SSince Russia’s attack on Ukraine, videos, pictures and songs of children staging their support for Russia’s “special operation” against Ukraine have been circulating on Russian-language social networks. A Russian mother proudly displays a shaved Z on her son’s head. Another asked about hair salons on the VKontakte platform to get patriotic symbols on her child’s temples. Groups of children can be seen forming a Z in the schoolyard, marching in rank and file. In a video from a Belarusian kindergarten, the little ones even declaim poems for May 9 with Kalashnikov. On the holiday itself, proud parents in Russian kindergartens watched a “military parade” of their children with military equipment made out of cardboard. The list goes on.
The desire to ignore all this as trash is out of the question in the face of the cruel real war that Russia is waging against the sovereign state of Ukraine with the help of Belarusian dictator Lukashenko. Children and young people are exploited by Russian and Belarusian propaganda. Particularly alarming are the “pedagogical” interventions in the everyday school and even preschool life of children, who are drummed into “patriotism lessons” that Russia is self-sacrificingly defending the “Russian world” against the “malicious West” and the “Nazis”. Schoolchildren are said to have repeatedly denounced their teachers for making critical comments. In Bobruysk, Belarus, a teacher was fined for wearing a bow with Ukrainian colors in her hair. The court interpreted this as a strike, which also provoked protests.
#Militarization #childhood #Uncle #Wowa #stand