Question of the Day: are there Russian teachers in Kharkov region?

Ivan Zubov

For several days now, the media and social networks have been actively discussing the statement of Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk that teachers from Russia were detained by the Ukrainian military. It is assumed that this happened in the area of active hostilities near Kharkov. However, Vereshchuk did not disclose any details about the region in which the teachers were detained, how many of them, where they came from. The vice-premier only clarified that the teachers would face trial under Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (violation of the laws and customs of war, up to 12 years in prison). Teachers will not be treated as exchange prisoners because they have not been in combat and therefore cannot be considered combatants. Vereshchuk noted that responsibility awaits Ukrainian teachers who agreed to cooperate with Russia.

However, officials in the provisional Russian administration of the Kharkiv region said, TASS reports, that there were no Russian teachers in the region. And later, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation circulated a commentary by Minister Sergey Kravtsov, who also denied the detention of teachers in the Kharkiv region: “The statements that they have been prosecuted in the Kharkiv region and face a prison sentence are not true”.

At the same time, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered to open a criminal case on the fact of the detention of “teachers who taught according to Russian curricula in the Kharkov region”, which, of course, again confused the situation - are there teachers there or not?

Back in June, Kommersant reported about sending Russian teachers to the regions of Ukraine, but there it was only about the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Teachers were promised double salaries and travel allowances. Later, information also appeared that teachers were being recruited to be sent to the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. According to The Washington Post, some teachers were offered a salary of 8.6 thousand rubles a day with the possible provision of accommodation and food.

In July, the Alliance of Teachers reported on more than 200 teachers who planned to agree to a business trip to Ukraine. The business trip of Russian teachers to the Kharkov region was not previously reported in the media. There is no information about the teachers sent to the Kharkov region in the "Alliance of Teachers", reports "Agency".

This, however, does not mean that teachers from Russia in the Kharkiv region definitely did not work. In July, Vera Sorokova, head of the education department of the administration of the Volchansky district of the Kharkov region, said that because of threats from Kiev, many teachers in the Kharkov region refused to work, and their place was taken by "those who are ready to work".

It is known for sure that a significant part of the teachers in the Kharkiv region agreed to work according to Russian textbooks. From the beginning of August, teachers began to be sent to Russia for retraining courses. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), dozens of teachers have been retrained. Perhaps some of them could also get Russian passports, which were actively issued in the region.