Study­ing in two shifts, patrols to pre­vent chil­dren from attend­ing a Ukrain­ian school online, and a “base­ment” [tor­ture cham­ber] for par­ents whose chil­dren attend a Ukrain­ian school. In the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, these are pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios for chil­dren who are try­ing to acquire Ukrain­ian edu­ca­tion in addi­tion to the manda­to­ry Russ­ian. Some chil­dren tried to find a way round and were even ready to forge their par­ents’ sig­na­tures in order to get into a Ukrain­ian school, some­times the whole grade announced that they were study­ing online in Ukraine, and some chil­dren could not with­stand the threats and chose the school pro­gram of the occu­pa­tion author­i­ties.

Ukrain­ian schools, which found them­selves under occu­pa­tion after the begin­ning of the full-scale inva­sion, con­tin­ue to work online. They have few­er stu­dents, but chil­dren still attend them. Fam­i­lies are devel­op­ing routes for chil­dren to leave the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries in order to pass the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Mul­ti-Sub­ject Test and enter Ukrain­ian uni­ver­si­ties.

The Ukrain­ian edu­ca­tion under occu­pa­tion means that chil­dren scat­tered around the world attend vir­tu­al class­rooms. In the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, some pages in the text­books are glued up to hide the Ukrain­ian coats of arms. In this arti­cle, “Sus­pilne” tells about edu­ca­tion dur­ing the war.

“The Ukrainian language had been taught until 2020 and was abolished then. At that time, they [Russians] were already preparing for the annexation”

“For as long as I can remem­ber, I always knew that I would study in Kyiv,” says 17-year-old Maria. This is not her real name, and there will be no details in the text that could reveal her iden­ti­ty. Maria is from the occu­pied part of Donet­sk region. All her con­scious life, she has been hid­ing her pro-Ukrain­ian stance and the fact that she stud­ied at two schools — in the occu­pa­tion and out­side it.

We are sit­ting in one of Kyiv co-work­ing spaces, and it is clear that Maria feels ner­vous. She has passed through 10 years of life behind the demar­ca­tion line, pro­pa­gan­da lessons at a local school, trips to pass the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Mul­ti-Sub­ject Test, and hours of ter­ri­fy­ing wait­ing at check­points in Donet­sk region. Maria bare­ly has enough courage to talk about the upcom­ing meet­ing with new class­mates.

“It always seems to me that I will meet here peo­ple who work for the FSB. That they will try to earn my trust, and will then trans­fer me [to Rus­sia],” she says.

The war start­ed when Maria was six. She had just fin­ished the first grade. The girl remem­bers this peri­od in frag­ments: she went with her moth­er and sis­ter to the already occu­pied Crimea to wait until the hos­til­i­ties are over. Once they called dad to say that they were going to come back soon, to which they received a short answer “no”. The forced vaca­tion in Crimea con­tin­ued in Zapor­izhzhia. She attend­ed the sec­ond grade there for about a month.

“At my school [in Donet­sk region], the sec­ond grade start­ed on Octo­ber 1. There were few class­mates — maybe fif­teen of the 33 chil­dren remained. But we were hap­py when some­one returned,” she recalls. “And we had the Ukrain­ian lan­guage! Until the eighth grade, that is, until 2020. A 90-minute les­son once a fort­night, com­pul­so­ry for every­one, not option­al. Then they abol­ished it — I do not remem­ber how they explained it, but it seems that they were already prepar­ing for the annex­a­tion.”

Ukrain­ian text­books did not dis­ap­pear from school libraries imme­di­ate­ly. It was only in the fifth grade that Maria first received books approved by the Russ­ian Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. Until that moment, the school chil­dren were sim­ply ordered to glue up pages with the Ukrain­ian coat of arms and the nation­al anthem. “If the pages were not glued, they used to say: “Glue up, quick­ly!”

Maria shows frag­ments from Russ­ian text­books in her phone. One of them was writ­ten by Vladimir Medin­sky, the for­mer Min­is­ter of Cul­ture of Rus­sia, who cur­rent­ly heads the “Com­mis­sion for His­tor­i­cal Enlight­en­ment”. It tells about a “coup d’é­tat” [in Ukraine], Rus­so­pho­bia, “rewrit­ing his­to­ry”, and “Ukrain­ian puni­tive squads”.

“How did you man­age to crit­i­cal­ly assess all this?” I asked her.

“Par­ents,” Maria replies. “I accept­ed every­thing they said because they are my fam­i­ly. Then I began to see how the Russ­ian [occu­pa­tion] author­i­ties work. And I under­stood — it is all true.”

In 2014, in the occupied part of Donetsk region, Ukrainian textbooks were not immediately replaced in school libraries with Russian books. Children were told to glue up pages with the Ukrainian coat of arms and the national anthem. Illustration by Inga Levi

After the sev­enth grade, Maria start­ed to attend one more school. Her par­ents enrolled her in online learn­ing at the near­est school in the Ukraine-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry. Then it was in the town of Vol­no­vakha. Every day, video record­ings of lessons with addi­tion­al mate­ri­als and home­work — most­ly in the writ­ten form — were giv­en to the class.

Maria’s fam­i­ly also vis­it­ed Vol­no­vakha for shop­ping, as the prices in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry were high­er. How­ev­er, with the begin­ning of the full-scale war, the city was occu­pied and destroyed by the Rus­sians. Since then, the girl’s fam­i­ly began to go to Ros­tov region for shop­ping. Maria trans­ferred to anoth­er dis­tance learn­ing Ukrain­ian school.

“I stud­ied asyn­chro­nous­ly. It means that I attend­ed online class­es when I could. Once a fort­night, there was an online con­sul­ta­tion in each sub­ject: on Thurs­day — in Ukrain­ian, on Mon­day — in Physics, and so on. Those who attend­ed class­es could have bonus­es and more atten­tion from teach­ers. The teach­ers were good,” the girl says. “At the end, we passed tests. I passed every­thing a month before the end [of stud­ies]. This year, I did all the tasks in a week.”

Maria admits that she does not like online edu­ca­tion, and she fin­ished a Ukrain­ian school in order to enter a uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, she says that she still feels lack of edu­ca­tion, because the school in Donet­sk region also switched to online learn­ing with the begin­ning of the full-scale war.

“For us, every­thing [the esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties before the begin­ning of the full-scale inva­sion] start­ed a lit­tle ear­li­er. Feb­ru­ary 18–19 — sirens, evac­u­a­tion, con­stant strikes [on Ukraine] with “Grad”, “Ura­gan” [mul­ti­ple launch rock­et sys­tems] — every­thing. I was in the ninth grade. We had a break from school for a month, and then they announced dis­tance learn­ing, but there were no online lessons, and the exams at the end of the year were can­celed,” the girl recalls.

She says that after the ninth grade she just stopped study­ing and start­ed prepar­ing for admis­sion to Kyiv [uni­ver­si­ty]. Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, Maria con­sis­tent­ly attend­ed only Social Stud­ies class­es — at that time she had already cho­sen the field of soci­ol­o­gy, so she tried to pick up every­thing that could be use­ful in the future. The girl recalls oth­er lessons with indig­na­tion:

“Let’s take Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture. There is a lot about war in it. I do not under­stand why they did not adjust the pro­gram for these ter­ri­to­ries [where active hos­til­i­ties were tak­ing place]. All my class­mates have war trau­ma; it is dif­fi­cult for every­one. How­ev­er, no one takes into account that it can trau­ma­tize again. The school psy­chol­o­gist did not talk about the war either. There were sev­er­al gen­er­al meet­ings, “Let’s talk about career guid­ance…” How­ev­er, they nev­er taught how to deal with the con­se­quences of the war.”

At the begin­ning of the spring of 2024, Maria and her par­ents were choos­ing where to take the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Mul­ti-Sub­ject Test abroad. They were look­ing for the eas­i­est option: going to the place for four days was not suit­able; going through Belarus with inter­ro­ga­tions there was not an option either. They decid­ed on Azer­bai­jan. Those few months were dif­fi­cult for the girl; she was ner­vous and was afraid for her fam­i­ly. She, as a minor, had a chance to escape inter­ro­ga­tions, but the risk was much high­er for her par­ents. How­ev­er, in the end, they man­aged to leave. The leg­end about the vaca­tion worked, and the bor­der guards were only inter­est­ed in where they got the mon­ey for the trip.

“How much did it cost?” I asked.

“Hon­est­ly, I do not know,” says Maria. “How­ev­er, I know that the way from Donet­sk region to Kyiv costs USD 250 per per­son.”

USD 250 for Maria to move to Kyiv. Anoth­er USD 500 for her par­ents who brought her to the cap­i­tal. The same mon­ey for them to return to the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry.

To take the Ukrainian National Multi-Subject Test in the early spring of 2024, Maria and her parents had to go to Azerbaijan and return. For Russian border guards, they invented a legend about a vacation at the seaside. Illustration by Inga Levi

Now Maria will study offline for the first time in three years. She smiles that she will final­ly have a nor­mal, full-fledged study. She will not pay for the edu­ca­tion as she man­aged to get a bud­get-financed place accord­ing to the so-called “Quota‑2” for appli­cants from the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries. “Quota‑1”, on the oth­er hand, is designed for orphans, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, par­tic­i­pants in hos­til­i­ties, and vic­tims dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty. Only two bud­get-financed places were allo­cat­ed for soci­ol­o­gy under “Quota‑2” pro­gram and the mul­ti-sub­ject test points allowed admis­sion through the gen­er­al com­pe­ti­tion pro­ce­dure.

Final­ly, I ask if any of her class­mates from Donet­sk region were going to enter uni­ver­si­ties in the Ukraine-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ries. Maria looks intent­ly into my eyes and remains silent.

“Nobody at all?” I ask her again.

“Nobody at all,” she con­firms. “I remem­ber that at the Social Stud­ies les­son the teacher asked who was plan­ning to move after grad­u­a­tion. Almost every­one raised their hands. She said, “I am upset! Who will rebuild our region?” That is, peo­ple already real­ized that they would have no future there. And they had to escape.”

Orig­i­nal Source: https://suspilne.media/837509-security-guards-check-children-classes-stories-education-occupied-territories/

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