Ukrainians are supposed to be Russians. Putin signed a new presidential decree

On 25 November, the Russian state news agency TASS reported that President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree concerning the national policy of the Russian Federation. The new presidential decree follows a previous one from 2012, which was considerably more concise and expires on 31 December this year.

From 1 January 2026, new rules for the formation of an "all-Russian civic identity" will apply in Russia and the occupied Ukrainian territory, which the Kremlin considers part of the Russian Federation. This follows from Putin's 34-page decree "On the Strategy of the State Nationality Policy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2036."

Above all

In Russian, there are two words that translate into other languages as Rus: russkii (русский) and rossijanin (россиянин). While the first word refers to ethnic Russians, the second has since the 16th century referred to the inhabitants of Russia regardless of their nationality. Something similar is found in Europe only in German, where the word Deutsche exists for an ethnic German and Deutschländer for a citizen regardless of ethnicity.

During Putin's presidency, the use of these terms has gradually changed, and today, even in official documents, they are casually used interchangeably, as if they were full synonyms. The blurring of the ethnic, cultural and linguistic specificities of the various peoples of the Russian Federation has long been criticised by Russian, Karelian, Komsomol and other nationalists.

The new decree claims that 92 percent of Russia's population has an "all-Russian civic identity" (общероссийская гражданская идентичность) that displaces national identity, although reference to any survey is absent from the decree. By 2036, this percentage is set to rise to 95.

Recall that the term "all-Russian civic identity" first appeared in Russian in Putin's 2012 decree and only began to be used in the press twelve years later. The new decree also states that foreign countries are trying to undermine this pan-Russian unity.

"Ukraine is grieving"

Until recently, the propagandistically used term Novorossiya does not appear in the decree, and the word Ukraine is mentioned only once, in the section on the "neo-Nazi leadership of Ukraine," from which a number of territories were "liberated" and subsequently "reunited" with Russia to be reeducated. Those concerned, i.e. Ukrainians, are not mentioned by name in the decree.

Point 37(a) of Part III of the decree states that the Kremlin's aim is 'to consolidate the all-Russian civic identity on the basis of traditional Russian spiritual-moral and cultural-historical values'.

The inhabitants of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson oblasts are to be involved in the activities of educational, cultural and scientific organisations. The federal - i.e. national - executive authorities will, in cooperation with the occupation administration in the above-mentioned Ukrainian regions, 'draw up, adopt and modify strategic planning documents' in the field of national policy.

According to the decree, the implementation of Russia's nationality policy in the occupied territory requires "the adoption of additional measures to strengthen the all-Russian civic identity", which includes, in addition to cultural, in particular linguistic violation of the territory. While in the occupied Crimea Ukrainian is, at least on paper, one of the official languages, in the four areas mentioned above it is not.

In the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region, according to a 2020 law, Russian is already the only official language, as it is in the occupied Luhansk region. While the Donbas regions have the status of (people's) republics within Russia, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions have not been turned into republics and remained regions after the occupation. According to Article 68 of the Russian Constitution, this means that they can only have one official language - Russian.

Meanwhile, according to the last province-wide census in 2001, Ukrainians made up almost 58 per cent of the population in Luhansk oblast, less than 57 per cent in Donetsk oblast, more than 70 per cent in Zaporizhzhya oblast and 82 per cent in Kherson oblast. Those who survived the crossing of the frontline but did not intend to take Russian citizenship were displaced and replaced by Russians and migrants from non-European countries by presidential decree of March 2025.

The new decree also apparently envisages the elimination of Ukrainian national identity, as it speaks of 'countering manifestations of neo-Nazism and attempts to falsify history, eliminating the consequences of the spread of anti-Russian propaganda and nationalism'.

Let us recall that, although the term 'nationalism' is now equated with chauvinism in many countries of the European Union, Russia or Belarus, it is synonymous with the word 'nationalism' or, in the case of nation states, 'patriotism', which is also confirmed by Slovak dictionaries - with the exception of those from the communist period.

This will be felt especially by children

Paragraph 38 also refers specifically to "children and youth from the Donetsk People's Republic, Luhansk People's Republic, Zaporozhye Oblast and Kherson Oblast", who, according to the decree, are to participate in projects, auditions and events of national dimension in the official language. For the time being, more than 2.5 million people with Russian citizenship from the four regions are involved, according to the decree.

At the end of the 2024/2025 school year, the Russian Ministry of Education issued a decree ending the teaching of the Ukrainian language as a compulsory subject in the occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya oblasts, thus returning the Kremlin to the tried and tested violation policy of the Russian Empire.

In addition, as part of compulsory classes, primary school pupils are taught, for example, that Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians are brotherly peoples, except that Ukraine chose the wrong path of 'Nazism and neo-fascism', which became the reason for the start of the Russian invasion. Similar lessons were observed by Pavel Talankin, a teacher at a school in Karabash, in Russia's Chelyabinsk region.

When he was given the task of filming 'patriotic education' at the school, he captured everything and then took the video footage out of Russia. Eventually, in collaboration with a Danish director, he made a 90-minute film , Mr Nobody Against Putin, which has already been screened in several European countries.

Talankin told the Standard that teachers will certainly teach according to the curriculum - no one will risk telling pupils the truth about the war and the occupation in an atmosphere of fear where children, parents and teachers write denunciations of each other. On the other hand, Talankin adds that while "young children absorb every word of the teacher as the complete truth," older children are more resistant to propaganda at school, especially if their parents talk to them in secret about what is happening in the country.

However, older pupils are also compulsorily involved in the activities of the Russian state group Junarmiya (Young Army). The latter, in the spirit of state ideology, leads children in Russia and occupied Ukrainian territory to allegiance to the regime and prepares them for war. The Ukrainian national identity is facing severe tests in the occupied territory.