Russia to Double Military Training in Schools Through 2036, Extending Programs Deep into Occupied Ukraine
Russia is set to sharply expand mandatory military instruction for schoolchildren starting in the 2026–2027 academic year, more than doubling the share of class time devoted to basic combat skills, drone operation, and field exercises. The changes will apply across Russia and, critically, in the territories of Ukraine currently under Russian occupation, where a parallel long-term plan aims to normalize military-patriotic education through 2036.
According to announcements by Russian Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov, beginning September 1, 2026, the compulsory subject “Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland” will allocate 50 percent of its teaching hours to basic military training for students in grades 6 through 11. Previously, only about 20 percent of the course focused on military content. The overall subject runs for 34 hours per academic year, meaning students will receive at least 17 hours of dedicated military instruction annually. New elements include practical training on unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), outdoor field exercises, and expanded combat-related skills.
This shift represents a significant escalation of policies that began after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Soviet-era initial military training, largely abandoned in the 1990s, was gradually reintroduced and has now been formalized and intensified. Prosecutors have already sued hundreds of schools for failing to install facilities such as shooting ranges, underscoring the seriousness with which authorities are treating the requirement.
The expansion is not limited to Russia proper. In the occupied Donetsk region, local occupation authorities have approved a ten-year plan running through 2036 designed to embed “military-patriotic education” as a permanent feature of schooling and youth life. The plan seeks to prepare children systematically for future military service. In schools there, pre-conscription and conscription-age youth are already receiving basic drone operation lessons alongside engineering instruction and additional military drills. Similar patterns appear in other occupied areas: vocational students in Kherson are being taught to operate, service, and repair drones as part of their professional curriculum, while children and teenagers in Luhansk are being steered into Russian youth organizations, cadet programs, party structures, and so-called volunteer groups.
Human rights monitors note that these programs target both boys and girls, substantially widening the potential future mobilization base beyond traditional male conscripts. The Eastern Human Rights Group has described the approach as an effort to impose a cult of war and military service on an entire generation. Ukrainian officials and international observers view the measures in occupied territories as part of a broader campaign of Russification and militarization that seeks to erase Ukrainian identity while building a pipeline of future personnel for the Russian armed forces.
The school changes sit within a much larger ecosystem of youth militarization. Organizations such as Yunarmiya (Young Army), founded in 2016 under the Defense Ministry, claim more than a million members aged 8 to 18 and operate training centers across Russia and occupied Ukraine. Graduates have already entered military academies, the armed forces, and security services; thousands have reportedly served in the war against Ukraine. Parallel structures, including the Movement of the First, organize large-scale military-patriotic games in which children as young as seven practice roles such as drone operator, assault trooper, combat medic, and political officer. These games include simulated captivity escapes, storming of positions, cyber operations, and propaganda work.
Funding for military-patriotic activities has surged. Russia’s 2026 budget for such programs reached approximately $910 million—roughly twenty times the pre-war level of 2021. Authorities have poured tens of billions of rubles into equipping schools with model weapons, drones, laser shooting ranges, and tactical medicine mannequins, as well as constructing specialized training centers and camps. Summer camps and short courses frequently bring teenagers from occupied regions into Russia proper for intensive instruction under the supervision of veterans of the Ukraine war.
Pilot programs for even more intensive initial military training—potentially a separate 64-hour course—have been discussed for grades 9–11 in selected regions, including occupied Crimea. Some lawmakers have gone further, proposing that mandatory military preparation begin as early as fifth grade so that Russia’s youth are ready for a possible confrontation with NATO and the European Union by around 2030. A new compulsory subject, “Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia,” is also being introduced, featuring content that includes the experiences of participants in the war in Ukraine and is intended to reinforce ideological loyalty.
In occupied Ukrainian territories the combination of compulsory schooling under Russian curricula, language replacement, historical narrative control, and military training creates a closed system. Children who remain in these areas face pressure to adopt Russian passports; boys who do so become eligible for conscription upon reaching adulthood. Reports document cases of Ukrainian teenagers who have fled occupation specifically to avoid Russian schools and the prospect of eventual service against their own country. Researchers have identified dozens of facilities where Ukrainian children undergo militarization programs involving weapons handling, tactical medicine, drone control, and even airborne training.
Supporters inside Russia present the expansion as a necessary response to security threats and a means of instilling discipline, physical fitness, and patriotism. Official statements frame it as preparation for the defense of the homeland in an era of heightened geopolitical tension. Critics, including Ukrainian authorities, human rights organizations, and Western analysts, argue that the policy amounts to the systematic militarization of minors and, in the occupied territories, a violation of international law governing the treatment of children in occupied zones. The OSCE has characterized aspects of Russia’s approach to Ukrainian children as a crime against humanity involving forced integration into a militarized education system.
The 2036 horizon of the Donetsk plan and the parallel federal expansions signal that the Kremlin views youth militarization as a multi-decade project. By embedding combat skills, drone literacy, and ideological loyalty into the ordinary school day, and by extending those practices into territories seized by force, Russia is attempting to shape both its domestic demographic base and the population of occupied Ukraine for long-term military needs. Whether enrollment targets are met, how thoroughly the programs take root, and what long-term psychological and social consequences follow for the children involved will become clearer only in the years ahead. For now, the policy marks one of the most comprehensive efforts in modern Europe to prepare an entire generation—beginning in early adolescence—for the possibility of sustained armed conflict.
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