‘No way I could work for the Russians’: The Ukrainian teachers resisting occupation

Staff forced to choose between collaborating or fighting against Russian takeover of schools

At the beginning of summer, several months after the Russians had taken over a large chunk of southern Ukraine in the first days of the war, the headteacher of a school in an occupied town gathered his teaching collective for a meeting.

The school would cooperate with the Russian occupation authorities, he told them, and reopen for the new school year in September, teaching the Russian curriculum.