The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Russia is invincible, Putin tells children as they return to school
VLADIMIR PUTIN told schoolchildren Russia is invincible as he opened the country’s academic year yesterday with a virtual appearance.
The Russian president yesterday held a two-hour televised lesson for a group of hand-picked students, during which he pressed Moscow’s vision of Russia as a besieged fortress locked in an existential battle with the West.
Recalling how relatives of his had died during the then-Soviet Union’s battle with Nazi Germany, Putin said: “I know why we won in the Second World War: it’s impossible to defeat the people who are that driven. We were absolutely invincible then – and still are.”
Earlier yesterday, Putin spoke via video-link with the staff of four new schools opening in Russia and another in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol, in south-eastern Ukraine.
Mariupol was flattened by Russian bombing last spring before Moscow’s forces seized control of it in its entirety.
In what appeared to be a scripted exchange, a Russian-appointed official in Mariupol gave the floor to a young student who then proceeded to offer Putin “a big thank you for taking care of my favourite city, Mariupol”.
The boy then stuttered, before being interrupted by the official.
In Russia itself, several schools marked the beginning of term by forcing their students to wear military uniforms and sing “patriotic songs”, reflecting increasingly apparent efforts by the Kremlin to militarise society and portray its invasion of Ukraine as a righteous conflict.
A school in the western city of Nizhny Novgorod made at least three of its students pose with machine guns while donning combat fatigues.
Parents had reportedly raised concerns earlier this week after the school handed out military uniforms to several children.
Elsewhere, in the central city of Kurgan, the local governor accompanied a young girl, whose father died fighting in Ukraine, to school yesterday.
Vadim Shumkov’s press office filmed him picking the girl up from her home and walking with her and her mother to school.
The governor led her all the way to her desk in the classroom and warned other children “not to bully” her.
Russian flags and state symbols were meanwhile omnipresent in classrooms throughout the country.
Some schools even resorted to new Kremlin-promoted “patriotic” pop culture to pledge their allegiance to the war effort.
In Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk yesterday, a teenager was seen at a school performing a pop song glorifying Russia’s imperial ambitions and portraying it as being surrounded by enemies. Other students coule be seen waving Russian flags behind her.