The Kremlin is stepping up efforts to promote military service among young people, including residents of occupied territories of Ukraine. These steps are aimed at ensuring long-term preparation for a war against Ukraine.
Points of attention
- Putin is strengthening military-patriotic education of young people to ensure long-term preparation for war against Ukraine and other Western countries.
- The Russian Federation is expanding its camp and excursion programs to instill patriotic feelings in children and youth for the purpose of war propaganda.
- The Kremlin plans to involve young people in military activities by raising the status of youth organizations and ideologically training the population.
- The online patriotic education platform implements the Kremlin's ideas about protecting Russian-speakers and supporting veterans, which could lead to a long-term war.
- The Kremlin uses propaganda and information platforms attractive to young Russians to militarize and popularize military service among young people.
Russia continues to plan war against Ukraine and other Western countries
As analysts note, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is expanding programs of military-patriotic education for youth in the territory of the Russian Federation and in the occupied regions of Ukraine.
Putin approved four main areas, which include:
creation and development of a network of "military sports camps" to popularize military service among young people;
expansion of the "Roads of Victory" program;
launching an online platform for organizing programs of so-called military-patriotic education;
converting one of the children's "health camps" to a year-round operation mode.
The "Roads of Victory" program aims to foster patriotic feelings in children and youth by offering them free excursions to places of cultural and historical significance for Russian military glory.
Experts say the Kremlin has already used military-sports camps like Avangard to militarize and instill Russian narratives among Ukrainian youth. Russia is now expanding its network of such camps across its territory, seeking to strengthen its armed forces in the long term.
In addition, the Kremlin plans to raise the status of other youth organizations, such as Yunarmiya and the Movement of the First, to attract young people to military activities.
Putin also declared 2025 the "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland," demonstrating the priority of ideological training of the population through support for veterans and increased military propaganda.
The Kremlin apparently intends to use military-patriotic organizations to popularize military service among young people, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a protracted war in Ukraine and likely future conflicts with the West.
The Kremlin is actively educating a new generation of Putinists
Young Russians are quite often influenced by Kremlin propaganda and do not even try to learn the truth about the realities of the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine.
Mariana Naumova is one of the freshest faces of Russian President Vladimir Putin's wartime propaganda machine.
She is a show host for the Kremlin-controlled flagship television network Channel One, has 85,000 subscribers on Telegram, and is a regular speaker at youth forums, universities, and talk shows around the world.
Naumova used to be a powerlifter prodigy with little experience in journalism, but that didn't stop her from covering most of Russia's major battles for peaceful Ukrainian cities, such as Bakhmut and Mariupol.
In her stories, the young propagandist cynically lies that Russian soldiers allegedly invaded Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers, despite the fact that in reality they killed, raped, and abused innocent Ukrainians.
