cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4931252
Here you can see a trailer (3 min, scroll to the bottom of the page)
More about the film and upcoming events to watch across the globe are on the documentary’s website: https://www.childreninthefire.com/
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Children in the Fire [is] a new documentary directed by Evgeny Afineevsky, a Russian-born, US-based film-maker whose previous works include Cries from Syria, about the Syrian civil war, and the Oscar-nominated Winter on Fire, which covered the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. Along with horrifying stories of abduction and forced adoption, the new film also features children who have endured extensive burns, injuries and amputations since February 2022.
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The film includes footage of Putin stating that, “Wars are not won by generals, but rather by schoolteachers and priests.”
“He is saying that re-education is the key element of winning the war. And it applies not only to Ukrainian kids; it applies to the entirety of Russia. He is trying to create a sort of Hitler Youth movement.”
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[Edit typo.]
Really fucking dark story time!
Back before the latest war kicked off and nobody gave a shit about Ukranian sovereignty outside of that one bit on Seinfeld, Crimea was a discussion point for one reason or another. With the main argument being that russia can’t give it back because it is not even Ukranian in culture or ethnicity and is really russia anyway.
And a friend pointed out… they aren’t wrong. Because they ethnically cleansed the hell out of it after invading.
Pretty sure that was literally the plan
Russia has a long history of cultural and ethnic cleansing. They treat every territory they hope to eventually claim like the apocryphal story of “the Nazi bar”. The first guys who show up are perfectly polite and helpful, with good reasons for being there. Then they bring in their friends and family which is totally reasonable. Then those people bring in their friends and family. And it keeps happening, and eventually they are so culturally and linguistically distinct that it’s time for them to demand autonomy and independence, which they won’t be able to get on their own. So then they send in Russian troops to protect their Russian civilians, and before you know it, it turns out your country was actually Russia all along. All of Russia’s neighbors and post-Soviet states understand this because they’ve been victims of it. Sometimes more than once.
This is literally “great replacement conspiracy theory” applied to Russians… Replace the word “Russians” with “Arabs” or “Muslims” and you’re saying literally the same as European Neofascists
Another component is Sevestopol, within Crimea, which has largely been a (colonial) Russian city for almost its entire history. The USSR eedesignated it as a part of Ukraine in the 1950s.