Ukraine: Teachers fight for children's minds amid occupation

Parents and teachers in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine face intimidation and threats if they refuse the new education policy imposed by Moscow. The policy forces teachers to work in Russian and according to a Russian curriculum, which also includes new history books justifying the Ukraine war.

Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In September of that year, Moscow declared it was annexing four Ukrainian regions — Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk — in their entirety, despite having only partial control of the territories. The invasion disrupted education for thousands of pupils. Now, schools in eastern Ukraine have become another battleground as Russia seeks to capture the hearts and minds of children.

"In the morning, my child goes to school, where we are forced to speak Russian to our students and teach them Russian books," a Ukrainian teacher, who is also the mother of a young pupil, told DW from an occupied area.

"In the evening, we give online lessons in Ukrainian, and we teach them about our things," she added.

The issues of Russian and Ukrainian language, history and identity have been at the center of the conflict even before the invasion. Millions of Ukrainian citizens speak Russian as their first language. In the aftermath of the 2014 Euromaidan protest movement, Kyiv passed laws mandating wider usage of Ukrainian in public life, including in schools, on television, and among public sector workers. Moscow has accused the Ukrainian government of discriminating against its Russian-speaking minority.

'The children are just not getting it'

The outbreak of war in 2022 prompted the staff to close the local school, said the Ukrainian teacher, who wanted to remain anonymous. The children attended online classes based on a Ukrainian curriculum for almost a year. In August 2023, however, Russian soldiers approached the teachers and forced them, at gunpoint, to start working in Russian, from Russian textbooks, and according to a Russian curriculum.

"It is difficult. None of the children in our village speak Russian. The children are just not getting it, especially in lower grades. This is why we teach there as a formality, and in the evenings, at home, we teach in Ukrainian, but only if there is internet," she said. "Very often, it is too weak to teach online or down altogether. "

Education as a 'propaganda machine'

In their December 2023 report, human rights watchdog Amnesty International accuses Russia of turning "education into a propaganda machine for the indoctrination of children" and trying to "eradicate Ukrainian culture, heritage and identity."

"In the Russian-occupied territories, intimidation and coercion are a daily reality for families, children and teaching staff. No one is safe under Russia's endless campaign of terror," said Amnesty International researcher Anna Wright.

Moscow currently controls less than 18% of Ukraine's territory, including the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014, according to the estimate by the US-based Institute for the Study of War. Amnesty International cites the Ukrainian Ministry of Education as saying around 918 educational facilities for children aged 6-17 were in the occupied areas as of December 2022.

Educators use guerrilla tactics

Defying the risk of reprisal by the Russian occupiers, some teachers, students and parents started "digging holes in their gardens to hide laptops and mobile phones or hiding in the attics and old sheds to catch the mobile signal" for online lessons in Ukrainian, according to Amnesty.

The organization also spoke to a school librarian who said she had to arrange secret meetings with students to give them books. She said Russian military patrols often conducted arbitrary searches in their village.

This appears to be part of a broader pattern of intimidation by the occupying troops. Russian officials also use threats of taking children away from parents to ensure compliance. This is no idle threat in war-torn Ukraine, where thousands of children have allegedly been forcibly deported to Russia and Belarus.

A mother who refused to send her 15-year-old to school said she was later confronted by men who wore Russian uniforms, who told her that her son would be taken "to an orphanage in Russia" unless he started attending classes.

The boy returned to school to find it "decorated with Russian state symbols, while armed personnel were stationed at the door and inside the building," according to the Amnesty report.

Checking for VPNs

Talking to DW, activist Violeta Artemchuk warns that all websites offering online lessons in Ukraine have been blocked and can only be accessed using a VPN.

"The occupiers are closely checking all devices of children and parents to find those who still study in Ukrainian schools," she said.

Also, parents are promised perks such as "free extracurriculars, swimming pool tickets" simply for deciding to get Russian passports, said Artemchuk, who leads the NGO Donbass-SOS aiming to help civilians in occupied zones.

Crimean-born Valentina Potapova, the head of the Ukrainian NGO "Almenda," calls for Ukraine to create an online school explicitly made for children in occupied territories. Such a school would allow children to study Ukrainian language, history and law, while physics and chemistry would be considered universally applicable.

Talking to DW, Potapova said this suggestion had been floating around since the 2014 occupation of Crimea and the creation of illegal pro-Russian governments in Donetsk and Luhansk. However, as Kyiv never implemented this course of action, Ukraine has lost an entire generation of children in the past decade, she said.

This article has been adapted from Russian.