In April, Russian schools began holding lessons about the dangers of VPNs. As Novaya Gazeta Europe reports, such classes have already taken place in Irkutsk, the Rostov region, and other areas under titles such as “VPNs Are Outside the Law” and “Using a VPN as an aggravating circumstance in committing crimes.”
At one school in St. Petersburg, parents were warned that words like “weed,” “salt,” “VPN,” and “proxy” in a teenager’s speech could supposedly indicate drug use. Alexander Tsvetkov, head of the Institute for the Study of Childhood, Family and Upbringing, said materials for these lessons were being prepared for mid to late April and that the focus would be on the risks of using VPNs to access blocked social networks.
The same institute also oversees the “Important Conversations” course, held in schools every Monday since September 2022. In April, during a lesson tied to Cosmonautics Day, students were told that Russia is one of the leading space powers, were asked to recall Tsiolkovsky, Korolyov, Gagarin, Tereshkova, and Leonov, and were again shown a fragment of Nikita Mikhalkov’s “BesogonTV” about Soviet education.
In September 2025, during the “Digital Shield” lesson, older students were taught about fraud and digital sovereignty. They were shown a video with an ad integration for the Max messenger in which AI-generated versions of Chekhov, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky praised the app. According to the project “Ne Norma,” Vladimir Solovyov also appeared in this segment, speaking about the greatness of the Russian language and Russia.
Other lessons focused on patriotism and war. In December, during classes for Heroes of the Fatherland Day, students were shown material placing participants in the war against Ukraine alongside historical Russian heroes; they also watched an interview with nurse Lyudmila Bolilai, and war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny was mentioned. In the Constitution Day lesson, teachers were instructed to speak about justice and equal rights without addressing the disputed 2020 constitutional amendments.
On February 16, the day politician Alexei Navalny was killed, schools held classes titled “A Hero from the Neighboring Yard” ahead of February 23. Children were told that true defenders are always patriots and were offered quotations from a song by Shaman and from Vladimir Putin calling participants in the “special military operation” heroes. In April 2026, after a new memorial date was introduced, older students also attended “No Statute of Limitations” lessons about victims of the “genocide of the Soviet people,” events in occupied Donbas, and war-related memorials.