When education comes with a risk to life: How 44,000 young Ukrainians in the occupied territories receive a Ukrainian education in secret

Ukrainian article of the week published in the 59th edition of the "What about Ukraine" newsletter on December 19th, 2024. The article was written by Oleksandr Paskhover for Champion and was translated for n-ost by Olesia Storozhuk. Find the original article in Ukrainian here.

Cover photo: Occupiers greet Donetsk secondary school pupils at the beginning of the new academic year (Photo credit: DR)

What happens to Ukrainian schoolchildren in the occupied territories of Ukraine, and how does the Ministry of Education help them study?

At the moment, 1.6 million Ukrainian children live in the temporarily occupied territories (TOT). Around 593,000 go to local schools, which are used as “laboratories” by the occupiers to experiment on how to transform free Ukrainians into oppressed Russians. Strategies employed by the Russians include bribing and intimidating both the parents and children. The curriculum adopted by the “new authorities” aims to extinguish every trace of the Ukrainian spirit.

“All our books were demonstratively burnt,” says Leonid Vorobiov, headmaster of the Enerhodar gymnasium No. 2 in occupied Zaporizhzhia, though he is now displaced. “They introduced entirely new Russian schoolbooks.”

These books contain not a word about the Cossack history or the tragedy of the Holodomor. Instead, Soviet leaders are glorified, and the so-called “special military operation” is a sacred undertaking.

“The children are taught that the Ukrainian language is useless and Ukrainian history is false,” says Oleksandra Dvoretska, advisor to the Ukrainian Ombudsman. “Children are forced to take one side, and such demands affect them badly.”

When this policy does not have the result the Russians expect, pressure mounts on the kids.

NV spoke to former colleagues of teens in the occupied territories.

“My close friend still lives in Mariupol,” says Anna, a 15-year old former resident of the Luhansk region, who currently lives in Kyiv [Editor’s note: For safety reasons, NV quotes underage Ukrainians who managed to escape from the TOT without surnames]. “She goes to a Russian school, while learning Ukrainian language and history secretly, of course.”

“I think there are many others like her,” adds Liza, also from Mariupol.

“You think so, or you know?” clarifies NV.

“I think that I know,” the 14-year-old reels off.

According to the Ministry of Education, as of November, 44,171 boys and girls from the TOT are secretly taking online classes in Ukrainian schools. Each of these children risks being exposed or punished, so this number is only an estimate, and may be higher. In 2022, the Ukrainian educational system reported that 96,621 children study in the TOT, while in 2023 this was only 70,533.

“In the first place, we do not lose not territories but people,” admits Mykhailo Vynnytskyi, deputy minister of education. “People grow and develop in a certain intellectual space, which will be very hard to change afterwards.”

Kids offered “1,500” dollars to follow Russian curriculum

In 2022, Olena Vorobiova and her husband Leonid Vorobiov escaped from occupied Enerhodar. Both used to be headteachers in the local gymnasiums. Since then, at least 40,000 people have left Enerhodar, four fifths of the pre-war population of 50,000. This means an all-out evacuation. Of the 7,000 schoolchildren in the city, only some 200–300 stayed in the first year of the full-scale invasion.

“My gymnasium was one of the first to be captured; the occupiers started to search for teachers and terrorise them,” says Leonid Vorobiov. “We are perhaps the only city where not a single school administrator agreed to cooperate with Russia. We all tried to escape.”

Since then, the occupiers have resorted to tricks to force Ukrainian teachers to return to classes and teach the Russian curriculum. They promise double or even triple salaries for doing so.

“They even promised to pay 100,000 rubles to parents who would bring their child to school,” adds Vorobiova. Back then, this was around 1,500 dollars for every little Ukrainian. This was a strong incentive, but it did not work.

Then, the occupiers searched for teachers and children in a more brutal way. As Iryna Stiopina, former headteacher of the gymnasium No. 1 and primary school teacher from Enerhodar recalls: “They wanted to find lists of all teaching staff, and told the parents and teachers, ‘if the headteacher doesn’t bring us the list, we will lock her in the cellar.’ From that moment on, I had to hide. A month later, we escaped.”

The Russians did launch a system of reeducation, opening some schools in the occupied areas. They also organised kid camps, both military and recreational, and patriotic events. “Children from the TOT have privileges,” says Dvoretska. “Such a child receives full state sponsorship, such as food, clothes, stipends, free excursions and trips. This acts as a spider’s web to catch both children and parents.”

Boys from the occupied areas may even gain easier access to the elite Suvorov military boarding schools in Russia.

According to Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based Regional Center for Human Rights, Moscow is trying to demonstrate to its provinces and the rest of the world that the occupation is peaceful and its citizens are glad to experience rampant Russification. “But this is not even true in Crimea,” says Rashevska, whose human rights centre was first established in Sevastopol. “A large number of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians [in the peninsular] are waiting for liberation. The Russian Federation is afraid of that. That is why it is eradicating the Ukrainian identity in the occupied territories.” In this process, the Kremlin spares nothing and nobody.

Ukrainian NGO the Almenda Centre of Civil Education, established in 2011 in Crimea, recently published the 2025 Russian propaganda budget targeting young people in general and Ukrainians in particular.

Over 40 billion rubles (370 million US dollars) has been allocated for “patriotic education” within the Russian ‘youth policy’, which is ten times more than in 2021. Spending for ‘patriotic education of youth’ from the federal budget of the Russian Federation will amount to 66 billion rubles (615 million US dollars), 65 percent more than in 2024.

Using this money, schools and universities on the TOT must organise monthly student meetings with the participants of the so-called special military operation (SMO), military veterans, and pro-Russian activists and volunteers.

“The scheme is organised very carefully,” Rashevska highlights. “It uses some Russian performers, pretty much unknown, from Rosconcert or Rossotrudnichestvo [the Russian federal government agencies aimed at promoting Russian culture abroad]. These agencies are now engaged in kidnapping children, reeducating and transforming them into Russian citizens.”

What concerns Rashevska the most is the total militarisation of Ukrainian children in these occupied territories. She brought this subject to the attention of a UN Security Council meeting in December 2024, and to the American Congress.

“The Russian Federation, supported by Belarus, has created a huge military camp network, where children take parachute jumps, mine and demine territories, salute Russian commanders, meet participants of the so-called special military operation, and learn to hate Ukraine,” she explains.

“Russians are creative at getting information from children”

The significance is in the name of the school and its locality: the Mariupol Lyceum in Kyiv. This is representative of recent Ukrainian history’s dislocation. In reality, children from all over Ukraine study here. 32 of them live in a nearby boarding house, some with their parents in Kyiv, and a large share are scattered all over the world, including in the TOT. Education here is provided for those physically present in classes and those who follow courses from behind their monitors. Schoolchildren come from Bakhmut, Pokrovsk, Crimea and Nova Kakhovka.

“I will say right away that I’m not going to tell you the names of the children and how many there are,” warns Iryna Tsynkush, deputy headmaster for educational work of the Mariupol Lyceum.

In the previous year, Ukrainian television visited the site and released a news report which, Tsynkush believes, revealed too much. A school child’s mother from the TOT contacted the headmaster and told her that, after seeing the TV story, envoys from occupying authorities paid her a visit, saying: “We know that you study at a Ukrainian school.”

“After that, around 12 children from Mariupol left us,” Tsynkush complains. This case is an illustration that the whole national education system, particularly that in the TOT, walks on thin ice.

“We had an eleventh grader, who finished school this year, so I can tell you about her, as she now lives safely in Ukrainian-controlled territory. Some time ago, her parents evacuated her to Berdiansk [under Russian occupation since 2022] and rented an apartment in a local dormitory for her [where she learned Ukrainian]. The child didn’t dare leave the building, as she was so afraid.”

Rashevska believes that parents who hide children in order to give them a Ukrainian education from occupants is heroic. “This is like Anna Frank’s story, but in 2024,” she says. “Can you imagine not leaving the house for two years? And that is a teenager. This is always a challenging age. And it’s Russia’s fault, as parents don’t want to lose their children.”

In the occupied territories, Rashevska also reports cases of priests from the Russian Orthodox Church forcing children to confess to their own actions, and those of their parents.

“This information then appears in criminal cases [against the parents],” Rashevska explains. “Apparently, parents are afraid to speak out at home. Russians are very creative at getting information from children.”

That is how the “Russian world” has divided families. Vorobiov mentions one family where the wife did not tell her husband that their child was studying at a Ukrainian school. “Their father agreed to cooperate [with the occupiers],” he explains. “He came home with the words ‘I prohibit you’ to study in Ukrainian. He destroyed all the ways for the child to get online education.”

Vorobiov says there were adults who had no fear of the occupiers in the beginning. This was not due to great bravery, but to a lack of understanding of the evil powers they were dealing with. “One headmistress talked to them only in Ukrainian,” Vorobiov goes on. “The occupiers visited her along with a Chechen and an Ossetian and demanded she should ‘switch to Russian.’ She refused saying, ‘Why should I switch to Russian? I speak my native language. It’s not my problem. You can make the translation.’”

“Today I had a class in the eleventh grade [with Ukrainians from TOT],” says Olena Vorobiova. “One child was online during the lesson, but she kept silent. They don’t answer questions, and just listen to the lessons silently.”

When the Vorobiovs start speaking about their schoolchildren as their own kids, they won’t stop. Olena adds: “I communicate with a family where the mother says, ‘We had to go [to the Russian school] after they visited us with a search warrant.’ They held off until the last moment before going to that school. But they faced intimidation. And the mother asked us: ‘Can we switch to external studies [in Ukrainian]?’ Definitely. However, there is a ‘but.’ Not even one, but numerous ‘buts.’”

Children “living parallel schooling”: Russian in public, Ukrainian in secret

From 1 September 2025, the Ministry of Education will bring most Ukrainian schoolchildren from online to offline studies, in places where it is safe, such as schools with bomb shelters. To form online classes, the following requirements must be complied with: at least 20 children for each class, at least one class in every grade (from the first to the ninth or from the fifth to the eleventh, for lyceums — from the eighth to the eleventh), and other rules. Clearly, not all schools will meet such conditions. Obviously, the number of online classes will drop.

Such a situation will indirectly affect children from the TOT who strive to get a Ukrainian education and attend Ukrainian classes. However, even earlier, it was almost impossible to attend Russian schools in parallel with Ukrainian classes. Firstly, it is impossible to stay in two places simultaneously during the school day; secondly, if someone manages these classes, they will be noticed by the occupiers; and thirdly, even if students can study in this way, the pressure of studying at two desks is unbearable.

However, the Ministry of Education is not going to leave these children to the Kremlin.

Nadiia Kuzmychova, the deputy minister of education, told NV how the so-called “patronage programme” for children in the TOT will be extended. This programme ensures a personal connection between a child and a teacher. Together, they should develop an individual learning plan depending on the TOT child’s needs and capabilities. A primary school child will be allocated five hours a week, a secondary school child eight hours, and a high school child twelve hours a week. The Ministry will pay for such a workload separately. The Ministry believes that, theoretically, it can cover for one third of the overall number of children from the TOT.

Apart from the patronage programme, there is a form of homeschooling, called ‘external studies’. In this structure, a child’s parents or caregivers are responsible for the education. As for external studies, this format expects children to study on their own while completing tasks and tests during an agreed time period.

“I have children from the TOT doing these external studies,” Vorobiov says. “They go to Russian schools, but at the end of the year, they will have to take a test in each subject in Ukrainian. They revise on their own and have access to electronic textbooks. We use an online platform. To receive a diploma, parents applied to a Ukrainian school for external studies for their child.”

Children in the TOT, who are handling tremendous psychological and propagandist pressure from occupiers, but are willing to continue education and work in Ukraine or any other civilised country, can therefore pass exams, and receive a relevant certificate.

If necessary, school graduates from TOT can take additional classes in Ukrainian language, literature, history, and geography. According to Kuzmychova, training centres called “Crimea-Ukraine” and “Donbas-Ukraine” function for such children, where they can apply to universities and pass exams in schools, lyceums and gymnasiums.

Can these measures break the war of educational attrition caused by the Russian occupation? Unlikely. “Today, frankly speaking, we don’t have any special tools to fight what happens, let’s say, behind the iron curtain,” Vynnytskyi admits. “We can support some individuals, and some young dissidents. However, it is unclear now how to make a massive impact.”

Some solutions exist. Hundreds of thousands of IDPs have left the TOT and require special assistance. Why? Ask 14-year-old Liza from Mariupol. “None of us wanted to leave, but we had simply no option. I didn’t want to leave my father. He is a military man who was trapped in Azovstal [the steelworks, and one of the last Ukrainian hold-outs in the city]. We wanted to stay, but our father told us we must go. So, that’s what we all did.”

We ask a similar question to Iryna Tsynkush, a mathematics teacher from the Mariupol Lyceum. “We have nothing. And we won’t have anything. If we want people to leave from the occupied territories, we should tell them: when you come, this is where you will live, you will get some aid for half a year to get on your feet, at least something.”

Having heard NV’s question, Olena Vorobiova added, “When we arrived (2022), we received some 2,000 hryvnias (45 euros) of aid for adults per month and 3,000 hryvnias (69 euros) for children — it was possible to rent an apartment for that money back then. Currently, there is no financial aid at all, but the prices are rising. And all displaced people are renting.”

Leonid Vorobiov shares this opinion: “I have young female teachers without families; imagine: she rents an apartment for 7,000 hryvnias (169 euros) per month with a salary of 12,000 hryvnias (275 euros) — and has to somehow make a living with the rest of her money.”

Before saying goodbye, the NV journalist asked three schoolchildren of the Mariupol Lyceum in Kyiv what they want to become in future. 15-year-old Uliana plans to study production at the Karpenko-Karyi Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television. Until recently, Liza dreamed of becoming a police investigator and intended to apply for the National Academy of Internal Affairs. However her parents are not so excited about this idea. So, now Liza is starting to look for a new dream.

Meanwhile, Anya from the Luhansk region has developed plans “A” and “B.” “I am fond of diplomacy,” she says. “I speak fluent English, French, German, and some Polish. If not, I will study finance, particularly banking, like my father.”

None of the girls wanted to become a school teacher. One of the reasons is due to the low salaries. But there is one thing the girls have agreed upon: they want to link their lives with Ukraine. They hope that most of their fellow citizens from the TOT will make the same decision.

Speaking about her expectations, Anya says:“I believe that nothing is lost yet. Not so many years have passed. However, a few more years like this — and it will be too late.”