Eight years after Russian troops seized the southern Ukraine region of Crimea, Vladimir Putin celebrated the anniversary with thousands of people at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.
According officials Russians, more than 200,000 people gathered in the stadium, although this information could not be independently confirmed. The official capacity of the stadium is 81,000 people, but there were also people outside.
State employees assured that they had been told to participate in the celebrations this Friday. In the schools, teachers they gave lessons on the “Crimean Spring”.
Addressing the crowd, President Putin praised his country’s armed forces, saying they had shown Russian unity: “When they need to, they protect each other from bullets using their bodies, like brothers. We hadn’t had such a unit in a long time”.
He also repeated the false claim that Russian troops were protecting the population in eastern Ukraine from genocide.
But as he spoke onstage, almost all major state television broadcasts of his speech were suddenly cut off to make way for singer Oleg Gazmanov as he sang the words “Forward Russia.” The televisions said that it was a technical problem.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who appeared on stage accompanied by renowned journalist Margarita Simonyan and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, also addressed the audience.
Many people preferred not to be filmed or answer questions.
Several students told us that they had been given the option to take a day off from school if they attended “a concert.” Some of the students we talked to didn’t even know that the event was, in part, dedicated to supporting the war in Ukraine.
No doubt there were people at the event who genuinely support President Putin and the “special operation in Ukraine,” as the Kremlin prefers to call it.
Since the beginning of March, students taking any of the last six years of school began receiving special lessons called “My Country.” The pupils are presented with a video of Putin from February 21 in which he expresses his vision of the history of Ukraine, BBC Russia reports.
Earlier in the week, photos circulated of children standing to form the letter Z, a symbol painted on Russian military vehicles invading Ukraine.
Russian vehicles entering Ukraine use the Z as a symbol.
The education ministry then sent out plans for classes on March 18, the day Russia annexed Crimea following an internationally discredited referendum.
According to the memorandum, classes for children in grades 6, 7 and 8 (between 12 and 15 years old) should focus on “the heroes of our age … to help form a stable and real understanding of the sense of patriotism” .
The students were asked to sit in a circle to listen to an explanation of how the ideas of “duty, dignity and patriotism are invariably tied to the concepts of deed and heroism”. Teachers would then show a video to teach people that there is a higher chance of becoming a hero through military roles.
Another video was sent to schools giving the Russian version of the events in reference to the annexation of Crimea.
In the video, two uniformed Crimean students are asked if they know what happened on March 18, 2014. One of them says that for him, as a resident of Sevastopol, Crimea, it had been a day of celebration when achieved the “Crimean spring”.
Another teenager, Anna, is asked why the event is known as spring: “Spring is the beginning of a new life. It’s renewal, warmth, the sun. And of course, a warm home.”
A teacher in the Moscow region spoke about why she took the day off because of her outrage.
“I don’t like the story being used as propaganda. I think this is dangerous because there are a lot of kids here who have relatives in Ukraine. This can cause conflicts between the kids,” said the teacher, who preferred to remain anonymous.
Most of his colleagues said they were in favor of the classes. “Even those with family members under the bombs approved of them. They say the Nazis should have been expelled a long time ago,” the teacher said, referring to Russia’s false characterization of Ukrainian leaders.
Some teachers have complained about the “My Country” lessons. A teacher from Volgograd named Svetlana said that for some of the children the war was something of an adventure. “I explained to them that there is nothing good in war,” she told BBC Russia.
