‘Maybe you’ll speak Russian?’ A boy stayed silent for five years about the bullying he faced at school. How does living under occupation affect children’s mental health?

“We don’t understand you,” the teachers would say. “Maybe you should speak Russian?” they pressured Bohdan, who insisted on speaking Ukrainian. His classmates mocked him, calling him a “separatist”, and laughed. In 2014, when Russia occupied his native Crimea, Bohdan was a first-grader. He told his father about the bullying only five years later, long after their family had left Crimea and been living in free Ukraine. The boy admits that when he recalled those memories, he suddenly burst into tears, which surprised him – he thought he no longer cared.

The names of the individuals have been changed, and some details of their stories have been deliberately omitted for security reasons. Given the ongoing hostilities and the occupation of parts of southern Ukraine by Russia, the editorial team cannot obtain official confirmation of some of the reported testimonies or independently verify them.

Bohdan’s family left Crimea a few months after the occupation. Thousands of families across the peninsula and the occupied parts of Donbas made the same choice, though many others stayed. Children growing up under occupation spend years listening to Russian propaganda, fearing to leave home without reason, to speak freely, or to trust anyone. Many secretly continue studying in Ukrainian schools, pretend to be loyal to the aggressor, and hide their true beliefs.

The indoctrination of Ukrainian children in occupied areas is a deliberate and systematic effort to reshape their worldview and instill specific ideas, a policy that, according to numerous testimonies, Russia has pursued since 2014, when it seized Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Militarization has become part of that policy.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has expanded both the indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children under occupation, especially in areas captured after 2022. In schools, this happens through propaganda, “lessons on important topics”, and meetings with so-called “heroes” of the “special military operation”, as Russia calls its war against Ukraine. Outside schools, it takes place in camps where, according to children and investigators, they are taught Russian patriotism, given military training, and recruited into Russian youth military movements such as “Movement of the First” and “Yunarmiya”.

According to Ukrainian authorities and human rights defenders, around 1.6 million children live in occupied territories. Nearly all of them experience psychological violence, says Nataliia Sosnovenko, a psychologist from the Voices of Children charity and an expert on occupation and deportation. These children, she explains, have been deprived of the chance to live a free and normal childhood.

Bohdan, “I was too young to argue”

“Myclassmates shouted ‘separatist’ at me and laughed. We were in first grade, and I didn’t even understand what that word meant,” says Bohdan, now 18 and a first-year university student in Ukraine.

Seven-year-old Bohdan was called a “separatist” by his classmates because he refused to stop speaking Ukrainian. Illustration by: Anastasiia Faizova

He was only seven when it all began.

It was the 2013–2014 school year, which began in the autumn with the Revolution of Dignity, continued in February with the occupation of Crimea, and ended in March with the aggressor’s illegal “referendum” on the “annexation” of the peninsula to the Russian Federation. At that time, Bohdan’s family lived in one of Crimea’s cities, where the boy had spent his early childhood.

Bohdan recalls that in 2013, his first school bell rang to the national anthem of Ukraine, with the Ukrainian flag in the background. At the beginning of the school year, about half of the children in his class spoke Ukrainian. After the occupiers arrived, all Ukrainian symbols disappeared from the school. The stand with the Ukrainian anthem, portraits of Ivan Franko, Taras Shevchenko, and Lesia Ukrainka were removed. The blue-and-yellow stand with teachers’ photos was repainted.

The principal and some teachers were replaced. The new teachers began forcing all students, without exception, to wear the “St. George’s ribbon” on their shirts, which at that time was still not officially banned in Ukraine (it was prohibited in June 2017).

“My parents explained to me that it had nothing to do with Ukrainian symbols, so I didn’t want to wear it and kept taking it off,” he says. But the teachers kept making him pin it back on.

The teachers switched to speaking Russian, and all lessons were now taught in Russian. Under pressure from teachers, Bohdan’s Ukrainian-speaking classmates began switching to Russian as well. The teachers pressured him too. “They told me, ‘We don’t understand you,’ and ‘Maybe you should speak Russian?’ I was too young then to argue with them. I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t switch either,” he recalls. Gradually, everyone in the class spoke Russian except him.

One day during a game, his classmates beat him up. The boy turned to the teacher who was nearby, but she did nothing to protect him. After that, he felt like an outcast.

Those few months under occupation were a serious test for Bohdan’s family. His father, an active participant in the Revolution of Dignity, lost his job. His mother was terrified. One day, his father said at home that the family would move to another region of Ukraine. Bohdan overheard and decided to wait until it was over.

At the last school ceremony of the year, he stood listening to the Russian anthem under the tricolour flag. Bohdan finished first grade with high grades, but after the family moved to free Ukraine in the summer of 2014, he was afraid to start second grade in a new school, thinking the bullying would continue. However, there everyone spoke Ukrainian, and both students and teachers welcomed him. He was finally able to make friends.

Bohdan barely spoke to his parents about what had happened at school after the occupation. When he was in sixth grade, he and his father were walking home and began talking about Crimea. Bohdan admitted that back in the occupied school, children had called him a “separatist”. It was the first time he had mentioned it in five years. “I thought I no longer cared, but I started crying,” the boy says.

His father supported him but was also angry – not at Bohdan, but at the fact that his son had been forced to endure bullying and had kept it to himself for so long.

For several years after that, Bohdan continued to believe that what happened to him was simply bad luck, that he had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, he sees it differently. “It wasn’t bad luck,” he says, “it’s just that there are Russians who didn’t let us live in peace.” He adds that after the full-scale invasion began, this conviction only grew stronger.

Bullying and identity change: ‘the psyche breaks’

“If bullying is systematic, the child either withdraws and becomes an outcast, or turns aggressive and fights for a place under the sun. Even a second-grader can rebel. It depends on what the child sees and hears at home because they take cues from adults,” says child and adolescent psychologist and art therapist Anna Yeriomenko. She works with children who fled the war in 2022 from front-line areas and territories occupied by Russia.

Teenager Yana was forced to hide at home from the Russians for several years until she escaped the occupation. Illustration by: Anastasiia Faizova

According to her, the forced change of identity aimed at retraining a child from being Ukrainian to being Russian is like telling a girl, “From now on, you are a boy.”

“This is definitely a harmful influence. The psyche breaks,” says Yeriomenko.

“Some children give in more easily, accept what is imposed, and their sense of identity fades. Others develop an aggressive psyche and adapt while feeling shame. That shame gets suppressed because deep down they realise they’ve accepted something wrong.”

In any case, silence is a defence mechanism, says clinical psychologist Natela Dubashydze. She explains that a child may remain silent out of fear of reaction, subconsciously thinking, “It’s too painful,” “It won’t help,” or “It’s my fault.”

“Victims of bullying often develop a sense of guilt. It’s a natural psychological response: ‘Maybe I did something wrong.’ Their trust in adults can be damaged,” Dubashydze says. “If the environment – teachers or school – fails to protect them, the child loses basic trust in adults’ ability to provide support and therefore doesn’t turn to parents.”

Yana: ‘that part of my life is just lost’

Yana left her home in southern Ukraine, occupied after 2022, carrying only a suitcase light enough for her teenage hands, a few hundred in cash, and a handful of phone numbers she still remembered after three years. “It’s like I wasn’t even a teenager. That part of my life is just lost,” she says.

Yana is 18. She fled the occupation alone. The girl says she had dreamed of leaving from the first days of the full-scale invasion, but her parents refused to abandon their home. Until she turned 18, she could not leave without them.

Under Russian law, which the occupier is increasingly enforcing in the occupied territories with the help of security forces, children are not allowed to travel abroad without parental accompaniment until after reaching adulthood.

In Ukraine, children can move freely within the country without supervision from the age of 14 and can travel abroad independently from the age of 16.

“I immediately told my parents that I would not go to the occupation school. For me and others my age, their propaganda no longer has any effect,” the girl says.

However, younger children whom Yana knew did attend the occupation school. They told her that in the new school they were subjected to “lessons on important topics”, where children were forced to listen to Russian propaganda about the invasion and occupation. “Children as young as ten really start to believe that everything happening there is correct,” she notes.

Yana recalls that after the Russian occupation of her town in 2022, schools and shops stopped working. In their place appeared signs with the Russian tricolour and portraits of Putin. “They spread information that this was supposed to last forever, that things would never be like before, and that they had come in peace,” she remembers.

The classrooms in Yana’s school were filled with Russian symbols, Z letters, and portraits of Putin. In the occupation, not only Ukrainian symbols but even hints of them were forbidden.

The friends and classmates of teenager Yana left the temporarily occupied territory in the first weeks of the occupation. The girl was left with almost no friends under occupation. Illustration by: Anastasiia Faizova

“Because I had something like a Ukrainian flag in my room, I had to hide it. If anyone had seen it and reported it to the ‘commandant’s office’, I would have faced very serious trouble,” she says.

After several years under occupation, Yana lost contact with most of her peers and classmates, who had left in the first weeks of the full-scale war. During that time, going outside was dangerous, and interacting with others was risky. Speaking Ukrainian or mixed Ukrainian-Russian (surzhyk) was not safe, and she did not want to make new acquaintances.

“There was a moment when I began to doubt that I would ever get out. People talked among themselves, and it felt like young people had no choice but to stay under occupation or go to Russia. I need to build my future, but I didn’t want it to be there,” she says.

Yana describes the years spent under occupation as completely lost in terms of personal development and life experience. She believes this is why it is now difficult for her to meet new people, trust others, and she worries a lot about how it will affect her future.

‘Teenagers are angry because adults could not fully protect them’

“A new social environment, new teachers. And any sense of past success gets reset. You might be a great athlete in Berdyansk, but if you move, for example, to Kyiv, you might not find your community,” explains child psychologist Anna Yeriomenko.

“They experience the loss of connection with peers as if someone has died,” she explains.

Younger children may not fully understand what occupation means and simply repeat what their parents tell them. Teenagers, however, grasp the reality of occupation. They understand what they had and what was taken from them by the enemy. In art therapy, this sometimes shows up with boys drawing dead Russians and Russia in flames, Yeriomenko notes.

There are general age-related patterns that adults closest to the child should be aware of. Young children are oriented primarily toward a parent or caregiver; younger school-aged children look to a trusted adult, like a teacher or coach. Losing contact with these key adults can be traumatic. For teenagers, peers are the most important.

They may withdraw, avoid leaving home or their room, and resist going to a new school after relocation. Yeromenko emphasises the need for particular care, since atypical teenage behaviour can confuse parents because trauma intersects with normal adolescent development.

“They may not realise it, or talk about it, but they are angry that adults could not fully protect them. Children lose their basic trust in the world. Physically, nothing might have happened to them, but in reality, their lives have changed profoundly,” the expert explains.

Natalia Mezina, a psychologist at the ‘Ukrainian Network for Children’s Rights’, explains that children who leave occupation zones often find it difficult to form new friendships and social connections in a new place. A significant portion of their psychological energy is spent on adapting and reintegrating. Sometimes, these children begin to miss friends who remained under occupation. At such times, they need support and presence.

“This can show up as sadness or grief. It might develop into depression, but not necessarily. The effects can vary greatly,” the psychologist says. “Our goal is to engage the child as much as possible in the school environment and family life, so they feel protected, heard, and supported. This creates a foundation for future development based on the help provided by nearby adults.”

Sashko: ‘they didn’t beat us, but we felt like unwanted guests’

“My grandson returned from a three-week camp in occupied Crimea, and the response from his grandmother was that the children were treated as if they were a different race – unfriendly,” recalls Sashko’s grandmother Yana.

A grandmother tries to reach Sasha, who went to a camp in Crimea. Illustration by: Anastasiia Faizova

Yana adds: “I asked him, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ – ‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘Well, grandma, I won’t go again.’ I asked, ‘Did they hit you?’ – ‘No, but we felt like unwanted guests. We were from Ukraine, and they, being Russian, weren’t very happy to see us.’”

In the summer of 2023, the administration of a school in one of the villages of the Kherson region took Sashko and other students to the occupied peninsula. At that time, he was a teenager, almost a graduate.

Sashko didn’t want to go to the camp, but his father was afraid the child might be taken away, as representatives of the occupation administration had already made such threats to people he knew. After weighing up the risks, the father agreed, and Sashko was added to the list of children for the trip.

He later told his grandmother that while in the camp, the children were not allowed to call their families. Still, Sashko managed to find a place with internet access to send short messages. “He wrote, but only briefly: ‘I’m fine’ and ‘I can’t talk’,” the woman recalls. That was all she heard from him.

His grandmother noted that Sashko had always been reserved, and it was never easy to have open conversations with him. After his return, the boy told her only that the camp supervisors were extremely strict, almost like in the army. He mentioned ordinary teenage quarrels and teasing but said he did not take part in them. Beyond that, she learned nothing more.

‘Almost all of these children have, in fact, experienced psychological violence’

When a child lives under occupation, they exist in an environment of constant threat, where not only their safety but also their identity, language, and attitude toward their parents are questioned. This environment lacks the basic sense of stability and predictability that is essential for the development of a healthy psyche, explains clinical psychologist Natela Dubashydze.

“A child is forced to adapt to a hostile environment where their real beliefs, or what they were taught at home, can be dangerous for them. This creates a double life: outwardly they behave ‘properly’ to survive, while internally they may preserve a pro-Ukrainian identity but keep it hidden,” says the psychologist.

According to her, this can lead to dissociation, a mechanism in which a part of the personality – one that feels unsafe – becomes frozen.

“In clinical psychology, this is sometimes referred to as ‘emotional freezing,’ when a child’s inner world is torn between what they must show and who they really are,” Dubashydze explains.

Natalia Sosnovenko, a psychologist with the charity ‘Voices of Children’, has been working since 2023 with families and children who returned from deportation or from temporarily occupied territory. She notes that such experiences often cause long-term acute stress reactions in children, and in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s a problem of self-regulation and emotional awareness. Looking deeper, almost all of these children have essentially endured psychological violence, because they were deprived of the chance to live their childhood freely,” the psychologist notes. 

Yeriomenko explains that during the war, she has often seen developmental regression by two or three years – for instance, children start sucking their fingers, biting their nails, or using baby talk again. “This is unusual for teenagers, but it’s a normal reaction to extremely abnormal circumstances,” she says.

Children in the temporarily occupied territories are systematically sent to camps for propaganda and militarization. Illustration by: Anastasiia Faizova

The most common concerns raised about children who left the temporarily occupied territory or the Russian Federation at different times, and whom experts are now working with, include prolonged adaptation in a new environment, fear, memories of the past, and emotional withdrawal. However, every child has a unique experience, and psychologists always apply an individual approach in every case.

Experts explain that being in a state of long-term stress negatively affects a child’s cognitive abilities, such as the capacity to remember and reproduce information.

According to psychologist Natalia Sosnovenko, many of these children also experience fear, which can impact their digestive and cardiovascular systems. “As a result, they may suffer from panic attacks, dizziness, and even fainting,” she says.

Children from the occupied territories feel additional pressure because their relatives may still remain there, which makes them stay silent out of fear of causing harm, says Natalia Mezina, a psychologist with the NGO Ukrainian Network for Children’s Rights. This is especially true when someone wants to make their stories public.

“People close themselves off and focus on survival. Even today, despite widespread internet access and communication tools, this tendency toward isolation persists out of caution. They feel that staying quiet is safer for them and their loved ones,” explains Mezina.

When working with children who return from deportation or from the temporarily occupied territory, it is important “to communicate calmly”, without drawing excessive attention to them but also without ignoring them, Sosnovenko notes. Leaving the occupied territory means losing part of themselves and the world they once belonged to.

“A fundamental need of children is to be accepted – to belong to a community, especially among peers, where they can feel included. For that, they must not face bullying or feel alienated. And they will feel alienated if no one helps them adjust, because they are entering a new environment, adapting to a new curriculum, language, place, and people. In such moments, their relatives may not be able to support them, as they themselves remain in the occupied territory and need help too,” Mezina adds.

In her view, it is also crucial to involve these children in active social participation. “Only when they see themselves as active participants will they start feeling confident, independent, and capable of further growth,” she says.

On 14 May, 2025, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted Law No. 12385 on the status of a child affected by armed conflict. According to the law, this status applies not only to children who suffered physical harm due to hostilities but also to those who were emotionally, psychologically, or socially affected by the war.

According to the Ministry of Health, several organisations in Ukraine assist children returning from the occupied territories with educational, social, humanitarian, and psychological needs. They are registered as internally displaced persons and therefore receive the same type of support available to both adults and children with that status.

Until recently, there was no separate state support specifically for this category of children. In early June 2025, the Ukrainian government introduced a one-time payment of 50,000 hryvnias for any child returning from deportation, forced relocation, or from the temporarily occupied territory to areas controlled by Ukraine, the Ministry of Social Policy announced. The ministry also noted that an individual reintegration plan is developed for each returning child, which includes the route home and a set of support services, including psychological assistance. However, the ministry did not specify whether there are state programmes of support and development for those who have already turned 18. The Ministry of Social Policy has not yet responded to The Reckoning Project’s inquiry.

At the time of preparing this material, none of the children featured in it were receiving psychological support.

Lawyers from The Reckoning Project use the term “indoctrination” to describe a pattern of conduct that includes a group of related or interconnected violations concerning the rights to freedom of thought, education, identity, and the prohibition of racial discrimination.

Sashko, together with other children from his school, was sent to a camp in Crimea, where, according to him, the counselors treated them harshly. Illustration by: Anastasiia Faizova

The Russian Federation is bound by several obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which define the state’s responsibility to respect and protect the rights of children both within educational institutions and beyond them. The right to education is based on principles such as accessibility, non-discrimination, cultural relevance, and the obligation to ensure adequate quality of education.

The removal of the Ukrainian language from school curricula, the alteration of study programmes, and the transformation of the cultural environment in schools on the occupied territory may also violate a child’s right to identity, which encompasses not only nationality but also name, family ties, language, and values. Forms of indoctrination that foster intolerance and hatred may constitute a violation of the prohibition of racial discrimination.

Author: Lesia Pyniak

This story was first published on Radio Svoboda.

This text was prepared in collaboration with The Reckoning Project, a global team of journalists and lawyers dedicated to documenting, reporting, and gathering evidence for the investigation of war crimes. The Reckoning Project receives support from the European Union.

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