russia is planning to remove the Ukrainian language from the school curriculum it imposes in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, according to open-source reports citing a draft russian Ministry of Education order. The Ministry reportedly explains the exclusion, expected to take effect from September 2025, as resulting from the "changed geopolitical situation", the UK Defense Intelligence reports.
The proposed change will reportedly primarily affect Ukrainian children in temporarily occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, where the Ukrainian language has remained a mandatory part of the education curriculum, according to the cited Ministry of Education order. The draft order also reportedly significantly reduces the study of Ukrainian literature.
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This follows reported long-term russian efforts to reduce and eliminate the Ukrainian language in schools in other illegally occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, whilst russia's President Vladimir Putin has simultaneously repeatedly demanded protections for the russian language within unoccupied territories of Ukraine.
The Ministry's plans as reported amount to a further addition to the senior leadership's long-standing russification policy in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory, which seeks to extirpate Ukrainian culture, identity and statehood.
As Defense Express previously reported, russian forces increased the pace of their territorial gains throughout May and June 2025.
The russian Ground Forces highly likely seized approximately 550-600 sq km of Ukrainian territory in June 2025, an average of approximately 18-20 sq km per day. This was a slight increase from russian advances in May 2025, which was itself a notable increase on the approximately 200 sq km of Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied in April 2025.
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