The point of this diary is that Russia of 2024 is in a mid stage of tranformation into a completely weaponized society along the lines of Nazi Germany and the rest of the world isn’t prepared to deal with it and truthfully doesn’t even understand what is going on.
I was already planning on writing this diary about what is going on with the population inside Russia when I found a recent documentary filmed by two female Russian journalists who spent over a year after the start of war inside Russia which says even more than I possibly could have assembled from other Russian content sources, of which I watch a good amount.
The documentary below carries a weight far beyond what I can sum up in words but I will still try. IMO, every single person of power who is advocating terms of surrender and/or refusing aid to Ukraine should watch this and wake up. I will continue below the video embed.
A couple of direct takeawys from the docmentary for those who don’t have time or connection to watch the video although I really hope you take the time to watch it and perhaps share.
The film begins with scenes of Russian children as young as 6 years old in full military gear performing training excercises with weapons. It’s a bootcamp for kids. The first speaker is the training leader of the children, Olga Sachran. She is a Russian who fought in Donbass and now works in this massive nationwide program to weaponize Russia’s youth. The camera focuses on her helping a camouflage clad girl who looks to be about 6 years old load a rifle . It appears to be a pellet rifle when the child fires it but nonetheless she is being shown how to arm, aim and fire. Olga speaks to the interviewer with the videos of the kids overlaid:
“They should know how to use a gun. They need to be prepared both physically ad morally. How do I see the future of my homeland? I see a powerful Russia. This isn’t simply about demilitarizing and de-nazifying Ukraine, the whole western world is hostile and backstabbing. It has to be fundamentally reformed, Russia will destroy it”
The film then makes it very clear that this isn’t some fringe element, this isn’t some extemist cell or some far flung minority of perhaps parental zealots sending their kids to learn extremists tactics. This is all of Russia.
What you are watching is a discussion of “Yuarmia” — A military patriotic youth army composed of children ages 6 to 18. The organization was formed in 2016. It had 25,000 members at the time.
Can you guess how many Russian kids are members of the Patriotic milita now?
1.2 million Russian kids are members of this organization. And it is a weaponized militia.
The film next takes us to an urban school in the city of Rostov On Don — the only school that allowed them in to film. We are shown a student assembly lead by the Yuarmia kids in the school, wearing the red and khaki uniforms (not the camouflage gear). The rest of the students salute them as they march with pride down the center of the assembly. The film states that this assembly is perfomed in every single school throughout the Russian Federation on a regular basis and the goal is to ensure the loyalty and nationalism as well as making sure that “patriotism” and militarization go hand and hand as root of civic responsibility in Russia.
They sing patriotic songs and then dismiss to a session for all of the students where they watch propaganda films in class. The film shows pieces of the propaganda movie shown. It is a feature showing a well spoken 12 year old girl “interviewing” named Sophia Chomenko ( noted as “SC” in the quote) a Russian journalist (noted as “J”) and a Russian historian (noted as “H”). Here are some of the quotes from their “Conversation”:
“Today we will be talking about what’s going on, we will be talking abou the events in Ukraine” [SC]
“We don’t attack residential buildings. We never strike civlians, We don’t destroy social infrastructure like kindergartens, or schools, or water, or power networks” [H]
“Now I understand that I need to be extra careful about the type of news that I watch. From now on I will double check everything."[SC]
The video was filmed 8 days after the war started and was shown to 22 million kids in classrooms in Russia.
In the sequence that follows the filmakers have footage of school programs from various parts of Russia in which the kids look even more militarized than the first school which they were granted access to. They show two disturbing clips of young kids, one waving a flag saying:
“I am ready to give my life for my mother, my father and my homeland”
and scarier still, a little girl in a military outfit saying:
“Finish off these damn fascists once and for all”
In the next segement they find a school teacher in Moscow named Tatyana Chervenkov who is willing to be interviewed. I will give a single quote from this teacher:
“I know the content of these ‘converstations about important things’. I know we are supposed to talk [with the children] about the Special Military Operation and tell 9 year old children they should be willing to die for their homeland.”
She goes on to say that she isn’t able to do that but she is almost alone in her resistance. The point of the film is that the vast majority of Russian kids in every single school are receiving that message.
The film continues to follow up that she was fired from her position.
The final snippet I will give from th film regards a 10 year old 5th grade girl name Varya Gilinka who was taken by the police from her school for drawing a picture which said “I”m for peace” with two kids, one in Ukrainian colors and one in Russian colors. Her phone was searched and they found a “Slava Ukraine” JPEG on it.
She was detained and the police and the FSB raided their apartment and randsacked it. The only other thing they found was a souvenir from Kyiv. They did however release her after that but still, a 10 year old was detained and interogated.
I will wrap up for now — I initially wanted to write about real time examples of what is going on in Russia but I think I’ve gone pretty long here. I will probably post a follow up using other material to showcase the transformation that is taking place.
The point I wanted to make is that I don’t believe that most if almost any people outside of Russia who don’t actually pay attention to real content coming out of Russia have an understanding of what is going on — but it’s not normal. It’s not even close to normal and Putin is building a machine that has a purpose and it’s purpose looks like social machines built in the past.
It’s my contention that most people are focusing on the actions in the war units — the army, the attacks, the tactics, the meat waves, the failures, the day to days, the things blowing up, the battlefield.
And not enough people are looking at the system that is feeding it — and because of this we are at greater risk.