After the fall: occupiers march children through Mariupol – Politics abroad

Source: Petro Andryushchenko
02:11
26.07.2022

Pictures from Mariupol that send shivers down your spine. Led by an adult, several children in military uniform are marching through the city – the propaganda behind it: Putin is recruiting and training his future soldiers in Mariupol, Ukraine. They belt out the Soviet love song “Katyusha” from 1938, to which the Katyusha rocket launcher owes its name. After weeks of fighting, the Russian army conquered the city of Mariupol, which was completely in ruins, on May 21, further pushing the Russification of Mariupol. The Ukrainian language is disappearing from school curricula, Russian flags are flying on buildings, and Russian rubles are being paid out instead of Ukrainian currency. And as a further breach of taboo, youth is apparently being militarized. The clothes: brown trousers, red shirts, red caps. The well-known outfit of the “Junarmiya”, the Russian “youth army”, which Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin brought into being in 2016 and which, according to official figures, already includes a million children and young people. Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s Mariupol mayor, shares video of marching children from the occupied city. He writes: “The dream of revenge for the blue-yellow children’s hearts is forged by the Putler youth”. After all, it is “only the children of collaborators in this outfit” who blare Soviet songs through the streets. The unmistakable Kremlin propaganda behind it: Russia is militarizing the youth in the occupied city, Mariupol is to become permanently Russian.

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