Authorities in Moscow have published a new textbook justifying the war in Ukraine and accusing the West of trying to destroy Russia.
According to excerpts published in the Russian media, children will learn in school from the fall that human civilization could reach a collapse and that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not launched a "special military operation" against Ukraine.
The co-author of the textbook "History of Russia 1945 - early 21st century" is presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, former Russian Minister of Culture.
This is the first officially approved history book to be used in Russian schools to mention recent events such as the invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022.
From September, it will be used by high school graduates in Russia - 11th grade - who are 17- and 18-year-old students.
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The textbook claims that "the West has a fixation on destabilizing the situation inside Russia" and that in order to achieve this goal, the Western powers are spreading "undisguised Russophobia".
Then, it continues, they begin to "draw" Russia into various conflicts.
The ultimate goal of the West is to destroy Russia and take control of its mineral wealth, the book says.
Numerous clichés of the Kremlin's propaganda are repeated, which depict Ukraine as an aggressive country led by extremist nationalists who are manipulated by the West and allegedly use that country as a "battering ram" in the fight against Russia.
The battering ram was used to breach large gates or fortifications in earlier centuries.
According to the textbook, Ukraine is little more than a Western invention created to spite Russia, and even the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine was supposedly invented by the Austrians because they want to convince Ukrainians that they are different from the Russians.
The textbook is full of twists and manipulations.
For example, Russia's first attack on Ukraine in 2014 is described as a popular uprising of residents of eastern Donbas who "wanted to remain Russian" and were joined by "volunteers" from Russia. No mention is made of the military equipment and personnel that Russia sent to Donbas at that time or in the following eight years.
It is also claimed that one of the key reasons for the invasion in 2022 was the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO.
If Ukraine had joined the alliance and then "provoked a conflict in Crimea or Donbass," the textbook states, Russia would have been forced to go to war against the entire NATO alliance.
"This would probably be the end of civilization. That should not have been allowed," the school book says.
However, Ukraine's entry into NATO was then - and remains - a distant prospect.
The textbook also claims that before the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine had plans to turn Sevastopol - the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet - into a NATO base and that later Kiev said it wanted to acquire nuclear weapons.
Another incorrect claim in the textbook is that by 2014, 80 percent of the population of Ukraine considered Russian their mother tongue.
According to a survey published in 2006 by the respected Razumkov Center, only 30 percent of Ukrainians listed Russian as their mother tongue, while 52 percent said it was Ukrainian.
Apparently drawing attention to the abundance of material on the Internet implicating the involvement of Russian forces in crimes committed in Ukraine, the textbook warns schoolchildren to beware of "a global industry that produces edited clips and fake photos and videos".
"Social networks and media in the West with great passion in spreading false information," the book says in the chapter on "special military operation".
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Authorities in Russia have previously detained activists who accused Russian troops of targeting civilians in Ukraine. Ilya Yashin, a critic of the Kremlin, was sentenced to eight and a half years in December 2022 for speaking in an online live stream about suspicions that Rsuija committed war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
The textbook also criticizes the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West because of the invasion and is presented as an attempt to "destroy the Russian economy".
It is incorrectly stated that these sanctions "are a violation of all norms of international law that the West likes to invoke".
At the same time, the exodus of Western companies from Russia due to the war is presented as a "fantastic opportunity" for Russian businessmen.
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