The Camera Inside the Kremlin’s Classroom
In a Russian classroom, propaganda replaces lessons, fear replaces trust, and children rehearse war. Pavel films it all, and risks everything, quietly.
We sat down to watch a documentary film on BBC iPlayer called “Mr Nobody Against Putin”1, and what unfolded before us was not some distant, abstract political argument about geopolitics or ideology. It was something far more unsettling. It was the slow suffocation of a society from the inside. It was the quiet dismantling of childhood. It was the transformation of classrooms into barracks. It was the story of Pavel Talankin, a school videographer in a small industrial town in the Urals, who picked up a camera and, almost by accident, became a witness against his own state.
He begins simply. “This is me. At the moment I still have no idea how much trouble I am creating for my future self.” He tells us he works as a school organiser and videographer in Karabash, a town of 10,000 people, known internationally as one of the most polluted places on earth. Life revolves around the copper smelting plant. He loves his town. He loves his students. He loves arranging books by colour in his small flat. He buys flowers for his mother because he has never told her that he loves her. He creates space in school where children can be children.
And then February 2022 arrives.
“Russia will conduct a special military operation”, Vladimir Putin announces. And everything changes.
Patriotic lessons replace normal classes. Military drills replace music rehearsals. Morning assemblies become ideological rituals. Pavel is ordered to film it all. He must upload the footage to some obscure Ministry database as proof the school obeys government directives. Somewhere soldiers run across battlefields. He runs from classroom to classroom filming what he calls these “show lessons”.
This is how authoritarianism works. Not with a single thunderclap, but with paperwork. With forms. With compulsory assemblies. With a new weekly ceremony where the national anthem must be played. With children instructed what to say about Crimea. With history teachers explaining that Europe suffers more from sanctions than Russia. With jokes about Frenchmen riding horses because petrol costs 150 euros. With assurances that Britain is a tiny island that starved its own people.
It is absurd. It is sinister. It is relentless.
We watch children rehearsing lines about Kyiv in 1941. We hear teachers say that if you do not like the country you were born in, you should leave. We see pupils writing letters to soldiers for literature grades. A girl writes, “My brother is on the battlefield. We wait for his call.” This is not theatre. This is the emotional conscription of a generation.
I have seen what happens when war becomes normal. As a child in Kosovo in 1997 and 1998, I watched neighbours vanish. I remember the fear in adult voices. I remember the smell of burning. In Georgia in 2008, I stood among families who realised the world could fracture in days. In Ukraine in 2014, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, I watched the same pattern repeat. First denial. Then justification. Then mobilisation. Then graves.
Pavel captures something many of us in the West struggle to understand. He says, “Love for the country does not mean raising a flag or singing an anthem. It means saying, we have problems and we need to talk about them.” That sentence alone is more patriotic than any slogan shouted in a rally.
But in Putin’s Russia, such thinking is betrayal.
The State Duma amends treason laws. Twenty five years in prison for dissent. Vladimir Kara Murza receives such a sentence. The message is clear. Loyalty is not love of country. Loyalty is obedience to power.
Pavel films a motorcade with Z symbols, symbols that have become shorthand for invasion. He secretly switches a display from the Russian anthem to the American national anthem performed by Lady Gaga. He pastes an X over a Z on school windows to show solidarity with Ukrainian refugees. Small acts. Dangerous acts. Human acts.
And he knows the risk. “If we were a free country, I would not have to hide this,” he says. He hides hard drives. He prepares for a knock at the door. In a small town, rumours spread. He becomes the man who hangs democracy flags. Students begin to avoid his office. Fear isolates him.
This is the tragedy we must understand. Dictatorship does not only jail people. It rearranges trust. It rewires relationships. It teaches children to fear the one teacher who dares to think.
We see young men shaved before mobilisation. We hear the chant, “Army, army.” We watch a boy named Vanya leave, unsure if he chose or was swept along. We hear of losses. We hear of desertion attempts. We hear of deaths concealed. A funeral recorded only in sound because filming is too risky.
War is not an abstract chessboard. It is a young woman who cannot speak about her dead brother. It is a teacher who feels he is becoming a pawn. It is a city where every family knows someone sent to the front.
And yet Karabash keeps producing volunteers. Why? Because children have been taught that love of motherland means sacrifice without question. Because the school system has become a conveyor belt of obedience. Because propaganda is not shouted, it is repeated gently, weekly, daily, until it feels like common sense.
We in Britain have been spared such transformation for generations. Since the end of the Second World War, we have built a society where disagreement is normal, where elections are contested, where journalism investigates power. We argue about tax and trade and immigration. We do not argue about whether we are allowed to argue.
But we would be foolish to think we are immune.
Authoritarianism does not always arrive in boots. Sometimes it arrives in suits. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in patriotism, promising to restore greatness, to protect tradition, to silence so called enemies within. Sometimes it arrives funded quietly through networks of shell companies and third party entities that blur the line between domestic politics and foreign influence.
We have seen credible investigations into Russian interference across Europe. We have seen oligarch money circulate through London property and political donations. We have seen admiration expressed for Putin’s style of leadership by figures who claim to speak for British sovereignty. We have seen narratives repeated that mirror Kremlin talking points about NATO, about Ukraine, about Western decay.
When someone like Nigel Farage praises aspects of Putin’s leadership2, or frames Russian aggression as understandable, we must examine that carefully. When networks linked to Russian funding seek to destabilise mainstream parties, when misinformation spreads to erode trust in democratic institutions, we must recognise the pattern. The aim is not to conquer with tanks. It is to fracture from within.
Pavel’s history teacher says, “If you do not think the country is right, leave.” That is the logic of exclusion. That is the logic that divides citizens into patriots and traitors. We have heard echoes of that logic in our own debates. “Enemies of the people.” “Traitors.” “Saboteurs.” Once that language becomes normal, the guardrails weaken.
We must be objective. Russia is not a monolith. Pavel is Russia. The students who question are Russia. The mothers waiting for sons are Russia. The activists imprisoned are Russia. Putin is not Russia. He is a ruler who has fused state, security services and oligarch wealth into a system that feeds on fear and manufactured unity.
But we must also be clear. That system exports instability. From Georgia to Crimea to Donbas to the full scale invasion of 2022, the pattern is consistent. Test the West. Probe. Exploit hesitation. Use energy dependency as leverage. Use information warfare to divide. Use corruption to influence.
If we dismiss this as someone else’s tragedy, we misunderstand history. In the 1930s, many Europeans believed authoritarian movements were local problems. Until they were not. Until borders shifted. Until freedoms vanished.
I remember standing in Kyiv in 2022 as missiles struck civilian infrastructure. I remember interviewing families in 2023 who lived without electricity through winter. In 2024 and 2025, I saw villages reduced to rubble, not because they held strategic value, but because terror is a weapon. War means displacement. It means trauma that lingers for generations. It means children drawing tanks instead of trees.
Pavel ends by organising the last school bell ceremony. He tells students that sometimes to say something small, like “I love you”, requires sacrifice. He knows he is leaving. He cannot tell his mother it is forever. He plants a tree as a symbol of new beginnings. It is heartbreaking because it is ordinary.
This is what we must tell our fellow Britons. War is not cinematic. It is administrative. It is bureaucratic. It is gradual. It seeps into lesson plans. It hides in amendments to law. It smiles from billboards. It rewards compliant teachers with flats. It marginalises dissent quietly until one day dissent is criminal.
We cannot afford complacency. We cannot allow foreign authoritarian influence to seep into our politics unchecked. We cannot normalise admiration for strongman rule. We cannot shrug when democratic norms are eroded in the name of efficiency or security.
We must organise. We must unite across party lines where fundamental rights are concerned. We must protect independent journalism. We must demand transparency in political funding. We must call out propaganda whether it comes from Moscow or is echoed domestically. We must educate our children not in blind patriotism, but in critical thinking.
If we fail, the warning from Karabash is clear. A classroom can become a recruitment centre. A teacher can become a propagandist. A generation can be shaped not by curiosity, but by obedience.
Pavel says, “I love the people. I love autumn. I love when frost turns your face red.” He loves his country deeply. That is why he resists. True patriotism is not submission to power. It is defence of the dignity of your fellow citizens.
We stand at a moment in history where illusions are dangerous. The war in Ukraine is not only about territory. It is about whether brute force can redraw borders in Europe. It is about whether truth can survive systematic lies. It is about whether citizens are subjects or participants.
This is not hysteria. It is vigilance. It is understanding that democracy is not self sustaining. It requires participation. It requires courage. It requires, sometimes, that we stand up to those who promise easy answers at the cost of liberty.
We owe it to the children in Pavel’s classroom. We owe it to the young men whose funerals are recorded only in whispers. We owe it to our own children, who have never heard an air raid siren.
If we treat this as someone else’s story, we will wake up too late. If we learn from it, organise, and defend our institutions with seriousness and unity, then perhaps Pavel’s risk will not have been in vain.
History does not repeat mechanically. But it rhymes. And right now, the rhyme is loud enough for all of us to hear.
Mr Nobody Against Putin — BBC iPlayer.
Nigel Farage’s £9m Donor Profits From Putin Propaganda Platform While Holding MoD Stake
Reform UK’s biggest donor is profiting from ties to a pro-Kremlin platform that hosts a Russian intelligence-backed influence operation — Byline Times.