Russian authorities in occupied Ukrainian territories are forcing Ukrainian children into a school system that violates their right to education and seems designed to destroy their Ukrainian national identity, Human Rights Watch said today.
The education system mirrors Russia's national curriculum and excludes Ukrainian-language instruction. Occupation authorities surveil and punish children for studying in Ukrainian schools online, require students to obtain Russian passports to graduate, indoctrinate children with anti-Ukraine propaganda and militaristic lessons, and channel boys toward Russian military registration and conscription. An estimated 1.6 million children, 600,000 of whom are school-age, remain in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.
"Russia is using schools to teach Ukrainian children loyalty to the Kremlin, glorify the Russian invasion, and prepare them to go to war against their own people," said Bill Van Esveld, associate children's rights director at Human Rights Watch. "Governments should keep these abuses high on their agenda with Russia; and Ukraine and its partners should increase education and mental health support for children from occupied territories."
Russian authorities and their proxies in occupied areas of Ukraine are systematically imposing Russian laws, administrative structures, and institutions, replacing Ukrainian laws in violation of international humanitarian law governing occupation. They force Ukrainians, including children, to obtain Russian passports, to engage with occupation authorities, and ultimately to remain in their homes. This violates children's right to preserve their identity and nationality guaranteed under international human rights law.
In October and November 2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 5 children, ages 11 to 17, who had left occupied areas; 3 young adults who had attended school under Russian occupation; 26 teachers with students in occupied territory; Ukraine's education ombudsperson; 3 psychologists; and 8 staff at Ukrainian civil society organizations assisting with evacuation and reintegration, including Almenda, GenUkrainian, Save Ukraine, Voices of Children, and the Ukraine Child Rights Network. Human Rights Watch also met with representatives of Ukraine's Bring Kids Back initiative.
Children, parents, and psychologists described armed men visiting or raiding homes and taking computers and phones to search for Ukrainian online school materials, and threatening to send children to residential institutions if they were not enrolled in Russian-run schools. In one case at a Russian-run school in 2023, a 12-year-old boy found with Ukrainian online school materials on his phone was sent to the principal's office, his Ukrainian teacher said. When armed Russian soldiers came to the office, the boy had a "nervous breakdown" requiring medical attention, and authorities then regularly searched his family's home.
Russian internet controls have also made Ukrainian online education harder and more dangerous. Since 2025, authorities have blocked messaging apps such as WhatsApp, throttled access to YouTube and Telegram, and required the use of Russian-developed apps that parents fear enable surveillance. According to Ukrainian government data, roughly 12,000 students from occupied areas dropped out of Ukrainian online schools between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.
Educators are increasingly required to disseminate official Russian narratives, facing professional risks if they deviate, said United Nations human rights agencies and rapporteurs. Russian-run schools require children to sing the Russian national anthem, recite Russian patriotic poems, write letters and draw pictures for Russian soldiers, and attend "Conversations about Important Things" lessons promoting Russian-state narratives.
Children said that their teachers claimed that Ukrainian statehood and identity do not exist, Ukraine is "ruled by Nazis," and justified Russia's invasion. Lessons promote loyalty to the Russian state, confidence in Russian state leadership, and reverence for those fighting in Russia's war against Ukraine. History textbooks include blatant anti-Ukrainian narratives.
Russian school staff pressured or required students to join state-backed youth organizations that combine ideological training with elements of militarization, and to attend militarized camps. Children were trained with automatic weapons, drones, landmines, and hand grenades. In some cases, schools in occupied areas function as an entry point into Russia's military system, facilitating military registration and eventual conscription.
Human Rights Watch previously reported on Russia's coercive takeover of education systems during its occupation of parts of Kharkiv that Ukrainian forces recaptured around the beginning of the 2022-23 school year.
International human rights law guarantees children a right to education that respects their language, culture, and national values. Article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that states shall respect the right of the child to his or her identity, including nationality, and shall not unlawfully interfere with it. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits propaganda for war.
International humanitarian law prohibits an occupying power from compelling residents of the occupied territory to serve in its armed forces or using pressure or propaganda to secure enlistment. Violations of these prohibitions are grave breaches of the laws of war and may constitute war crimes. International humanitarian law also prohibits an occupying power from changing laws in occupied territory, which Russian authorities have done with respect to Ukraine's law on education. An occupying military is required to "facilitate the proper working" of schools in cooperation with "the national and local authorities."
Children who reach Ukrainian-controlled territory often show signs of anxiety and trauma, psychologists said. A psychologist gave an example of a boy who began having seizures while living under occupation, which he found "overwhelming." The boy and his family left the occupied areas after occupation authorities threatened him for singing the Ukrainian anthem at school.
Ukraine's government provides children who evacuate Russian-occupied areas with a relocation grant, medical care, official documents, assessments, and treatment plans. However, follow-up care depends on financially stretched local authorities.
Civil society groups and teachers urged Ukraine's education ministry to expand reintegration support, including remedial education, Ukrainian language instruction, psychological support for students and teachers, and teacher training to address Russian propaganda and prevent bullying of children for speaking Russian or repeating narratives learned in Russian-run schools. Ukraine's parliamentary ombudsperson called for greater outreach to students under occupation about enrolling in Ukrainian universities.
Governments and organizations supporting Ukraine should increase financial assistance to strengthen the education system and support children and teachers relocated from occupied areas.
"Russian abuses against Ukrainian children have been widely condemned, yet children both under occupation and those who managed to leave still urgently need support," Van Esveld said. "Parents, teachers, and civil society groups are helping these children thrive despite trauma and deprivation. Governments supporting Ukraine should scale up assistance to ensure they succeed."
Suppression of Ukrainian Education and Coercion into Russian Schools
Russian authorities have systematically suppressed Ukrainian language and education in occupied territories, while using surveillance, threats, and punishment to create an environment in which children cannot safely express their Ukrainian identity or access Ukrainian schooling.
This pattern began in occupied parts of Donetska and Luhanska regions in 2014 and intensified after Russia's full-scale invasion, on February 24, 2022, creating an overwhelming climate of fear that persists.
Students and teachers described harassment and penalties for speaking Ukrainian, repeated home searches, threats, and pressure to enroll children in Russian-run schools and restricted access to Ukrainian education online. They monitor students' phones, search homes, and punish those found using Ukrainian materials. Despite these risks, some families continued to access Ukrainian education covertly.
A 20-year-old university student from Luhanska region said that even before 2022, students avoided speaking Ukrainian "even in the hallways or in the yard," because it would "cause problems" and trigger harassment from school administrators. Her school stopped all instruction in Ukrainian, including language and literature classes, in 2019. In 2025, Russia removed Ukrainian language instruction from curricula in occupied areas.
A former student from Khersonska region, age 17, said that her principal had transferred her to another school as punishment for speaking Ukrainian, and that she was temporarily placed in a Russian-run school that had "no books or teachers."
Another student who attended a Russian-run school in Zaporizka region in 2024-25, when he turned 16, said that teachers reported students who "said pro-Ukraine things in class" to law enforcement authorities, and police could visit their homes. He said that soldiers stationed at school entrances would sometimes "show up in the middle of class and check a student's phone." He also said that during the first year of the full-scale invasion, Russian forces would search his home two or three times a month.
He said that when he was 15, Russian soldiers woke him at 4 a.m. shining "a strong light in my face" and beat his father. Occupation officials pressured his family to enroll him and his sister, then 7, in Russian-run schools. Their mother tried to stall, but she said that in August 2024 officials gave her an ultimatum: enroll her children in a Russian-run school by September or she would have to look for them "in an orphanage in [Russian regions of] Rostov-on-Don or Siberia." She ultimately gave in and enrolled them.
Nevertheless, they were also able to attend Ukrainian classes remotely from 2022-25 using a phone their mother hid under a commode seat and burning their homework after it was sent.
One teacher said the parents of a fifth-grade student feared he might reveal his online Ukrainian studies if he spoke Ukrainian or made anti-occupation comments, so they allowed him to visit a playground only twice in six months and forbade him to talk to other children.
Other students used VPNs, changed their names online, and joined online Ukrainian lessons from isolated spaces in their homes for fear of being discovered. A Ukrainian teacher said some children joined her classes from storage rooms so neighbors would not overhear.
Russian restrictions on messaging apps, VPNs, and internet access have further limited access to Ukrainian education. In 2025, a student's mother stopped communicating with his Ukrainian online school after her employer required her to install the Russian "MAX" messenger on her phone, the student's teacher said. The mother feared authorities could use the app to surveil her phone for evidence of Ukrainian schooling. Reporters Without Borders and Ukrainian rights groups report that the MAX app stores user data on Russian servers and can harvest data from users' phones.
Ukraine's education ombudswoman stated that enrollment in online schools from occupied territories dropped from 56,000 in the 2024-25 academic year, to 44,000 in 2025-26.
Indoctrination and Propaganda in Schools
Schools function as a central mechanism for disseminating Russian state ideology and reshaping children's understanding of identity and history. Children described a school system centered on nationalist and militarized messaging aligned with Russian state narratives.
Students said they were required to sing the Russian national anthem, recite patriotic poems, and attend "Conversations about Important Things" lessons up to three times a week. One student said that in her first grade, "We wrote letters to soldiers saying thank you for protecting us … We watched videos about who soldiers were, and that they were heroes."
Another said that in ninth grade, "they [teachers and visiting military] would talk about the [so-called] special military operation, how they're making history, we should honor their actions," and students had to subscribe to occupation "propaganda channels" on Telegram, he said.
Students at a school in the occupied areas of Luhanska region raised the Russian flag and sang the anthem at each school assembly, a former pupil said. This practice has been ongoing for years. Russia's Education Ministry made flag raising assemblies mandatory in occupied Ukraine in 2024. School events tied to public holidays "revolved around propaganda," emphasizing that students should be proud of being Russian and "love our Fatherland," she said. Her school had classes dedicated to Russian state ideology and militarized messaging.
A former student who evacuated from occupied Mariupol in November 2025 said her 9-year-old brother and 7-year-old sister attend Russian-run schools where teachers have told them "that Mariupol is Russian, they live in Russia." She described frequent patriotic events at school where her siblings had to wear military uniforms, march, sing Russian patriotic songs, and make cards and drawings for Russian soldiers. The messaging was so pervasive, she said, that when her younger sister was asked to draw her family in art class, she added Russian flags in the background.
Military-Patriotic Education and Youth Groups
A compulsory course, "Fundamentals of Security and Protection of Fatherland," taught weekly, includes elements of basic military training and glorifies Russia's war against Ukraine, former students said.
Schools also host events and youth initiatives intended to instill loyalty to the Kremlin and readiness for military service. School staff pressure students to join Russia-sponsored groups, including the "Youth Army" (YunArmiya), the "Movement of the First" (a recreation of the Soviet patriotic Pioneer Organization), and present participation as a condition for graduation. The groups hold meetings at schools, and activities include military-style training exercises.
Students from an eleventh-grade class in a school in Luhanska were required to attend a meeting of the Youth Army, where a cameraman filmed them. One student said that she "felt disgusted" and humiliated, but a local television segment portrayed students' reactions as "patriotic elation and overwhelming love of the Motherland." Several other students said teachers or youth group instructors recorded them without consent and posted such videos online.
The family from the Zaporizka region said that in 2024 school staff pressured them to enroll their daughter and son in the Orlyata Rossii (Eaglets of Russia) and Yug Molodoy (Youth of the South) respectively, which are state-sponsored youth groups that met at their schools after classes. Instructors "would take attendance and photos [of students] and send their [personal] information to the occupation forces' juvenile police, who investigated absences," the son said.
The Ukraine Child Rights Network said that children from Khersonska region told them that their schools had required students who refused to sing the Russian national anthem to attend Voin (Warrior) Center and Young Army youth groups. And a Save Ukraine case manager reported that children evacuated in 2024-25 from Berdyansk, Melitopol, and Crimea said that Russian-run secondary schools told them that participation in youth groups was important for graduation.
Both the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Ukrainian nongovernmental organization Almenda, which focuses on children's rights under occupation, have identified extensive coerced membership of school children in youth groups that prepare children for service in Russian state institutions and armed forces. Teams of schoolchildren from occupied Ukrainian territories participated in "Zarnitsa 2.0," a tactical war games competition open to children ages 7 and older and organized by the Movement of the First and the Young Army organizations.
Military Training and Camps
Russian authorities have extended school-based patriotic education into coerced participation in camps and training programs that expose children to military training and normalize participation in armed conflict, based on reports by Almenda, Save Ukraine, and the Yale Humanitarian Observatory. The Regional Center for Human Rights has reported an expanding network of facilities across Russia and occupied areas that combine patriotic propaganda with weapons familiarization, tactical exercises, and drone training. In a March 2025 report, OHCHR found that in occupied territory Russia had imposed a system of "patriotic and military education."
The university student from Luhansk said that in her final school year, 2024, male classmates received basic military training several times a week as a part of the "Fundamentals of Security and Protection of the Fatherland" curriculum, including shooting and weapons maintenance, on school grounds.
Children from Zaporizka region told Save Ukraine staff that since 2023 school officials pressured boys ages 15-17 to attend camps where they received a week of training with automatic weapons and drones.
In the final school year for the student from Khersonska, staff urged students to register for "what we thought was a summer camp," she said. "We thought about the sea, about vacation." In July 2024, the student and two of her brothers, ages 16 and 17, traveled to the "Voin Avangard Center" in Henichesk. Staff issued students with military-cadet-style uniforms, separated boys and girls, and transported the children to Volgograd, about 1,000 kilometers away. "We traveled two days by bus, without stops, and then by train." At the Volgograd facility, she saw hundreds of boys and girls from occupied Ukraine and Russia.
She described regimented routines and military-like training. Children sang "the anthem of the Warrior Center, and the Russian anthem" daily. Instruction included emergency medicine, tactics, drone control, sapper training, radio communication, and trench digging. In one class, students "wore large suits and gas masks, and they timed how long it took us to put on these suits. Photographers took pictures of us," she said.
Students learned to disassemble and hold automatic weapons, and how to "hit with the butt if we ran out of ammunition." An instructor "threw a real grenade and gave us two seconds to fall to the floor." On the "hardest day," instructors took children out without breakfast or lunch, "and taught us how to move correctly with automatic weapons … and if we didn't do it right, we would stand there until we learned." The student was assigned to landmine warfare training: "They taught us how to properly mine, clear mines, and … set tripwires," she said. At the end of the program, a supervisor issued "certificates that we had completed military training."
Schools Facilitate Conscription
Save Ukraine staff said boys aged 16 and older were bused from school to military conscription points, where they were registered in advance to be drafted at age 18. At vocational colleges, "authorities just take [boys'] documents and register them for the draft in absentia." Once registered, it is impossible for that child to leave occupied territory, said a staff member.
Former students and civil society activists said that boys were being drafted into the Russian army, with deferrals only for boys who continued on to a university. "Practically all the boys in my class ended up drafted" once they turned 18, the university student said.
After the eleventh grade, the student from Khersonska, then 17, attended a college established by occupation authorities. A male friend was arrested by military police and sent to the front for shouting "Glory to Ukraine" in the dormitory. Another friend was also forcibly sent to the front and "disappeared without a trace," she said. When her brother was about to turn 18, military officials warned that if he did not report to the draft office, they would come for him. Both siblings fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory in May 2025.
Russian Passport Requirement for Graduation
Documentation requirements enforced by occupation authorities pressure students to accept Russian citizenship to continue and complete their education.
Russian education regulations in occupied territories require schools to maintain identification documents for students. After age 14, children may no longer use a birth certificate and must present a passport. Students must also provide identification to register for graduation exams and internal school assessments needed to receive a secondary school certificate. Because Ukrainian passports are often unavailable to children under occupation, many students are pressured to obtain Russian passports to complete their schooling.
In 2025, the student from Zaporizka was told by his homeroom teacher that he could not receive his ninth-grade completion certificate or continue to the next grade without a Russian passport. He said he was also told that as a 17-year-old, he would also have to register for the draft. "A couple weeks later, they [authorities] said he had to pack [for military service]," his mother said. "I realized he would be taken to fight." The family fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Parents who refuse to obtain Russian passports for their children may also face legal consequences under Russian law under the pretext that they are preventing their child from exercising their rights.
Psychological Impact on Children
These policies and practices have profound psychological consequences for children living under occupation. Psychologists described widespread trauma, including anxiety, fear of surveillance, and stress-related conditions.
A psychologist with Save Ukraine said most children she worked with from occupied territories "manifest deeply entrenched anxiety," including fear of being watched by Russian authorities.
A psychologist with the Ukrainian Child Rights Network described a boy who was so "overwhelmed" by propaganda and restrictions under occupation that he began having physical spasms. The boy had sung the Ukrainian anthem at school to protest the occupation, and his family evacuated due to threats from occupation authorities. Children also felt responsible for punishments their parents received for allowing them to attend Ukrainian school online, and some "wished they would be harmed or killed, instead of their parents," the psychologist said.
Reintegration Challenges in Ukraine
Children who reach Ukrainian-controlled territory often face significant challenges to recovery and reintegration into the education system. These stem from the trauma they have experienced under occupation and a lack of sufficient services to meet those needs, bullying, and bureaucratic barriers.
Under Ukrainian legislation, children arriving from occupied territories receive a 50,000 hryvnia resettlement grant (US$1,160) and medical treatment from the central government. Children are also entitled to housing assistance, educational materials, and psychological and integration support for up to 18 months, but these services are funded by local authorities already cash-strapped by the war.
Children from occupied territories frequently need remedial education, Ukrainian-language support, and psychological care, Ukrainian civil society groups said. Staff spoke about a 9-year-old boy with an untreated speech impairment who had never gone to school, a girl whose parents were killed and who missed four years of school, and a 14-year-old boy who had never spoken Ukrainian under occupation. A case manager said one boy needed three months of therapy to begin speaking after Russian authorities separated him at age 5 from his mother and placed him in an orphanage for more than a year.
Civil society groups provide psychological care, remedial education, and help accessing state support. However, there are not always adequate services available to meet students' needs at any given time, and what services are available can vary significantly.
While some Ukrainian schools provide individual online learning plans for children under occupation, and schools can create individualized in-person study plans for evacuated students, other schools may be unprepared. The Ukraine Child Rights Network supported one boy to obtain a special learning program from an Inclusive Resource Center initiative supported by UNESCO and Ukraine's Education Ministry, and then worked with his school to implement it.
Yet the director of GenUkrainian, a group helping children harmed by the war, gave another example in which a school declined to help a woman who had asked for psychological support and individualized lessons for her child: "They had no idea what to do." Because there is no national budget for such programs, what schools feel they are in a position to deliver is unpredictable. "It's up to the schools. In most cases they help," the education ombudswoman said.
Staff at Almenda also described "a lot" of bullying in Ukrainian schools of children who had come from occupied areas, who were more fluent in Russian than in Ukrainian and repeated Russian narratives taught under occupation. In one case, a teacher who had no training to prepare for a new student, criticized a 12-year-old boy who refused to wear a traditional embroidered Ukrainian shirt, a gift from his class. He was then bullied and assaulted by other students. Some bullied children changed schools or returned to online education.
Civil society groups said national guidelines and training programs were needed for teachers working with these children. Teachers also need psychosocial support, including for trauma, vicarious trauma, and burnout.
The Education Ministry has revised regulations so that children's educational attainments under occupation are recognized. The Ministry recognizes secondary-school attainment in most subjects for university applications. Ukraine also recognizes vocational, professional, and higher education obtained in occupied territories.
Civil society groups have set out further steps the Education Ministry can take to help students in occupied territory, including by collecting data about these students' access to online education disaggregated from data on children in other areas.
Ukraine's Parliamentary ombudsman found that the Education Ministry should take more robust action to inform students in occupied territory of higher education opportunities, in order to counter the drop from 11,325 university enrollments from students in occupied territory in 2024, to 9,418 in 2025.
