Mail Online

Russians report their anti-war children in echo of Stalinist era

By Natasha Livingstone

RUSSIANS are reporting their own children to the police for opposing the war in Ukraine in a chilling echo of the Stalinist era.

A mother of three from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We are living in a Soviet hell, with friends reporting friends to police, parents disowning their children. The level of heartache is very hard to describe.’

In Moscow, a father reported his daughter to the police for allegedly opposing the war online. Elmira Khalitova, a student and blogger living in the Russian capital, was held by police after her father falsely claimed that she had written Instagram posts calling for Russians to be killed.

Her father, who was drunk, called the police station and insisted the officers broke into her apartment to arrest her. Officers brought her in for questioning and took her phone to try to find the incriminating evidence on Instagram – but could not open the app because it is blocked in Russia. She was released because of a lack of evidence.

Ms Khalitova said: ‘He thought it was his duty to go to the police and file a report. He’d found another enemy of the people and was bringing them to justice.’

Speaking to Vice World News, she added: ‘It’s disgusting that all this is encouraged. That the government encourages people to do this.’

In Siberia, a father is said to have informed on his son to the police for allegedly discrediting the Russian armed forces.

It is also reported that a husband in Moscow told police that his Ukrainian wife was against the war.

A ten-year-old schoolgirl in Moscow was taken from her classroom to a

police station after the headmaster reported her for using a social media profile picture with the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Pupils at other schools have reported their teachers for criticising the war in Ukraine.

No teachers have been jailed yet, but some have been forced to resign.

In the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991, ordinary citizens commonly reported each other to the authorities for criticising the Communist Party. Now history is repeating itself.

Historian Sergey Radchenko told BBC’s Today programme: ‘This practice goes back to Joseph Stalin, but it is also very common in dictatorial regimes to report on your neighbours and sometimes even your friends.’

The reports are a frightening echo of Stalin’s campaign of terror in the 1930s, which caused citizens to denounce their friends, neighbours, bosses and even their own children. Millions were sent to labour camps and hundreds of thousands died.

Ukrainian officials last night accused Russia of striking a residential district in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka, killing three, while Russia claimed an attack on a hospital in Russian-held eastern Ukraine, which killed 14, was a war crime.

In his daily broadcast Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky reported major battles under way for Vuhledar, to the south-west of Donetsk, and Bakhmut, to the north-east.

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