Russia has launched an elaborate plan to maintain control of territory annexed from Ukraine, according to Western officials who liken the effort to the propaganda operations refined by Soviet dictators.
“Indoctrination helps to seal the fate because any sign of different thought would be interpreted as ‘traitors,’” a Baltic official told the Washington Examiner.
Crimea has been the focal point of these efforts in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin annexing the region, which holds a strategically important port city that the Soviet Union controlled throughout the Cold War. The Kremlin maintains that the Crimean people voted to break away from Ukraine, but Western powers have dismissed that referendum as a rigged vote, and U.S. officials decry “the militarization of Crimea” under Russian occupation.
“Crimea really more or less, according to our civil society folks, has become an armed camp,” Rob Destro, who leads the State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor bureau, told reporters on Monday. “They’re even sending soldiers into the schools, and so they’re developing what is the reinvigorating, what might be termed the Young Pioneers from the Soviet times.”
The Young Pioneers was a Soviet youth organization populated by 9- to 14-year-olds, who pledged loyalty to the Communist Party “rather than attach themselves most strongly to their families,” according to Western experts. Putin launched a new “Russian school children’s movement” in 2015 through an order unveiled on the anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union’s Young Communist League.
“The conditions are right for uniting the public movement for children into one big organization,” Mikhail Barannikov, the editor of the Young Pioneers newspaper, said at the time. “Naturally, it won’t be the same organization that existed in Soviet times.”
The emergence of such tactics in Crimea, along with the Russian military presence, could undermine Kremlin claims about having the support of the Crimean people.
“It shows why it was important for Kremlin to grab Crimea,” the Baltic official said. “Russia might be worried that some Crimeans might start having second thoughts about belonging to Russia.”
Destro aired his rebuke after meeting with human rights activists in the Slovak Republic, where he traveled last week during a diplomatic tour of Europe. His focus on Russian aggression against Ukraine comes the same week that House lawmakers vote whether to impeach President Trump due to a controversy sparked by his push for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accuse Joe Biden of corruption.
“U.S. being vocal towards Crimea, despite all internal political controversies here, is also a sign of big support and a clear message to Putin,” the Baltic official said.
