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Putin Has Found Another Way to Take Ukraine
A Ukrainian mother hid a phone beneath a commode seat so her children could continue attending school.
After the lessons, the children completed their homework, sent it to their teachers, and burned the pages.
They were not hiding military secrets. They were studying the Ukrainian curriculum while living under Russian occupation.
And getting caught could have devastating consequences.
This family’s experience appeared in a July 2026 investigation by Human Rights Watch. Their mother said occupation officials had threatened to take her children away if she refused to enroll them in Russian-run schools.
By August 2024, she was reportedly given an ultimatum. Send the children to Russian schools, or risk having them placed in an institution somewhere in Russia.
She enrolled them. But secretly, the Ukrainian lessons continued.
It sounds almost unbelievable that ordinary schoolwork could become something worth hiding. Yet this is one of the less visible battles being fought across Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Moscow is not simply changing which textbooks children use. Human rights investigators say Russian authorities are trying to reshape how an entire generation understands its nationality, history…
