A new textbook was presented in Moscow on Monday, the 27th of January, likening Russia’s war in Ukraine to the Soviet struggle against the Nazis and saying that Russia was “forced” to send troops to Ukraine, reports Reuters.
President Vladimir Putin describes the war, officially dubbed a “special military operation” by Moscow, as a difficult but necessary fight against Western and NATO-backed Ukraine. He says it is part of a wider existential struggle against a decadent West that seeks to weaken and divide Russia.
Ukraine and its Western allies, for their part, claim that Russia is waging a brutal and unprovoked war just to gain territory.
The three-volume “Russian Military History” was edited by Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin aide who led the delegation that conducted the failed peace talks with Ukraine in 2022, in the first months of the war, and has already co-authored Russia’s main history textbook.
The third volume, which the Ukrainian leadership is likely to dismiss as propaganda, is intended for teaching children aged 15 and up.
It explains why the Kremlin thinks the war has started, how it is being fought and highlights what the Kremlin considers to be instances of heroism on the battlefield, as well as describing how the modern Russian army sometimes uses methods used by the Soviet army during the Second World War.
In a chapter entitled “Professionalism, steadfastness and courage: Russian troops in a special military operation”, students are taught that in 2022 Russia was “forced” to send its troops to Ukraine.
It says the West ignored Russia’s security concerns for years, referring to the eastward expansion of the NATO military alliance and to what the book described as the Western-backed toppling of the Russia-friendly Ukrainian president in 2014, which turned Ukraine into an “aggressive anti-Russian beachhead”.
NATO and Ukraine deny ever having posed a threat to Russia.
Speaking at a TASS press conference discussing the new book, Ivan Basik, a military historian with ties to the Russian army, said the actions of the West and Ukraine had made war “inevitable”.
“The most important task was to explain to the younger generation, to schoolchildren, the forced nature of the special military operation carried out by the Russian Federation,” he said.