The Re-education of Ukraine’s Children

Earlier this summer, in June, children from an occupied region of Luhansk were taken to a summer camp in Russia. The camp was made up of both Russian and Ukrainian children. The goal, authorities say, was to distract children from the grim reality of war.

During the 10-day camp, activities included history lessons in which the children were taught that Ukraine was a Russian land. Belén Carrasco Rodríguez from the Center for Information Resilience, who investigated this case as part of a recently published report on Russian propaganda, told me that the “key thing with this camp is that these children are in crisis mode and when they leave the crisis they feel relaxed. So they associate this feeling of relief with the Russian government taking them away from the war, to a happy place.” 

The camp seems in keeping with the “Russification” of Ukrainian children through the use of propaganda.

Renee Hobbs, a professor of communication studies at the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island, explained why children are a perfect target audience for propaganda. “Children,” she says, “generally lack critical thinking and analysis skills as well as the contextual or background knowledge needed to evaluate media messages.” They are “naturally drawn to authority figures, are literal in their thinking, and respond well when feelings of belonging are cultivated.”