Natalia, a school teacher in Ukraine couldn’t tolerate living under Russian occupation in her southern hometown of Melitopol which is occupied by Russia, and felt she would be more useful in territory still controlled by Ukraine.
But Nataliia didn’t just leave her home and relatives behind, she also surrendered her profession, giving up her job of 20 years as a school teacher to young children.
Now she spends her time giving online classes to hundreds of her former students. The risks for her, and her remote school, are huge. They could be sentenced to political prison if they did not comply.
False names in the school
“No-one had done this before,” Nataliia explaind. “Not in Crimea, or in the occupied Donbas, Kherson or the Zaporizhzhia regions.”
Portraits of Vladimir Putin now hang on the walls of Nataliia’s old school classrooms in Melitopol as they have been made to look more “Russian”. The pupils must both learn, and sing, the Russian national anthem. They are even obliged to write “inspirational letters” to Russian soldiers to their efforts in the war.
This is how Ukrainian children are educated in territories occupied by Russia. They are taught that Ukraine isn’t a real country. A humiliating remark of Ukraine, undermining its sovereignty and Nataliia says, that if a child challenges the curriculum, their parents are threatened with beatings or torture. Freedom of speech is completely stopped in Russian territory of Ukraine
It’s the reason why Nataliia, with her former colleagues, created an online teaching platform to try to “save the minds of Ukrainian children” and to purge them of Russian propaganda.
“Once we launched it, I wrote a neutral letter, offering the classes to all of the parents,” explains Nataliia. “I didn’t know who was pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian, and they knew my home address and my relatives”.
She says even uttering the word “occupation” can result in Russian authorities visiting your home and being beaten and tortured. If there is any evidence of loyalty to Ukraine, such as a child’s homework being written in Ukrainian instead of Russian, a trip to the police station could follow and there they would again be beaten or tortured.
And yet, hundreds of families have taken up Nataliia’s offer to teach the Ukrainian curriculum – and numbers are growing fast. This shows the resilience of the Ukrainians to preserve their language and culture.
In the morning, they attend Russian school, and in the afternoon or evening, the pupils have secret online lessons with Ukrainian teachers to teach them the Ukrainian syllabus and state curriculum.
Students at school in Russian-occupied Ukraine, standing next to a screen which says, ‘Homewards to Russia’ another proof of Russian indoctrination of young and impressionable children to uphold dangerous beliefs of Russian supremacy and Ukrainian inferiority.
“Safety is more important than knowledge. All the students join with their cameras off and use false nicknames,” says Nataliia.
Recordings are provided for those who might not have a signal or power because of frequent power cuts in Ukraine.
“It’s not so important to teach children what year Taras Shevchenko [a famous Ukrainian poet] was born, or the rules of geometry, but to keep them connected with Ukrainian culture,” she explains.
“I have one student who came home and cried after the Russian lessons. This is too much psychological pressure for a child. All their lives they lived in a Ukrainian environment – and suddenly, everything changed.”
Valera (a nickname to protect their privacy) goes to a Russian school as he is required by the kremlin but also attends secretly online Ukrainian classes. The 14-year-old told us only six out of his 31 classmates support Ukraine. He says he tries to resist Russification when he can.
“Once we turned on the Ukrainian anthem during our lesson, on the phone,” he recalls. “Then they started to search everyone. I hid my phone; once they played their anthem – everyone stood up, we remained seated.”
He says he always wanted this additional Ukrainian teaching, but Valera believes he is going to be made to join the Russian army, probably forced?.
Nataliia says that the purpose of her teaching is constantly tested. The longer Russia occupies Melitopol, the greater the risk children living there will be indoctrinated by Russian propaganda and develop an inferiority complex.
“I can’t check their homework normally,” she says. “I fear for our future generation. It’s very important to keep these children connected to reality. But it is so difficult to do.”
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