Russia’s aggressive efforts to brainwash Ukrainian children begin early, with three-year-olds in kindergartens in occupied Tavriisk (Kherson oblast) forced to draw pictures and write “words of support” to the Russian military invading their country. In posting photos from one such kindergarten, the Yellow Ribbon resistance movement notes that Russia’s education ministry claims that this constitutes “the formation of identity from a young age”.
Moscow has, since 2014, been spending billions on both propaganda and indoctrination of children on occupied territory, aimed at eradicating Ukrainian identity and brainwashing children into believing that they are ‘Russian’ and that they should want to ‘defend’ and even die for an aggressor state which invaded and is occupying their country.
In October 2024, Russian leader Vladimir Putin even expressed support for five-year-olds in kindergartens taking part in the so-called ‘conversations about important things’, otherwise known as the weekly propaganda classes introduced at all school levels shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Presumably the idea is that the younger the children, the better from the point of view of brainwashing and of militarization. It is not, per se, guaranteed that very small children would be militarized merely by taking part in a ‘children’s military parade’ or dressing up in military uniform. Such activities were pushed by some kindergartens in Russia and occupied Crimea even before 2022. In Tavriisk also, the toddlers were, at one level, simply colouring in pictures, and certainly would not have understood how shocking it is for any Ukrainian children to be ‘thanking’ the invaders, and for such cards to be under a banner reading “2005: Year of the defender of the fatherland”. These are, however, the first elements of a relentless process of brainwashing, seen even in the earliest books on learning the alphabet that children are shown. Later the same process is implemented both in the school curriculum and in extracurricular activities, especially those involving Yunarmia [Youth Army] and other such militaristic organizations.
Russia is, with particular cynicism, forcing school-age children in occupied Mariupol to write ‘thank you letters’ to the military of the same country that dropped bombs on schools, hospitals and apartment blocks in the city. Petro Andriushchenko, Adviser to the Mayor of Mariupol, stresses that such letters are part of the general ideological indoctrination process, with the children also subjected to ‘lessons in patriotism’; ‘military training’; and propaganda about so-called ‘heroes’ of what Russia calls its ‘special military operation’ [i.e. its war against Ukraine]. While some of the children, or at least their parents, will be revolted by the lies, older school students and/or their parents would be in danger if they spoke out. It is known in occupied Crimea that children have had their grades lowered if they refused to write the ‘thank you’ letters, with this the least serious of a whole range of repressive measures, which could easily include criminal charges for so-called ‘military fakes’ or on fabricated ‘spying’ or ‘treason’ charges.
The older the children, the more pervasive and unavoidable the propaganda. Every part of the curriculum pushes a narrative about the occupied territory being ‘Russian’, while ‘history’ and ‘social studies’ also foist an entirely distorted account of recent history. From the very first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, children were told that Russia was acting in ‘self-defence’ and as ‘peacekeepers’, with this and similar nonsense later set out in textbooks of ‘history’ and on ‘Foundations of security and defence of the fatherland’. These, and a later ‘military history of Russia’ do not just distort the facts about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and illegal occupation, but also aggressively glorify the aggressor state’s army and encourage young people to want to fight against their own country.
