Russia’s Soldiers Force Ukrainian Teachers To Obtain Russian Passports Or Lose Jobs

The National Resistance Center, which is run by Ukraine’s Special Forces, said Monday that teachers in the areas of Luhansk Oblast are being forced by occupiers to acquire Russian passports.

The Russia soldiers were imposing this on teachers, who continued working in the occupied areas. According to the report, the Russian forces told the teachers to either obtain their country’s passports or lose their jobs.

The National Resistance Center claimed the teachers were told to write an application to renounce Ukrainian citizenship, while urging people to not cooperate with the Russian forces and leave the region, if possible.

Last month, the center reported occupiers in Donetsk Oblast were forcing employees of state-owned and municipal organizations to obtain Russian passports.

The latest news comes a day after reports surfaced that Russian soldiers raided the homes of several teachers in Melitopol in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia Oblast and confiscated their electronic devices, as they feared these teachers were conducting online classes in accordance with the Ukrainian curriculum.

“(The Russians) are afraid that those who are in the occupied territory are conducting online lessons according to the Ukrainian curriculum. They force our educators to come to captured schools and teach children according to the Russian curriculum,” Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov said on Feb. 5.

The war in Ukraine has not only claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, but also uprooted the lives of those surviving.

Mykola Lukashuk, the head of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration, said Russian forces attacked the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast twice, following which one of the pumping stations had been cut off from the power grid. This resulted in nine settlements without water on the night of Feb. 6-7.

“The Russian occupiers deployed heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns to hit the Nikopol district. That night, the enemy attacked the district twice, firing about four dozen shells at the Marhanets hromada,” he said, according to Pravda.

Four private residential buildings, an outbuilding, power transmission lines, and a gas pipeline were also damaged in the attack.

The latest attacks come as fear grows of a renewed offensive by Russian forces as the war in Ukraine nears its first year anniversary.