Following the unprecedented pro-democracy demonstrations that broke out after Belarus's disputed 2020 presidential election, the government undertook a ruthless crackdown on dissent that included jailing activists, shutting down independent media, and generally dismantling civil society.
And among those left most completely isolated were the country's thousands of orphans and children whose parents have been deprived of custody.
"Previously, there were organizations that offered alternatives for the integration and socialization of such children," Volha Vyalichka, a Belarusian child psychologist and rights activist who fled to Poland after her children's hospice in Hrodno was closed down in mid-2021, told Current Time. "Now only the state pays attention to them, and it has its own agenda."
Increasingly, and particularly since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that agenda has centered on military-patriotic activities. Orphans from state and Belarusian Orthodox Church institutions have been sent to camps at military installations, instructed in military drills and weaponry, trained by mercenaries from Russia's notorious Wagner Group, and assigned to write letters of encouragement to Russian soldiers occupying parts of Ukraine.
The state's "patriotic" education efforts are jointly coordinated by the Education, Defense, Interior, and Emergencies ministries. Although such camps for vulnerable children have been run since at least 2007, the war in Ukraine and Belarus's growing authoritarianism have made the effort a government priority.
'A Warm, Family Atmosphere'
In December 2020, for instance, the Interior Ministry and the Minsk OMON riot police hosted a group of orphans at a display of weaponry and vehicles. According to a state media report, one 12-year-old boy donned a bulletproof vest and a riot-control helmet, provoking another child to exclaim that he looked like "a real colonel!"
The head of the Minsk OMON unit was quoted as saying they had done all they could "to make the children feel as if they were in a warm, family atmosphere."
Such events have become commonplace. In April, the Education Ministry reported on a series of events involving more than 100 special-needs children and orphans who met with paratroopers and were encouraged to write letters to soldiers. According to the report, "the paratroopers spoke with the children, familiarized them with modern weapons, and took photographs" under the project called Kindness+Courage.
The number of camps for orphans and other socially disadvantaged children hosted by military units has increased steadily since 2020. In 2021-22, there were about 480 of them, state media reported. While in 2023, 583 such camps were organized with the participation of "nearly 6,000 children."
For 2024, the government planned to host 14,000 children -- including many orphans and other children in the government's social-services system -- in summer camps "at bases of structures and units of the armed forces," the Belta state news agency reported. The camps are conducted by veterans, mercenaries, and active-duty personnel.
In July 2023, a commentator on state television, Ksenia Lebedeva posted a video on Telegram showing Wagner mercenaries instructing a group of small children at a "military-patriotic club."
"This is not Mary Poppins, you know," Lebedeva wrote. "Our children are choosing the right toys and the right teachers."
'It Is About Loyalty'
The Emergencies Ministry University runs a high school for orphans, disadvantaged children, and children from troubled families. This year, 93 percent of the school's graduates planned to study at military-technical institutes.
"There has been a shift in the concept of patriotism," said Katsyaryna Deikalo at a June roundtable on children's rights in Belarus hosted by the national legislature of Lithuania. "Now it is not about love for Belarus, but first of all it is about loyalty to the current government."
Deikalo particularly noted the active participation of the military and the Moscow-affiliated Belarusian Orthodox Church in the educational process. The news website Mediazona reported in 2023 that the church was running about 20 military-patriotic clubs around the country. In May, the Education Ministry authorized Orthodox monasteries to open shelters for vulnerable children.
Since Russia began fomenting a separatist uprising in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, several Belarusian military-patriotic clubs have sent children to parallel camps in Russia, where they were instructed in "military practices" by Russian mercenaries from the conflict in Ukraine's Donbas, Belarusian state television reported in 2016.
Child psychologist Vyalichka said orphans and disadvantaged children lack adult role models to help them understand the heavily ideologized and militarized environment in which they find themselves.
"The ideologization with which the Belarusian government is infusing education leads to specific behavioral patterns in children," she told Current Time. "Although children with parents can often cope with this, military-patriotic education is much easier with orphans."
In addition, strict restrictions on the Internet and access to information in orphanages leaves these children even more vulnerable.
"Orphans are traumatized children who have lost their main support attachment," Vyalichka added. "Therefore every adult who gives them some candy or says some kind words is seen as a type of protection. They will be perceived by these children as a positive hero and a role model.
At a session of the UN Human Rights Council in March 2023, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) expressed alarm at "Belarusian military training programs of children," saying that more than 18,000 children "as young as 6" had passed through the training -- which included the use of firearms -- in 2022.
