Save the Children Europe’s Post

Over the course of Russia's full scale invasion of #Ukraine, #educational institutions have been heavily targeted by attacks. A total of 3793 educational institutions have been either damaged or destroyed over the past two years. Here is a look at the leadership and resilience of Ukrainian universities during the #war. https://lnkd.in/gvyCH5-x

Russian propagandists are actively trying to convince their own people and those in the #occupied territories that they should be prepared to sacrifice themselves in Russia’s wars of aggression. They are promoting the idea that such an act is the greatest honour. These narratives are also being incorporated into the education of #Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories. In the temporarily occupied territories, Russia uses various methods to propagandise the #war: - Involving veterans of the Russo-Ukrainian war in children’s education - Organising actions in support of the Russian military - Opening specialised paramilitary classes - Involving children in military-patriotic organisations, camps, and games - Introducing compulsory military training in secondary and higher education institutions Children living under Russian occupation in the Autonomous Republic of #Crimea and #Sevastopol often participate in events celebrating the “Days of Military Honour of Russia”. These events involve children dressing in military uniforms and using the St. George’s ribbon, which is banned in #Ukraine and several #EU countries. Veterans of the so-called special military operation also participate in the celebrations. The All-Russian Military Patriotic Social Movement “Yunarmiya” (“Youth Army”) has been incorporated into the educational curriculum of Crimean institutions since 2016. Children learn how to handle weapons and take part in military-patriotic activities. While parents can refuse to have their children participate in the organisation, orphans do not have this option. By the end of 2024, the aim is to have one in every ten schoolchildren in Crimea join the ranks of the Yunarmiya. On 10 November 2022, compulsory military training for schoolchildren was introduced on the peninsula. Regular military-patriotic activities with young people are conducted, including events dedicated to “Conscript Days”. In spring and summer training camps, students are organised into “military units” and receive instruction in firearms, drill, tactical training, and physical fitness. The militarisation of school education lays the groundwork for recruiting Ukrainian citizens into the Russian armed forces. It promotes the idea of serving Russia and the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the enemy state from an early age. Read more about Russia’s methods of cognitive occupation in the occupied territories on our website: https://lnkd.in/ewuK8Ctp

Can you imagine trying to teach or learn under conditions of war? Ukraine is doing it: read my article in our program's publication JMEG: Education Under Threat to learn more! https://lnkd.in/dPtrpHmS (Information was actual as of November, as you can imagine, conditions change constantly.)

#weremember 💔On January 29, 1918, at the station of Kruty in the Chernihiv region, several hundred Ukrainian youths went out to fight a deadly battle with the moscow-bolshevik horde, which was superior in numbers and weapons. In January 1918, the Ukrainian People's Republic, which emerged from the ruins of the russian empire, found itself in mortal danger. A Bolshevik uprising began in Kyiv, and the rebels were being helped by the russian red army, from the north. On January 29, they were already 130 kilometers from Kyiv, near the Kruty railway station. The Ukrainian military command, which had expected the main bolshevik offensive not from Bakhmach but from the Poltava direction and sent the main forces there, was confused: there was no combat-ready army that could resist the russians. Kyiv newspapers wrote at the time, "There are only a few days left for Ukraine to exist as a state: we are in a hostile environment-no sooner or later will drunken Bolshevik soldiers be roaming the streets of Kyiv." At that time, the UPR government was helped by young Ukrainians, students and gymnasium students: at a meeting of students at St. Volodymyr's University of Kyiv, they created a Sich Riflemen hut, which published an appeal to Ukrainian students in Kyiv newspapers. In particular, it read: "We must stop at all costs the march that could lead Ukraine to terrible ruin and long-term decline. Who better than us to block the bolsheviks' path to Kyiv?" After a fierce battle lasting many hours, Ukrainian troops retreated from Kruty station to their echelons in an organized manner, taking advantage of the dusk. 27 students and high school students who were in the reserve were captured during the retreat. The next day they were shot or killed. Despite the inequality of forces, this battle delayed the Russian offensive for several days, allowing the Ukrainian delegation to sign the Brest Peace Treaty with the Quadruple Alliance states, which then saved the young Ukrainian statehood. The losses of Ukrainian troops at Kruty are estimated at 70-100 killed. Among them are 37-39 students and high school students killed in action and shot. To date, the names of 20 of them are known: Oleksandr Sherstyuk, Isidor Purik, Borozenko-Kononchuk, Holovashchuk, Chyzhov, Sirik, Omelchenko, Oleksandr Popovych, Volodymyr Shulgin, Mykola Lyzohub, Bozhko-Bozhynsky, and Dmytrenko, Andriyiv, Andriy Sokolovskyi, Yevhen Ternavskyi, Volodymyr Hnatkevych (6th grade), Hryhoriy Pipskyi, Ivan Sorokevych (7th grade), Pavlo Kolchenko, Mykola Hankevych (8th grade). The fallen Heroes were transported to Kyiv, where they were solemnly buried on Askold's grave on March 19, 1918. In Soviet times, the graves were destroyed. For decades, the history of the battle was silenced and overgrown with myths, both in foreign and domestic historiography. In independent Ukraine, the heroic deeds of the Kruty heroes took a worthy place in the pantheon of national glory. @istoriya_ukrainy

Since the onset of the full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, #Russia has destroyed 3,800 schools across Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of #Ukrainian #children have been forced to flee abroad, now receiving education in various languages through programs in other countries. In the front-line areas, thousands of children must frequently stop their classes to seek shelter from Russian bombardments. Even in the more remote and seemingly safer parts of #Ukraine, the sound of air raid sirens causes children to startle. The most severe situation is in the occupied territories. Here, children and parents face persecution by the occupying forces for choosing to continue their education through remote Ukrainian schools. The Russian authorities consider this choice a crime and threaten to take away parental rights. Children attending Russian schools are compelled to learn a version of history tailored by Putin and, from a young age, undergo military training. They are taught to admire the “heroes” who invaded and occupied their country. Isn't this genocide against the Ukrainian people? #SaveUkraine #StopWar Save Ukraine NGO

An article in The Jerusalem Post has highlighted the experience of ORT students who moved from Ukraine to Israel after the beginning of the War in Ukraine. Learn more about how they feel living in Israel since October 7: https://lnkd.in/e-kQGB5t

Want to learn more about Hamas? Try this Gratz online adult continuing education class with Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, Executive Director at Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Inside Hamas Thursdays, February 8 - March 28, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm Online There are no clear distinctions among social, military, and political activity of Hamas; ambiguities are deliberately created to blur those distinctions. For the last sixteen years Israelis came to describe an intense divide within Hamas, between the polarized aspects of “resistance” (muqawwamah) on one hand and governance on the other, along with the claim that the movement assigns growing priority to the demands of the latter due to its new duties as a sovereign, and particularly the need to take care of the heavily burdened and needy Gazan population. In fact, during this past decade and a half Hamas deliberately avoided any such choice, and handled both poles with equal attention: managing the sewage in Gaza while also investing in a military buildup and preparation for a doomsday war with Israel. https://lnkd.in/eMvNASmr #hamas #middleeast #israel #gaza

❗️ Russian re-education camps, where Ukrainian children from the occupied territories are displaced, have become an element of the Kremlin’s strategy to form loyal youth who will be ready to give their lives for the interests of the Russian Federation. Such camps complement extracurricular military-patriotic movements such as the ‘Unarmiya,’ ‘Young Guard,’ ‘Warrior,’ ‘Akhmat,’ as well as cadet classes created on the basis of occupied schools. In re-education camps, Russian militarist ideology is imposed on Ukrainian children, fostering a desire to serve in the Russian army and fight for the ‘new Motherland’ against Ukraine and the Western world. The Ukrainian identity of these children is deliberately eradicated through immersion in the Russian cultural, linguistic, and social space. ❓ How is Russia turning Ukrainian children into instruments of its military ambitions? What do children who have experienced political indoctrination and militarization in such camps say? And how can such unlawful acts be qualified? Regional Center for Human Rights and Bring Kids Back UA will tell you in this post. #BringKidsBack

❗️ Russia's re-education camps for Ukrainian children from occupied territories are part of a Kremlin strategy to create loyal youth ready to serve its military ambitions. These camps, alongside military-patriotic movements like ‘Unarmiya’ and cadet classes in occupied schools, impose Russian militarist ideology, erasing Ukrainian identity, and pushing children to fight for Russia against Ukraine and the West. ❓How is Russia turning Ukrainian children into instruments of war?  ❓What do these children say about their experiences, and how can such acts be legally qualified? 🔽 Learn more from Regional Center for Human Rights and Bring Kids Back UA here.

Political Occupation and Social Stratification This inaugural lecture delivered in 1993 by Prof. Bayo Adekanye, formerly of the University of Ibadan, focused on how military catapulted their profession from the backwater level of the pre-independence to immediately after independence era, where one can hardly find any of the brightest students of those days, to a 'prestigious' profession (or occupation as the author opined) it later became that even the elite of the time struggled to place their children in military schools just to give them a head start in life. The same reasons enunciated in the lecture for the military officers' remarkable elevation to the class of nouveau rich can also be used to explain why politics has become the most lucrative 'occupation' in Nigeria today. Thus, in essence, we can substitute military occupation for 'political occupation' and social stratification and the postulation will still be apt.