The Stolen Generation: Investigation into Russia’s systematic re-education of Ukrainian children in the occupied territories

One morning in 2025, students at School No. 15 in Melitopol enter their classroom. In front of them stands a man in camouflage and a balaclava. “Good morning. I am your new teacher, call sign ‘Sarmat.’ Today in our subject ‘Security and Defense of the Fatherland’ we will study the structure of firearms and learn how to disassemble and reassemble a Kalashnikov and a Makarov pistol.” The man is a former special forces soldier, and his stated goal is “to prepare the boys and girls to defend our Fatherland.”

This scene is not an isolated case, but part of a shockingly comprehensive program that the Kremlin is financing with a budget of $840 million for 2025 alone. The year was declared the “Year of the Defender of the Fatherland” by presidential decree, and 901 educational institutions now operate in the occupied Ukrainian territories under a unified federal program approved by Russia’s Ministry of Education earlier this year. According to estimates by the Almenda Center for Civic Education, 1.6 million Ukrainian children – 615,000 of them already of school age – are at risk of growing up as “defenders of Russia.”

This systematic indoctrination blatantly violates Article 50 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from interfering in the education system of the territories it controls. Yet Moscow ignores international law with remarkable brazenness. As everywhere in Russia, the school week in the occupied territories begins with the raising of the Russian flag, the singing of the national anthem, and a session called “Important Conversations.” Starting in the sixth grade, students take career guidance courses titled “Russia: My Horizons,” and since 2024 all students in grades eight to eleven have been required to attend the course “Security and Defense of the Fatherland.”

This subject is an expanded version of the traditional course “Fundamentals of Life Safety,” enriched with two modules of basic military training. While the textbook is still in development, the curriculum has already been fundamentally revised: students are taught tactical medicine, firearms training, drill, and how to handle drones and weapons of mass destruction. Half of the curriculum is devoted to ideological conditioning – students are to develop an “anti-extremist and anti-terrorist attitude,” understand “Russia’s role in the modern world,” “feel pride in their Motherland,” and “be ready to defend the Fatherland.”

At Melitopol’s School No. 15, the Russian National Guard has taken “patronage” over several classes. Photos on the school’s social media accounts show students in camouflage uniforms during lessons. Schools are opening specialized classes connected to security agencies. A 14-year-old student from a school in Crimea recounts, “They are always inciting us against Ukraine and all Ukrainians. Our homeroom teacher teaches history, social studies, and the foundations of the spiritual and moral cultures of peoples. She often says that all Ukrainians are fascists and terrible people, and that feminists and homosexuals are crazy. She constantly repeats that Crimea is Russia. Over the past year, the boys were told more often, ‘You are a future defender of the Motherland, so you must study well.’”

Students are not only asked to demonstrate loyalty and patriotism, but also to do manual work. Students at School No. 5 in Simferopol were put to work producing parts for the “special military operation” and, since September 2024, have sent more than 2,500 3D-printed items to the front, including devices for quickly loading Kalashnikov magazines. The school’s social media page explains that supporting soldiers in the “zone of the special military operation” is a “key element in raising the younger generation.” Photos from the production site show students in military uniforms while a man in camouflage stands beside them.

As of September 1, 2024, a pilot educational program called “Luhansk Character” was introduced in all schools in the occupied Luhansk region, modeled on the Soviet Pioneer system and the modern Kremlin-friendly “Movement of the First.” The core of the curriculum is based on textbooks to be distributed starting September 1, 2025: for tenth graders, “History of the Great Patriotic War,” and for grades six through nine, an updated version of the series “History of the Fatherland,” including “History of Our Land: The Luhansk People’s Republic and Outstanding Figures of the Luhansk Region.”

The “Luhansk Character” program is intended to cover 100 percent of students. Every year on September 30 – the “Day of the Accession of the Luhansk People’s Republic to the Russian Federation” – first graders are inducted into the ranks of the “September Eagles” and “work on concepts such as patriotism, Fatherland, homeland, memory, heroism, and civic responsibility.” Students in grades five through nine receive the title “Pioneer” and take part in the “Luhansk Character” program. Once they have mastered the twelve qualities of the “Luhansk Character” and fulfilled the mentoring duties assigned to them by eleventh graders, they receive the title “Worker.”

The complete removal of the Ukrainian language from the curriculum is another tactic of the “de-Ukrainization” of education. According to human rights activist Maria Sulyalina, currently only 0.5 percent of children in Crimea are studying Ukrainian. As of September 1, 2025, this option will disappear entirely.

Celebrations of the anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II are to continue throughout the year in all occupied territories. The so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” announced major plans that include more than 25,000 “patriotic events,” 15,000 educational initiatives, and over 2,000 recorded lectures and screenings of “patriotic films.” The occupation authorities used many of these events to once again equate modern Russian troops with those of the Soviet Army – and Ukrainians with Nazi Germany. At the Savur-Mohyla memorial in the Donetsk region, children laid a wreath at the grave of a Donbas militia commander before going to the Eternal Flame to honor World War II veterans.

As part of the “Unconquered” campaign, young residents of Donetsk helped Russian soldiers and the “DPR” chief Denis Pushilin unfurl “the largest replica of the Victory Banner in the world.” For Pushilin’s security, the military cordoned off access to the monument and forced families to stand in line for hours, with only those holding a special permit allowed through.

Another opportunity to draw parallels between the two wars was the nationwide history test “Victory Dictation.” The head of the United Russia party, Dmitry Medvedev, ordered that questions about the war in Ukraine be included in the section on World War II to emphasize the alleged similarity between the two conflicts. About 18,000 children and adults from the so-called “historical regions” took part in the dictation: over 5,000 in the Zaporizhzhia region, almost 4,000 in the Kherson region, and around 9,000 residents in the “LPR” and “DPR.” Denis Miroshnichenko, head of the “People’s Council of the LPR,” said that schoolchildren and students in Luhansk see special meaning in the test: “We know the heroism of our fathers and grandfathers not only from their stories – we had to face fascism ourselves.”

A 17-year-old student who took part in the dictation in Luhansk said he attended the event to “avoid being pestered with additional questions” at school. According to him, the atmosphere was oppressive: “There were people in uniform at the entrance and exit, and some sat next to us – they took the test too. Supposedly they were there to protect us from shelling, but it felt like having a gun to your head. We would have been safer from shelling if we had just stayed home.”

The event elicited little enthusiasm among his peers: “No one prepared – we just randomly picked answers. There was a question about the ‘SMO,’ about someone who was killed in 2022 – as if I should know that. And for those who haven’t been killed yet, I’m supposed to write another message of thanks ‘for the liberation and the peaceful sky.’” When asked whether participants felt comfortable during the dictation, he replied, “How could we – with Comrade Major at the next table?”

Another United Russia initiative, the “Hero’s Desk,” is gaining similar momentum. By January 2025, a total of 1,087 memorial desks in honor of “fallen heroes” had been installed in the occupied territories, with more than 600 added in 2024 alone. In the Kherson region, a desk for the soldier Sergei Kabanov was installed in the school he had graduated from – where his three children are now enrolled. Not only locals in the “new territories” are being immortalized, but also residents of other Russian regions. In Mariupol, a student desk was installed in memory of the “Hero of Russia” Pavel Kochanzhy from St. Petersburg. In May 2025, the project was expanded to include living “heroes” in addition to the dead: a school in Donetsk granted this honor to Konstantin Kuzmin, head of the “People’s Council of the DPR.”

In June, a “pedagogical documentary” was reportedly produced in Melitopol. Its subject was Pavel Sudoplatov – an NKVD agent and saboteur known as “Stalin’s assassin.” Sudoplatov’s victims included Yevhen Konovalets, the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and a key figure in the struggle for Ukrainian independence. His assassination is presented as the most important feat of the “intelligence genius from Melitopol.” The Center for Patriotic Education of the New Regions initiated the production as part of the project “Heroes’ Names: Novorossiya.” The filmmakers use Sudoplatov as a poster child for modern Russian propaganda, portraying his fight against Ukrainian nationalists in the postwar years as an “example for the younger generation.”

The ambitious project has already won a competition by the Presidential Grants Foundation and is receiving funding of 6.8 billion rubles ($83.8 million). This budget will not be spent on fees for Russian film stars, as the cast consists of students from Melitopol Gymnasium No. 19, which was renamed in Sudoplatov’s honor on May 9, 2025. The lead actor, 14-year-old Nikita Podshivalov, said it was “a great honor to portray a real hero.” The target audience for the film is also young – it is intended for viewers aged 14 to 20, with screenings planned in educational institutions.

A mother from Melitopol shared her opinion about the effectiveness of this propaganda tactic: “Before the war, our children were taught in history class that Sudoplatov was the man who killed our Ukrainian leaders. But in 2022 they named a street after him here and put up a bust. Everyone just learned to pretend they’d forgotten – the children and the teachers alike. This film won’t brainwash anyone. No one here takes this show seriously, least of all the younger generation.”

For over a year, Russia has been operating a network of VOIN (“WARRIOR”) military-patriotic centers in the occupied territories – an organization whose stated goal is to “raise a new generation of patriots.” These centers employ more than 400 instructors, and over half of them are active military personnel – including combatants in the Russian-Ukrainian war. The instructors train teenagers and men aged 14 to 35 in the handling of firearms, technical and tactical skills, the basics of Russian national security, drone piloting, and other combat-related disciplines. Teenagers aged 14 to 18 can choose between two modalities: a three-month athletic and military course and a series of military-patriotic summer games called “Time of Young Heroes” with sessions lasting 14 to 21 days.

In 2024, the VOIN network trained around 11,000 cadets, and in just the first two months of the current year this number exceeded 15,000. In the “DPR,” VOIN operates in four schools and has already trained 865 cadets, with plans to reach 2,000 by the end of the year. The largest branch is to open in Mariupol, where 15 hectares have already been cleared for the new “educational institution,” which will include accommodations for 300 children and a military-sports training ground. Petro Andriushchenko, head of the Center for the Study of the Occupation, describes VOIN as Russia’s largest “recruitment and training center for future soldiers.” Child participants “undergo full military training” and are openly prepared for combat.

The tragic consequences of this militarization are evident in harrowing individual fates. “Oleg had dreamed since childhood of defending his Motherland and knew that his path was military service and protection against the neo-Banderite threat,” reads part of the obituary for Oleg Zotov, who signed a contract with the Russian armed forces on his eighteenth birthday and was sent to the front, where he was killed a week later. The young local from Donetsk may have been inspired to enlist by the Yunarmiya (“Young Army”) patriotic youth movement, of which he was an active member. Oleg Zotov

“Born, raised, gave his life for the Motherland” – another line from the obituary that reads like a slogan for youth-patriotic programs tightening their grip on the occupied Ukrainian territories. The Russian authorities have made support for the Young Army a priority and allocated a record 1 billion rubles ($12.3 million) to the organization in 2025. Its leader, Vladislav Golovin, who took part in the Russian assault on Mariupol, promised that the movement would continue to encourage young people to enlist. To date, about 120,000 “alumni” of the Young Army serve in the Russian armed forces and security services.

On the cut-out paper hands, apparently created as part of a school or extracurricular activity, nationalist slogans and war propaganda appear throughout. The “Z” symbol, used since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022 as a military identifier and propaganda sign, is emblazoned repeatedly, flanked by slogans such as “С победой!” (“With victory!”), “Вы лучшие” (“You are the best”), or “Желаю чтобы вы не отступали” (“I wish that you do not retreat”). “За ZOV” (“For ZOV”) is frequently written – a combination of the invasion symbols Z, O, and V that has been elevated to a combative pledge in Russian state discourse. One hand reads, “Дорогие мы и вас верим, и ждем нашу победу” (“Dear [soldiers], we believe in you and await our victory”) and “Мы всегда с вами” (“We are always with you”). The design of these hands clearly shows how children and adolescents within the Russian state’s sphere of influence are deliberately drawn into war rhetoric and declarations of loyalty to the army.

Maria Sulyalina of the Almenda Center notes that Oleg Zotov’s death is not an isolated case: the Young Army routinely recruits children from the occupied territories, and as soon as they reach the age of majority, they go to fight against their own country – and often lose their lives. The Young Army already has more than 35,000 Ukrainian children in its ranks – they receive reconnaissance and firearms training, learn from soldiers involved in the special military operation, and even teach elementary school students the basics of shooting and the assembly and disassembly of rifles.

Vladislav Chichkan, a member of the Young Army unit named after the “DPR heroine” Olga Kachura in Horlivka, describes his experience: “The first meeting of the club left a lasting impression on me. We had a packed program: practical lessons in first aid, drill training, and lectures on the Great Patriotic War and modern military conflicts.” The young man says he “understood the importance of patriotism,” “learned a lot about the country,” and is now “ready to give everything for service to the Motherland.”

The Movement of the First, which claims to revive Pioneer traditions, also runs a military-patriotic program. According to an EU report, “the movement is re-educating Ukrainian children, including those illegally deported to Russia.” The organization participates in every state holiday. During this year’s Children’s Day celebrations in Donetsk, young Ukrainians tried on military gear and familiarized themselves with mock weapons provided by the National Guard, while United Russia organized a parade of militarized strollers. According to Sulyalina, the movement has 24,000 child participants in occupied Crimea and 60,000 in the Luhansk region.

“Today there is not a single child in the Kherson region who has not gone on such a trip at least once,” emphasized Tatiana Kuzmich, an occupation official who oversees assistance to evacuees in the Kherson region, speaking in September 2024 about educational events and tours for local children to various Russian regions. Young Ukrainians are sent to summer camps and sightseeing tours in Russian cities and also to the Crimean coast. The Young Army offers summer schools focusing on art, patriotic education, and military-athletic training in four of Russia’s largest summer camps: Artek in Yalta, Orlyonok and the Smena Center in the Krasnodar region, and Okean in Vladivostok.

As part of its “Culture Map 4+85” project, the Russian Ministry of Culture also organizes “cultural and educational routes” specifically for schoolchildren from the “new regions.” Last year, the program attracted more than 20,000 Ukrainian children – twice as many as in 2023 – and offered them an introduction to Russia’s “rich historical, cultural, scientific, and technological heritage.” The occupation authorities set annual participation targets, and for 2025 they promise to attract at least 30,000 children from the “LPR,” 14,000 from the “DPR,” 4,000 from the Kherson region, and 8,000 from Zaporizhzhia.

As a teacher from Donetsk admitted, children in her city “have no options”: “What is there to see in Donetsk? Children see gray and destruction, watch everything collapse before their eyes, experience helplessness. Over there they are clothed, fed, and taken on excursions. Many bring water canisters back to Donetsk from summer camps because we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe. People go months without running water or get it only three times a week. Of course, the children do not understand that it is Russia that brought the region to this catastrophe.”

Since 2022, Russian universities have been organizing summer programs for high school students from the “new regions” to help them with socialization and career guidance. As part of the project, teenagers travel to Russian regions, visit local universities, study Russian history and the culture of their peoples, and explore potential career paths. In June 2025, students from the Donetsk region attended a play in Grozny, Chechnya. Others played lapta at a ski resort in Birobidzhan, and five program participants have already enrolled at a university in Ufa. This year, the Russian government allocated more than 150 million rubles ($1.9 million) to support the participation of more than 2,000 young Ukrainians in these educational events, which contain a strong ideological component.

Marina Kovyneva, the project leader and chief methodologist at Don State Technical University, compiled a series of guidelines titled “How to Build Resilience Against the Spread of Destructive Ideas Among Children from Combat Zones,” published by the National Center for Countering Terrorism and Extremism in Educational Environments and on the Internet. From June to September 2022, her team conducted 10 sessions for 2,000 teenagers evacuated from occupied regions. According to Kovyneva, many children said that “Ukraine has nothing to do with Nazism,” then drew swastikas and shouted, “Ukraine will live forever! Glory to Ukraine!”

Under Kovyneva’s guidance, the children completed a course titled “The Baptism of Rus,” which focused on the “correct” version of history: “I always emphasized the name of the state, ‘Kyivan Rus,’ and the image of Vladimir the Great, Prince of Kyiv and all Rus.” At the end of the summer school, Kovyneva noted that some of the Ukrainian children “left deep in thought,” while others “thanked me through tears and hugged me for the truth they learned and heard for the first time in our lessons.”

A Donetsk educator tasked with teaching at the university summer schools described the psychological effects of re-education: “They try so hard to integrate children into Russian society because they still remember Ukraine. You could call it cultural exposure if both languages had been preserved in our territories and Ukrainian were taught as extensively as before 2014. Instead, they pulled the ground out from under the children’s feet in terms of national identity – erased it and replaced it with another. It is similar to how Nazi Germany took children from other countries who met ‘Aryan standards’ and raised them under its propaganda.”

The US Institute for the Study of War reaches a similar conclusion: “These various summer camp programs aim to indoctrinate and militarize Ukrainian children, erase their Ukrainian identities, and instill pro-Russian hyper-militarized sentiments in them to create the next generation of loyal Russians.”

The Tavriya Youth Media School was launched just a few months after the occupation of Kherson in the “liberated territories” and expected its best graduates to become employees of local TV and radio stations and provide their fellow residents with “truthful information.” According to propagandist Alexander Malkevich, the founder of the school and first deputy chairman of the Media Commission of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, a career in local journalism will serve as an “example of ‘Stalinist’ social mobility.” Since 2022, Malkevich has worked in political communications for the team of the late Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and has launched several TV channels: Tavriya TV in Kherson Oblast, ZA TV in Melitopol, and Mariupol 24. He was awarded a medal for the “operation to evacuate correspondents” from Kherson.

The first cohort of the media school included about 50 participants aged 15 to 47. Malkevich hired minors to work at his TV channels: for example, starting at age 15, Vlada Lugovskaya filmed news segments for Tavriya, and some staff were 16 to 17 years old. The propagandist admits that he excludes freedom of opinion and aims to provide children with “consistent information about ongoing processes.” In his own words: “I do not understand why there should be a spectrum of opinion when war has been declared on us. And we do not promote a gloomy ideology.”

In the Zaporizhzhia region, blogger and native of Melitopol Alexander Gurov founded the Mediatopol School of Journalism. Reporters Without Borders describe the organization as a “Kremlin propaganda school.” Among the students are teenagers: Gurov mentioned 16-year-old Kostya Nizhnikov, who “is already earning money from his work.” Gurov himself is 21 years old. He works as a press secretary for the presidential platform “Russia: Land of Opportunity” in the Zaporizhzhia region. The latest news about the media school was published in May 2024 on the Telegram channel of the movement “YugMolodoy” (“Young South”).

Further efforts to train young propagandists were visible in a media center in Mariupol intended for schoolchildren aged 14 to 17. The project, launched in September 2024 by graduates of the Russian government’s “New Media Workshop” program, is partially funded by a presidential grant of nearly 12 million rubles ($150,000). As part of learning the “fundamentals of media work,” students are taken on tours of federal TV studios and offered internships in the newsrooms of pro-government media such as Komsomolskaya Pravda, AiF, and News Media, with employment prospects. One student already works at Mash.

The “School of Bloggers,” founded in 2024 by the Donbas Media Center in Luhansk, invites people aged 16 to 25 and promises to teach them how to shoot and edit video, promote content on social media, and interact with followers. The project has graduated more than 100 participants and has also opened branches in Mariupol, Donetsk, and Melitopol. Tuition is free, a point emphasized in school advertisements on regional channels. The School of Bloggers is proud of its international recognition: CNN journalists reported on its activities as part of an investigation into the propaganda efforts of pro-Russian bloggers and highlighted its cooperation with the Kremlin program “Russia: Land of Opportunity.”

Another regular re-education practice is to organize meetings of demobilized war veterans with Ukrainian schoolchildren living under occupation. The exact frequency – and the toll – of these events is unknown, but in honor of the “Day of the Liberation of Mariupol” alone, the “DPR” authorities organized 70 events for 1,500 teenagers. During these gatherings, schoolchildren interacted with soldiers and examined mock weapons. “Fighters of the special military operation” frequently conduct so-called “Lessons of Courage” in schools. The Donetsk Cadet Corps held a session with Artem and Denis Lopatin, a father and son who went to the front at the very beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where they took part in the battle of Mariupol. After their demobilization, they met with about 100 schoolchildren as part of the project “Russia: Land of Opportunity.”

Another entry in this genre is the “Open Dialogues” organized by the Russian society “Znaniye” (“Knowledge”). In Luhansk, for example, a participant in the “special military operation” gave a lecture titled “Knowledge: Heroes.” More than 1,000 teenagers from Luhansk took part in such events in 2024. In addition, the Russian Patriot Center organizes “Dialogues with Heroes” for children, including in occupied territories. On International Women’s Day, members of the Young Army in the Zaporizhzhia region spoke with a participant in the “special military operation” who serves as a military doctor.

Teachers who take their students to “patriotic events” do not necessarily act of their own free will, as their colleague from Donetsk recounted: “It is a huge system, and every person in it is just a cog. The teacher pressures the student, the administration pressures the teacher, the education department pressures the administration, the regional education ministry pressures the department, and the federal Ministry of Education and Science pressures the regional ministry. It is a massive system in which everyone acts formally, no one really cares, but everyone pressures everyone else.”

Patriotic events are the responsibility of the principal’s educational advisors, who work in coordination with public organizations. As one teacher explains, “This purely propagandistic but well-paid position was introduced in all schools and vocational colleges. It is like a Soviet Pioneer leader, but now it is called a ‘childhood navigator.’ To get the job, you have to take a course and pass exams. I have seen these advisors – they dress almost identically, wear ‘childhood navigator’ badges, do not interact with teachers, and have the same lifeless eyes.”

They also organize meetings with “participants in the special military operation” according to a standard format: the “hero” tells his life story, explains when and why he decided to sign a contract and come to the Donbas, talks about combat experiences, offers advice, and takes questions from the audience. These events also cultivate the same set of narratives: “They all say they are sorry to see how Ukraine treats its citizens and that Russia has never attacked other states – not once in its history – and only took up arms to defend itself or those who are weaker. So they could not stand on the sidelines and watch Ukraine erase Russian identity. Each of them says they are not here to kill, but to bring peace to the region, protect the civilian population, and ensure that local children have a happy childhood.” The teacher admits she has also accompanied teenagers to such meetings – and even helped organize one of them in order to “meet educational targets” assigned to every school and district. At the same time, she has doubts about the propagandistic effect of “Dialogues with Heroes”: “It is all just a show. Everyone is bored to death because no one wants to be there – neither the children nor the organizers. The only ones interested are the SMO participants who can feel significant.”

According to the teacher, the “heroes” do not consider the residents of Donbas to be their compatriots: “To them we are not Russians, but khokhly [a slur for Ukrainians]. Everyone here knows that.” She emphasizes the reality that children show little enthusiasm for these gatherings: “Teenagers get bored quickly and openly laugh at the cliché phrases like ‘We never started the war, we are only protecting Donbas.’ They laugh when they hear about ‘stupid Ukrainians jumping around on the Maidan.’ Children are very receptive to falseness.” She has also noticed a similar attitude among local adults toward Russian soldiers, who understand that Russians do not consider them equals: “We are khokhly to them – that is what they call us among themselves. Meanwhile, the locals call them ‘Russkies,’ as in ‘look at all these Russkies coming here.’”

Russia is also trying to gain control over the minds of young Ukrainians in the spiritual sphere, using the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as another tool of propaganda and militarization in the occupied territories. The clergy’s anti-Ukrainian policy is enshrined in the mandate of the 25th World Russian People’s Council – titled “The Present and Future of the Russian World” of March 24, 2024. The document calls Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “holy war” and claims that the entire territory of modern Ukraine “must be included in the zone of Russia’s exclusive influence.” The ROC declares that “the acquisition of worldview ideas, spiritual and moral values of Russian civilization” is an important element of youth education and has already secured the integration of a discipline called “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics” into the fourth-grade curriculum. In 2022, a textbook was developed to “expand the horizons of schoolchildren and facilitate the promotion of decent, honest, and worthy citizens and patriots who love their Motherland, their Fatherland, and their homeland and are ready to serve their Fatherland.” Meanwhile, schoolchildren in Crimea study the fundamentals of the Orthodox culture of Crimea starting in the first grade.

The religious section of patriotic education is not limited to weekly classes: the clergy seeks to expand its reach to extracurricular activities through the All-Church Youth Orthodox Movement “Vernye” [The Loyal], which aims to “raise a young generation healthy in spirit and body, loving Russia, and ready to stand up for its interests.” Other goals of the movement include fostering a “patriotic attitude toward our Motherland” and “increasing the prestige of military service.”

Another ROC project is the Brotherhood of Orthodox Christian Scouts – the children’s division of the youth movement of the Moscow Patriarchate. The brotherhood’s motto resembles a campaign slogan: “Stand ready! Always ready to stand for God and Russia!” An Orthodox Christian portal describes the “scouts” as scouts with a focus on Christianity and patriotism. Participants in the program are taught “Scripture and Motherland studies” as well as a more practical discipline called “scouting.” In January 2025, scouts from Melitopol visited occupied Crimea to attend a winter convention of the Cadet Corps. The trip was organized by the regional branch of the Orthodox women’s organization of St. Luke of Crimea. Children took part in a variety of activities – from prayer to building military fortifications.

The effectiveness of propaganda depends on the child’s age and the duration of exposure. Dima Zitser, an educator labeled a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities, is convinced that an abrupt shift in identity and language from Ukrainian to Russian can disorient anyone – but it is most harmful for elementary school students: “At the age of seven or eight, a child has developed a certain worldview, but as soon as it shifts, they lose their footing. A 15-year-old is more likely to experience inner resistance, feeling as if they are in the enemy’s hinterland – which, by the way, is exactly the case. They can set themselves the goal of maintaining their identity and position while pretending to play along. Small children cannot do that.”

Human rights activist Sulyalina noted that children continue to feel fear even after leaving the occupied territories, along with apprehension toward their Ukrainian peers: “They are afraid to speak freely, afraid to share their thoughts. One of our cases involved a boy who came to the Ukraine-controlled area and spent half a year in his room. He thought he would be beaten for speaking Russian because that is what Russian propaganda taught him. He was afraid to show that he came from occupied territory, so he had trouble making new friends and trusting people in general.” Another major propaganda genre is the “fight against terrorism and neo-Nazism.” In Donetsk, trainers who teach boxing, archery, and other sports were obliged to give lectures in their clubs titled “Terrorism as a Global Problem.” The social media page of the Leader Sports School posted a video called “Get Neonazi Ideas Out of Your Head!” In the video, the protagonist clicks the “like” button under opposition posts – and then the police knock on his door.

According to Pavlo Lisyansky, a human rights defender and founder of the Eastern Human Rights Group, those under eighteen charged with so-called “extremist activities” are subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment. Human rights activist Vera Yastrebova, who works closely with Lisyansky, cited a large number of cases: “The similarity to Soviet punitive psychiatry is striking. In their view, a healthy person can only agree with the official agenda, and if a child sympathizes with Ukraine or calls things by their proper names, they can be classified as mentally incompetent and committed.”

According to the Eastern Human Rights Group, the majority of such cases have occurred in the Donetsk region. Reports of the forced psychiatric treatment of underage “extremists” were confirmed at a meeting of the interagency working group on the prevention of juvenile delinquency, held in October 2024 in Mariupol. Security agencies reported that 16 juvenile defendants were being prosecuted for actions “of an extremist, nationalist, and terrorist nature.” They also reported that 161 “underage radicals” had been “held accountable,” with 48 of them subjected to compulsory treatment. Despite the pressure, teenagers in occupied territories are trying to resist. As Sulyalina emphasizes, “Children protest in every possible way. We had cases where children posted videos on Facebook in which they spoke out for Ukraine or said they were waiting for the Ukrainian army. Each of them was summoned for questioning by the FSB or the Center for Combating Extremism.”

Sulyalina also notes that the risk of prosecution often prevents parents from having open discussions with their children about the threat of Russian propaganda: “I heard of a case where a child was about two years old when the occupation began, and the parents decided not to talk about politics in front of him so he wouldn’t say something he shouldn’t. They lived in Sevastopol, and he went to school with the children of Russian military personnel. When he was in the first grade and was assigned to ‘draw his country,’ he drew Russian tanks with tricolor flags. So you cannot say when it is too early to tell your children about propaganda.”

A report by the Eastern Human Rights Group warns that constructing a false image of the “enemy” – together with the total militarization of education – presents the prospect that a generation of Ukrainians living under occupation will grow up as brainwashed Russians eager to take part in military aggression against other countries: not only Ukraine, but also the United States, the United Kingdom, and EU member states. As the authors of the study note, while “the scale of indoctrination and militarization has not been equaled even by Hitler’s Germany,” the underlying mechanism is simple: a distorted portrayal of contemporary political processes and a targeted misinterpretation of historical events. The tragedy unfolding in the occupied territories of Ukraine surpasses in its systematization and cruelty even the darkest chapters of history. What is happening here is nothing less than an attempt to erase the soul of an entire generation and replace it with an artificial, militarized identity. While the world watches and responds with sanctions, a generation grows up in the shadows of occupation whose childhood has been stolen, whose identity has been destroyed, and whose future has been conscripted into the service of a war they never chose. The question remains: how many Oleg Zotots must die before the world understands that this is not only a war against Ukraine, but a war against innocence itself?

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