Deportation, Russia has reinstated them in a school history textbook + Update

Schoolchildren from Russian-occupied Kerch and neighbouring areas have taken part in new ceremonies highlighting the dangerous militarization that Russia has brought to Crimea and its attempts to indoctrinate children and young people

The increasing militarization of childhood in occupied Crimea and Russia is beginning earlier and earlier, with children decked out in military uniform and taking part, together with the Russian defence ministry’s ‘Youth Army’, in military and other parades for Victory Day.

Crimean youth are to be enlisted for filling the Internet with ‘correct information’ about life in Russian-occupied Crimea, with the occupiers determining just what content is ‘correct’, and what is to be dubbed ‘fake’