The expert described how the "Russian world" prepares children in the occupied Crimea and Russia for war

11 May 2018, 21:50 | Policy
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Children dressed in military uniforms, along with the "Youth Army" of the Russian Defense Ministry, participated in military and other parades dedicated to the Victory Day. Part of students and students - under duress. This is only one of the reverse sides of the "Victory Mania", which began to appear after Russia's invasion of the Crimea and began military aggression in eastern Ukraine. These events occurred a few days after the protests against the fourth inauguration of Vladimir Putin, as a result of which about two thousand demonstrators were detained. Many are children and adolescents, says Galya Koynash, a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.

Ukrainian journalist Pavel Kazarin says that Russia turned the "Great Patriotic War" (1941-1945) into a religion. As in all religions, there are canonical beliefs in it, which can not be denied - otherwise you will become a heretic. Old myths are not subject to discussion or change. However, in his opinion, sooner or later it will pass: all myths have a shelf life.

Most likely it will. Only what is happening in the occupied Crimea and Russia, even remotely resembles the former celebration of the Victory Day. And it's not just a growing number of "fake veterans," many of whom were not born in 1945. In several cities of the occupied Crimea, parades of Russian military equipment were held, along with marches with young children in military suits and the "Youth Army" of the Ministry of Defense (Unarma). Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu openly stated that the main goal of the movement of the Unarmy is to popularize military ideology and create a special connection between "young Russians and the army". Currently, Russia illegally mobilizes young Crimeans in the Russian army, and also makes great efforts to promote membership in the "Youth Army" among young Crimeans. The organization is already compared with the Hitler Youth and other "formations in which young people were instruments of totalitarian regimes in Europe".

One of the residents of Sevastopol reported that on April 27, taking a child from kindergarten, he saw three small children dressed in military uniform and camouflage. Then before the Victory Day celebration there was more than a week. "They teach their children to fight," he says..

Often, it is planted in schools and kindergartens, - for sure, at the direction of higher officials. Complaints that children are forced to take part in processions of the "Immortal Regiment" are received. But in most cases, students are not given a choice, and university students do not doubt that they are waiting for problems if they do not listen.

This year, the number of children in military uniforms may partly be a tribute to the fashion that more affluent parents succumbed to. Otherwise, no doubt, this was encouraged by institutions that organize "children's military parades" and the like.

In 2017, during the Crimean events, children were used for propaganda purposes: they used to glorify invading Russian soldiers and the war as a whole. At a concert in Sevastopol, dedicated to the triennial of annexation, young girls danced on stage singing "My country, my destiny, my dream, my war". At that moment, other children broke into the scene, waving machine gun models or Russian flags.

During another action, young children dance around the monument to Russian soldiers who invaded the Crimea, shouting "thank you" loudly and in unison.

Russia began to implement its Strategy for the Education and Upbringing of Children as early as 2014. One of its tasks: "the upbringing of patriotism among children, the feeling of pride in their homeland, the readiness to defend the interests of the Fatherland, responsibility for the future of Russia on the basis of programs of patriotic and military-patriotic education". In the framework of "Lessons of courage and patriotism" children from one Simferopol school were taken to the Russian military unit.

There are also camps and "military-sports" games for studying the state-approved version of "patriotic consciousness" with the training of shooting from the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

All this is done openly and publicly. What can not be said about the protests in Russian cities that the Russian state media did not show at all. The fact that there seemed to be no disturbances in the Crimea is probably a reflection of even greater repression.

Under the conditions of Russian occupation, the protests are divided among themselves, there are few of them, and usually they end in arrests.

In Moscow on May 5 Cossack units, prepared by the Moscow City Hall, attacked the anti-Putin protest: some protesters were detained by OMON, often using unjustified cruelty.

A shocking feature of the arrests of that day was the number of children detained for entering the street in protest against the president who ruled Russia before their birth.

Translation of HB.




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