Children from Grades 5 to 7 in occupied parts of Ukraine are to be fed a particularly distorted version of history from 1 September 2026 on the basis of ‘textbooks’ teaching something described as the ‘history of Donbas and Novorossiya’. In presenting these new books on 24 June 2026, Russia’s education minister Sergei Kravtsov claimed, on the one hand, that the textbook presents “the single history which is linked with the hurst of Russian history”, while on the other, that is presents “objective information, and not the lies which were in Ukrainian textbooks”. This is only one of a series of ‘textbooks’ which the current Russian regime is installing for indoctrination on occupied territory and to present “the only permitted version of history” on all territory under Russian control. The textbooks already published claim, for example, that Russia did not invade Crimea and that the ‘little green men’ [Russian soldiers without insignia who seized control on 27 February 2014] were merely there to ‘protect’ people during the so-called ‘referendum’. According to their version of reality, it was Ukraine and NATO who were responsible the events of 2022; and it was ‘the population of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts who supposedly “voted’ to ‘join Russia’ in September 2022.
Any denial of these assertions, any details about Russian atrocities in Bucha, the bombing of hospitals, residential buildings and schools in Mariupol, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities, the killing of children can and has got people imprisoned for 6 and 7 years under draconian silencing laws rushed in within 10 days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia cannot rewrite history beyond the borders of territory under its control, with this, doubtless, the reason why Kravtsov claimed both that the Russian ‘textbooks’ are objective and that they “do not stir up hatred” in contrast to those “in some other countries”.
Both assertions are false. The Kremlin and Russian state-controlled media began aggressively pushing a false narrative about Crimea, Donbas and the so-called ‘Kyiv regime’ from early 2014. Even those lies, about the supposedly ‘crucified son of a militant’, about an ‘Odesa massacre’ that never happened, and the supposed ‘genocide of Russian speakers’ that were debunked continued to be repeated and are very likely mentioned in this supposed ‘textbook’. The lies were, furthermore, directly aimed at stirring up hatred towards Ukraine, with these intensifying after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It was only after the downing by a Russian BUK missile of MH17 on 17 July 2014 and the killing of 298 passengers and crew that awareness began to develop of the dangers posed by state-generated lies and propaganda. That awareness remains frustratingly limited, and the danger is also ignored by those in the West, especially the Trump administration in the United States, who pressure Ukraine to seek ‘a deal’ with Russia that involves accepting Russia’s occupation of Crimea, all of Donbas and other territory currently under Russian occupation.
The very term “Donbas and Novorossiya” is based on a dangerous lie. Any ‘historical’ roots to the term ‘Novorossiya’ are as relevant as Adolf Hitler’s ‘historical’ claims to the Sudetenland. Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s revival of the term on 17 April 2014 included the Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts which Russia has not succeeded in occupying, as well as parts of Kherson oblast, including Kherson itself, which the invaders were either unable to seize, or could not keep. Even if the ‘textbook’ for Grades 5-7 only mentions Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts (as well as occupied Crimea), this will still be a menacing lie, since Russia is claiming that all parts of these oblasts “joined the Russian Federation”, with this at most true only with respect to Luhansk oblast.
Even the fake ‘referendum’ creating the so-called ‘Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics’ on 11 May 2014 which was so falsified that Russia chose not to ‘recognize’ its proxy ‘republics’ has since become part of the myth which Russia is seeking to perpetuate. It has aggressively sought since May 2022 to ‘re-write’ its role in the bombing and siege of Mariupol, with the FSB using refugees forcibly taken to Russia to try to blame Ukrainian defenders for some of its most heinous crimes (in particular the bombing of the Drama Theatre which was being used as a believed bomb shelter by other a thousand civilians). It is just as aggressively destroying monuments, books in Ukrainian and all that is representative of Ukrainian identity, while erecting monuments to mercenaries and war criminals, like Arsen Pavlov (‘Motorola’), Mykhailo Tolstykh (‘Givi’) and others. All of the lies and distortion about the Ukrainian Armed Forces and particular units within them, about the government in Kyiv, etc. are then used for propaganda aimed at convincing Ukrainian children that they are ‘Russian’ and that they should want to ‘defend Russia’, including on the battlefield.
