On Children’s Day, the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya), the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), and the police held events for schoolchildren across a range of cities including Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, and Yakutsk. Officers demonstrated weapons, armored vehicles, and riot suppression techniques, DOXA reports.
In Vladivostok, the Rosgvardiya directorate for Primorsky Territory organized a celebration at the premises of the Vostok unit, which has participated in the war against Ukraine. As Vladimir Motorin, deputy chairman of the Patriot military sports club, wrote on social media, fighters of the unit and cadets from the local branch of the Far Eastern Law Institute showed children “drill maneuvers and formations used for suppressing mass unrest.” Club instructors also held basic military training workshops for the schoolchildren.
The security forces employees showed children special and armored vehicles, small arms, and riot control equipment. Judging by the photographs, a sniper rifle, assault rifles, machine guns, pistols, grenades, and drones were on display. During competitions, teenagers were invited to disassemble assault rifles. Event participants were treated to porridge and sweets from a local manufacturer.
Similar events took place in other cities as well, DOXA reports. In Novosibirsk, staff from the local FSIN directorate staged a performance simulating combat, and prison service employees and police officers dressed children in their gear and handed them riot shields. In Yakutsk, instructors from the Voin military-patriotic center held workshops for children at the “Festival of Childhood,” training participants to pilot drones, disassemble and reassemble assault rifles, and perform CPR on a mannequin.
In January, Syktyvkar’s Yuri Gagarin School No. 4 published a summary of a field trip by second-graders to the FSIN Directorate Museum, describing the event as “a fascinating and unforgettable journey.” The report noted that children were particularly impressed by the “harsh punishment cell,” and that the excursion could “awaken in them the desire to become worthy defenders of justice in the future.”
