By: Eric Weinberg

Soon, Russia will begin to spread propaganda by showing war movies and lectures on “traditional values” and “the geopolitical situation.” Other influential events, values, and respect will also be taught in great detail.

Students will participate in a flag-raising ceremony every morning as well as a celebration of the “rebirth” of Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin. According to Putin, all children will be encouraged to join a youth movement similar to the Soviet Union era’s red-cravat “Pioneers”. This movement will be presided by President Putin himself.

Imparting a state ideology in schools has been unsuccessful ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, says Kremlin bureaucrat, Sergei Novikov. Although now, during the nearly five-month invasion of Ukraine, Putin has made it very clear that this must change. His goal; to reprogram the entire Russian population after 30 years of openness to the west.

Putin will indoctrinate his war-focused anti-West patriotism into all 40,000 public schools in Russia starting in September. Already though, classes have started to begin to include this. For instance, a ninth grader at a Russian public school said that a whole period of her day was substituted with watching a news feed of Ukrainian forces surrendering to the Russians, and a lesson was learned to only trust official Russian government news.

Many students have shared their classmates have changed after being subject to the propaganda. Their beliefs are changing, and they now strongly support every action Russians make, including war crimes in Bucha and more.

Teachers have noticed a change as well. Instead of drawing normal pictures, students have drawn Z’s and V’s and other symbols supporting the war in Ukraine. Public school teacher, Irina Milyutina, has said at recess, students pretend to be Russian soldiers at the battle and call classmates they don’t like “Ukrainians.”

“The propaganda has done its job here”, Milyutina says. She also shared that just after the invasion began many classes were replaced with lectures and lessons filled with pro-war rants and patriotism.

Authorities say that surveys show that more younger adults do not support the Russian government, showing that recently the schools did not enforce respect for the government enough.

The director of the Novosibirsk school says that it will go against all common sense. “A 10-year-old child is much more of a humanist than the typical Russian citizen,” he said. “It’s simply impossible to explain to a child in plain language why, right now, some people are killing others.”