Svitlana’s account of life under Russian occupation and education in a Russian school reflects what members of TRP’s legal team describe as “indoctrination”: a non-legal term encompassing multiple concurrent human rights violations, including infringements on the rights to education, freedom of thought, and identity… The educational process is entirely oriented around a Russian worldview and geopolitical ambitions. If children resist, they are punished. Children are raised on the principles of blind faith and obedience, deprived of the right to identity. Simultaneously, intolerance towards everything Ukrainian — the environment in which they were born and raised — is instilled.
1.6 million Ukrainian children live in territories occupied by Russia, according to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. In kindergartens and schools, they are forbidden from mentioning Ukraine, or anything connected to Ukrainian culture. They are taught to handle weapons to be turned into the Russia Soldiers.
The Reckoning Project – a global team of Ukrainian and international journalists and lawyers – is documenting war and atrocity crimes by Russia. This story by Ghanna Mamomova tells about Svitlana who chose to escape her home village in the occupied Kherson region.
Living in Fear
It is a cold spring in Kyiv this year. Fruit trees blossom in rain and hail. During a walk through the Ukrainian capital, 18-year-old Svitlana keeps reminding us — her face cannot be photographed. She turns her back to the camera and hides her profile behind long hair.
The girl is afraid to be photographed, to give her surname, or to reveal any details by which Russian security services could identify her. Half a year earlier, in the autumn of 2025, Svitlana packed a warm jacket, jeans, a few dresses, and left her home village in Kherson region, which had been seized by Russian forces in 2022.
The journey that once could have taken a day by car to Ukraine’s capital lasted ten days. In the very first year of the full-scale invasion, the Russians blocked all exits from the occupied part of Ukraine, except through the Russian border.
Svitlana travelled through ruined Mariupol, then through Russian cities, and after that Belarus.
When she crossed the Ukrainian border, she understood that the danger had passed for her — but not for her loved ones. Her mother and grandfather remained in occupation.
In occupation, laws don’t work, everyone is intimidated and can be arrested, accused of pro-Ukrainian views. “I’m constantly afraid for my family,” she said.
At 18 years old, Svitlana has done nothing wrong. Her fear arose solely because for three years has she lived under Russian occupation and attended school. There, Russian authorities re-educate Ukrainian children to make them loyal to Russia and forget about Ukraine. Her memories of this are documented by researchers at The Reckoning Project — which has been collecting evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine since 2022. The project’s archive consists of over a thousand interviews.
The Beginning of the Occupation
On the first day of the full-scale invasion, 24 February, 2022, Svitlana woke up to the sound of explosions, like every Ukrainian family. Her parents told her that Russia was dropping missiles on Ukraine, and that their tanks were entering their village, so going outside was forbidden and school was cancelled. Svitlana was 14 years old at that time and was in the ninth grade.
The girl spent the whole day secretly peering through the window and she saw Russian tanks driving past her house. Fifty military vehicles were moving in a single column, and there were several such columns. The movement of military equipment continued for several days without stopping.
There were battles on the outskirts of the village. Adults said that tanks were entering the village and shelling the food stores, Svitlana recalled.
Food and medicine disappeared almost immediately. People stopped going outside. Everyone hid in cellars because the shelling did not stop.
“For some time we didn’t even have bread. Then the Russians started bringing in their own products. But there was little of it and the prices were astronomical,” Svitlana stated.
To buy a single loaf of bread, Svitlana and her mother stood in line for several hours.
Adult Pressure and Children’s Protest
Svitlana returned to school only on 1 September, 2022. She got to the first bell and saw that the school courtyard had been decorated with the flags of Russia and the already non-existent Soviet Union. In her classroom hung a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Russia’s coat of arms and anthem. Ukrainian state symbols and Ukrainian language inscriptions had disappeared. The teacher told the children they had to memorise the Russian national anthem.
“I understood that my Ukrainian school had turned into a Russian one”, Svitlana said. “My mom said that we couldn’t leave the occupation, so I had to finish Russian school, get my certificate, and go to Kyiv for university.”
This gave Svitlana a plan for the next few years of life under occupation.
Every Monday all school students were gathered for assembly, so they could sing the Russian anthem. Svitlana and her peers secretly sang the Ukrainian anthem instead.
“If the teachers had heard, we would have been in trouble,” the girl said. “We found it funny,” what was happening. Before, the teachers called themselves Ukrainian, but they soon forgot that and became Russian.
After the occupation, ten teachers, along with the principal, resigned, but the rest, comprising more than 30 teachers, remained working under the Russian occupation authorities.
“I had a favourite German language teacher and she went over to Russia’s side. That was her choice, but from that moment she stopped being my favourite teacher”, Svitlana said.
From adults, the girl heard that before the start of the school year, Russian military and occupation authorities had gone from house to house visiting teachers. They persuaded them to work; and those who refused were intimidated.
“Some teachers told us they had no other choice”, according to Svitlana. Perhaps they were frightened, perhaps some didn’t have the strength to leave the occupation. Russia started paying teachers large salaries to make them more willing to collaborate.
The school curriculum became Russian. Ukrainian language and literature disappeared; and Ukrainian textbooks were confiscated. Instead, Russian books were brought to the school, and children began studying Russian language and history. In lessons, children were required to speak Russian. For Svitlana this was difficult, because she didn’t know it.
“In our village everyone speaks Ukrainian”, she said.
Every Monday and Thursday, the school held lessons in patriotic education — “Lessons About What Matters” and “Russia, My Horizons.” In these lessons, children sang the Russian anthem, and watched documentaries about Russia and the Russian army. Teachers told children that Vladimir Putin was “the world’s best president,” Svitlana recalls. Talking about Ukraine at school was forbidden; the words “occupation” and “war” were also banned. Instead, one was required to say “special military operation” — the term Russian propaganda uses for its war against Ukraine.
“In lessons they praised Russia, and about Ukraine they said that fascists live there who eat children. We didn’t believe it, but we sat in silence because we were afraid to say anything extra”, Svitlana recounted.
The girl recalled that at school she “kept her tongue behind her teeth.” For every careless word, Russian soldiers could come to her home and intimidate her family, accusing them of pro-Ukrainian views. This happened more than once to her friends. One of her girlfriends took a Russian flag and wiped the chalkboard with it as an act of protest. Someone filmed it and passed it to the military. Her family was fined and the girl was taken to the police and placed on a register. Another of Svitlana’s friends received a Russian passport and scratched out Russia’s coat of arms on it. For this, her parents were also fined.
“My classmates burned Russian school diaries and passports. Good thing no one found out — otherwise we would have had problems”, Svitlana said.
Children expressed their protest in 2022, because they thought the occupation would end soon. When it didn’t, the children became cautious.
Propaganda Through Education, Sport, and Weapons
Life changed not only at school. Children stopped gathering after lessons to spend time together. The only leisure for the girl was sports training. She had practised athletics since childhood.
Students who wanted to build sporting careers were supported by the Russian school administration. They were sent to competitions in which children from other Russian-occupied Ukrainian settlements took part. Competition winners were promised they would be sent to study in Russia after school.
In 2023, Svitlana and her mother received Russian passports. The girl says they had no choice.
“If you don’t have a Russian passport, you can’t go to school, and if you don’t go to school, Russian soldiers come to your home and intimidate you. Then you’re given 24 hours to pack your things. After that you’re deported — forced to leave the occupied territory”, she said.
On Russian patriotic holidays — which were never celebrated in Ukraine — teachers forced students, including Svitlana, to wear St. George’s ribbons, a symbol of the Russian army, which are officially banned in Ukraine, as they had become a symbol of Russian aggression.
Children were asked to participate in festive school events in which they danced and sang Russian patriotic songs. Svitlana tried not to take part. Her classmates also avoided these events, but not attending was not an option.
“For this they could lower grades for the whole class”, Svitlana said. “Or worse, teachers could complain to Russian soldiers, who would then come to your home to intimidate you.”
Against the backdrop of a ban on everything Ukrainian, a youth organisation called “Movement of the First” began to develop rapidly in Svitlana’s school. It was created at the initiative of the Russian president for Ukrainian children living in occupied territories, in order to raise them as Russian patriots.
Representatives of the movement canvassed children to join their ranks, enticing them with vouchers to Russian summer holiday camps. Boards appeared in the school with photographs of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine. Children in lower grades were asked to write letters to Russian soldiers.
From time to time, Russian soldiers came to Svitlana’s classroom. They taught children to assemble a machine gun, showed military equipment, and distributed leaflets saying that from the age of 18 one could be mobilised into the Russian army and receive large sums of money for it.
Searches and Arrest
All this time the girl tried to stay in the shadows, because her father is a Ukrainian soldier. Svitlana’s parents had divorced long ago and did not live together. The man mobilised immediately after the full-scale invasion. For a long time there was no contact with him, and in 2023 Svitlana learnt that he had gone missing in action during one of the battles in Kharkiv region.
In the summer of 2024, another misfortune struck Svitlana’s home — Russian soldiers burst in. The schoolgirl, her mother, and her grandfather were taken outside, while the soldiers searched the house. In the grandfather’s belongings, they found a suit he wore for hunting. Its colour resembles a Ukrainian military uniform. The Russians took the suit and confiscated everyone’s mobile phones.
A few days later, Russian soldiers came to Svitlana’s home again; they started shooting in the yard, seized her grandfather, and took him away. The man was gone for eight days. When he returned to his family, he recounted that he had been thrown into a ten-metre pit somewhere unknown. Food was given once a day. Likewise, he was allowed out to use the toilet only once a day. When rain fell, the elderly man sat in the pit. From the soldiers, the grandfather learnt that he had been seized on the basis of a denunciation from neighbours who had falsely claimed he was sending money to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Shortly after his release, Russian soldiers came for Svitlana herself. While checking her phone, they found that she had liked a post on Facebook congratulating Ukraine on Independence Day.
The soldiers did not find her at home. They therefore ordered her mother to have an “educational conversation” with her about patriotism, threatening that otherwise they would handle it themselves.
Escape from Occupation
Svitlana finished the Russian school in occupation in May 2025. Having received her certificate, she contacted the organisation, Save Ukraine, which evacuates children from occupied territories, and began preparing to leave for Kyiv.
Svitlana bought a new mobile phone, so that during checks at Russian checkpoints the soldiers would not find her correspondence with Save Ukraine. She invented a cover story that she was going to enrol in a Russian university.
For the ten days she was travelling, her mother was almost out of her mind with worry. Svitlana had no Ukrainian document, but she was helped to obtain a “white passport”, a temporary document granting the right to enter Ukraine.
“When I was crossing the border into Ukraine, it was hot outside. I desperately wanted to sleep from exhaustion,” she recalled. “I have relatives in Kyiv who took me in.”
A month later, Svitlana enrolled in a university in Kyiv. She chose interior design as her speciality. She moved into a dormitory. She made new friends, with whom she often goes for walks in parks and cafés after class. Svitlana doesn’t like talking about life in occupation, and her friends sense this, so they don’t ask unnecessary questions.
A Factory of Indoctrination
Svitlana’s account of life under Russian occupation and education in a Russian school reflects what members of TRP’s legal team describe as “indoctrination”: a non-legal term encompassing multiple concurrent human rights violations, including infringements on the rights to education, freedom of thought, and identity.
The educational process is entirely oriented around a Russian worldview and geopolitical ambitions. If children resist, they are punished. Children are raised on the principles of blind faith and obedience, deprived of the right to identity. Simultaneously, intolerance towards everything Ukrainian — the environment in which they were born and raised — is instilled.
When carried out as part of a broader pattern of conduct, indoctrination may amount to persecution and contribute to the creation of a coercive environment that facilitates other violations of international humanitarian law, including compelled conscription into hostile forces and forcible transfer.
Researchers at The Reckoning Project have recorded over 750 testimonies from children who left the occupied territories. Svitlana’s story is not an exception, but common practice.
According to testimonies, in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, schools have become indoctrination factories through which Ukrainian children are recruited into the Russian army. Patriotic education lessons have become a key component of indoctrination.
During interviews, children from occupied territories told researchers from The Reckoning Project that they felt lonely and confused because of being Ukrainian.
Children in the occupied territories are effectively experiencing psychological violence, as they have been deprived of the ability to freely live their childhoods, says psychologist Natalia Sosnivenko of the Voices of Children charitable foundation.
Clinical psychologist Natella Dubashidze explains that under occupation, a child constantly feels danger simply for who they are. In order to survive, children conceal their true convictions and publicly display what the school demands of them.
Having left occupation for a safe place, children continue to live in fear and feel anxiety. As a result, they may struggle to adapt and study in a new environment.
Russia began the re-education of Ukrainian children as soon as it occupied Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions in 2014. Patriotic lessons and the Russian language appeared in kindergartens and schools, while everything Ukrainian was eradicated. The first cases of illegal deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children from Ukraine to Russia occurred in 2014. Ukrainian law enforcement authorities had reported this to the International Criminal Court before the full-scale invasion. When the abduction of Ukrainian children from occupied territories took on a mass character, in 2023 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children’s Rights Commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova.
In January 2026, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemned the indoctrination, militarisation, and Russification of Ukrainian children in temporarily occupied territories, including Crimea.
Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Ruslan Kravchenko, says that 1.6 million Ukrainian children live in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. The Russian Federation’s changes to the education system in occupied territories expose all children there to a range of human rights violations that collectively amount to indoctrination.
Through the so-called “re-education” camps and the paramilitary movements “Yunarmiya,” “Movement of the First,” and “Voin,” Russia is raising Ukrainian children to become its soldiers, the Prosecutor General says.
An investigation is underway against 30 suspects from among Russian officials and military personnel, who are the organisers of the militarisation and destruction of Ukrainian education.
In April, the Office of the Prosecutor General submitted an indictment to court against the Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of Russia, Andriy Omelchuk. He is considered as one of the main organisers of the liquidation of the Ukrainian education system in temporarily occupied territories.
With each passing year, the militarisation and assimilation of Ukrainian children is intensifying in the occupied territories, emphasises the Civil Education Centre “Almenda” (CCE Almenda), which has been protecting the rights of children in these territories for 12 years. The Centre’s report states that during the summer of 2025, more than 189,000 children in the temporarily occupied territories went through holiday and patriotic education camps. From 1 September, 2025, unified Russian history textbooks for grades five to nine were introduced in schools, which justify the occupation and aggression against Ukraine.
Almenda’s director, Maria Sulialina, says that children are not being raised to think of Ukraine as an enemy. They are being raised to think that Ukraine does not exist.
Three Dreams
Svitlana stopped communicating with her former classmates when she found out that they had gone to study in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea.
“Everyone made their choice”, she said. “Our paths diverged.”
Recently, one of Svitlana’s classmates was mobilised into the Russian army, and another boy is planning to become a Russian soldier voluntarily.
“I don’t know why this happened to them”, she stated. “Russian propaganda at school didn’t affect me. But from the beginning I knew I would go and study in Kyiv, and the whole time I didn’t listen to what they told us about Russia and Putin.”
Svitlana’s closest friend currently lives under occupation. She is finishing school. Svitlana offered to help her move to Kyiv, but her parents would not allow it. They cannot bring themselves to abandon their home and don’t want to be separated from their daughter. Svitlana’s own family also cannot leave their home. If they take that step, the Russian authorities will confiscate their property.
“They are bound to that land”, Svitlana pointed out. “Although it is very dangerous there: there is constant shelling.”
Svitlana now has three dreams. She completed a drone pilot school in Kyiv and dreams of enrolling in a military lyceum to become a servicewoman. In this case, it’s her personal choice made on reaching adulthood and not something influenced by school headmasters. She also dreams of a miracle — that her father might still be alive.
First of all, her dream is to embrace her mother, but when that will happen she cannot say. She is only 18 years old and alone in an unfamiliar city. She says she cannot return to the occupied territory, and her mother cannot abandon everything and flee from there.
Ghanna Mamonova is with The Reckoning Project.
