Kremlin’s Use of Veterans with Criminal Pasts and PTSD as Teachers in Regular Russian Schools Backfiring

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Having failed to get even the United Russia Party to agree to push veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine into political office, the Kremlin is now inserting veterans, including many with criminal pasts or suffering from PTSD, as teachers in the early grades of Russian schools, hoping to keep these veterans loyal and to inculcate its version of patriotism.
    The Russian government has even set up a special training center in Moscow to provide such veterans with some training in pedagogy – see vk.com/vershinarus?w=wall-224943658_2%2Fall – but Moscow’s primary interest, Horizontal Russia says is propagandistic (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/18/cennye-kadry).
    The independent news portal says that the Putin regime believes correctly that the earlier it can inculcate its version of patriotism, the more success it will have in ensuring that the new generation will remain on its side and carry out all the orders that the center gives them. But the system is backfiring, Horizontal Russia continues.
    Many of the veterans inserted in the schools do not behave well and they frighten the children rather than attract them to Putin’s cause. And their parents are outraged that the education of their children is being sacrificed to propaganda and that this propaganda is being carried out by people with few educational credentials and numerous personal problems.
    Educational specialists, the portal says, are recommending that parents who are troubled by this use of veterans of the war in Ukraine as teachers should either shift their children to other schools where such “teachers” have not yet appeared or if necessary homeschool their children so they won’t be put at risk by such teachers.