On a late October evening, well into the school year, six Russian soldiers wearing balaclavas burst into an apartment in occupied southern Ukraine. “Do you go to school?” one demanded of Ksenia, who was 15 at the time.
“I do, but I’m sick now,” she lied.
The soldiers confiscated Ksenia’s phone and laptop, she said, and arrested her stepfather on suspicion of pro-Ukrainian views. They forced her to end her boycott of a Russian-language school, she said — a school she described as requiring students to listen to the Russian national anthem, watch “documentaries” portraying Russia as Ukraine’s savior and attend classes on Russian patriotism.
“Teachers told us that it is very important to cheer for your country,” she said. They meant Russia, which had invaded her country and arrested her family members.
Militarism and Russian chauvinism are defining features of the education system Moscow has imposed on occupied territory in Ukraine over nearly four years of war, according to education experts, rights groups, and parents and a dozen children interviewed by The New York Times who attended the classes. The experts and rights group say the aim is to Russify children, erasing their Ukrainian cultural and linguistic identity.
“Russification is so pervasive and toxic that children believe in it,” said Kateryna Rashevska, an international law expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights, a Ukrainian nongovernmental group.
Children and parents were interviewed after they had made their way back to unoccupied Ukraine; their last names are not used in this article because nearly all still have relatives in occupied areas who would be at risk of persecution if the children’s full names were made public.
The people who escape to Ukrainian-controlled territory come in a small but steady stream by going to Russia, through Belarus and then to a remote border crossing into the village of Domanove, in the northwestern corner of Ukraine. It is a roundabout trek of as much as a thousand miles, often made partly on foot.
Ukrainians making the journey have to clear bureaucratic hurdles, sometimes inventing tales of sick relatives they need to visit. They also must pass through dreaded “filtration” camps where the Russian authorities interrogate, register and sometimes detain them, deciding whether they may leave.
Dozens of children turn up every month at the border crossing, many of them teenagers traveling alone, as Ksenia did, according to Ukrainian organizations that help children from occupied territories.
Yana, 17, walked alone through the checkpoint recently, afraid and exhausted, her head pulled into her shoulders and her bell-bottom jeans wet above the ankles from trudging through fields. She had left her parents behind in occupied territory, taking four days to make the trip.
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“‘Ukraine will not be back, so we are switching to Russian,’” she said teachers declared on the first day of school.
As an occupying power, Russia is obligated by treaties it has signed to uphold children’s existing identity, traditions and education, Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said in a written comment to The New York Times. Russia has violated these obligations, she said.
freezing_banshee on
Nothing new here. Brainwashing is Russia’s biggest asset.
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On a late October evening, well into the school year, six Russian soldiers wearing balaclavas burst into an apartment in occupied southern Ukraine. “Do you go to school?” one demanded of Ksenia, who was 15 at the time.
“I do, but I’m sick now,” she lied.
The soldiers confiscated Ksenia’s phone and laptop, she said, and arrested her stepfather on suspicion of pro-Ukrainian views. They forced her to end her boycott of a Russian-language school, she said — a school she described as requiring students to listen to the Russian national anthem, watch “documentaries” portraying Russia as Ukraine’s savior and attend classes on Russian patriotism.
“Teachers told us that it is very important to cheer for your country,” she said. They meant Russia, which had invaded her country and arrested her family members.
Militarism and Russian chauvinism are defining features of the education system Moscow has imposed on occupied territory in Ukraine over nearly four years of war, according to education experts, rights groups, and parents and a dozen children interviewed by The New York Times who attended the classes. The experts and rights group say the aim is to Russify children, erasing their Ukrainian cultural and linguistic identity.
“Russification is so pervasive and toxic that children believe in it,” said Kateryna Rashevska, an international law expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights, a Ukrainian nongovernmental group.
Children and parents were interviewed after they had made their way back to unoccupied Ukraine; their last names are not used in this article because nearly all still have relatives in occupied areas who would be at risk of persecution if the children’s full names were made public.
The people who escape to Ukrainian-controlled territory come in a small but steady stream by going to Russia, through Belarus and then to a remote border crossing into the village of Domanove, in the northwestern corner of Ukraine. It is a roundabout trek of as much as a thousand miles, often made partly on foot.
Ukrainians making the journey have to clear bureaucratic hurdles, sometimes inventing tales of sick relatives they need to visit. They also must pass through dreaded “filtration” camps where the Russian authorities interrogate, register and sometimes detain them, deciding whether they may leave.
Dozens of children turn up every month at the border crossing, many of them teenagers traveling alone, as Ksenia did, according to Ukrainian organizations that help children from occupied territories.
Yana, 17, walked alone through the checkpoint recently, afraid and exhausted, her head pulled into her shoulders and her bell-bottom jeans wet above the ankles from trudging through fields. She had left her parents behind in occupied territory, taking four days to make the trip.
Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
“‘Ukraine will not be back, so we are switching to Russian,’” she said teachers declared on the first day of school.
As an occupying power, Russia is obligated by treaties it has signed to uphold children’s existing identity, traditions and education, Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said in a written comment to The New York Times. Russia has violated these obligations, she said.
Nothing new here. Brainwashing is Russia’s biggest asset.