“Held at gunpoint”: Teachers in occupied Ukraine subjected to abuse, torture

Viktor Pendalchuk remembers the moment Russian soldiers first came for him. Dozens of them, all heavily armed, arrived at the Ukrainian headmaster’s family home. “They handcuffed me, kicked me, and put a bag over my head,” he said. “I was held at gunpoint.”

Pendalchuk, 46, is one of the many Ukrainian school teachers or directors in Russian-occupied territory to have been threatened and detained by Russian forces throughout the war for resisting a push to impose a Russian curriculum in Ukrainian schools. 

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Moscow has sought to reshape, Russify, and indoctrinate Ukraine’s education system including by forcing them to use the Russian language. “Everything related to the Ukrainian language, literature, and history was burned” at his school by Russian forces after the war started, Pendalchuk remembers. 

Russian forces had approached Pendalchuk in April 2022 to ask him to convert the school he ran in Kakhovka, situated in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region. “They wanted me … to stay in my position and to persuade my team to continue working and teaching according to Russian standards,” he told Context. “I could not agree to that.”

After Pendalchuk was detained, he was taken to the basement of a former police station in Kakhovka that had been converted into a detention centre. He recalls the cramped cell held as many as 20 people. Many of them were subjected to psychological and physical abuse.

„They electrocuted some people and beat others with rubber police batons, or with their hands, feet, or fists,” he said, adding that some of the guards beat some detainees with brass knuckledusters. “They beat everyone … sometimes they took it out on us because we didn’t want to obey them, sometimes they got drunk and just did it for fun.”

According to Education International, a global teachers union, the Russian army in Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region is arresting and torturing education workers “for teaching the Ukrainian curriculum.” This is reportedly happening throughout the occupied territories.

Photo: The Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine

Larysa Polishchuk, the head of the Kherson city’s Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine, told Context in an interview that shortly after the invasion, Moscow deployed a special team to the Kherson region to oversee the Russification of educational facilities.

“One of the representatives of the State Russian Duma arrived in Kherson with a special educational mission, he visited educational institutions, looked through the library collections that were in the schools,” she said. “These books were taken from several Kherson schools to Russian territory.”

Ukraine’s educational system has been hard hit by the war. 

More than 3,790 educational facilities in Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed, according to a Human Rights Watch report published in November 2023, titled “Tanks on the Playground”.

“When occupying schools, Russian forces pillaged them, looting desktop and laptop computers, televisions, interactive whiteboards, other school equipment, and heating systems,” HRW said. “Upon withdrawal, Russian forces left behind burned-out and ransacked classrooms.”

Polishchuk said that 131 out of 150 educational institutions in Kherson city alone have been destroyed during the full-scale war. “Many teachers who refused to cooperate were sent to basements to intimidate them,” she added. 

After Pendalchuk was detained at his home in April, he was held captive for two weeks, and then released. “I could not walk or lie down properly for two months,” he said. “They must have thought that the time (held) in inhumane conditions … was enough to change my mind in their favor.”

Photo: The Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine

But despite the intimidation, the headmaster refused to bow to Russia’s demands, and as a result, he was captured and detained for a second time. 

„It was on the street, I was walking with my wife and daughter. A car drove up, they stopped us, and asked who I was, then put me in the car,” he said. „The reasons were the same: disagreement with cooperation.”

One notable thing had changed: the detention centre, he remembers, was more crowded with detainees. Many of them were activists, businessmen, and military personnel. Pendalchuk said that during his second time in captivity, he saw a fellow teacher from his school who said she had been detained for helping children to study remotely. 

When he was released the second time – after three weeks in captivity – Russia’s occupying troops issued a threat to try to convince him to collaborate. “They told me that the next time … I will not leave here (detention) alive,” he said.

The first round of captivity had already taken a heavy toll on his mental health. “You are released and you don’t know if you are under surveillance, you think about who you can communicate with and who you can’t,” he said. “You stop trusting people.”

“The main thing is not to close in on yourself. Communication in the family circle and outdoor walks with my family helped me a lot,” he said. “But still, the events that happened to me in captivity left their mark. I don’t feel the same as before.”

Photo: The Trade Union of Education and Science Workers of Ukraine

Pendalchuk eventually fled Kakhovka with his wife and child to live in the Kyiv region, and he and his fellow teachers from his old school have managed to continue teaching hundreds of their pupils remotely. 

„This year our school resumed remote work. We managed to gather teachers and children who had left, many of them abroad, some to other regions of Ukraine,” he said, but added: “We used to have about a thousand children, and now we have half that number.”

Hugh Williamson, the director of Europe at Human Rights Watch, noted in the report that “Ukrainian children have paid a high price in this war because attacks on education are attacks on their future.”

Polishchuk, the Kherson city unionist, said that despite Russia’s war many teachers in the city are dedicated to ensuring the children receive a proper education.

“For us, it is not just a job – it is our life,” she said. “I continue to live in Kherson, and I believe that we will overcome everything and win.”