Kremlin ramps up youth military indoctrination amidst Ukraine conflict

The Kremlin has decided to maximize ideological propaganda among children and youth in a Soviet-style manner, for the first time openly including participation in the war with Ukraine and the West on the list of values instilled from childhood, reports The Moscow Times. "We need warriors, shooters, and attackers," says one of the Kremlin officials.

The task of "shaping among young people the readiness to fulfill the constitutional duty to protect the Motherland" is written in the draft law "On Systematizing the Sphere of Youth Policy," which has been sent to the State Duma on behalf of all five factions.

"We need warriors, shooters, and attackers. Those who will run to the military registration and enlistment office at the president's first call, and not towards Upper Lars," explained a Kremlin official in an interview with The Moscow Times.

Upper Lars is a checkpoint on the border of Russia with Georgia, through which Russians left the country in the fall of 2022 after the announcement of "partial mobilization."

"The jokes are over. Our homeland is in danger, threatened by the West and the USA. We no longer need hipsters, rappers, lovers of Western culture, and other non-binary people," added the official.

The Kremlin has recognized the fight for young people's minds as one of the main directions of internal policy since 2000, when Vladimir Putin first became president. Money from the central budget was regularly allocated to numerous projects and youth movements under the patronage of Kremlin ideologues—initially Vladislav Surkov, later Vyacheslav Volodin, and currently Sergey Kiriyenko.

However, as shown by the massive protests in 2011-2012 and the particularly strong support among youths for Putin's main opponent, Alexei Navalny, on the eve of the 2018 presidential elections, the regime has not managed to win over young people.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russian authorities have been more enthusiastic about youth policy. Just three months after the invasion, in May 2022, the "First Movement" was founded on Putin's initiative, reminiscent of Soviet pioneers. Since fall 2022, weekly solemn formations with the national flag and the anthem have been introduced in schools.

"Now the presidential administration is simply dusting off old practices and literally studying and adopting methodological recommendations that were used during Stalin's times and later," a source close to the Kremlin tells the portal. "There is no sense in reinventing the wheel when we are dealing with an example in our eyes—the 1930s and the years of the Great Patriotic War. We take the practices of our fathers and grandfathers and prepare the younger generation," added the source.

To systematize and unify a large number of initiatives in the field of ideological indoctrination of citizens from early childhood—starting in kindergartens, followed by schools and higher education—the Kremlin intends to seriously strengthen the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh).

The department's funding will be significantly increased, and next year, a new head will be appointed to report Russian media. Although after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian constitution stated that "no ideology can be established as state or mandatory", in practice, Rosmolodezh will become a state branch promoting state ideology. So far, Putin has declaratively rejected proposals to return state ideology to the text of the Constitution, calling "patriotism" the only possible ideology of contemporary Russia.