Russia intensifies combat training for high schoolers in occupied Crimea — Irade human rights initiative

Russia is turning schools and public spaces in occupied Crimea into platforms for military propaganda, according to data from a non-public report by the Irade human rights initiative obtained by ZMINA. Monitoring conducted between February 2025 and May 2025 reveals a systematic campaign to press-gang local residents into the Russian military.

Key violations documented by investigators include:

• Compulsory military training for tenth-grade pupils, including firearms training conducted directly in Russian military units;
• Organised meetings with war veterans in schools, cultural centres, children’s sanatoriums, and libraries;
• Continuous broadcast of recruitment advertisements for contract service in the Russian army over public address systems; 
• Recruitment posters advertising contract service offices were displayed in public transport across Simferopol and Sevastopol;
• Sustained recruitment propaganda across Russian-controlled media, social networks, and local authority websites, specifically targeting the Crimean Tatar audience.  

These actions directly violate Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits occupying powers from both compelling civilians to serve in their armed forces or conducting propaganda to secure voluntary enlistment.

The Center for Civic Education “Almenda” warns that Russia’s ultimate goal in occupied territories is to transform Ukrainian children into a mobilization reserve. According to Mariia Sulialina, head of the organization, this system of “identity erasure” targets approximately 1.6 million children, including at least 582,000 school-age children. The process is driven by four key pillars: political indoctrination, militarization, the destruction of Ukrainian educational standards, and aggressive recruitment propaganda.

Evidence shows that this indoctrination has already led to fatal consequences, with documented cases of 18-year-old Ukrainians dying in combat while fighting for the Russian army against their own country. By 2026, the number of cadet classes in occupied Crimea alone had surged 102-fold, while at least 344,600 young people had been integrated into the Kremlin-controlled “Movement of the First.” This massive investment in militarization aims to ensure that children, deprived of alternative information, accept Russian narratives as their own.

Previously, ZMINA reported that Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for the Southern Defense Forces, stated that starting April 1, 2026, Russia plans to deploy all individuals mobilized from temporarily occupied Crimea into active combat. Specifically, there are plans to replace wounded and “unfit” personnel within the 810th Marine Brigade, stationed in Sevastopol, with these newly mobilized residents.