By Galina Korol | 2025-07-04

Russia has dropped any remaining pretense in occupied Ukraine. It is pulling Ukrainian from classrooms, part of what critics call a broader push to erase the country's language, culture and identity.

As The Moscow Times reported in June, the Kremlin has ordered schools in occupied provinces to stop teaching Ukrainian altogether, an escalation in its Russification campaign.

The Russian Education Ministry formalized the decision, citing "the changed geopolitical situation in the world."

Until recently, Ukrainian was taught on a limited basis in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces as a first language, some schools in Crimea, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics and even Bashkortostan, Russia.

Now, officials plan to remove Ukrainian literature as well. It will vanish from the curriculum except in grades 10 and 11.

"It's hard to believe that the same people who are trying to eradicate the Ukrainian language in captured territories are demanding respect for the Russian language in territories which they are unable to capture," said Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst, according to The Moscow Times. He called the decision "infantile."

The Kremlin's genocide policy

Removing Ukrainian from schools is more than a policy shift, analysts say. It is part of a broader Russian strategy to erase Ukrainian identity.

The occupiers have stripped the language both from school schedules and from the list of national minority languages, Oleh Ohredko of the Almenda Center told Kontur.

"Russia is beginning to treat Ukraine ever more aggressively, trying to exert pressure in any area," he said.

The move is the latest step in a centuries-long effort to eliminate Ukrainian identity, Kostyantyn Batozsky, director of the Azov Development Agency, reiterated.

"An attribute of a people is its language, traditions reflected in daily life and the territory where the people lives. Russia is denying us all these substantive hallmarks of nationality," Batozsky told Kontur.

Russia's campaign in Ukraine mirrors Soviet-era tactics used to suppress national identities, according to analysts. Russia's actions violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and amount to denying Ukrainians "the right to exist," Batozsky said.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry echoed that claim in a June 24 statement, accusing Moscow of pursuing genocide. Russia has tried to outlaw the Ukrainian language more than 130 times and continues a pattern of Russification, cultural oppression and "genocidal extermination of entire nations," it said.

Batozsky pointed to Tatarstan, a Russian internal republic, as a parallel.

"At the behest of [Moscow], Tatarstan abandoned the use of Tatar in schools," he said, calling it the last entity in Russia to resist abandoning its native language in schools. "It became an elective subject, not a required one."

That shift occurred in 2017.

The reality of eradication

After seizing Crimea in 2014, Moscow tried to simulate "multilingualism," claiming Ukrainian was "available" as an elective, observers note. In reality, that promise was empty, according to Ohredko.

Russian authorities pointed to a Ukrainian school, supposedly near Feodosia, but it was "a fabrication, he said.

Ukrainian instruction had effectively vanished from occupied Crimea.

The latest decision, he added, further violates Crimea's own constitution, which names Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean Tatar as official languages.

"But there's actually just one language left," Ohredko said.

Ukrainian as enemy mark

The Kremlin's education policies have made it nearly impossible to preserve the Ukrainian language in occupied territory, residents say.

Alyona, a Ukrainian speaker from Kyiv now living in Russian-controlled Crimea, told Kontur her children, born after the occupation, hear Ukrainian only at home.

"There is no Ukrainian in school at all," she said, adding that even taking Ukrainian after school does not exist as an option.

She speaks Ukrainian to her children privately but said they hide that part of their identity in public.

"The atmosphere is very aggressive. If someone wants his [or her] child to study Ukrainian, everyone will regard him [or her] as an enemy," Alyona said.

Alyona, who used an alias for safety, is barred by court order from leaving Crimea with her children after her ex-husband obtained a legal restriction preventing their removal from the peninsula.

"Now I'm just hoping for a miracle," she said.

The resistance endures

Ukrainian has become a marker of identity and resistance, Ohredko noted.

A 2022 survey by Russian occupation authorities in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia found that about half of parents supported teaching Ukrainian, a result that surprised officials, Ohredko said. In response, Russia has worked to stamp out the language, replacing it with propaganda.

Despite the risks, more than 40,000 children in occupied areas still attend Ukrainian schools online. Families often use hidden devices to avoid detection, said Ohredko.

"We are aware of children and parents having two devices -- one for regular use and the other to communicate with Ukraine. After a call they turn it off and hide it," he explained.

Ukraine has created a simplified university admission system and a streamlined curriculum for schoolchildren living in occupied provinces.

Even under pressure, Ukrainian will survive, said Ohredko. He called it a "language of resistance" and "an anchor" connecting children to their country.