Russia's Preparing Its Children For War

In a chilling, but expected development in autocratic thug Vladimir Putin's Russia, the Kremlin is sponsoring what it calls "military patriotic education" for Russian children, promoting the idea that their country is surrounded by enemies (i.e., NATO countries) and that a fight is brewing in their future. From the linked article:

"Over the past eight years, the Russian government has promoted the idea that the motherland is surrounded by enemies, filtering the concept through national institutions like schools, the military, the news media and the Orthodox Church. It has even raised the possibility that the country might again have to defend itself as it did against the Nazis in World War II.

Now, as Russia masses troops on the Ukrainian border, spurring Western fears of an impending invasion, the steady militarization of Russian society under President Vladimir V. Putin suddenly looms large, and appears to have inured many to the idea that a fight could be coming.

“The authorities are actively selling the idea of war,” Dmitri A. Muratov, the Russian newspaper editor who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year, said in his acceptance speech in Oslo this month. “People are getting used to the thought of its permissibility.”  (our emphasis)

The Kremlin has created a "Youth Army" organization which resembles the Soviet Union's "Pioneers" in its emphasis on patriotic militarism and red accessories (the Pioneers had their red scarves, the Youth Army has red berets). In a more ominous throwback to Soviet times, the youth are hearing the "patriotic" themes from those times,  but twisted and directed at the West by Putin, a former KGB officer. A core theme borrowed from Soviet times is that Russia only fights "defensive wars" (tell that to Poland, and lately Ukraine). However, as Putin does, when you consider Ukraine, the Baltic states, Georgia, etc. as an integral part of Russia, undermining them and invading them is "defensive" in their paranoid mindset, and that mindset is being passed along to younger generations of Russians.

(photo: Mural in Moscow featuring Youth Army children. Sergey Ponomarev)