Natalia Goncharova and Valentyna Lavryk - leaders of the occupation regime's criminal policy in education in the occupied Crimea

Every crime has its perpetrators, the names of each of whom must be found out in the course of the investigation. In the case of organized crime, the group committing the crime has a leader who issues "sanctions" to his henchmen for illegal actions. The more than decade-long crime of destroying the Ukrainian-language segment of education on the Crimean peninsula, occupied by the terrorist regime of the Russian Federation since late February 2014, has its perpetrators - and each of them will face due retribution in the future.

However, two people who held the "post of Minister of Education and Science" in the so-called "authorities of the Republic of Crimea" played an important role in curtailing education in the native language for Ukrainian children in the occupied region: Natalia Goncharova, who served in her "cadence" in 2014-2019, and Valentyna Lavryk, who, after her predecessor, has been managing educational processes in the occupied Crimea to this day. We will focus on their biographies and involvement in the elimination of Ukrainian-language education in the region in more detail.

 From Polissia to Crimea, to Kyiv and back: Natalia Goncharova's journey

Natalia Goncharova was born on December 9, 1970, in Korosten, Zhytomyr Oblast, where she was a pioneer teacher at School No. 6 in 1988-1989. In 1994, she graduated from the Frunze Simferopol State University, receiving a degree in geography, where she worked for almost a decade and a half, including at schools #24 (September-December 1994), #19 (1995-1997), and #17 (2001-2007) in Simferopol: in the latter school, Goncharova was also the deputy director for educational work and a social pedagogue. In 2007, she ended up in Kyiv, where she worked for almost a year as deputy director of educational work at the Erudite gymnasium, and then until 2010 as a geography teacher and deputy director of educational work at school No. 118. Meanwhile, in 2009, Goncharova received a law degree from the Kyiv National University of Trade and Economics. 

Upon returning to Simferopol in the spring of 2011, Goncharova found herself working in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, where she held the positions of chief specialist legal adviser (March-April 2011), head of the legal labor sector (April-May 2011), and deputy minister (from May 2011 - deputy, from November - first deputy). Finally, in November 2012, Honcharova became the head of the Crimean Ministry of Education. After the Russian occupation of Crimea, in April 2014, she was appointed "Minister of Education, Science and Youth of the Republic of Crimea".

In the autumn of the same year, she defended her dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Geographical Sciences on "Optimization of the Territorial Organization of the General Education System in Crimea" at the Vernadsky Tauride National University, from which the occupiers turned the "Tauride Academy" into the "Crimean Federal University": the following year, the then "rector" of this "institution" Serhiy Donich (died in March 2022) presented Goncharova with a "diploma of Candidate of Geographical Sciences". In November 2019, Goncharova was dismissed from the "post of Minister of Education", after which in December she headed the "Lyceum of the Crimean Spring" in the village of Myrne, Simferopol district, which she still runs. 

Beginnings and progress of the destruction of Ukrainian-language education in Crimea

The "appointment" of Natalia Goncharova as "Minister of Education of the Republic of Crimea" in April 2014 coincided with an incident at the Ukrainian Gymnasium in Simferopol: the head of the school, Natalia Rudenko, who actually founded it in 1997, was forced to sign a letter of resignation "by agreement of the parties," while the Simferopol "authorities" claimed that it was Rudenko's decision.

The day before, pro-Russian activists held a rally near the gymnasium demanding that the school be converted to a Russian school. At the same time, the father of one of the students, claiming to be a representative of the "self-defense of Crimea," came to the principal's office and emotionally demanded that Russian textbooks be immediately issued. The pressure on Natalia Rudenko ended with a visit from city "officials": she was offered to leave either by agreement or under the article.

The pretext was the collection of funds by parents to cover the costs of the visit of kobzar Vasyl Nechepa, who in mid-February 2014 gave a concert at the gymnasium as part of the anniversary events dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko. Afterwards, a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea from the Russian Unity party, Sergey Tsekov, stated that during his performance Nechepa called on students to agitate their parents to go to the Maidan in Kyiv and demanded that the Ministry of Education of Crimea take action against the director of the gymnasium; a study of the full recording of the performance showed that no such calls were made. The day after Natalia Rudenko's dismissal, the "mayor" of Simferopol, Viktor Ageev, stated that the parents of more than 200 students of the Ukrainian gymnasium had written applications to have their children taught in Russian. Subsequently, the gymnasium was renamed from a Ukrainian school to an "academic" one.

On October 10, 2014, Natalia Goncharova reported that the demand for Ukrainian language instruction in Crimean schools was rapidly decreasing: "There is a tendency to reduce, and here it is the right of parents." According to her, there are no schools left in Crimea with Ukrainian as the only language of instruction: "We have classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction in 20 schools, where all subjects are taught in Ukrainian." A month before this statement, the Crimean "Ministry of Education" blamed the parents of students for not opening Ukrainian classes - despite the fact that school directors did not accept such applications in the summer of 2014, or persuaded parents not to write them, resorting to threats as a negative motivation.

Despite the official assurances of the Crimean "authorities" about the "state status" of the Ukrainian language in the region, its study has disappeared from the school curriculum, but some Crimean parents have expressed a desire to send their children to Ukrainian classes so that they can continue their studies at any Ukrainian university on the mainland of Ukraine.

Parents were outraged by the fact that in high school, according to the Russian regulations established in Crimea, education was to be conducted exclusively in Russian. Given such facts, local Ukrainians concluded that the occupation "authorities" of Crimea are deliberately destroying Ukrainian-language education in order to assimilate the population so that Ukrainians do not feel their identity but rather feel part of the "Russian world."

In May 2015, in addition to Natalia Goncharova's interview with the Russian publication Uchitelskaya Gazeta, statistics were provided according to which in 540 schools in the occupied Crimea out of 191100 students, 1990 (1.1% of the total contingent) received education in Ukrainian; it was stated that out of 7 schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction in 2015, none were closed, but Russian language classes were also opened on their basis.

During 2014-2015, the administration of Crimean schools, contrary to all the rules and regulations, refused to accept applications from parents of students to open classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction. In particular, at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, gymnasium No. 1 in Simferopol Simferopol collected a lot of applications for studying the Ukrainian language, after which this subject was introduced as an optional 20-minute per week; after a while, students and their parents were confronted with the fact that the Ukrainian language would be taught only at the level of proverbs and fairy tales, as "there were no volunteers".

In 2016, school administrations individually rejected applications from parents who applied for their children to study in Ukrainian-language classes, telling them that the school would not open such a class "for the sake of a single student." In schools, Ukrainian language classes were reduced in favor of Russian, and classes with in-depth study of the Ukrainian language and literature were disbanded by decisions at the level of the city "authorities."

Instead, a powerful propaganda campaign was conducted to "foster patriotic feelings" towards the occupying country. According to the explanations of the "Ministry of Education of the Republic of Crimea" of 25.06.2014 No. 0114/382, was stated it : "The teaching and learning of the state languages of the Republic of Crimea should not be carried out to the detriment of the teaching and learning of the state language of the Russian Federation", i.e. Russian.

The criteria for "damage" were not defined, so the "authorities and self-government bodies" had a direct impact on language practices in education, effectively banning Ukrainian education and convincing everyone around them that there were no people in Crimea willing to learn Ukrainian of their own free will. Not only was the Ukrainian language removed from Crimean schools as a subject, but also textbooks, which were thrown out of school libraries along with works by Ukrainian classics. On September 19, 2014, the Crimean "Ministry of Education, Science and Youth" ordered an audit of the libraries of educational institutions on the peninsula and the destruction of materials from the federal list of extremist literature, which includes several thousand items.

  

The natural outcome of this policy was the statement by Natalia Goncharova that as of August 2015, no applications for Ukrainian language education had allegedly been received by the occupied Crimea's secondary schools. By that time, there was not a single school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction left in Crimea - only about 17 Ukrainian-language classes.

"But there are no applications for the first grade with Ukrainian as the language of instruction," Goncharova said, adding that in 2015-2016 there was no enrollment in the Ukrainian philology program at the so-called Crimean Federal University.

It is worth noting that at that time, fifteen students were admitted to the first year on a state-funded basis and two on a commercial basis (in 2014, this figure was twice as high).

The Faculty of Ukrainian Philology at the former Tauride National University, which had a stable student population of 60-70, was liquidated in September 2014, when three departments (Ukrainian Language Culture, Ukrainian Linguistics, and Theory and History of Ukrainian Literature) were merged and incorporated into the Faculty of Slavic Philology and Journalism; most of the faculty members were laid off, and the number of students decreased significantly, many of whom transferred to other specialties and universities on the mainland.

The Ukrainian language was also taught at the humanities faculties of the universities of Armyansk, Yalta and Yevpatoria, which became part of the "Crimean Federal University" as branches. According to Volodymyr Kazarin, who for some time headed TNU "in exile," the elimination of the Faculty of Ukrainian Language and Literature and the Department of Ukrainian History was one of the first demands of a certain part of the faculty who, after the occupation of Crimea, began to serve the new government.

"The Department of History of Ukraine was also closed. It turned out that the specialty "history of Crimea" may be possible, such a department has been created, but the history of Ukraine is not, it is a pseudo-science," he added.

Aspects of the struggle against the Ukrainian component in Crimean education; attention of the Ukrainian and international community to the problem 

Back in April 2015, the then "Chairman of the Committee of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea on Education, Science, Youth Policy and Sports" Vladimir Bobkov was outraged that a Ukrainian school in the village of Primorskoe near Feodosia was named after Olena Teliga, a Ukrainian writer and poet, a member of the OUN, who in the winter of 1942 was first arrested by the Gestapo and then, together with her husband and associates, was shot by the German Nazis in Babyn Yar, the site of mass executions of the Jewish and Roma population of Kyiv. The "deputy" demanded that the school be renamed within 10 days and expressed the opinion that the institution would be able to survive in the old format for no more than a year, as students wishing to continue their education "in Russia" would not be taught in Ukrainian. A short time later, Natalia Goncharova reported that the school in Prymorske had been "re-registered" and the name of Olena Teliha removed from its name: "Everything has been fixed, everything is fine there."

In early October 2015, the Crimean pro-government publication Kryminform, citing the Russian news agency TASS, reported Natalia Goncharova as saying that in the new school year in Crimea, as in 2014, there is not a single first grade class taught in Ukrainian, but a few classes with Ukrainian language in some schools remained: "If we talk about the percentage of Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian, it is 95 to 5."

TASS also quoted Goncharova as saying that in 2015, an experiment was launched in three Crimean schools: teaching of three "state" languages was introduced for all students from the first grade onwards: no information about this "experiment" or the schools where it was allegedly implemented could be found. Earlier, on March 20, 2015, during a "government hour" in the "State Council of the Republic of Crimea," Goncharova released data according to which almost 2000 students in 142 classes of Crimean schools studied Ukrainian in Crimea, but the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported different data according to Goncharova: 39,150 children, or 18.2% of all students on the peninsula.

At the same time, the Ukrainian media published comments by Olga Tymoshenko, a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, former head of the only Ukrainian-language school in Yevpatoria, who was forced to move to Kyiv. After the occupation of Crimea, Tymoshenko was summoned to the "Ministry of Education" and forced to write a letter of resignation and leave the school in one day. According to Tymoshenko, during the occupation of Crimea, the school she headed came under intense pressure from the Russian community and public opinion; after the March 2014 "referendum" the school was considered a "center of evil" because "all the enemies of Russia" were concentrated there. In Tymoshenko's opinion, the policy of mother tongue education in the occupied Crimea can be characterized as "disingenuous."

"Yes, you can, if you want, open classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, but this is only possible up to the 9th grade. In the 10th and 11th grades, you will no longer be able to study in Ukrainian , but only in Russian. Do you realize how much time you will spend not on learning Russian, which you will need when you enter a higher education institution, but on God knows what? And parents think: yes, how will my child study... Or you will finish 9th grade and go to a vocational school; if this is your path, then please. And parents think about it."

On December 8, 2015, the twelfth report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, based on the activities of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMM) in Ukraine from August 16 to November 15, 2015, was released in Geneva and New York. Traditionally, a separate section was devoted to the situation in Crimea: this time, the document focused on the situation of the Ukrainian language on the peninsula, the level of teaching of which in schools has decreased by more than ten times since 2013. With the beginning of the new 2015-2016 year, the Crimean "Ministry of Education" reported that the last year's trend, when the vast majority of children (96.4%) used Russian in their curricula, had been maintained.

Before the end of the use of Ukrainian curricula, 12694 children were studying in Ukrainian in Crimea (as of the end of 2013); in 2014, this figure was 2154, and in 2015 - 949. Ukrainian-language classes were maintained in 22 schools on the peninsula, but basic secondary education (grades 1-9) was available in Ukrainian only in two schools, located in Alushta and Feodosia. 

Some parents told the HRMMU that the 'authorities' on the peninsula impede the use of minority languages, in particular by preventing children with the same language preferences from being grouped together and transferring them to Russian-teaching classes. The Crimean "authorities" tried to refute such statements: in particular, Natalia Goncharova stated in September 2015 that separate classes with instruction in minority languages were opened when at least seven applications from parents were received.

The situation in the Ukrainian gymnasium, which was renamed to an "academic" school, was brought to the point where only one application for Ukrainian-language education in the 2014-2015 school year was received from the parents of a first-grader. At that time, Valentina Lavryk, who was appointed as the principal of the gymnasium to replace Natalia Rudenko, who was forced to leave Crimea, said that in the new school year there would be no Ukrainian-language first grade, but also no Ukrainian-language 5th and 11th grades. In 2014, despite pressure on parents, the Ukrainian gymnasium managed to recruit a Ukrainian-language first grade of more than 20 children; according to parents, Ukrainian language instruction in Crimean schools, if it remained, was optional, meaning that instead of learning the language, only familiarization with it was offered.

Parents also complained about the lack of textbooks in Ukrainian: despite the fact that there were textbooks published in Ukraine, the library refused to give them to students, citing a ban by the "administration"; as a result, students in Ukrainian classes were taught with textbooks in Russian, despite assurances from Russian and Crimean education officials that textbooks in Ukrainian were being prepared for Ukrainian schools and classes in Crimea, which would be approved by the Russian Ministry of Education. At that time, the basis was being laid for statements by Crimean journalists that Crimeans had declared a boycott of the Ukrainian language and were writing massive refusals to learn it. 

In reality, there have been numerous cases where applications for teaching in the mother tongue or learning it were not accepted, ignored or disappeared. The lack of response or even open opposition to learning or teaching in Ukrainian was aimed at disorienting parents and children, as well as preventing them from exercising their right to education in their native language. There were reports that students of the former Ukrainian gymnasium were forbidden to bring textbooks in Ukrainian to school and were constantly threatened with the disbandment of Ukrainian classes.

At the end of 2015, Goncharova assured that "the Ukrainian language and culture will not disappear in Crimea, because there are many representatives of this people in Crimea." However, during a meeting with journalists on December 25, 2015, she explained the eradication of the Ukrainian language from the Crimean educational process by saying that "it's just a period of time" and promised that it would pass. Goncharova also stated that Ukrainian should not be imposed as a language of instruction at school, lest it backfire:

"We cannot associate language with politics, but we also should not break the established stereotype of behavior at the peak of tension, when Crimea is experiencing a lot of trouble from representatives of the neighboring state (as Ukraine was called in Crimea in 2015)."

 According to her, some Ukrainian language teachers were retrained and retrained to teach other school subjects, but there were also those who did not want to change their profession: they worked in an after-school program, were involved in extracurricular activities, and taught elective classes. Accordingly, with this short remark, the Crimean "official" made it clear that the "state" Ukrainian language was relegated to the margins of educational institutions on the peninsula.

On January 14, 2016, at a press conference at the Ukrinform agency, employees of the Crimean House State Enterprise and the SPHERA Research Center presented the results of a comprehensive sociological study "Cultural Environment and Situation in Crimea" conducted in December 2015.

According to Oleksandr Shulga, PhD in sociology and head of the SPHERA Research Center, the Crimean "authorities" deprived children of the opportunity to learn Ukrainian in several stages:

"At the first stage, the Ukrainian language was removed from the compulsory school curriculum to the category of optional subjects. At the second stage, at least 8 applications were required to form an optional Ukrainian language class. At the third stage, "educational work" was conducted with parents so that they would not write such applications, and the class was not actually enrolled. Respondents also mentioned intimidation and advice not to write such applications. At the fourth stage, the teachers who specialized in the Ukrainian language were already being forced out, as they were no longer needed. They were offered two options: to re-profile to another subject or to leave."

The situation in higher education is equally sad, with no state order for Ukrainian language teacher training.

On July 18, 2016, the coordinator of the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Crimea initiative, Leonid Kuzmin, was summoned to the "FSB Department" in Simferopol for interrogation, which lasted 1.5 hours, after which the activist was taken under a non-disclosure agreement. On the same day, Kuzmin submitted a request to the "Minister of Education" of Crimea Natalia Goncharova to obtain statistical data on classes and electives with Ukrainian language study in Crimean schools and students studying in Ukrainian.

At the end of the month, Kuzmin published the response of the "First Deputy Minister of Education of the Republic of Crimea" Natalia Zhurba to his request: according to the "official", 894 students, or 0.5% of the total number of students, studied in Ukrainian in Crimean schools in the 2015-2016 school year. At the , the response same timeprovided data that 9316 students studied Ukrainian as a subject, and 13661 as an optional subject. According to Kuzmin's assumptions, based on these data, there could be from 455 to 2732 optional classes in Crimea and from 210 to 621 school classes with Ukrainian language instruction. 

However, the applicant did not believe this statistic, in particular, given the absence of Ukrainian in the Crimean curriculum: according to Kuzmin, in most Crimean schools since 2015, Ukrainian has not been a subject, even as an optional one, and where it was, the issue of attendance and the number of students is very acute.

In Yalta's Ukrainian gymnasium, which is the only one in Crimea that remains Ukrainian, more than half of the classes were switched to Russian.

"I know of a case when in 2015, in one of the schools, parents of children applied for the first grade to be taught in Ukrainian. Then the school principal called the parents one by one and explained that he could not open the class because there were only three applications, while, according to the law, there should be ten. Then there was a similar case in one of the schools in the Simferopol district, where the principal acted in the same way. But since it was a rural school and parents are in contact with each other, they united and at one point came to the principal all together: you say there are three of us, but here are ten people - open the class," said Leonid Kuzmin.

On August 21, 2016, the participants of the VI Ukrainian World Forum adopted a draft resolution proposed by the Crimean delegation on the efforts of Ukraine, global Ukrainians and the international community to de-occupy and reintegrate Crimea. It was submitted to the assembly's editorial committee.

"The existence of more than half a million ethnic Ukrainians, which is the second largest ethnic community in Crimea, is under threat. The occupiers have set a course for its assimilation. They have basically destroyed the cultural, media and educational infrastructure of Crimean Ukrainians, banned the activities of Ukrainian political and public organizations, illegally severed the connection of the Crimean information space with the all-Ukrainian one, persecute and expel Ukrainian activists from Crimea, exert massive information and psychological pressure on the Ukrainian population, restrict their right to freedom of conscience, in particular, persecute the structures of the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate in the temporarily occupied territory," - the statement said.

In particular, it called on the Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to open criminal proceedings over the destruction of 7 schools and more than 500 Ukrainian language classes in the occupied peninsula against the former Minister of Education, Youth and Sports of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Natalia Goncharova, who joined the occupiers.

On August 26, 2016, the Crimean Ukrainians blog on Facebook reported that the Simferopol "academic gymnasium" no longer had 1st and 2nd grades with Ukrainian as the language of instruction. Additionally, it was reported that there were still a few Ukrainian classes in the school, in particular, before the start of the new school year, there were places for students in every parallel, except for the 6th and 10th grades. Krym.Realii received confirmation of this information from the "press secretary of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Crimea" Anton Garkavets (now Goncharova's "deputy" for administrative and economic work at the "Crimean Spring Lyceum"), who stated the following: "The decision to study a language is made by parents, and classes are formed on the basis of their applications at . Over the past two years, parents have not expressed a desire for their children to study in Ukrainian."

In September 2016, experts from the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research noted that during the years of Russian occupation of Crimea, the number of educational institutions providing opportunities to study or learn in languages other than Russian has significantly decreased. According to the "official" data of the Crimean "Ministry of Education" at the time, there were 5 Ukrainian schools in Crimean cities and 17 in villages (894 students in total); Ukrainian is taught as a separate subject in 169 general education institutions.

"The new authorities are secretly surviving the Ukrainian language, despite the fact that according to the so-called constitution of the Republic of Crimea, it is recognized as the state language along with Russian. Back in 2014, 750 Ukrainian language teachers were retrained to teach other subjects. The directors of some schools hold "educational" conversations with parents about the inexpediency and futility of teaching children in their native Ukrainian language: they say that the younger generation should grow up as citizens of the Russian Federation, feel part of a "single people" and not "some" Ukrainians," - the authors of the material argued.

On November 30, 2016, the Crimean online media outlet Kerch.FM published the response of the Crimean "Ministry of Education" to an information request regarding statistics on schoolchildren's education in the languages that are considered "state" languages on the peninsula from the point of view of the Russian Federation. According to the "ministry," as of the end of the fall of 2016, 96.9% of schoolchildren in Crimea were taught in Russian, while only 0.2% were taught in Ukrainian. According to the Crimean "minister of education" Natalia Goncharova, at that time there was only one general education organization with Ukrainian as the language of instruction on the peninsula (9 classes, 132 students).

There were also classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction on the basis of Russian-teaching schools (19 classes, 239 students). At the same time, the "deputy head" of the city "administration" of Kerch, Dilyaver Melgaziev, said that absolutely all schools in the city teach in Russian, and there are no classes with Ukrainian or Crimean Tatar as the language of instruction. The Ukrainian language was taught as an optional subject only in school No. 9; only one Ukrainian teacher remained in Kerch. 

Melgaziev also said that the study of native languages in Kerch schools is organized "in accordance with the wishes of parents and students." Parents themselves claimed that, compared to the 2014/2015 school year, in 2016/2017 their children's interest in Ukrainian became minimal, and Ukrainian language teachers retrained to teach other subjects or even other specialties.

In December 2016, during a press conference, the then "human rights commissioner" controlled by the occupation "authorities" of Crimea, Lyudmila Lubina, stated that schools and classes with Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages of instruction, as well as national and cultural organizations and societies, continue to function in Crimea.

"As for creative organizations and public associations, I do not have a single fact that any cultural or public institution was closed on religious or ethnic grounds," - Lubina said.

According to her, "there are three state languages in Crimea, and a family can choose any state school and language to teach their child." However, it is worth paying attention to Lubina's quote, which was published by Moskovsky Komsomolets-Krym: "Not a single Crimean Tatar school or class with in-depth study of the Ukrainian language has been closed." That is, unlike the schools with the Crimean Tatar language of instruction, there is no longer any mention of schools with the Ukrainian language of instruction, only classes were mentioned directly.

Less than a year and a half later, on April 30, 2018, it became known that Lubina, in her annual report in response to the demand to comply with the interim decision of the International Court of Justice to restore the rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens on the occupied peninsula, stated that claims against the Crimean "authorities" regarding the situation with Ukrainian language education were "groundless" because parents of schoolchildren independently choose the language of instruction for their children. As an argument, she cited the following data: in 2017, there was a single Ukrainian-teaching school with 132 students in Crimea, and 19 Ukrainian-teaching classes with 239 students were opened on the basis of 12 Russian-teaching schools.

The office of the Crimean "ombudsman" explained the reduction in the number of educational institutions with Ukrainian as the language of instruction by the fact that parents do not write applications for their children to be taught in Ukrainian. At the same time, according to the Crimean Human Rights Group (CHRG), before the Russian occupation, there were 8 Ukrainian schools in Crimea, and the number of children receiving education in Ukrainian was 13589, which decreased by 102 times over the 4 years of occupation.

Earlier, the UN OHCHR report on the human rights situation in Ukraine reported that in Crimea, the number of children receiving education in Ukrainian or learning it as a foreign language continues to decline rapidly: according to the commission, in the 2017-2018 school year, only 318 (0.2%) of Crimean schoolchildren received education in Ukrainian, a total decrease of 97% since 2014. The number of children who studied Ukrainian as a foreign language dropped sharply by 50% - from 12892 in the 2016-2017 school year to 6400 in the 2017-2018 school year.

At the same time, students of the Ukrainian-teaching school No. 20 in Feodosia and their parents informed the CHRG that there were no Ukrainian classes. The school's charter, published on its website, stated that the languages of instruction were Russian and Ukrainian, but the sign at the entrance to the school was in Russian only.

The school's website, which had a Ukrainian-language version, posted an announcement that it had been closed since January 2016 and provided a link to a new version that did not work. It was noted that the Crimean "ministry of education" published information about this school on its website in the section "On the state of education in the state (Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian) languages and the study of native languages in educational organizations of the Republic of Crimea": this is not the only case when the information on the website of the "ministry of education" contradicted the real situation. 

According to the CHRG, in Simferopol gymnasium No. 11 named after K. Trenov, the only Ukrainian class was closed in 2016; Ukrainian was an optional language in this educational institution, but the gymnasium was listed among the seven schools in Crimea that opened classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction in the 2017-2018 academic year. 

"Ukrainian language in Crimea will have to start from scratch" 

On March 2, 2017, the "press service of the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of the Republic of Crimea" quoted Natalia Goncharova as saying that the "ministry" she heads "pays great attention to creating conditions for learning native languages." Goncharova came to this conclusion when summarizing the events dedicated to the Mother Language Day: "By creating conditions for the development, preservation and study of native languages by schoolchildren of the Republic of Crimea, we are forming historical memory and fostering patriotism."

According to her data, in the 2016-2017 academic year, 556 general education organizations of all forms of ownership operated in Crimea, with 192.3 thousand children enrolled: only 371 of them received education in Ukrainian, which was 0.1% of the total number of students. In the indicated academic year, there was only one general education organization with Ukrainian as the language of instruction in Crimea (9 classes, 132 students) - Feodosia school No. 20.

Classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction were also opened on the basis of Russian-teaching general education institutions (12 schools have 19 classes, 239 students). According to the Crimean "Ministry of Education", 12892 students studied Ukrainian in various forms (as a subject, as an optional extracurricular activity); 3-5 hours were allocated for studying the native language in general education schools with the native language of instruction, and 2-3 hours per week in schools with Russian as the language of instruction.

The "ministry" also reminded about the preparation in 2015 of applied programs "Ukrainian language (native)", "Ukrainian language (non-native)" and "Ukrainian literature" for pre-school educational and general educational organizations, which were included in the register of Applied basic general educational programs of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Specialists in the Ukrainian language were trained at the "Crimean Federal (former Tauride National) University named after Vernadsky" and the "Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University". According to the Crimean "Ministry of Education", in the 2016-2017 academic year, 63 children (0.09%) studied in Ukrainian in municipal preschool educational organizations.

On June 7, 2017, an article in the Russian newspaper Vzglyad stated that "education in the Ukrainian language continues in Crimea, although Kyiv and the West claim otherwise". As an "argument", it cited data from the "Minister of Education, Science and Youth of the Republic of Crimea" Natalia Goncharova, according to which 371 children received education in Ukrainian in the occupied Crimea, which was about 0.1% of the number of students in Crimean schools.

"The only school with Ukrainian language instruction is in Feodosia. It has 9 classes and 132 students. Another 12 schools with Russian as the language of instruction have 19 Ukrainian-language classes with 139 students. Thus, teaching was not actually interrupted. The number of people willing to learn Ukrainian has just sharply decreased," - the publication said.

On September 10, 2017, Zaur Smirnov, the then-head of the State Committee for Interethnic Relations of the Republic of Crimea, said on Sputnik in Crimea radio that Russian remained the most popular language in schools in occupied Crimea, followed by Crimean Tatar, and that the "third state language" Ukrainian "is not in demand."

On September 19, during a press conference at the multimedia press center of the Rossiya Segodnya news agency in Simferopol, Smirnov said that "the decrease in interest" in learning the Ukrainian language in Crimea is due to the fact that it was allegedly "imposed" on the peninsula before its occupation by Russia.

"Many of our opponents - thank God, there are practically no more of them here in Crimea, they are mostly broadcasts from abroad - talk about the alleged oppression of the language. This is an absolute lie and provocation. There is absolutely no action on the part of the authorities or educational institutions," Smirnov said, predicting that in the future there will be an increase in interest in learning Ukrainian in Crimea due to demand from the "local Ukrainian diaspora". "There is a natural process when the Ukrainian language in Crimea will have to start from scratch," -  he added.

In early November 2017, at Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the Freedom Space movement presented the results of the study "The State of the Ukrainian Language in Ukraine in 2017".

During the presentation, experts spoke about the situation with Ukrainian language education in Crimea. According to Serhiy Stukanov, coordinator of the State of the Ukrainian Language project, since there is no access to the peninsula, researchers have to use data from the occupation "administrations," but even they confirm the catastrophic trends in Ukrainian language education and the language situation in general.

"While in 2013, 6.5% of students on the peninsula studied in Ukrainian, or 12,694 students, and we said then that this was inadequately small, today the number of students studying in Ukrainian in Crimea has reached 371 students. In terms of the number of classes, we also see a drop of almost 30 times: from 875 classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction to 28. Obviously, the Ukrainian language has been completely ousted from all spheres of society in Crimea, but even these data may be inaccurate and overstated," the expert noted.

According to Taras Shamayda, coordinator of the Freedom Space movement, Russia did not close the few Ukrainian-language classes in Crimea for a formal, demonstrative purpose - to be able to show international society that everything is supposedly in order with the language rights of ethnic groups on the peninsula.

On December 5, 2017, the online publication "Open Russia" published an article by the Crimean correspondent Ivan Zhilin "How Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages are made into exile languages in Crimean schools".

"The Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages, which formally have the status of state languages, have actually become 'unloved stepsons' in Crimea," - Zhilin said.

He added that the Ukrainian language in Crimea "has never been very popular": these words were argued by the fact that until March 2014, there were only 8 Ukrainian schools and 829 classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction on the peninsula, and only 13688 of the 209986 Crimean schoolchildren studied Ukrainian. 

After the Russian occupation, "the already unfortunate situation of the Ukrainian language" in Crimea worsened: at the time of publication of the article, there was only one Ukrainian school left, 28 out of 829 Ukrainian classes, and 371 students received Ukrainian education.

Journalist Valentyna Samar, who was the head of the parental committee of the Ukrainian gymnasium in Simferopol in early 2014, shared her memories: "It all started before the 'referendum'. The "self-defense" fighters of Crimea, commanded by the current of Crimea, commanded by the current "head of the republic" Sergey Aksyonov. They demanded that the school take down the Ukrainian flag and remove everything Ukrainian. They said that the gymnasium would be reorganized to Russian standards.

Students reacted negatively to what was happening, and high school students walked around the school singing the Ukrainian anthem. Parents began collecting applications to keep the Ukrainian language in the gymnasium. Then there was a proposal to make the school a bilingual school with Russian and Ukrainian. But at the end of the school year, we were made to understand that if Ukrainian was to be taught, it would only play a secondary role, and would lose its status as the main language in the gymnasium. After that, many of us decided to move to mainland Ukraine."

The article noted that 44 students of the Ukrainian gymnasium in Simferopol left Crimea with their parents before the end of the school year; in April 2014, the school's director Natalia Rudenko resigned, explicitly stating that she did so under pressure from the "new authorities." Over time, the school was renamed from a "Ukrainian" to an "academic" school: at the time of publication, it had 5 Ukrainian classes with 85 students, but according to the new "director" Valentyna Lavryk, only one application for teaching a child in Ukrainian was submitted in 2015. At the same time, the head teacher of one of the Simferopol schools said on condition of anonymity that there was no direct instruction from "officials" not to teach children in Ukrainian, but in many cases the initiative was taken by teachers themselves.

On September 13, 2018, a thematic report "On the human rights situation in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (Ukraine)" was published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

It noted that the number of Crimean children receiving education in Ukrainian in the 2017-2018 school year decreased by 14% compared to the previous school year. During this period, only one school on the peninsula and 13 Ukrainian-language classes in Russian-language schools provided instruction in Ukrainian, with a total of 318 children enrolled. The UN attributed the steady downward trend in Ukrainian language instruction to assimilation in a predominantly Russian-speaking environment and various deterrents; in particular, the report noted cases of pressure on school administrations and on students' parents.

"A former teacher from Yalta reported that parents who demand that their children receive education in Ukrainian are included in lists that are passed on to the FSB," - the report says.

Earlier, the Russian authorities reported that in the 2017-2018 school year, 6400 students studied the Ukrainian language in the occupied Crimea, while in the 2016-2017 school year, there were allegedly 12892 students; the UN report noted that such significant discrepancies between the published figures raise doubts about the overall reliability of these statistics.

A week later, UNESCO's official website published a report by Director-General Audrey Azoulay, which stated that since the beginning of the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the number of secondary schools with Ukrainian as the language of education on the peninsula has decreased by 87.5%: in particular, in the 2013-2014 school year, there were 8 such schools, in 2017-2018 - only one (in Feodosia, 146 students).

The number of classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction in secondary schools in Crimea decreased by more than 98% (in the 2013-2018 academic year - 879, in 2015-2016 - 163, 2016-2017 - 28, 2017-2018 - 13). The number of students studying in Ukrainian in general education institutions in Crimea also decreased by more than 98% (in the 2013-2014 academic year - 13688, in 2015-2016 - 2154, in 2016-2017 - 371, in 2017-2018 - 172).

"The number of students who could study the Ukrainian language as an optional course or as part of extracurricular activities decreased by 50% from the 2016-2017 school year to 2017-2018," - the report stated, noting that the secondary education system in occupied Crimea was almost completely cleared of the Ukrainian language.

On October 31, 2018, Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko said during a UN Security Council meeting that the number of students in Crimea studying in Ukrainian had decreased from more than 13,000 in the 2013-2014 academic year to only 172 in the 2017-2018 academic year.

On January 9, 2019, Natalia Goncharova, when asked by a correspondent of the Argumenty Nedeli - Krym publication whether Crimean teachers of the Ukrainian language had managed to "integrate into the new system", said:

"They were offered the option of retraining to become Russian language teachers, but they chose different things - some went for a second higher education, some retrained in other subjects. I think that they will have to do a lot of self-education to meet the high title of "philologist of Russian language and literature." We offer courses. There is an opportunity to go outside Crimea to study. No one was left on the street."

Shortly after, at the end of January 2019, the annual report on Ukraine by the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch was published, which, citing UN data, noted that after the Russian occupation of Crimea, the number of students in Ukrainian-language classes on the peninsula had rapidly decreased from 12,694 children in 2014 to 318 children in 2018.

A few days later, the Crimean "Ministry of Education and Science" published its data, stating that in the 2018-2019 school year, out of almost 39,000 children studying their native languages, 10,600 students studied Ukrainian in schools on the peninsula; 249 children (0.2% of the total number of students) studied exclusively in Ukrainian. It was also indicated that there is one Ukrainian-language school in Crimea.

On March 26, 2019, the results of the monitoring of education in the occupied Crimea, conducted by the CHRG experts, were made public. According to their conclusions, the real situation with mother tongue education in the region is much worse than the one stated by the occupation "Ministry of Education".

Compared to the "official" statistics, in the 2017-2018 academic year, the number of students studying in Ukrainian decreased from 318 to 249, the number of schools with Ukrainian-language classes decreased from 7 to 5, and the number of classes decreased from 13 to 8. In school No. 20 in Prymorske village (Feodosia), declared as a school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, according to parents, all subjects were taught in Russian; Ukrainian remained only as a separate subject in some classes. 

Of the two schools that allegedly had classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, only the "Simferopol Academic Gymnasium" had such classes. In the Simferopol "gymnasium №11 named after K.O. Trenov" Ukrainian was taught only as an optional subject, and all subjects were taught in Russian. According to the monitoring results, there is not a single school in Crimea where all subjects are taught in Ukrainian; there were also significantly fewer Ukrainian-language classes than the Crimean "authorities" claimed.

In April 2019, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that only 249 children receive education in Ukrainian in Crimea and called on the Russian Federation to act in accordance with the ruling of the International Court of Justice of April 19, 2017, in particular, to ensure the availability of education in Ukrainian in Crimea.

In early June 2019, the "press service of the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of the Republic of Crimea" announced that 147 Crimean graduates would undergo a "state" final certification in the Ukrainian language.

On October 30, 2019, during the Unity Forum in Mariupol, the then Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Anton Korynevych stated that only 250 children in Crimea were studying in Ukrainian (the figures were taken from official sources, primarily Russian): in his opinion, such a small number indicated that children in Crimea were not given the opportunity to learn their native language, culture, and traditions. At the same time, the Crimean media cited statistics from the occupation "Ministry of Education of the Republic of Crimea," according to which only 249 students were receiving education in Ukrainian.

On December 2, 2019, the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations Office in Geneva released data according to which the number of students studying in Ukrainian in Crimea decreased by 150 times after the Russian annexation. It was reported that until 2014, there were 660 schools in Crimea where all children studied Ukrainian; almost 13,000 children studied in Ukrainian.

"Since 2014, when Russia used the 'protection of the Russian-speaking population' as a false pretext for occupation, the number of Ukrainian schools in Crimea has decreased by 87%," - the report said.

It was emphasized also that there is not a single school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction on the territory of the occupying state, where almost 2 million Ukrainians officially live. 

"Changing of the guard": Valentyna Lavryk "ministerial cadence" 

On December 4, 2019, Valentyna Lavryk, who had previously been the head of the Simferopol Academic Gymnasium, a former Ukrainian school, since spring 2014, was "appointed" to the "post of Minister of Education, Science and Youth of the Republic of Crimea"; on October 22, 2024, she was "reappointed" to the post.

Later, Lavryk worked at the company's secondary school, which later became the private educational complex "Gymnasium School-Kindergarten "Consol", as a psychologist and teacher of the Ukrainian language (1997-2002), deputy director for scientific, methodological and educational work (2002-2009), and teacher of the Ukrainian language (2009-2014). 

She was awarded the honorary titles of Honored Teacher of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (2005), Excellence in Education of Ukraine (2010) and Honored Teacher of Ukraine (2013). After the Russian occupation of Crimea, Valentyna Lavryk received several letters of thanks and certificates from the "State Council of the Republic of Crimea" and its "chairman", as well as from the "Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea", and after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2023, she was awarded the title of Honorary Worker of the Russian Federation in the field of education, a letter of thanks from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and even a certificate of honor from the Russian Ministry of Defense - apparently for contributing to the militarization of children, adolescents and youth in occupied Crimea. 

In addition, in an investigation by Ukrayinska Pravda published on May 3, 2023, Lavryk was listed as one of the persons involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories and deportation to Russia, along with other "officials" from Crimea who perform the tasks of the Russian occupiers - Ivan Kusov, Mykhailo Rodikov, Anastasia Omelchenko, Anton Tytskyi, Iryna Kliuyeva, Olena Romanovska, and others.

At the beginning of Valentyna Lavryk's "ministerial cadence" on the peninsula, processes initiated by her clearly did not take place in Ukrainian-language education. Thus, in January 2020, local media reported that the "authorities of the republic" and "public figures" suddenly began to popularize the Ukrainian language after almost six years of Russian occupation, mentioning that it is "one of the state languages" in the occupied region that has been practically cleared of it. For this purpose, a forum, roundtables, and exhibitions were planned.

In particular, it was planned to hold a round table on Lesya Ukrainka's works in February with the involvement of philologists from two regional "universities" where the Ukrainian language was taught (Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University / KIPU and Crimean Federal University), and an exhibition of Taras Shevchenko's books from the home libraries of members of the "Ukrainian community of Crimea" in March (both events did not take place). At the same time, the "rector of KIPU" Chingiz Yakubov complained that the number of applicants to the Ukrainian philology department is decreasing in the "university" he heads, as "the issue of their further employment is quite acute" and "objective realities, unfortunately, are such that there are fewer and fewer people willing to study in this area of study every year."

Almost a month later, the Crimean "branch of the Communists of Russia" party, headed by Leonid Grach, unexpectedly defended the Ukrainian language in occupied Crimea. In No. 5 of Iskra Pravdy of February 20, 2020, an article "Vvernite us ukrainskuyu gimnasiyu!" ("Return us the Ukrainian gymnasium!") was published on behalf of an initiative group of six people, which, among other things, stated

"The big problem that has emerged during this time (of Russian occupation of Crimea) is that the Crimean authorities have closed all Ukrainian schools, Ukrainian kindergartens, Ukrainian theater, Ukrainian gymnasium, Ukrainian newspaper, while more than 500,000 Ukrainians live on the peninsula. This did not happen even during the [Second World] War. All this shows that the ethnocide of Ukrainians has begun in Crimea, and their rights to freedom of expression, culture, and religion are being violated."

Accusing the Crimean "authorities" of "doing everything to destroy everything Ukrainian in Crimea," the authors of the appeal called on them to revive the Ukrainian gymnasium in Simferopol and open a Ukrainian school in every district center. However, these appeals were quite expectedly left unanswered. 

 

According to the information collected by the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the AR of Crimea, in the 2018-2019 academic year, there were 200700 students in 544 general education organizations of the occupied Crimea of all forms of ownership, of whom 249 (0.2%) were educated in Ukrainian; in the 2019-2020 academic year, 206 (0.1%) out of 213591 students studied in Ukrainian; the Simferopol Academic Gymnasium had 3 classes with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, where 54 students studied, and 65 children were educated in Ukrainian in preschools. According to the "Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of the Republic of Crimea", in the 2020-2021 school year, 214 (0.1%) of 218974 students studied in Ukrainian: 162 - at school No. 20 in Feodosia, which as of 2021 "officially" remained the only school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction (up to grade 9) in Crimea, and 52 - in three Ukrainian-language classes of the "Simferopol Academic Gymnasium".

Meanwhile, more than a year after her "resignation," Natalia Goncharova, in an interview with the Crimean "parliamentary" publication Krymskaya Gazeta, mentioned the fact that in 2014 "our army of 22,000 teachers managed to preserve their traditions and, without breaking the system, smoothly move into the Russian educational and legal field," as a result of which all schools in the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea meet "federal state educational standards."

This was an achievement as "Minister of Education" that Honcharova was proud of at the time. She recalled that in 2014-2015, with the assistance of the ministry she headed, in addition to the "law on education in the Republic of Crimea," more than a hundred more "bylaws" were issued, which allegedly contributed to "the correct, calm, legally protected work of educational institutions, from kindergartens to universities." 

Goncharova also said that after almost 7 years of Russian occupation, 10 out of 97 universities in the occupied Crimea remained: more than half of the institutions were "illegitimate" - some "did not have accreditation for some specialties," others "were 'apartment universities' aimed solely at issuing documents for money."

In June 2021, Valentyna Lavryk joined the "council on the use of the Russian language and improvement of internal language policy" established by the decree of the "head of the Republic of Crimea" Sergei Aksyonov. 

On December 7, 2021, the CHRG stated that in the occupied Crimea, the Ukrainian language was effectively eradicated from the education system and other spheres of public life. At that time, according to the statements of the peninsula's "authorities", a little more than 200 students (0.1% of schoolchildren) studied in Ukrainian in Crimea, but according to the CHRG, this figure did not exceed 100.

In July 2022, Valentyna Lavryk told the Russian newspaper VZGLYAD that "author teams" in occupied Crimea "wrote textbooks on the Ukrainian language and literature" for students in grades 5-9 of schools in the Russian-occupied territories of southern and eastern Ukraine, which the "minister" called "liberated" according to Russian propaganda narratives: these textbooks were allegedly undergoing examination and revision at the Institute of Native Languages in Moscow.

Complaining about the content of Ukrainian textbooks, "imbued with nationalist ideas, especially after 2014," Lavryk said that in the occupied Crimea, classes with Ukrainian language instruction use textbooks published in Russia, as these are the requirements of the Russian state standard; she did not specify how many Ukrainian-language classes remained on the occupied peninsula. 

At the same time, Lavryk noted that in Yevpatoria, the Academy of the Russian Ministry of Education has opened retraining courses for teachers from the occupied territories of Ukraine to adapt to teaching in Russian, and assured that new groups of teachers will take weekly advanced training courses, taking into account the difference in the curricula of subjects in Russia and Ukraine, as well as "adapt to the new legislation."

A short time later, on August 16, 2022, Valentyna Lavryk said during a press conference in Simferopol that about a thousand children "from Donbas and the liberated regions" were enrolled in schools and kindergartens in the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, meaning the territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Armed Forces: out of about 500 preschoolers, 309 had already been enrolled in kindergartens and almost 200 were in the process of registration.

"About 2000 schoolchildren (from the occupied territories of Ukraine) have expressed a desire to study in Crimean schools, some of them have already been enrolled in the spring. Approximately 680 have already been enrolled, the rest are in the process of registration. The children are assigned to existing classes, they are provided with psychological and methodological assistance from psychologists, teachers and, above all, classmates," Lavryk said, adding that teachers "take into account the difference in curricula to identify the level of knowledge of each child to eliminate gaps and help in adaptation to the current educational process."

In May 2023, the "Minister of Education of the Republic of Crimea" stated that about 100 11th grade graduates of schools in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region would arrive in Crimea to take the Russian unified state exam.

Finally, we can cite one more distinct moment in the "ministerial cadence" of Valentyna Lavryk. If in the period 2014-2019, when Natalia Goncharova was still in the chair of the "Minister of Education of Crimea", one could find "orders" on the website of the "ministry" that concerned at least some functioning of the Ukrainian language in the education of the occupied region (No. 234 of 23.10.2014 - on the development of applied programs for the subjects "Ukrainian language" and "Ukrainian literature", No. 276 of 02.03.2016, No. 466 of 10.03.2017 and No. 553 of 25.03.2019 - on the results of the participation of students from the occupied Crimea in the "regional stages" of the All-Russian Olympiad of Schoolchildren in the Ukrainian Language and Literature) - in the period 2020-2024 we do not find anything like that there. 

                                Vitaliy SOLONCHAK, columnist for the Voice of Crimea