Russia will teach children about "heroism" of their soldiers in Ukraine

Starting 1 September, Russian schools will be teaching students about the "heroic deeds" of Russian soldiers in the war against Ukraine, as well as other figures regarded as heroes by the aggressor country.

Source: the Russian Ministry of Enlightenment (Ministry of Education), which has published a list of "war heroes" of the "special military operation", as the Russian Federation refers to its war in Ukraine

Details: The Russian list of "Our Heroes" features militant Arsen Pavlov, known as Motorola, who was blown up in a lift, and propagandist Daria Dugina, who was blown up in a car.

According to Russian media reports, the new curriculum has been made available on the Unified Content of General Education website.

The list of people that the Russian Federation wants pupils to learn about is organised into three categories: the pre-revolutionary period, the Soviet period, and modern Russia. The latter features Vladimir Zhoga and Olga Kachura, terrorists and militants from Donetsk who fought for the Russian Federation and were killed in 2022.

The Ministry of Education advises that Russian teachers should teach their students about propagandist Daria Dugina (daughter of "Russian world" ideologist Alexander Dugin), pro-Putin explorer Fyodor Konyukhov, pro-Putin ice hockey player Alexander Ovechkin, and similar figures.

The website also includes links to videos about "preserving and strengthening traditional Russian values".

Russian propaganda is also present in the pre-revolutionary section, in which the Russians claim Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv as one of their heroes, describing him as a "symbol of Christian Russia".

The Russian Federation recommends that students study the works of writers Mykola Hohol [the Ukrainian-born writer better known as Nikolai Gogol] and Anton Chekhov, poets Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Tyutchev, composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and others.

From the Soviet period, the Ministry of Education has chosen "heroes" such as Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky, "saboteur" Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and other military figures from the Red Army.

Also on the Russians’ list is the renowned Ukrainian designer and rocket builder Serhii Korolov, who was responsible for the first spacewalk.

Korolov was a pioneer of practical cosmonautics and the USSR's first head designer of rocket and space technologies – but he had previously spent six years in Soviet forced labour camps.

In 1938, the Soviet authorities imprisoned him in the Gulag in Kolyma, later transporting him to Moscow. Korolov collaborated with aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev – also a victim of Stalin's terror – on the development of jet engines, and it was not until 1944 that he was granted an early release from prison.

Previously: Russian media reported that Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Russian schools should be renamed after veterans of the "special military operation". 

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