In 2022, Russian troops entered Kherson, a Southern Ukrainian city. Ukrainians protested on the central streets of the city. Russians answered with fire. Resistance took a decentralized form, while Russians quickly took control over most spheres of life in the Southeastern cities of Ukraine, including education. Teenagers responded to these events of occupation with anger.

Denys Kostev, a pupil from Kherson, failed to hide his discordancy with Russian occupation, as a result of which he was forcibly deported to and detained in a re-education camp for Ukrainian children.

Later, he was used as proof of the functionality of the Russian repressive system: his face often present in Russian propagandistic media. In videos, Denys spoke according to the basics of Russian propaganda and claimed his readiness to serve in the Russian army.

Russians forced him to decline his relatives’ call to return to them, which caused him to stay on Russian-controlled territory for several months more, avoiding contact with his family. Finally, the Save Ukraine organization succeeded in rescuing Denys, but he came back a different person.

Going from defending Ukraine in TikTok to making videos in support of Russian aggression, Denys now sees himself as a “lost soul”.¹ His worldview was ruptured by Russian indoctrination, and his Ukrainian identity was taken away by the dissociation that came with multidimensional colonial violence.

Denys was rescued, but this possibility is not open to everyone. The storyline of Denys can be applied to multiple (ex)children’s destinies who survive the occupation, with the difference that they could not escape the final goal of the conversion.

Growing up under the occupation is policed by colonial pedagogy that mainly directs its force to, speaking in Achille Mbembe’s terms, the creation of death-worlds.² Russia is actively developing a web of institutions on occupied lands that instill loyalty among children. It’s already possible to speak of the army formed from stolen Ukrainian youth who are fighting against Ukrainians. Violent identity transformation guarantees the reproduction of groups that are programmed to be in long-term conflict, reproducing violence in the corresponding geographies.³ It instills certain visions of the future that allow the Empire to treat the living bodies as a resource for industrial colonial erasure. For centuries, Russia enforced a social logic that instrumentalized the bodies of Ukrainians for the goals of imperialistic expansion, and pedagogy was central to that process. Ukraine inherited a rich educational infrastructure from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, including colonial frameworks that designed pedagogical practices. Ukrainian academia slowly started to do the work of reappropriation of the educational infrastructure by making it the place of decolonial critique and redistribution. In Ukraine-controlled lands, the Russian invasion accelerated the process of distancing from the common academic space with the former Soviet republics. But in the Temporarily Occupied Territories (TOT), it made it impossible to stay out of Russian direct control over knowledge production. In an active phase of imperial aggression, the educational infrastructure activates its ties with colonial genealogy and turns to a space for terror and indoctrination.

To establish control over the newly occupied territories, the Russian government organizes spatial politics that limit movement and consequently establishes “borders on the imagination”,⁴ limiting the thinking to the current (geo)political setup. The zoning of the territories as “new regions” makes the land administered in a specific way that aims to mentally separate it, making it a space for the exercise of the sovereign’s power. Zoning enables the imposition of the state of exception, “vertical” control in the air space, appropriation of digital infrastructure, and malfunction of the public sphere. Accompanied by the fear of being close to the erasing and polluting brutality of the frontline/frontier, these technologies produce an environment that constrains the living through specific rules due to “security threats”: “extremism” and “terrorism” in the sense Russian autorrities use it, often meaning the forces that undermine legitimacy and legality of Russian authorities’ actions in domesticand foreign policy In the case of children, especially orphans, these spatial and political configurations create a feeling of isolation, conducive to the objectifying manipulations of bio- and necropolitics.

Children know that their rescue from TOT is hard to conduct and are aware of the surveillance that is practised on TOT. Through deportation, identity transformation and movement restriction, children are practising various strategies of dealing with various institutionalized forms of engagement and collaboration that the Russian state enforces on them.

Making sense of these engagements that took place on the TOT after the invasion, I will try not to follow the desubjectifying practice of aggressors regarding Ukrainian children. Victimization is used by Russian war criminals to justify the crime of deportation, narrating it as an evacuation mission that has a humanitarian cause. Speaking in the logic of victimization discourse, children are those who need protection, so the forced deportation from the warzone should be treated as a gesture of mercy.

Russian approach to Ukrainian children is a continuation of the broader Russian policy of desubjectivation of the enemy through negation of its will and identity. Securitization tactics on the TOT directed at children mean that the Russian authorities are aware that Ukrainian children are not only one to “save”, but are powerful agents that can influence the trajectory of the ongoing battle. So this is why they are desperately seeking to subjugate their autonomy with the help of a complex institutional web and aggressive pedagogical tools. And in cases of disobedience, by torturing and killing them.⁵

Axis of humanitarization

Russian colonial style of pedagogy operates on different levels and pierces different spheres of life. Due to the occupational practices in TOT, the operating areas for colonial pedagogy are recreation (“оздоровление”), education, entertainment, leisure and socialization. For colonial subjectivation to unfold in the mentioned fields, it also needs spaces and presupposes certain formats. These formats demand to network, engage, and become part of the “big country” and its net, to repetitively affirm the Russian identity and to disperse this affirmation in the living experience of children. Outline of imposed networking consists of spaces, travels, camps, entertaining events, and digital initiatives. Together, operating areas, spaces and formats create the environment that locks in the life and (future) death of (ex)children, reproducing the structures that are needed for colonial exploitation and expansion.

Since 2022, when Russia occupied more Ukrainian land than it did before, including parts of Zaporizhska and Khersonska regions, Russian governmental initiatives began actively taking part in the regions’ civil life with programs and content for children in TOT that praise the so-called “re-union” with the Russian Federation. These projects were mostly initiated by the Russian president Vladimir Putin, but formally were spearheaded by Rosmolodezh (Росмолодёжь), the Ministry of Enlightenment of Russia (Министерство просвещения Российской Федерации) and new structures like the Ministry of Youth Policy (Министерство по молодёжной политики) (rapidly formed in occupied regions after full-scale invasion).

Most state-run institutions that are working with children are entangled with each other. Russia transfers kids from one institution to another, creating a centralized net that can consume all of their free time. For example, forum SouthYoung (ЮгМолодой) (2022), and Movement of Firsts (Движение Первых) (2022), initiatives which are active in TOT, were founded in 2022. To indoctrinate Ukrainian youth, they partner with established Russian organizations like Eaglets of Russia (Орлята России), Young Guard (Молодая гвардия) and Yunarmy (Юнармия), which were tested in Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014. Through these initiatives, Russia attempts to assimilate children as citizens of Russia and to impose the ideological unity of the TOT with the Russian Federation.

By tightly controlling children’s schedules and penetrating their daily routines, the system blocks any possibility of staying outside of the reach of propaganda and the burden to perform belonging to the Russian nation.⁶ To escape more surveillance, children are persuaded to repeatedly apologize for their identity by correcting themselves in accordance with the Russian fascist ideology and its rituals. Becoming a routine, reeducation becomes a repetitive insistence on loyalty as a way to internalize the colonial imperative.

The discourse in which the elements of the system exist is the discourse of the gift. Unity is imposed from the format of passive perception of benefits that Russia obtrudes through the hierarchy of so-called “chiefs” and the discourse of liberation, aid and rebuilding. Daria Getmanova follows Hagar Kotef’s notion of humanitarized subjectivity that is constructed as a subjectivity of a receiver of the aid and nothing more. Reduced to survival through violence and terror, humanitarized subject is a subject to be “savable and only savable”.⁷ Framed in this way, colonization camouflaged with help, repair, humanitarian aid and gifts creates for itself unlimited possibilities of exploitation through indebtedness.

Humanitarian aid comes not only in the form of supplies but infrastructural repair, often directed at schools. For example, occupied Berdyansk remains under “shefstvo” (patronage) from the city of Tver. Summing up the investments of Tver in infrastructural reactivation, the local authorities mention 60 objects where repairs took place. Many of them are schools, restaurants, stadiums and sports areas in educational facilities.⁸

Fig. 1. Telegram-channel Бердянск. Официально. Screenshot of post from 25 November 2024. URL: https://t.me/glava_brd/10026

Russia is filling the occupied territories with dual-purpose gifts. Something that repairs or improves infrastructure and conditions, but at the same time, inside these gifts, Russians are packing radicalizing ideology. They replace the meaning of local spaces with a new one, filling schools, universities and museums with propagandistic military-patriotic events, as well as create spaces designed for activities deemed necessary by the occupational government. Quickly after the occupation of the beach of the Azov Sea, the Russian government built the Mayak Center for Creation (Центр созидания “Маяк”), narrating its building as a place specifically for youth. Building construction was overseen directly by Sergei Kirienko, the First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. Propagandistic media wrote that Mayak “focused on training public opinion leaders in Donbass and Novorossiya, integrating historical subjects into the unified communication space of Russia”.⁹ In other words, Mayak Center was planned as a settler colonial infrastructure, where children are exercising and developing colonial practices to occupy their own land.

On opening day, Putin connected online to explain the aim of the center himself: “This educational center will help young people throughout the region to build careers related to entering the cultural and educational space of the Russian Federation and to feel like true citizens of our vast and great country”.¹⁰ Propagandistic resources that are filling new infrastructure spent to create emotional dependencies on Russian ideology, even if necessity to embody this feeling of being a “true russian citizen” always refers to the past it’s trying to hide. Despite agreement or disagreement, all that matters is the disciplined continuation of performance. “Fake it till you feel it”.

The Mayak Center is the venue for the SouthYoung forum, which takes place there once a year. Forum SouthYoung happens in the summer, as many other similar indoctrinating forums and camps, and in that period, most of the children’s deportations take place. SouthYoung combines different events to attract youth in the occupied territories to voluntarily invest in the assimilation processes under occupation.¹¹ Formally adhering to the format of the neoliberal forum, Russia replaces spontaneous collective formation with the dead-born, top-down forms of engagement designed to stage performances of children’s loyalty to the Russian Federation and its Armed Forces.

Fig. 2. Telegram-channel #ЮгМолодой. Post from 2 December 2024. URL: https://t.me/YugMolodoj/21229

Fig. 3. Telegram-channel #ЮгМолодой. Post from 23 April 2025. URL: https://t.me/YugMolodoj/23894

In social media and on websites, promoters of the program sell the event as emotional, entertaining and one that will make any young person happy. Most of the websites of this and partner initiatives are supported by attractive visions of collective engagement and happiness. Whether such agitation works or not, it is wrong to ignore the necessity of young people to socialise and interact during periods of isolation and surveillance under occupation. Exploiting these desires , Russia creates the basis for further engagement, where friends gathered on events can become comrades in the struggle for the values of the occupier country, even if they are violent and unjust.

Russian puppet authorities’ project “Cultural map 4+85” («Культурная карта 4+85») proposes for young people from the four occupied oblasts to familiarize themselves with the 85 Russian regions.¹² Producing emotional ties to spaces in Russia through such projects allows Russia to mobilise young people in the case that these places are asked to be “defended” in the future. An important point in this journey is Moscow — a metropolis that should be remembered as powerful and one that brings richness and innovation, a city that is worth dying for.

Educational structures impose trajectories of moving through colonial social life for the individual in accordance with the needs of the state. The state defines how many resources it will give to the individual, depending on their choices and how much it will take from him or her after the investment. In the Russian case, investment converts into military enforcement of the imperial state.

Resourcification of the Body as a way to control the Time

In any case in which Russia invests in humanitarian efforts, it creates logistical channels to transport militarization through them. Militarization is a part of humanitarian aid given as a gift that no one asked for. And by militarizing “humanitarian” infrastructure, Russia takes back what it gifted. As if this infrastructure was a yo-yo.

In the necropolitical realm, militancy becomes a part of the subject constitution. Recreation camps have become the basis of military preparation and reeducation, which is now a part of governmental policy led by Putin.¹³ Good or bad grades at school — all lead the children to Avantgard camps and Voin centers, where rest in the camp somehow means exhaustive military training and consuming propagandistic dogmas.¹⁴ Schools and universities are visited by participants of Russian aggression in Ukraine and taught pupils to prepare for war under the title “Talks about what’s important” («Разговоры о важном»). Engagement in civil life takes the form of securitization and participation in policing structures, as it takes place with the Volunteer youth squads (Добровольческие молодёжные дружини).

Fig. 4. Screenshot from the article Наталія Стратована, “Готовий солдат: Як Росія у дитячих таборах робить з українських дітей російських військових,” Суспільне Новини, опубл. червня 18, 2024. URL: https://suspilne.media/944887-gotovij-soldat-ak-rosia-u-ditacih-taborah-robit-z-ukrainskih-ditej-rosijskih-vijskovih/.

Fig. 5. Telegram-channel Добровольческая молодёжная дружина. Post from 3 May 2025. URL: https://t.me/DMD_ZO/920

Taking thoughts from Mbembes’s Necropolitics, in children’s case, the killing of parents and deportation (that often take place in the process of occupation) serve to enforce the triple loss for a kid: “loss of a ‘home,’ loss of rights over his or her body, and loss of political status”.¹⁵ Occupational practices of Russia move in the logic of international norms subversion that is normal for late-modern colonial occupation. In the Ukrainian case, it ends not only with genocidal elimination, but genocidal resourcification of the body.

The indoctrination of Ukrainian children has become a field sustained by governmental funding derived from Russia’s oil revenues. The partial subordination of the Russian economy and society to the goals of war creates a situation in which the aggressor is far from exhaustion in military abilities. A political order structured around death seeks to secure its own continuity, and children become the perfect material for materializing that desire.

Dehumanizing destruction that accompanied the so-called demilitarization goals of Russia in Ukraine went through humanitarization and desubjectivation, to what can be named remilitarization — militarization of emptied life. On the basis of erasure, Russians configure new subjects assembled from ideological stands and filled with Russian military ambitions.

The image of Ukrainian children training in Russian military uniform is created to convince the viewer of a certain vision of the future. Such an image means infinite war. At least, Russia wants it to have such an influence. Russian terror moves into the future through these images and practices: it claims that there will be no end, because children will grow and will join the expansion of the Russian empire.

In light of hybrid aggression against the EU-NATO countries that largely took place in 2025, it seems that Ukrainian children will fight for Russia not only against their own country, but also against other states. The ways for them to rewrite what was coded in them seem to be hidden in the fog of war. How long are we imagining the war to be? Especially if we consider the practices that, by militarizing children, militarize temporality itself. How long will it take to demilitarize children if it can be done without just replacing the militaristic mindset from one to another? Do Ukrainian and European societies in general have the spaces and approaches for the deoccupation of the body? For now, what we have is a factory of converting Ukrainian children into “lost souls” — killed because of resistance, preparing to die in the Russian wars or just confused about what is wrong and what is not. And the price for the inability to save their souls is only rising. Rising day after day with the children’s growth. Yo-yo returns to the hand.