“Your opinion does not matter.” Russian fifth-grader chided for calling on soldier not to kill people

Timofey, a fifth-grader from School No. 22 in Yekaterinburg, was chided for writing a letter in which he called on the soldier whom he addressed not to kill people and to return home. The children were told to write “letters to the front” as part of the Kind Letters campaign that kicked off all over Russia on October 3.

Timofey was told that no outsiders would read the letters and they would go straight to the front. The school kid believed it was true. Timofey's mother, activist Nadezhda Sayfutdinova, told It's My City. According to her, her son, like herself, held anti-war views, so the boy decided to write what he thought in the letter.

“He wrote in the letter that it is not necessary to kill people in a foreign land: “Go back home, soldier, don't hurt anyone. It is better to die than to become a murderer,” Nadezhda said. The boy stuck a white dove of peace on the envelope.

A few days later, Timofey was summoned by his teacher. She asked him if he had added “his personal thoughts” to the text of the letter. The boy was frightened and “thought they were going to arrest him,” Nadezhda says. However, the teacher just chided Timofey, saying he should have written the letter according to the template, and that his personal opinion did not matter. Timofey got an “A” in the electronic diary for this assignment.

The “Kind Letters” campaign was officially launched by the Russian Movement of Children and Youth, whose de facto head (and chairman of the supervisory board) is Vladimir Putin.

On October 8, The Insider wrote that a fifth-grader was taken to the police department in Moscow because of her avatar with yellow and blue flowers. She was denounced by the principal. In a statement, he spoke well about the student's progress and character but asked to “examine the family's living conditions and establish the causes for the child's behavior and his civil position». In addition, the principal asked the police to “influence the educational position” of the mother so that she would not “influence” her daughter “with her conviction of her own political views” or encourage “discussion of interethnic and political issues among children.”

The family's apartment was searched and even the bedding was examined. A juvenile affairs inspector told the mother that the family will be inspected by a commission to determine whether it should be registered for prophylactic measures.