From 1 September 2026, schoolchildren in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine will study under a reworked curriculum built around loyalty to the Russian state, the Yellow Ribbon resistance movement reported on Telegram, a change separately confirmed by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.
Taken together, the changes work to strip a generation of Ukrainian children of their national identity — children who did not choose to be schooled under Russia's war against their country.
The overhaul bundles three separate mechanisms into a single school year. Occupation authorities are introducing a new subject called "Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia." They are splitting the existing course "Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland" into two tracks, life safety and basic military training, deepening a militarization of occupied schooling that Euromaidan Press has documented. And for pupils in grades 2 through 8, a three-tier behavior assessment is being added, graded as "exemplary," "acceptable," or "unacceptable." Together, Yellow Ribbon said, the changes are turning schools in the occupied territories into "a tool of the ideological and military indoctrination of children."
The new identity subject is aimed at children in grades 5 to 7, roughly ages 10 to 13, and is built on so-called traditional Russian values, with Russian Orthodox Church representatives drawn into the teaching in occupied Crimea and Sevastopol. The Almenda Center of Civil Education has documented the subject's territory-wide rollout. It puts the reach of the imposed Russian curriculum as a whole at more than 582,000 children in nearly 2,000 schools. The subject mirrors a class Russia is rolling out in its own schools, now applied to Ukrainian children in territory it holds by force. The new three-tier behavior grading adds a compliance layer to a system that the OSCE expert mission found is already enforced through "pervasive coercion," applying pressure to children, parents, and teachers alike.
An unlawful campaign
International humanitarian law bars an occupying power from indoctrinating and militarizing the children under its control. In July 2026, an independent expert mission established under the OSCE's Moscow Mechanism, invoked by 41 of the organization's 57 participating states, reported to the OSCE Permanent Council that Russia's transformation of the education system in the occupied territories breaches international law, naming Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The experts described a coordinated, state-level system spanning schools, youth organizations, religious institutions, and security agencies, built to strip Ukrainian children of their identity from kindergarten age through high school. The "Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland" course, now being split to carve out a dedicated military track, has been compulsory in schools in occupied territory since the 2024/25 academic year.
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The in-place indoctrination forms one arm of a wider effort to erase Ukrainian identity. The other is deportation. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children. As of June 2026, according to the OSCE mission, Ukraine's Ministry of Justice had recorded 20,610 children as deported or forcibly transferred, and Ukrainian authorities reported just 2,264 returned.
Ukraine's own tally is likely an undercount: Yale researchers put the total closer to 35,000, and Ukrainian officials have estimated the real figure runs into the hundreds of thousands. In a resolution of 8 May 2025, the European Parliament declared that Russia's forcible transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children meets the legal definition of genocide, part of a "genocidal strategy" to erase Ukrainian identity.
