Russia’s war in Ukraine has expanded into classrooms, culture, and competing historical narratives. Reports of forced curriculum changes and ideological instruction highlight a broader effort to reshape identity in occupied territories.
Tatiana Vorozhko, a contributing editor at The Reckoning Project, says the conflict is ultimately about “the minds and hearts of the next generation.”
Vorozhko has worked as a journalist, editor, manager, and show host for the Voice of America Ukrainian Service and as an analyst with Program Review. She now contributes to The Reckoning Project, an organization focused on documenting war crimes and preserving testimony for legal accountability.
The organization gathers evidence with legal precision, according to Vorozhko. “This is a group of researchers, journalists and lawyers who collect testimonies in such a way that those testimonies can be admissible in courts,” she says. Teams document accounts from victims, witnesses, and those who experienced Russian occupation, with the goal of supporting future prosecutions. She works on turning that research into public-facing reporting.
Her recent work highlights the transformation of education in occupied Ukrainian territories. Authorities replace Ukrainian-language instruction with Russian curricula and reshape historical narratives. “They’re replacing the textbooks… they increase their hours of education in history,” she says. Students also participate in weekly programs designed to justify the war. “They are told why military operation is a good thing,” she says.
Instruction extends beyond academics into cultural and military conditioning. “They [are] taught how to love Russia,” she says. Schools host visits from soldiers and promote patriotic messaging tied to the war. Programs also introduce military training. “They’ve been taught how to use rifles… so basically they are raising them to be future soldiers,” she says.
Teachers who resist face consequences. “Some of the teachers had to leave the occupied territories because they were viewed as pro-Ukrainian,” she says. Others are retrained to teach “according to the Russian view of history.” Families have little ability to opt out. “It’s almost impossible to avoid,” she says, citing threats, surveillance, and pressure to accept Russian citizenship.
Despite those risks, some families resist. “With a huge risk, they actually take online classes provided by the Ukrainian government,” she says. Parents use secure methods to keep children connected to Ukrainian education. “They see the danger of losing their Ukrainian identity,” she says.
Vorozhko argues that these policies reflect a deeper ideological goal. “It’s not about territories… they just don’t recognize Ukraine,” she says, pointing to narratives embedded in textbooks that deny Ukrainian independence. She explains that Russian leadership draws on a specific historical framework that predates the Soviet Union. “He wants to take it back to the Russian Empire, where there was no separate Ukrainian,” she says.
History, according to her, functions as a political instrument in that system. “Those ideas emerged in one particular time to serve the circumstances,” she says. “Now they’re taken for granted.” Modern Russia enforces that narrative through law and policy. “Falsification of history is an extremist threat,” she says, describing how dissenting interpretations are treated as security risks.
She adds that Western audiences often misunderstand this dynamic. “They don’t treat history the same way as people here,” she says. Debate among historians is replaced by state-controlled narratives used to justify policy. She says that international law, not historical interpretation, should guide responses. “We don’t use the historical narrative to justify anything. It’s a question of law.”
Beyond Ukraine, she notes broader geopolitical implications, including Russia’s relationship with Iran and the impact of global energy markets. “They are big winners because of the price of oil,” she says, explaining that rising prices could offset economic pressure from sanctions.
Despite the challenges, Vorozhko points to one unintended consequence of the war. “One thing that Putin definitely achieved is [he taught] Ukrainians to love their country, to value their history,” she says. Ukrainian identity, according to her, has strengthened under pressure. “Society is a living organism,” she says. “We can see how strongly Ukrainian identities are solidified.”
