Children as young as 14 are being taught to shoot guns in Russian schools. (Image: Getty)
schools are now training children to shoot guns as the number of hours spent teaching Kremlin propaganda is set to double this year.
This report comes amid hints that army is facing a significant manpower shortage.
This academic year the total number of hours Russian schools spend teaching these propaganda modules – which aim to prepare children for – is set to reach a staggering 1,300 hours out of a total of 11,000 teaching hours.
Children aged between 14 and 17 are also to be sent to , with parents who refuse to comply threatened with fines under the charge of “discrediting the army”, Russian outlets have revealed.
Propaganda modules these children are forced to study include “Military Training. Fundamentals of Military Knowledge” which is designed to prepare children for war, news outlet Agentstvo reported.
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Moscow’s educational institutions have seen a major shift towards a focus on defence. (Image: Getty)
Since the beginning of the war, Moscow’s educational institutions have also witnessed a major shift in how propaganda is taught, with a significant focus now on defence.
Agentstvo reported that the “Life Safety” course introduced for senior students in 2023 has since been renamed “Fundamentals of Security and Defence,” where students learn about the Armed Forces, weapons, and military equipment.
The news outlet revealed that the teaching of Kremlin ideas now makes up a staggering 12% of teaching hours during this school year, but the share of propaganda in the may vary depending on the class and grade.
By comparison, at the beginning of the war this teaching – which ranged from history to defence studies with the aim of strengthening “traditional Russian values” and to “foster patriotism” – made up around 3.4%.
Russian schoolchildren are being taught how to shoot by Sergei Chesalin, a veteran of the Soviet Airborne Forces special units.
Vladimir Medinsky, the Chairman of the Interdepartmental Commission on Historical Education of , is also said to have given new history textbooks to grades five through nine.
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They have also been given military training outside school and the military sports squad “Rubezh” has been photographed training in the town of Divnogorsk in Krasnoyarsk Krai, .
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, , the former deputy minister of Internal Affairs of , posted a video of Russian military instructors teaching children how to shoot and wrote: “Learn how to kill Khokhols [Ukrainians]!”
“This is how Russians teach children for the war against . ‘Ukrainians will not kill themselves—we must do it,’ they say. Sick people. Sick Russian society.”
Roman Sheremeta, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, warned that the next generation of Russians may be even worse than the current cohort.
He said: “It is a machine on steroids. We are witnessing development of a mass psychosis.
“The new youth strategy which was approved by the government in August 2024 aims to prepare pre-conscription age teenagers mentally and physically for military service. This has very strong similarities with what happened in Nazi Germany before the .”