The increasing militarization of childhood in occupied Crimea and Russia is beginning earlier and earlier, with children decked out in military uniform and taking part, together with the Russian defense ministry’s ‘Youth Army’, in the military and other parades for Victory Day. It is known that some of the school kids and university students were coerced into taking part, but this is only one of the shadows over the Victory-mania particularly stirred up since Russia’s invasion of Crimea and military aggression in Eastern Ukraine. The events took place just days after protests against Vladimir Putin’s fourth inauguration as Russian President resulted in around two thousand demonstrators being detained, many of them children and young adults.
Ukrainian commentator Pavlo Kazarin says that Russia has turned the ‘Great Patriotic War ‘(1941-1945) into a religion, and like all religions, there are canonical beliefs which one cannot deviate from without being condemned as a heretic. No discussion or modification of the old myths is allowed, however this, he believes, will sooner or later change. All myths, he notes, have their sell-by date.
