{"id":37679,"date":"2026-03-27T16:18:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/?p=37679"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:28:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:28:17","slug":"children-and-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/articles\/columns\/children-and-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Children and War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo from the social media page \u201cThe Movement of the First | Elektrostal\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is, oddly enough, a kind of blunt honesty in the decision of the Chelyabinsk Central Court to ban<\/a> an Oscar-winning film about the militarisation of schoolchildren in the town of Karabash. The prosecutor\u2019s complaint was disarmingly direct: the film expresses a \u201cnegative attitude\u201d towards Russia\u2019s war and its authorities. The court went further, invoking \u201cterrorism propaganda\u201d because of a white-blue-white flag \u2014 long designated extremist by the state \u2014 seen in the office of the film\u2019s protagonist and co-author, Pavel Talankin. At least the pretence is gone. In today\u2019s Russian legal vocabulary, the so called <\/span>extremism and terrorism are interchangeable labels, as well as <\/span>their \u201cpropaganda.\u201d The film was banned for exactly what it shows: Talankin, coyly introduced as \u201cMr Nobody,\u201d is read as being \u201cagainst Putin\u201d \u2014 and that, in itself, is enough, because such a \u201cnegative attitude\u201d is banned<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The ban was not immediate; <\/span>For more than a year, the film travelled the international festival circuit, collecting awards and gathering momentum as an Oscar contender, before ultimately winning. Throughout this, the Russian authorities remained conspicuously silent, as if unsure how to respond. When they did, the reaction was as clumsy as it was revealing. The so called <\/span>Presidential Council for Human Rights filed a complaint \u2014 strangely enough, <\/span>not with domestic institutions, but with the <\/span>UNESCO \u2014 claiming that the film violated the rights of minors by showing their faces. It is hard to read this as anything other than cynical theatre. It is hard to believe that even people as inexperienced in children’s rights as those who are appointed <\/span> in this “human rights body” do not understand that UNESCO is not the most suitable place to study their claims. If this were a body genuinely concerned with children\u2019s rights, it might have turned its attention to the Ministry of Education, whose cynical <\/span>role in orchestrating the very scenes captured in the film is difficult to overstate. As Talankin himself put it, the filming followed a script effectively authored by the Ministry: every line, every gesture, every reaction preordained. \u201cIt was a fully scripted lesson, a fully scripted presentation \u2014 down to the minute: which teacher should say what, how the children should look, and how they should respond\u201d, \u2014 Talankin said in an interview<\/a>. What the film captures is not improvisation, but choreography \u2014 the staging of militarised childhood.<\/p>\n

The outrage over children\u2019s visibility on screen rings especially hollow in this context. Everyone, including the children themselves (their opinions are rarely asked, but they are in fact even more important than those of adults \u2014 parents, teachers, or other adults crushed by propaganda and afraid for themselves), and all the other participants in the filming, understood that this was not being filmed for \u201chome viewing,\u201d although, of course, they did not know about the future international film that would make them famous.<\/p>\n

There are no scenes in the film where children try to hide from the camera pointed at them or, in tears, ask for the filming to stop. But in the film \u201cBetrayal,\u201d shown on Russian television shortly before the \u201cscandalous\u201d (in the view of the Human Rights Council) awarding of the Oscar, such scenes do appear. It also features a member of the Human Rights Council, Marina Akhmetova (was it not she who drafted the complaint to the <\/span>UNESCO?). In \u201cBetrayal,\u201d Akhmetova comments on the arrests of teenagers accused of terrorism: her speech is inserted precisely between scenes of the arrest of a boy suspected of setting fire to a relay cabinet on the railway. The teenager\u2019s face is shown in the closest close-up, as are the bewildered faces of his parents scolding the boy (\u201cDidn\u2019t you know you weren\u2019t allowed to do that?\u201d). It is highly unlikely that these people gave permission to the propagandist Andrei Medvedev or to the <\/span>Human Rights Council member Marina Akhmetova to publish video filmed at the tragic moment of their son\u2019s detention.<\/p>\n

Even if the parents did give such permission, it is entirely obvious that their understanding of what is happening (or rather, their lack of understanding) in no way corresponds to the position of the young man himself, who stubbornly turns away from the camera, looking only into his mother\u2019s eyes, from whom he is now being taken away for years. He faces up to ten years in prison (as a security officer\u2019s voice off-screen says) \u2014 he will answer for his decision and his \u201cexpression of a negative attitude\u201d himself, yet for some reason others are expected to give permission for filming and publishing his image at the moment of his detention?..<\/p>\n

This is how the experts from the Human Rights Council understand the \u201crights of minors.\u201d This is also how the Russian authorities understand them \u2014 a prison sentence for \u201cjustifying terrorism\u201d (that is, for example, for a white-and-blue ribbon) applies from the age of fourteen, while showing their faces up to the age of eighteen requires permission from the oldest and wisest.<\/p>\n

The film about \u201cbetrayal\u201d is precisely about the young \u2014 about those whom it neatly refers to as the \u201cjuvenile strata\u2019s<\/span> of the population.\u201d It shows both those who are still awaiting trial and those who have already been sentenced to 17\u201318 years or more. A menacing voice-over declares that the arson of relay cabinets is most often carried out by these \u201cjuvenile strata\u2019s<\/span>,\u201d that criminal responsibility begins at fourteen, and that the \u201csentence may extend up to life imprisonment\u201d (here again they are lying \u2014 minors cannot yet be given life sentences).<\/p>\n

Yet even these harsh measures do not seem sufficient to the film\u2019s \u201cexperts\u201d in their fight against the \u201cjuvenile strata\u2019s<\/span> \u201d: the ex-spy<\/span> Bezrukov calls openly for the death penalty, stating with apparent expertise that \u201cany recruitment takes place on the basis of a sense of life.\u201d It turns out that some people have found this \u201csense of life\u201d in \u201cprotecting something, like animals,\u201d and here the experienced intelligence officer concludes: \u201cif a person associates with such people, then they must have something in common.\u201d The authorities vigilantly monitor those who \u201cassociate\u201d and have already convicted thousands of young people over the past three years (this information from an FSB report is also cited in the film). The rest are being intimidated and have their minds flooded with lies promoting war.<\/p>\n

Returning to the Talankin\u2013Borenstein film banned in the Russian Federation, I would only add that this film is important for Western audiences. It has been awarded in Britain, the United States and other countries precisely because the horror of the militarisation of schoolchildren is shown there in the most accessible, most explicit way \u2014 so that even those who are extremely far removed from this reality can understand it. Those who closely follow what is happening to children in Russia and in the occupied territories of Ukraine \u2014 and even more so those who live there \u2014 will find nothing surprising in this. Moreover, the situation is changing every year and every month, as demonstrated by the latest study<\/a> by the \u201cNe Norma\u201d project and online media \u201cVerstka\u201d, which addresses the issue of the use of children for military purposes.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, in hundreds of Russian schools children are no longer simply made to absorb propaganda and, in line with the Ministry\u2019s script, to \u201cwatch and react,\u201d but are directly made to produce items used in war and for military purposes. Researchers found that \u201cin a school in the village of Uzyan in the Republic of Bashkortostan, children make scrubbing pads and weave tactical bracelets for participants in the \u2018special military operation\u2019.\u201d It is known that \u201cin field conditions, military personnel use these bracelets for the rapid securing and camouflage of equipment, and for creating traps or snares\u201d \u2014 that is, these tactical bracelets may serve to kill people on the front line. Teachers, publishing their reports, explain: \u201cSuch work allows them to feel their involvement in the common cause of supporting the defenders and fosters patriotic feelings in children.\u201d At times, by the teachers\u2019 own admission, children tried to refuse \u201cbecause of their attitude towards the special military operation,\u201d but they were \u201cpersuaded, coaxed\u2026 Under collective pressure, they gave in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talankin once took part in filming militarised lessons \u201cfor reporting to the Ministry\u201d; now, for such reports, photographs are published of children (and not always with their faces concealed) making tactical bracelets, weaving camouflage nets, and sewing clothing for those who are going to kill, conquer and destroy Ukraine. Meanwhile, those children who, \u201con the basis of a sense of life,\u201d speak out against this are sentenced to ten years or more, as shown in the film \u201cBetrayal\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stephania KULAEVA<\/em>
\nFirst published on the Radio Svoboda<\/a> blog<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is, oddly enough, a kind of blunt honesty in the decision of the Chelyabinsk Central Court to ban an Oscar-winning film about the militarisation of schoolchildren in the town of Karabash. The prosecutor\u2019s complaint was disarmingly direct: the film…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362],"tags":[155],"strategy_cases":[],"campaign":[],"archive":[],"filter-content":[],"regions":[515],"class_list":["post-37679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","tag-childrensrights-en","regions-russia"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar.png",922,576,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-125x125.png",125,125,true],"medium":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-300x187.png",300,187,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-768x480.png",640,400,true],"large":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-650x406.png",640,400,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar.png",922,576,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar.png",922,576,false],"pub-thumb":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-220x137.png",220,137,true],"post-thumb":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-170x170.png",170,170,true],"wcicon":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-48x48.png",48,48,true],"wcsquare":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-300x300.png",300,300,true],"wcsmall":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-250x156.png",250,156,true],"wcstandard":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-550x344.png",550,344,true],"wcbig":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-800x500.png",800,500,true],"wcfixedheightsmall":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-288x180.png",288,180,true],"wcfixedheightmedium":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-480x300.png",480,300,true],"wcfixedheight":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-800x500.png",800,500,true],"wccarouselsmall":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-210x150.png",210,150,true],"wccarousel":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-400x285.png",400,285,true],"wcslider":["https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/childrenandwar-922x500.png",922,500,true]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":"

Photo from the social media page \u201cThe Movement of the First | Elektrostal\u201d There is, oddly enough, a kind of blunt honesty in the decision of the Chelyabinsk Central Court to ban an Oscar-winning film about the militarisation of schoolchildren in the town of Karabash. The prosecutor\u2019s complaint was disarmingly direct: the film expresses a \u201cnegative attitude\u201d towards Russia\u2019s war and its authorities. The court went further, invoking \u201cterrorism propaganda\u201d because of a white-blue-white flag \u2014 long designated extremist by the state \u2014 seen in the office of the film\u2019s protagonist and co-author, Pavel Talankin. At least the pretence is…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Columns<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"admin3","url":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/author\/admin3\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37681,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37679\/revisions\/37681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"strategy_cases","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/strategy_cases?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"campaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campaign?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"filter-content","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/filter-content?post=37679"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=37679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}