Russian students are turning in teachers who don’t back the war

When Irina Gen’s students in western Russia asked why a European sports competition had barred them from attending, the 55-year-old teacher let loose with a tirade against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“So long as Russia doesn’t behave itself in a civilized way, this will go on forever,” she fumed, adding that she endorsed the European ban. Russia “wanted to get to Kyiv, to overthrow Zelensky and the government. This is a sovereign state,” she said. “There’s a sovereign government there.”

Little did she know that her students were recording her outburst and that a copy would make its way to law enforcement, who opened a criminal investigation March 30 under a new national law banning false information about the military.

Gen is one of at least four teachers recently turned in by students or parents for antiwar speech, in some of the starkest examples of the government’s quest to identify and punish individuals who criticize the invasion.

“I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country,” Putin said March 16 in a televised speech, accusing the West of wanting to use a “fifth column” to destroy Russia.

In the last several weeks, a list of “traitors and enemies” has cropped up online, published by the Committee for the Protection of National Interests, a shadowy group claiming a duty to expose public figures who support “anti-Russian” sanctions and political pressure.

The regional government of Kaliningrad sent text messages to local residents urging them to report “provocateurs and scammers” who were undermining the “special operation in Ukraine,” according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. And a string of activists, journalists and opposition politicians have found the word “traitor” and vile graffiti painted on their front doors.

The cases of children informing on teachers recall the young Soviet folk hero Pavlik Morozov, who, legend had it, betrayed his father to the authorities for anti-Soviet activity. Generations of Soviet children were encouraged to be like Pavlik, to show loyalty to the state above all else.

Russian propaganda today stresses similar themes. “To be a human, to be a good citizen, to be moral, is to identify with the state and to identify in particular with the state’s language,” said Ian Garner, a historian of Russian propaganda. “That is especially the case when it comes to young people,” whom the Kremlin hopes to mold into obedient citizens, he said.

In the weeks since the invasion began, Russian social media have been flooded with photos of schoolchildren attending special patriotic lessons or posing for pictures as they formed the letter Z — a symbol signifying support for the war.

Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said in early March that more than 5 million children across Russia had watched a lesson called “Defenders of Peace.” It was part of a government-produced series reviewed by The Washington Post that promotes many of the Kremlin’s arguments and justifications for the attack on Ukraine.

Bucha’s Month of Terror (NYT)
Warning: Graphic images and horrific details

Very long read with lots of heartbreaking, graphic images, personal accounts from survivors, and investigation details, making it very hard to summarize. I tried my best to highlight the most critical details below, but IMO you should just read it yourself if you can stomach it.

As the Russian advance on Kyiv stalled, a campaign of terror and revenge against civilians nearby in Bucha began, survivors and investigators say.

Russian soldiers set up in this school. A sniper in a high-rise fired at anybody who moved. Other soldiers tortured, raped and executed civilians in basements or backyards.

We visited Bucha, documented dozens of killings of civilians, interviewed scores of witnesses and followed local investigators to uncover the scale of Russian atrocities.

A mother killed by a sniper while walking with her family to fetch a thermos of tea. A woman held as a sex slave, naked except for a fur coat and locked in a potato cellar before being executed. Two sisters dead in their home, their bodies left slumped on the floor for weeks.

Bucha is a landscape of horrors.

Reporters and photographers for The New York Times spent more than a week with city officials, coroners and scores of witnesses in Bucha, uncovering new details of execution-style atrocities against civilians. The Times documented the bodies of almost three dozen people where they were killed — in their homes, in the woods, set on fire in a vacant parking lot — and learned the story behind many of their deaths. The Times also witnessed more than 100 body bags at a communal grave and the city’s cemetery.

The evidence suggests the Russians killed recklessly and sometimes sadistically, in part out of revenge.

At least 15 people were found dead with their hands bound, in various places around the city, indicating that more than one Russian unit detained and executed people. Five bodies were found in a cellar in a children’s summer camp, which Russian units had used as a base. Others were found on Yablunska Street, and more in the glass factory.

In accounts corroborated by a local military commander, residents described how a Ukrainian ambush that blew up the armored vehicle and supply truck led to a flurry of Russian violence targeting civilians.

The following day, a Russian armored personnel carrier drove down a street, firing randomly into homes with a heavy machine gun, said Serhiy Petrovsky, the head of a local unit of civilian volunteer soldiers. He doesn’t know how many people were wounded or killed, but said that after the Russians departed, he collected 20 bodies in and around the village, from this episode and others.

The same day, Russian soldiers detained Ms. Sukhenko, 50, her husband, Ihor Sukhenko, 57, and their son, Oleksandr, 25, Mr. Rodchenko said. The bodies of all three were found in the grave.

By April 2, they had collected more than 100 bodies, and by Sunday the number had risen to more than 360 for the Bucha district. Ten of the dead were children, officials said.

Of the 360 bodies found through this weekend in Bucha and its immediate surroundings, more than 250 were killed by bullets or shrapnel and were being included in an investigation of war crimes, Ruslan Kravchenko, chief regional prosecutor in Bucha, said in an interview. Many others died from hunger, the cold and the lack of medicine and doctors, among other reasons.

Sitting in his car, Mr. Kravchenko flipped through files and photos of corpses on his cellphone. He said he expected more cases as the police continued to find bodies and information kept pouring in. Over all, in the broader Bucha region, there were at least 1,000 deaths in the war, he said.

The dead are overwhelmingly civilians. Only two members of the Ukrainian military were among those killed in Bucha city, according to Serhiy Kaplychny, an official at the city cemetery.

Some of the worst crimes — including torture, rape and executions of detainees — were committed by troops based at the glass factory in Bucha, local residents and investigators said. The regional prosecutor, Mr. Kravchenko, said investigators found a computer server left behind by the Russians that could help them identify the men behind the violence.

Ukrainian investigators also have an immense resource from organizations, citizens and journalists who have posted more than 7,000 videos and photos on a government internet hub, warcrimes.gov.ua, the state prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, said.

“What is very important here is that they are made in such a way that they are admissible evidence in court,” she said. “That is seven thousand with video evidence, with photo evidence.” Yet a long and laborious process of identification lies ahead.

Warning, article contains graphic imagery.

NYT: Bucha’s Month of Terror