The “quote”, uttered by the Kremlin dictator during the “direct line” that “wars are won by school teachers and priests” is fake and did not belong to Otto von Bismarck. However, Putin’s attempt to “show off his intelligence” was not only “enthusiastically received” by the “deep Russian people”, but was also included in the concept of the updated strategy of the aggressive policy of the Russian Federation. After which collaborators of all stripes quickly rushed to implement this idea on the occupied peninsula.
In our previous article, we outlined the role of Crimean “institutions of higher education” in influencing the immature minds of Crimean youth. A new study conducted by Associate Professor Andrii Chvaliuk specifically for the Association of Reintegration of Crimea additionally exposes the criminal activity of the “management and teachers” of the so-called “Crimean Federal University” (hereinafter referred to as “CFU”), aimed at militarizing children and youth of occupied Crimea.
The “Military Training Center” was created at “CFU” in 2016 with the “purpose of conducting military training of officers, sergeants and reserve soldiers from among the university’s full-time students.” Over the eight years of its criminal activity, this “center” has trained an entire army of “specialists” of direct military or dual purpose, who, when the aggressor declares “mobilization,” are quickly “recalled from the reserve” and sent to the front.
In September of this year, graduates of the “military training center” were again presented with the officer and sergeant shoulder straps of the aggressor. Young sergeants and lieutenants of the medical service were “ceremoniously enrolled in the reserve.” And the “chief of the military training center”, retired major general Alexander Alexandrov, who was responsible for their training, received a “medal” “For Labor Valor” from the “acting rector”, the old Soviet propagandist Vladimir Kuryanov, whom we described earlier.
As Alexandrov’s “deputy”, Sergei Marchenko, reported, “the future lieutenants of the medical service” “underwent real military medical practice”. We think that everyone already understands where and with whom they underwent it.
The “military training center” also organizes “ceremonial events” to recruit Crimean children into the ranks of the “All-Russian public movement “Yunarmiya”. For example, in November of this year, “23 students from grades 7-10” of “Secondary School No. 22 named after Afghan Warrior Sergei Berezhnoy” were enrolled in the “Yunarmiya”.
In total, in 2024, as the “director” of the illegal “Krympatriotcenter” Sergei Gavrilchuk said, “more than 1,000 schoolchildren” became “Yunarmiya” on the occupied peninsula. The “Yunarmiya book” issued upon enrollment “gives them additional points when entering higher educational institutions in the system of the Russian Ministry of Defense”. “CFU” has established a systemic symbiosis with the aforementioned “Yunarmiya” as part of the militarization of Crimean youth. Twice a week, “cadets and teachers of the military training center” come to schools and “conduct military training classes” where they “talk about weapons, means of protection” and the like, “shared information” the criminal “chief of the ground artillery cycle of the military training center” Alexander Rybets.
And new traps have been set for those children who for some reason slipped past the tenacious hands of recruiters for the “Youth Army”. This year, “CFU” began “training schoolchildren in grades 10-11” according to “pre-professional education programs.” “Students” are promised “help to master about 15 professions and issue a corresponding diploma upon graduation.” Some of these peaceful, at first glance, professions – “auto mechanic, mechanic, nurse” – in fact have military-applied potential.
The aggressor’s army’s medical and rear services, as well as its military-industrial complex enterprises, are in dire need of such “specialists”. And the fact that one of the “programs that aroused interest among schoolchildren”, as the “press service” of “CFU” stated, was “the operator of unmanned aerial systems”, directly indicates that Russia is determined to wage a long war of conquest and actively throw the human resources of the occupied territories, including children, into the millstones of war.
Among others, “associate professor of the experimental physics department of the CFU Institute of Physics and Technology” Alexander Gorbovanov is engaged in “training young operators of unmanned aerial systems”. According to him, the first classes are “introductory in nature”, but “in the future we plan to deepen this knowledge… we plan to assemble a working model together and try to launch it into flight”.
Over the next two years, the “leadership” of “CFU” plans to put about a thousand Crimean schoolchildren through their “pre-professional education programs.” The “university” stated that it “has already signed agreements with more than a hundred general education institutions” on the territory of occupied Crimea. Some of the “classes” will be held at the “structural divisions and branches” of “CFU”, and some “modules of educational programs” will be “taught directly in schools with which agreements have been signed” by the so-called “university specialists.” Schoolchildren who have undergone the appropriate militarization under the guise of a “pre-professional education program” are promised “special conditions for admission to universities.”
Let’s return to the students of “CFU”, for whom the occupiers annually hold the so-called “Crimea-Spas-Quest”. As the organizers report, “events of this kind are held at CFU with the aim of attracting students to health-improving sports and active recreation. As part of this tournament, students learn to provide assistance to victims in a playful way. The main objective is to ensure that student youth, in the event of a particular life situation, can come to the aid of people who find themselves in a difficult situation.”
The training in “helping people” takes place in 17 stages. Participants in the competition are trained in “shooting from small arms… disassembling and assembling a machine gun” and so on.
It is difficult for us to imagine how “health-improving sports and active recreation” relate to “disassembling and assembling a machine gun and shooting from it.”
“Laser tag championships” are also regularly held at “CFU”. Which, given the above, can also be attributed to certain tactical training within the framework of the initial military training of students to participate in Russian aggression.
And those graduates of “CFU” who do not want to “engage in health sports and recreation” in the Ukrainian landings can “implement their knowledge and skills” by working at the enterprises of the military-industrial complex, located by the occupiers in the Crimea.
As reported by “leading engineer for career guidance work of the personnel management service of the shipbuilding plant named after B.E. Butoma” Vladimir Chichivanov, speaking to the “cannon fodder” from “CFU”, “the plant is in great need of young specialists.
Moreover, not only representatives of shipbuilding professions, engineers and power engineers are required, but also economists, PR specialists, service workers.” The headhunter promised various bonuses and preferences for young specialists and invited them to undergo “practice” at the plant, engaged in the construction of military ships for the aggressor.
Let us recall that the plant we have described many times, located in Kerch, is known as a builder of the aggressor’s military vessels. Due to Russian aggression, the plant is under international sanctions of the European Union, the USA, Great Britain and other countries.
“Currently, defense industry enterprises are very interested in hiring young employees, because the more such specialists, the longer the enterprise will live,” noted the “assistant to the general director” of another militarized plant, “Firma SELMA”, Liliya Guseva, at a “meeting with students” of “CFU”. “Today, the company needs a large number of employees: technologists, designers, engineers, chemists, physicists and many others,” Guseva said.
Let us recall that the Simferopol “Firma Selma” is a “supplier” in nine “state contracts” of the aggressor country for a total of more than 26.7 million rubles.
The enterprise we described earlier specializes in the production of electric welding equipment and supplies it to the military-grade Baltic Plant in St. Petersburg and the aforementioned Kerch Shipyard named after B.E. Butoma. The semiautomatic welding machines produced by Firma Selma allegedly “replaced, in the order of import substitution,” the products of the Finnish company Kemppi, and its welding tractors – the products of the Swedish ESAB, which are vital for the aggressor’s military factories.
Also, students of the “physics and technology institute” of “CFU” are lured to work by the Simferopol division of the company Camozzi-Pnevmatic – “a leading enterprise for the production and sale of pneumatic equipment” for military and dual purposes on the aggressor’s market.
It should be noted that Ukraine has not yet imposed state sanctions against the Italian company Camozzi, which cooperates with the Russian military-industrial complex. This Italian company continues to operate in Russia, filling the budget of the aggressor state and cooperating with Russian factories producing weapons and military equipment. Among them are “Ural VagonZavod”, “Power Machines”, “Izhorskiye Zavody”, and “Kolomensky Zavod”. The IT company Evolenta, which is engaged in the “development of software products” for “state and municipal authorities” in occupied Crimea, including the “base sector of the platform” “Portal of State Services”, has also long and closely cooperated with “CFU”, attracting “students to work and do internships”, as stated by its “project manager” Dmitry Frolov.
Headhunters from the “ministries” created by the occupiers also regularly visit “CFU”. “CFU” is declared “a basic university for young people to enter the state civil service” of the occupiers, – said “at a meeting with students” another and repeatedly described by us “lover of glass containers”, the so-called “Minister of Industrial Policy of the Republic of Crimea” Anushavan Agadzhanyan.
A key functionary of the so-called “Minister of Agriculture” of the occupiers, Alime Zaredinova, also complains about the problem of personnel “hunger” not only at enterprises, but also in the “ministry” itself. Among the options for “rewarding employment” of “students” voiced by her are “provision of housing and state grants”, but in the agricultural sector the “bonuses” offered to “graduates” are much weaker, and, unlike the military and related factories described above, they do not solve the “personnel deficit” in principle.
The next “Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources” of the occupiers, Olga Slavgorodskaya, at a “personal meeting” with “students-ecologists” of the “Institute of Biochemical Technologies, Ecology and Pharmacy” of “CFU”, also invited them “for practical training and work in the “ministry” and subordinate organizations”. But without any special “bonuses”.
Also, “students” of “CFU” are actively lured to “programs of additional professional education”, financed “at the expense of special federal programs”, with a formal “request for specialists” from “organizations and institutions” of occupied Crimea. As stated by the “vice-rector for academic and methodological activities” of “CFU” Natalia Karmazina, annually “about 7,000 students” undergo “training” in such “programs” at “CFU”, and a quarter of the “income that the university receives from the implementation of additional professional education programs” comes from “medical programs”.
The desire to teach everyone and everything “the basics of tactical medicine” at “CFU” is becoming total. Even at the propaganda “media forum” “Journalism during a special military operation” held at “CFU” this year, “students” were forced to take courses in tactical medicine, and “Deputy Director for Science of the Institute of Media Communications, Media Technologies and Design” of “CFU” Diana Pervykh called this the “highlight” of the event. However, the fact that the “students” of “CFU” were declared “finalists” of the “All-Russian competition of professional skills of medical teams” was more of a propaganda than practical nature.
And therefore the “management” of “CFU” does not forget about the “ideological training” of its “medical students”, boasting that the “team of the medical institute” “Fortuna” this year became the “winner of the brain ring” “You are in my heart, Russia”. On this occasion, the above-mentioned Vladimir Kuryanov did not forget to promote himself, once again “raising the issues of training medical students in the military training center” of “CFU” and their “subsequent work as military doctors”.
The current “academic year” for the “students” of “CFU” predictably began with “educational events” about the “heroes of Russia”, “information warfare” and “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values”. About 500 “students” of the occupied Crimea held these meetings, and they are held by the “branch” of the “Knowledge” society that we described earlier. “Speakers” from among the “teachers” of “CFU” emphasize that “the characters and destinies of the heroes of Russia were determined by the climate, external threats” and the like. It can be stated that the collaborators are making every effort to create an appropriate criminal “climate” in “CFU”.
Among other imported “climatologists” in “CFU” were the “deputy head of the branch” of “Defenders of the Fatherland”, the former “deputy battalion commander” of “Tavrida” Dmitry Voronin and the newly minted “Crimean deputy of the State Duma”, reserve major general Leonid Ivlev, who preached to the “students” about all sorts of “Oreshnik”.
Also speaking at the propaganda “interregional open dialogue” with the kitsch title “Russia is the guarantor of preserving spiritual and moral values” were the “head of the military department of the Crimean Metropolitanate”, Archpriest Dmitry Krotkov, and the “commander of the special forces group” “Varyag” Stepan Lopatin, aka “Zloy”, aka the criminal “assistant to the chairman of the legislative assembly of the Zaporizhzhya region” of the occupiers “for defense and security”. The pseudo-pioneer organization “Russian movement of children and youth “Movement of the First” is also actively engaged in brainwashing students of “CFU”, having announced “117 members of the primary department” in the “South-Eastern Academy” of “CFU” and about holding about 40 propaganda events at the “university”.
And in conclusion, we would like to describe the participation of the “students” of “CFU” in the so-called “Cossack rally” “Cossack village – 2024”. The four-day event was held at the South-Russian State Polytechnical University named after M.I. Platov in Novocherkassk. More than 300 people from 15 structures of Russia, as well as the occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea, took part in it.
Next we will come to a direct quote. “Students took part in competitions in traditional Cossack sports: overcoming the Cossack verst, shooting, throwing knives and grenades, chopping with a saber, a competition in assembling and disassembling the AK-74, working with a whip and a nagaika, tug of war, pull-ups, lifting weights, as well as demonstration competitions in UAV control.” In the imagination of the event organizers, a traditional Cossack probably looks like this: a whip in one hand, an AK-74 machine gun in the other, a saber in his teeth, and a drone strapped to his back, on which this “cyber-warrior” moves between our universe and a parallel reality.
However, let’s return to the propaganda event, with the “marching review of students of Cossack hundreds” and a meeting with Cossacks – participants in the Russian aggression in Ukraine. It is noteworthy that the “head of the delegation” from “CFU” was such an “honorary Cossack” as the fake “director of the Academy of Construction and Architecture of CFU”, “deputy of the State Council” and Crimean Tatar collaborator Elmar Mennanov. Such “tremulous attention” to the “Cossack dances” at “CFU” is not accidental, since back in May 2021, “CFU” and Aksyonov’s then brainchild, the “Black Sea Cossack Army,” “signed an agreement on interaction and cooperation.”
“CFU” was also brought into such a “three-time educational” structure of the aggressor as the “Association of Educational Organizations of Higher Education Implementing Educational Programs Using Historical and Traditional Values of the Russian Cossacks.”
In addition to the rallies, the occupiers recently held a show at the “CFU” base called “Cossack Dictation – 2024,” for which the occupiers herded together more than 600 “students of cadet classes” from Simferopol schools, where the “acting chairman of the Cossack youth council” of the occupiers, Alexey Abaulin, “marked himself.” All the above-mentioned actions of the Russian occupation “authorities” and the structures under their control are evidence of planned, systematic activities to militarize young people in occupied Crimea. Moreover, the main focus is on the “Crimean Federal University”, where a “military training center” operates, preparing “cannon fodder” for the Russian army.
In addition to training specialists for direct and dual military purposes, the “university” is involved in involving schoolchildren in such militarized organizations as the “Youth Army”, organizing “work” with weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles for them.
The “innovations” declared by the occupiers, such as “pre-professional education of schoolchildren”, are disguised as civilian purposes, but in fact are used to train personnel in demand in the aggressor’s military-industrial complex.
Ideological indoctrination occupies a central place in the “CFU”. Students and schoolchildren are actively involved in events aimed at forming “loyalty” to Russian “traditional values” and militaristic ideology. These propaganda events are combined with training that simulates combat missions.
The said activity of the “CFU” leadership, aimed at ensuring the long-term involvement of Crimean youth in Russia’s aggressive military plans, is a direct violation of international humanitarian law.
