Teachers under Russian Occupation: Education as a Front Line and Tool of Cultural Genocide

The war in Ukraine is characterised not only by the seizure of territory or an attempt to change the country’s government, but also by a distinct form of violence often absent in interstate conflicts: the forced transformation of identity. To legitimise its annexation of territory, Russia seeks to ‘convince’ the residents of occupied areas that they are not Ukrainians, but Russians who have finally been ‘liberated’. Those who resist are subject to coercion, including threats, invasive searches, interrogations, blackmail, deportation, abduction, imprisonment, torture and even summary execution.

For Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coined the term in 1944, genocide encompasses not only the physical destruction of a nation or ethnic group, but also the ‘coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves’. According to Lemkin, control over schools, language and educational policies may be used as a tool to carry out ‘genocide in the cultural field’, a term later popularised as ‘cultural genocide’. Education has become one of the Kremlin’s key instruments of cultural genocide, with children and teenagers a particular target of russification. This process must be understood in the broader context of repeated denials by Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders of the legitimacy of Ukraine as a state and nation. Thousands of schools across Ukraine have been damaged and hundreds destroyed in Russian bombings. Many universities have had a similar fate. Scholars use the terms educide and scholasticide – other variations on the term genocide – to describe the widespread targeting of educational institutions and schools in war zones.

Coercion and co-optation

Following the invasions of 2014 and 2022, the occupying authorities tried to get local principals and teachers to reopen schools and universities under the Russian curriculum. From the outset, Russia invested significant financial and human resources in this re-education campaign, combining coercion and co-optation strategies. Ukrainian-language materials were deliberately destroyed, and while the use of the Ukrainian language was not officially banned, it has been systematically stigmatised and interpreted by Russian forces as a sign of nationalism. Official media channels broadcast images of children in the occupied zones singing the Russian anthem and participating in patriotic Russian events. The deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia was also part of this cultural genocide policy. In this context, education professionals faced a dilemma: either resist Russian directives and risk severe punishment or comply and be labelled traitors or collaborators by Ukraine.

As part of my postdoctoral research, I conducted fieldwork in six regions of Ukraine, including formerly occupied territories, and carried out 55 in-depth semi-structured interviews (42 in person and 13 online), mostly with individuals who had experienced the occupation but are now in Ukrainian-controlled territories. The interviews were carried out from mid-2024 to April 2025. In an initial collaborative study with Gabriela Lotta (Getulio Vargas Foundation) and Mykhailo Honchar (Kherson Academy of Continuing Education), we identified three main patterns of response among education professionals in the months immediately after the 2022 full-scale invasion: local resistance, collaboration and remote adaptation.

Local resistance

Few principals and teachers agreed to collaborate under the Russian-imposed curriculum. Even Russian propaganda websites confirm the low levels of cooperation. In the first months of the occupation, resistance took various forms. In larger cities, many continued teaching online while avoiding contact with the occupying authorities. Ukrainian salaries and allowances were still accessible, but not from every location and institution. In many villages, online teaching was impossible due to prolonged electricity outages and a total lack of internet access. Many educators hid school equipment and documents to prevent looting and deleted information about parents who had participated in the war in Donbas since 2014.

The initially ‘friendly’ tone adopted by Russian forces – with offers of high salaries and bonuses – gradually gave way to threats, intimidation and coercion. Two school principals from the Kherson region reported that collaborators visited them accompanied by masked, armed officers. After refusing to cooperate, both were taken to the so-called pidval (basement), an improvised detention facility unfit for human habitation. They spent several days there, subject to interrogations and threats, before being released. Both were accused of teaching a ‘foreign curriculum’ on ‘Russian territory’, a ‘crime’ for which they could allegedly face years in prison. Armed men seized their school buildings and prevented them from entering. Eventually, they fled the occupied zone. Another principal from the Mykolaiv region recounted how her home and devices were repeatedly searched by armed men. And a university professor from the Kherson region also described being taken to a pidval, where he was interrogated and tortured.

Collaboration

From the interviews it appears that only a small number of principals and teachers collaborated. They were partly motivated by the prospect of career advancement – many with no prior administrative experience were promoted to high-ranking positions – and promises of higher wages and bonuses. Fear of the consequences of refusing, ideological alignment with the Kremlin, uncertainties, or a belief that Ukraine will not retake the territory also played a role in this decision.

The moral binary of ‘collaboration versus resistance’ often obscures the complex dynamics of occupation. A principal from the Kharkiv region recalled that during meetings with armed officers, she was told that if local staff refused to work, teachers would be brought in from Russia. Indeed, some Russian teachers were deployed to occupied areas, where they were offered higher salaries and homes confiscated from displaced Ukrainians. To address these moral complexities, we distinguished between ‘active’ collaboration (driven by material incentives or ideological conviction) and ‘passive’ collaboration (driven by coercion or survival strategies).

Remote adaptation

Many schools under occupation continue to operate online. Principals and teachers conduct classes from Ukrainian-controlled territories, with their students scattered across Ukraine and abroad. Thousands remain in occupied areas and secretly attend these online lessons. Given the ubiquity of the Russian intelligence services, this puts them and their families at risk. Many children also attend Russian schools in person. During the early months of the occupation, Russia made access to financial and humanitarian aid conditional on school attendance – parents who resisted were even threatened with the loss of parental custody. Some universities from occupied territories have relocated to Ukrainian-controlled areas. I visited Kherson State University, now in Ivano-Frankivsk, and Mariupol University, now based in Kyiv. Most classes are online, though some academic activities take place in person.

The deliberate use of education as a tool for identity erasure and cultural genocide follows a pattern of imperial domination that Ukraine has faced for centuries. In the current war, schools and universities have become not only targets of repression, but also vital arenas of resistance, where the struggle over memory, identity and national continuity is fought daily. The resilience of education professionals and students challenges the logic of occupation and affirms education as a front line of defiance against an authoritarian regime that seeks not only to seize land, but to redefine belonging and erase the future of a nation.

Vicente Ferraro is a postdoctoral researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil. He was a visiting researcher at ZOiS from February to April 2025.