While sitting before a group of school children on the first day of their return to the Russian region of Kaliningrad on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin set out the significance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Putin said that, “An anti-Russian enclave has begun to be created on the territory of today’s Ukraine that affected our nation. Our guys fighting there are protecting both the inhabitants of the Donbas and Russia itself.”
The address by President was a part of the first “important conversation”, which is to take place in Russian schools after the concept- designed to foster patriotism, which was announced by the Education Ministry earlier this year.
Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov said that, “Important conversation” will add talks about what Moscow refers to as its “special military operation” in Ukraine as well as the virtue of “dying for the motherland.”
Meanwhile, a 5th-grade teacher at a school in Moscow said that, “It is very wrong to talk to children about the special operation in Ukraine. In my opinion, children are not the audience with whom it is required to talk about politics.”
The weekly “important conversations” are one of several changes taking place in Russian schools amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and ongoing attempts by the Kremlin to rally support for the invasion.
Other changes include the mandatory raising of the Russian flag and singing of the national anthem every Monday.
But it is the “important conversation” classes that appear to have provoked the most resentment among teachers and parents.
