Ukrainian Ombudsperson: Occupiers forcing children to go to school near conflict lines
Yana Osadcha, journalist
Russian occupying forces are forcing children and teachers to re-commence studying in districts where fighting is ongoing.
Source: Ludmyla Denisova, Ukrainian ombudsperson, on Facebook
According to Denisova: "While monitoring the social media of the occupying authorities, we discovered information that in the temporarily occupied town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region, from 11 April 2022, the Russian occupiers are forcing children to go to education establishments."
The Ombudsperson suspects that the Russians are doing this to hinder the future operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to free the town and to prepare potential provocations with casualties to discredit and accuse the Ukrainian side.
"In such a case, the children will in fact become hostages and human shields for the troops of the Russian aggressor," she says.
The Educational Ombudsperson of Ukraine Serhii Horbachov, in his comment to Ukrainska Pravda.Life, noted that he indeed had received numerous appeals from teachers in occupied territories saying that they were being forced to go to work and to teach using Russian curricula, in the Russian language.
With regard to the information on the potential use of children as human shields, Horbachov said he could not confirm it as a fact.
"I cannot affirm that, but knowing what the Russians are doing in the occupied territories, tragic developments are possible. They don’t have anything humane [in them]," he said.
Earlier, the Envoy for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin stated that in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russian occupying forces decreed a return to school, but cancelled all Ukrainian language, literature, and history classes.
