Indoctrination programmes
Brainwashing
Companies that employ trolls, such as the Internet Research Agency discussed in detail in this section, recruit their - mostly young - employees at the so-called Seliger camp, among other places. This is an annual gathering of young people at Lake Seliger, some 350 km from Moscow, with a strong indoctrination character.
oungsters at a Seliger camp
Walking together (The Putin Jugend)
Just like the communist party during the time of Lenin and Stalin, Vladimir Putin's entourage understood that early indoctrination produces loyal and cheap followers. It began in May 2000, with the founding of Идущие вместе [Idushchije vmjesty] or Walking Together by an employee of Vladimir Putin's administration, the then 29-year-old Vasily Grigorievich Yakimenko (°1971). This youth movement applied strict rules and drastic indoctrination methods that were reminiscent of the Komsomol from the Soviet era. The members were particularly noticed for their actions against the contemporary Russian writer Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin (°1955) and the rock band Leningrad. The symbols and internal working methods quickly earned the group the nickname Putin Jugend. With rewards such as «stars» and T-shirts with Putin's image, the members' activism was stimulated. For example, a member who had earned his first «star» had to bring in 50 new members. In 2004, Walking together found itself in a crisis. One of the group members had become involved in the distribution of pornographic videos, and financial disputes arose between the St. Petersburg branch and the headquarters in Moscow. This was the signal for the Kremlin to establish a new movement on March 1, 2005.
Vasily Grigorievich Yakimenko
Nashi
The new movement was called Наши [Nashi] or Ours. It was founded in response to the Orange Revolution in neighbouring Ukraine a year earlier, in which protests led by young demonstrators had helped elect pro-Western president Viktor Andriyovich Yuschenko (b. 1954). Nashi aimed to prevent or disturb mass demonstrations in Russia by occupying squares before the opposition had a chance to gather there. It was again led by Vasily Grigorievich Yakimenko (b. 1971). According to his own statements, the movement received money from the Kremlin. In 2010, that would have been 200 million rubles - at that time it was 5.4 million euros. Vladislav Yurievich Surkov (°1964), the man of the Friday meetings with the press mentioned elsewhere on this website, is generally seen as one of the initiators. He dreamed of a paramilitary group that could threaten and attack Putin's critics as «enemies of the state».
At a political education event in 2006, the Kremlin adviser Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky (b. 1951), also mentioned earlier, said that in his opinion the Nashi members did not show enough brutality: «You must be prepared to break up demonstrations and to deal violently with any attempt to attack the constitution». Nashi regularly takes action against foreign embassies. For example, in 2006 the movement stalked the British ambassador to Moscow, Anthony Brenton (b. 1950), and his family for four months, seven days a week. The action was carried out because Brenton had attended an opposition conference. The group also distributes pamphlets in which unsaid statements by disgraced politicians such as former Prime Minister Mikhail Mikhailovich Kasyanov (b. 1957) are presented as factual quotes, or in which the Soviet Union is depicted as a period of material prosperity and abundance. Several members of Nashi have testified that they were paid to participate in demonstrations or counter-demonstrations. A typical fee is 500 rubles. Nashi also provides the foot soldiers for other projects to glorify Russian leaders, including the beautiful Medvyedev Girls. This girl group, which sometimes went topless to support the policies of former Prime Minister Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvyedev (b. 1965), was founded on 4 August 2011.
The Medvyedev Girls
In order to further expand the base of the influx of young people into Nashi, the Мишки [Misjki] or The Little Bears movement, a pro-Putin children's movement for children aged 8 to 15, was founded on 6 December 2007. Just as Nashi can be compared to the Komsomol, this movement for children, founded by Yulia Konstantinovna Zimova (°1987), shows striking similarities with the Pioneers from the Soviet period. From an early age, the children are brainwashed to show unconditional love for the person of Vladimir Putin, and they are also called upon for demonstrations, such as, among others, during the infamous elections of 2012.
Yulia Konstantinovna Zimova
Kidnappings
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped by the Russian army. The Kremlin itself says that Russia has been able to «remove 700,000 children from the war that Ukraine provoked. The children are being protected from the Nazi regime in Kyiv». Ukraine says it has verified the names of more than 19,000 children who have been transferred to Russia or to Russian-controlled territory.
Removing children without the intention of repatriating them later is considered a war crime under Article 2 paragraph 'e' of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 9 December 1948, but according to Putin that is not a problem in this case. He simply denies the right of Ukraine as a nation and of Ukrainians as a people. That means that Ukrainian identity is a threat to what they see as Russian children. The Ukrainian children are mainly abducted from the four regions that were annexed by Russia at the end of September 2022: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson. Russia sees those areas as Russian. So if you take the children away from there, that is actually a good deed.
The Dutch Hella Rottenberg of the journalistic platform Window on Russia, and author of the book Z How Putin wants to make Russia great again, described the entire organisation: «Before the regions were taken by Russia, they were heavily shelled by Russian troops. The only escape routes that were not bombed led to Russia. People had the choice to go to Russia or remain in danger. The escape routes often went along special filter camps. In those camps, children were separated from their parents and sent to Russia alone. Children were also brought to Russia from Ukrainian orphanages.
JHella Rottenberg
Once the children are in Russia, they are forcibly adopted by Russian parents or placed in children's homes. They also have to go to Russian schools. In this way, their Ukrainian identity is slowly erased. The children have to learn Russian and are no longer allowed to speak Ukrainian. They are only allowed to read Russian literature and only learn about Russian culture and Russian heroes».
The investigative journalist also found that Russia ensured that the children were quickly given a Russian passport. «The longer the children are in Russia, the harder it is to undo their brainwashing later and restore their origins and history. The intention is not for children to ever return to Ukraine, they are transformed into Russians».
The communication around these abductions was sometimes very cynical, as the video below shows. Try to imagine that our Children's Rights Commissioner has a child abducted by soldiers abroad and then adopts and indoctrinates it himself. Bizarre? Not for Putin and the Russian Federal Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova (°1984). She herself «adopted» a child that was abducted from Mariupol and she is quite proud of it.
Re-education and mobilisation
At least 6,000 Ukrainian children in the occupied territories have attended Russian state-funded summer camps. In February 2023, a Yale University study identified 43 camps that were described as re-education camps. The Kremlin does not deny this, but says the camps are an opportunity for children to «get away from the war for a while».
«Evacuated» children from Donetsk in the camp of Zolotaya Kosa (Rostov)
The camps run a programme called Послезавтра [Poslezavtra] or The Day After Tomorrow. It includes activities that «provide social and psychological support to children from the war zone» and aims to «introduce the children to the educational system, history and culture of Russia». In essence, it is about ideological indoctrination and Russification
The camps are organised by the administration of the aforementioned Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova. She has entrusted the management of the programme, which is officially described as Humanitarian Aid to the Children of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic and Ukraine, to a man who knows exactly what Russification is intended to achieve. After all, it is her advisor Aleksey Aleksandrovich Petrov (b. 1996).
Aleksey Aleksandrovich Petrov handing out presents
Before he became an advisor to Lvova-Belova, this Petrov published messages from white supremacist, neo-Nazi and far-right groups on his own social media profiles. He also posted links on Skype and Instagram that referred to white supremacist organiations and to Adolf Hitler. Only after being asked for a response by the Reuters news agency in July 2023 he deleted some of his messages and links. He also resigned from some 150 groups, including the group Оставайся белым [Ostavaysa belym] or Stay White, which is dedicated to the idea of «the revival of great Russia».
«Be the best. Stay white»
The Yale University report also showed that the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia began even before the start of the large-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. The first transports of children in early February 2022 involved a group of 500 alleged orphans who had been «evacuated» by Russia from the Donetsk Oblast. The Kremlin justified this by stating that «an offensive by the Ukrainian army was expected.» Three weeks later, the Russian army offensive began.
The Reuters news agency witnessed how in January 2023, Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova went to visit a group of abducted children at Vocational School No. 27 in Henichesk in occupied southern Ukraine. There she told a girl: «You will be able to study at any Russian university, even in Moscow». She promised the children Russian passports and said that they would each receive 100,000 rubles and an apartment after their 18th birthday if they stayed in the occupied territory.
Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova
The boys, aged 16 and 17, are being kept under extra surveillance to prevent them from escaping and returning to Ukraine. After all, on the day of their 18th birthday, they receive a mobilization order to fight as Russian soldiers against their compatriots.
A shocking story in itself is the abduction of ten-month-old Margarita Prokopenko from the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation in Kherson. It shows that the kidnappings are well prepared with the cooperation of high officials of the Duma and the Kremlin. You can read it by clicking on the link below.