In Karelia, a teacher forced a seventh-grader to sit through the entire lesson facing the wall because of a hoodie with a US flag.

Biology teacher Galina Kutsina from Lyceum No. 1 in the city of Kostomuksha in Karelia forced a seventh-grader who came to school wearing a hoodie with an appliqué in the colors of the American flag to sit through the entire lesson facing the wall, the student’s father, Alexey Kulikov, told Mediazona.

According to him, the incident occurred on November 15. The boy shared what happened with his parents when he returned home from school.

“The lesson had just started, she walked into the classroom, saw this jacket - and, as the proverb says, she was like a bull on a red rag,” says Kulikov. “She raised him [her son] and said: ‘Go to the back of the class, sit with your back to me, and so that I don’t see this flag the whole lesson.’”

On the chest of the hoodie his son wore to school that day, the numbers “62” are sewn from stars and stripes, Kulikov says. The family bought the sweatshirt during a trip to neighboring Finland “long before the special operation.” He adds that he is ready to appeal to the Ministry of Education of Karelia if Kutsina does not apologize to his child and the entire class. According to the man, his son had previously told him about the teacher’s harsh political statements in class.

“She said that at one time she taught Zelensky that he was stupid, some kind of... Scum, in short,” Kulikov quotes the teacher as saying. “She literally tells the children all this.”

Lyceum director Tatyana Shemyakina confirmed to Mediazona that Kutsina moved to Kostomuksha from Ukraine in 2019 - the teacher previously lived in Krivoy Rog. Shemyakina admits that she “could have taught” the Ukrainian president, but does not know whether the teacher talked about this with schoolchildren.

“She is already about 60 years old, and she is actually from Krivoy Rog. She fully supports the SVO, but the fact that the Americans started all this - she, of course, perceives all this very painfully. And when she came to class and there was a boy sitting with an American flag... She asked him to turn away. Today there will be a personal meeting between parents and the teacher, I think she will apologize. It’s clear that I lost my temper, I understand that the teacher behaved incorrectly,” Shemyakina said.