Yesterday at 23:58
Ukrainian teenagers in occupied territories are resisting Russian brainwashing by secretly running a Ukrainian book club, The Guardian reports.
Seventeen-year-old Mariyka (not her real name) and her friends gather in secret to discuss Ukrainian poetry and prose, taking extreme precautions to avoid detection. They close windows, check for eavesdroppers, and meet in small groups of no more than three to reduce the risk of being reported by collaborators.
In the occupied areas, Ukrainian textbooks are labeled “extremist,” and possessing them can lead to imprisonment. Parents risk losing custody of their children if they allow them to study the Ukrainian curriculum online. Teens caught speaking Ukrainian at school have even been subjected to intimidation and “interrogations” in the forest by Russian forces.
Finding Ukrainian books is another challenge. After destroying nearly 200,000 Ukrainian publications from local libraries, the occupiers left Mariyka and her friends reliant on e-books, which they delete from their devices after reading to avoid detection during phone or computer checks.
Mariyka’s favorite author is Lesya Ukrainka, who also founded an underground book club in Kyiv in 1888, when Ukrainian culture was suppressed under the Russian Empire.
At school, Mariyka says, “They don’t teach us knowledge, but hatred for other Ukrainians. They’ve removed all Ukrainian symbols and replaced them with portraits of Putin. History lessons focus only on ‘Greater Russia’ and how it was always under attack.”
The book club, Mariyka explains, is more than a refuge for learning—it’s a way to remind Ukrainians in free territories that some, even under occupation, are still fighting to stay connected to their Ukrainian identity.
