BELGOROD, Russia — Since Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin and his government have been waging a parallel struggle to capture the minds of Russia’s next generation and raise loyal fighters for the future wars that he believes he needs to restore Russia’s imperial greatness.

For 14-year-old Yegor, that struggle has already been won.

Above his bed hangs a large banner of the Wagner Private Military Company, a brutal mercenary outfit, known for its activities in Ukraine, Africa and the Middle East. Pinned to his desk is an infographic about “denazification,” entitled “Ukraine is a terrorist state.”

His bedroom walls are decorated with military maps and toy guns.

Yegor spends his days roaming around in a child-size uniform from Belgorod’s local military unit that his father, a soldier, gave him for New Year’s. The Washington Post is not identifying Yegor by his full name as his father is an active-duty soldier.

Asked to describe one of his favorite recent memories, Yegor lit up talking about how he learned to fly drones at a military youth camp in nearby Gubkin. “I was proud because the instructor told me I was a talented pilot,” he said, his voice cracking. “I find it easy. It’s like a video game.”

The camp is part of a nationwide network that was created in 2022 following an instruction by Putin to establish more military training and patriotic education centers across Russia. Its website says it has trained over 55,000 cadets to date and describes its mission as preparing “a new generation of patriots who love their homeland.”

At schools, libraries and youth clubs across Russia, the militarization of education is now on full display. Funding has been increased for youth movements and patriotic education, and the budget was doubled last month for Russia’s Youth Army. History and literature textbooks have been rewritten, and compulsory weekly patriotism classes have been introduced.

Much of what has been revived harks back to the Soviet Union. The Youth Army and Putin’s new youth movement, “Movement of the First,” is a reincarnation of the Komsomol. The new war camps, meanwhile, remind grandparents of their days in DOSAAF, a paramilitary sports organization in the Soviet Union.

Yegor, like other children interviewed for this article, spoke about what it is like for young Russians coming of age in an authoritarian wartime society shaped by powerful state propaganda and the militarization of institutions.

They also showed how, far from readying Russia for peace, the Kremlin is rapidly and successfully pursuing a long-term strategy of preparing its society to fight new wars of expansionism to return the country to what it casts as its glorious Soviet past.

An evening at the library

Last month, at an evening library session for children organized by Belgorod’s local administration, the theme was “our heroes.” Children wrote letters to soldiers on the front lines, glued together Victory Day-themed collages, sang patriotic songs and explored a Soviet storybook following the life of a military family.

Artem, 15, a “veteran” of the youth camps, showed an excited group of 8-year-olds how to hold and fire an RPG-26, a Soviet anti-tank weapon. “Well done, guys!” encouraged one of the librarians, as the children also practiced moving around in flak jackets half their size, visibly struggling under the weight. “This will protect your vital organs and your heart from the enemy’s bullets!”

Artem himself dreams of becoming a soldier, showing off his own bespoke military patch and call sign, Cheburashka — the beloved Soviet-era cartoon. Like Yegor, he attended the war camp in Gubkin this summer and told The Post he had learned how to storm enemy positions and throw grenades.

While these initiatives have sprung up all over Russia, it is Belgorod and nearby Kursk that have truly experienced the fallout of Russia’s invasion. Ukraine invaded and occupied part of Kursk region for nine months before it was pushed out by Russian forces this April. Kyiv has also bombarded the Belgorod region with rockets and drones since the start of the war, killing civilians, including children.

Schoolchildren across Belgorod region spent two years studying remotely in the wake of the attacks and watched as bomb shelters have been built in their neighborhoods and schools. As residents here have learned to live with constant air raid sirens, the Kremlin’s line that Russia is fighting a defensive war against Ukrainian neo-Nazis, rings true for many here.

From Kaliningrad in the west to Yakutia in the east, the same, unified history textbook casts this conflict not as a war, but as a noble mission inherited from World War II to liberate historically Russian lands from fascist invaders.

Children are watching men go off to war. Those who don’t return are memorialized on plaques at schools — their uniforms, diaries and belongings presented in new exhibits at youth clubs.

“I hate it when he leaves, it’s scary,” said Yegor of his father.

A vaccine against Nazism

As schools across Russia geared up to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, The Post visited Secondary School Number 2 in Gubkin for an 11th-grade history lesson.

The Great Patriotic War, what Russia calls World War II, has become modern Russia’s most important founding myth; in the last decade particularly, with the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine, the May Victory celebrations have acquired a cultlike reverence.

The visit was organized by the Belgorod regional administration and was partially attended by local officials from the Education Ministry. The visit did not reflect an average day at the school, but it did reveal the ultrapatriotic image to which it is obliged to adhere.

The school was an overwhelming, frenetic scene of activity. Teenage cadets were rehearsing for the town’s upcoming parade. Girls wearing friendship bracelets and traditional Soviet school uniforms were huddled together making St. George ribbons, which once commemorated the Soviet victory over fascism, but have since become a nationalist and pro-war symbol. Volunteers from the local youth movement were busy overseeing letter-writing sessions to soldiers.

On one side of the main hall stood three “hero desks” emblazoned with the faces and biographies of some of those killed on the front — a government initiative found across the country.

Principal Yelena Baglikova, who won a regional prize at this year’s Principal of the Year awards, spoke breathlessly about the regular lectures by active-duty soldiers at the school.

“Lots of our children already wish to sign up and join the Special Military Operation!” she said, using Russia’s term for the war in Ukraine. “Thirty-two children have parents fighting at the front, and we have children here whose parents have died fighting.”

At the entrance to the school, a single plaque has been fixed to the wall dedicated to Viktor Merkulov, a former member of the school who died in 2022 “heroically performing his military duty in the course of the Special Military Operation on the territory of Ukraine.”

At Secondary School Number 2, memorializing the victory of 1945 has seamlessly merged with a push for victory in the present-day war against Ukraine. Fascists, just as they invaded before, are invading again, and it is every Russian’s duty to fight back. Inside the corridors and classrooms, self-sacrifice for the motherland is glorified on every wall.

History teacher Igor Grebyonkin, 43, is dynamic, charismatic and clearly well-liked by his students. He regards the Great Patriotic War as part of Russians’ “genetic code” and describes modern Russia as “an ideology of love, mercy and honesty.” An official from the Education Ministry would later describe him to The Post as “a good patriot.”

His 30-minute lesson that day was dedicated to Nazism and the lecture, backed by visual aids, moved smoothly from the Nazism in Hitler’s Germany to Nazism in the present day — namely, in Ukraine.

“Nazism is a dangerous disease, and it is reviving,” Grebyonkin said to his class. “What does the world need so that this disease not take hold again? A vaccine.”

He asked the class to identify the qualities that Soviet people had shown in their fight against the Nazis. “Patriotism, bravery, fortitude,” said one student. “Selflessness and self-sacrifice,” said another. “History, memory and love for the Motherland.”

“All correct,” replied the teacher. “And all these components … should be the components for a vaccine against Nazism. … You and I now have a collective historical immunity. That is why we shall be victorious!”

After the lesson, Grebyonkin insisted that there were no forbidden topics in his classroom, that he and the children talk about everything.

“What about Bucha?” this reporter asked. The Bucha massacre was a campaign of torture and killings by Russian occupying troops against the Ukrainian civilian population that has been documented by independent war crimes investigators and hundreds of journalists, including by this newspaper. The Russian government has accused Kyiv of faking the massacre.

“I have not seen a single shred of evidence that this happened,” Grebyonkin said. “If someday there are documents that prove this crime, I will come to the children and openly say that our soldiers committed a war crime … but I am 1000 percent sure that Russian soldiers today are primarily guided by morals.”

Speaking with one voice

Following the lesson, The Post asked the students if they could explain in their own words why the war in Ukraine had started.

“It began because of racism toward the Russian people. Russian people are not respected,” said Ulyana, 17. “Fascism has started to rise again in Ukraine.”

At a patriotic youth club in neighboring Kursk region some two hours away, those views were mirrored by the uniformed teens dismantling and reassembling Kalashnikovs. As they used the same language and slogans about love for the Motherland and the need to defend Russian values, it was as if they were speaking in one voice. Several teenagers had already started their applications to join the army.

“Since 2013, Ukrainian nationalist formations that supported Hitler’s ideology started to form. Our government launched the Special Military Operation to prevent a new world war,” said Ivan, 17.

Asked if anyone had any other explanation for the war, one girl in braids solemnly stood and said “No. You will never hear another explanation but these.” Circle of fear

The tone of the instruction is by no means unique to the front-line regions of Kursk and Belgorod. Last summer, a teacher at a school in the central Russian city of Karabash fled the country with seven hard drives of footage hidden in his luggage.

Pavel Talankin had spent over two years meticulously documenting how after the outbreak of war, the Education Ministry sent out scripted lessons and orders to schools to increase patriotic education.

The result was his documentary with the American filmmaker David Borenstein, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” The film captured sweeping changes at the school, including teachers expressing unease with the new policies and the principal acknowledging that she would lose her job if she didn’t follow the new rules.

Talankin described to The Post a circle of fear that has locked children and teachers alike into this new wartime system.

“The parents’ opinion means nothing to the child because the teacher’s authority is so great at this age,” he said. Likewise, the teachers themselves are scared. They are scared of the Education Ministry and scared of their students reporting them to the principal or popular celebrity influencers that seek out those expressing the anti-war or “unpatriotic” sentiments.

“For me it was a huge shock, not just because we were having to fill the children’s heads with this stuff, but because we were essentially creating a troll factory out of them … giving other people confidence that there is support for the war,” Talankin said.

He believes that this propaganda will be extremely hard to reverse in part because of the power of nostalgia.

“One’s childhood and adolescence is always wonderful. Russian children are now being taught ‘wonderful Russia, wonderful Putin, wonderful childhood,’ so there will always be this link in their minds,” Talankin said. Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.