This summer, Russian accusations that children in Estonia were being trained to shoot at pictures of Russian soldiers made their way into our media as well. The claim was, of course, nonsense, but it brought attention to the war hysteria gripping Russia — particularly among its youth and children. I want to continue discussing this issue because the psychological conditioning of young people in our eastern neighbor is a long-term project.

Sergei Kiriyenko, deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, has said that the country must prepare for a professional, long-term and serious fight in the realm of information and ideology. He added that this war will not end, as it is a civilizational conflict.

And so, beginning this September, brainwashing sessions under the name "Conversations About Important Things" were launched in Russian kindergartens — initially in 100 institutions across 22 regions. Children are supposedly being taught about traditional values, compassion and Russian history. It all sounds innocent enough.

The pilot program will run until the end of the year, after which the Ministry of Education is expected to decide whether to make these sessions mandatory in all kindergartens. One can predict that indoctrination will be introduced nationwide. In schools, such sessions were already made mandatory in the previous academic year.

According to the publication Agenstvo, around 12 percent of all classroom instruction last year involved elements that promoted Kremlin ideology. These included subjects like "Conversations About Important Things," "Fundamentals of Homeland Security and Defense," and "Spiritual and Moral Foundations of the Peoples of Russia," among others. The number of these classes was three times higher than in 2022.

Since the start of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine, government spending on patriotic education has increased more than thirteenfold, reaching 66.6 billion rubles — or about €700 million — this year.

To make room in the curriculum for propaganda classes, changes are being made. The Ministry of Education announced that, starting this September, the number of foreign language classes would be reduced from 510 to 408 — at first for grades five through seven. In place of foreign languages, which in most Russian schools means English, students will be taught the aforementioned spiritual and moral foundations of Russia. These new lessons will introduce figures who, through their lives, exemplify the importance of value-based choices. Among them will be the so-called heroes of the war in Ukraine.

A corresponding textbook has already been compiled with the involvement of Metropolitan Tikhon of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is widely considered to be Vladimir Putin's spiritual advisor.

Ideological grooming also takes place in history classes from the first grade through high school. Children are taught about the eternally aggressive West, the "Banderites" in Ukraine and the so-called heroes of Russia's "special military operations." The problem with the latter group is that they've started interfering with school life — not just because they're being sent into schools to speak to children by mandate, but also financially.

In early September, a memorial to those killed in the war in Ukraine was opened in the village of Tsautsei, east of Lake Baikal, with local authorities allocating 17 million rubles for the project. Meanwhile, the local school has been in a state of disrepair for five years, and two years ago, teachers and students sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin asking for help. He did not respond. In some other villages, schools have simply been shut down due to the risk of collapse or actual structural failure. At the same time, local authorities are spending tens of millions of rubles on war-glorifying monuments. Incidentally, it would have taken only 5 million rubles — less than a third of the memorial's cost — to repair the previously mentioned school.

In addition to mental conditioning, there are also more concrete preparations underway. One method involves recruiting children into the Yunarmiya, or Youth Army, which was created in 2016 on the initiative of then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The Youth Army is also active in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Until 2022, participation in this organization was mostly symbolic — just another box to check. But now, children are being directly prepared for military service. For older students, joining has become mandatory. Previously, the minimum age to join was 14; now, it's eight.

Schools are teaching students how to operate drones and weave camouflage nets, but also how to handle firearms and engage in tactical battlefield behavior. One of the formats is a military-sports initiative called Voin — or Warrior — aimed at teens and young adults up to age 35. According to Russian media, the movement was created at Putin's direction. In 2023, the first 11 Warrior centers opened and the number has since grown to at least 21.

There are also Defense Ministry-affiliated programs in which hundreds of thousands of students are directly involved in drone production. In Tatarstan, for example, there's a company called Alabuga Polytech, which presents itself as a technical college. Its students spend much of their time assembling Iranian drones in a special economic zone. Recruits are drawn not only from across the CIS countries, but also from Africa. Many of the young people working in these workshops are minors.

To sum it all up: young people and children are being used directly to sustain the war effort and are being prepared for the front lines in the future. Teachers have warned that the ideological atmosphere in schools is altering young people's way of thinking. When you're constantly surrounded by images of Putin and so-called war heroes, when you're bombarded with messages about the hostile West and "Nazi" Ukraine and told over and over about the need to sacrifice yourself for the homeland, it inevitably shapes the person you become.

And all of this is happening with the knowledge — and at least tacit approval — of parents, which reflects the broader mindset of a population that the authorities have molded in an atmosphere of war hysteria.

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