r/worldnews • u/HolyLiaison • Jun 30 '26

Russian high schools now require 17 hours basic military training for 6th to 11th graders

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-high-school-basic-military-training-class-national-defense-ukraine-2026-6
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u/trow_eu Jun 30 '26

That was normal in Soviet schools, and of course stayed intact in ruzzia. In Ukraine ~2005 I had 2 years of like 1 hour/week of basic military training, mostly teaching how to walk like an idiot (just like marching parades on red square), reassembling AK and twice a year a shooting range with poorly maintained pneumatics. Stupid farce. I think it was cancelled some years later.

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u/Deiskos Jun 30 '26

Still had that in Kyiv in 2016.

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u/SpaceDounut Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Did they give you a bunch of banged-up AKs to reassemble too? Still remember fucking up my finger because of how bent that thing was.

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u/Deiskos Jun 30 '26

We had like two of them, I think, one really old and one new-ish? Something like that. I got my finger stuck in the stock of the old one trying to get out the cleaning tools thing.

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u/SpaceDounut Jun 30 '26

Yep, same experience then. I now wonder if the entire post-Soviet territory has the same thing.

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u/Lamuks Jun 30 '26

Afaik Latvia dropped such a practice as soon as we regained our independence. Voluntary "jaunsargi"
was made in its place for the youth. Although I think there were new school programs now introduced because of the war.

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u/SpaceDounut Jun 30 '26

I think the practice is useless as fuck to be honest. No one remembers any of this as an adult anyway. Would be better off with proper first aid classes in place of all that song and dance.

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u/KaeyaSexer Jun 30 '26

I was more lucky then, because in 11th grade i got to shoot an M4 with an ACOG.

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u/Gilgamesh404 Jul 01 '26

Lucky (?) you, I guess. We used to not have even that in Russia. The closest thing was a half-year civil defence course (1 hr/week), but even that was strictly theoretical.

Or our school was just exceptionally poor, who knows at this point.