The underground Ukrainian partisan movement, the Center for National Resistance (CNR), called Russian plans to create a new ministry for youth policy and “patriotic” education “brainwashing.”
Russian media outlet Vedomosti reported on Moscow’s plans to create the new ministry on Tuesday, April 9.
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It said that the ministry would likely be put together by Russia’s Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) and take over some of the functions now performed by the Ministry of Education.
The ministry would likely begin its work after May 7, the date of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration – which follows his landslide victory on March 17 – in an election largely condemned by Western nations as being predetermined.
“The idea arose after it became clear that there is no single body responsible for patriotic education – now the Defense Ministry has some powers, the Education Ministry has some, and Rosmolodezh has some, but there is no coordinating structure,” said a source cited in the Vedomosti article as being close to the Russian presidential administration.
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Rosmolodezh organizes “Z” patriotism festivals. “Z” is the pro-war symbol used by Russian forces to represent their westward invasion of neighboring Ukraine – though more than a few Russian political commentators have hinted that the invasion should extend beyond Ukraine’s borders.
In liberated areas, Ukrainian forces have also encountered the “Z” symbol graffitied by Russian soldiers in the homes of families that were either evacuated or whose bodies were discovered in mass graves – in a war that the Kremlin says is to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
The irony now, Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder told The Washington Post, is that Putin appears to be “fighting a war the way that actual Nazis did.”
According to the CNR, the Russian army is also planning to forcibly bring Ukrainian children to Moscow in May for “Keepers of History,” an event the partisans refer to as: “another propaganda forum.”
Collaborators from each occupied region of Ukraine compiled a list of Ukrainian teenagers to be bused to the Russian capital, the CNR stated.
According to the CNR, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has been increasingly coming to boarding schools in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and delivering “propagandistic” messages.
“The most vulnerable sections of the population of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are easy prey for the Russian invaders,” the CNR wrote on its website Tuesday.
The CNR said the Kremlin has been encouraging children to enter specialized MIA educational institutions in the future – or work as police officers for occupation authorities immediately after finishing school.
“First of all, we are talking about orphans or children deprived of parental care. It is from this category of local residents that you can ‘sculpt’ your future henchmen with impunity,” it said.
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