Hahahaha! This is so much like Ron DeSantis, right? Isn’t it hilarious when Russians act like Republicans and vice versa? LOL! After the war began on February 24, employees of Prosveshcheniye, the main publisher of school textbooks in Russia (formerly a USSR state entity, privatized in 2011 in some oligarch scam), were ordered to remove or at least minimize all mentions of Kyiv and Ukraine from future editions of their course books in history and literature, Mediazona reports. “We are faced with the task of making it as if Ukraine simply does not exist… It’s much worse when the textbook just doesn’t mention a country. A person grows up without a knowledge base about some country, and then it is much easier for him to believe what he is told about it from TV,” said one source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he or she would be thrown out of a window if the FSB found out they were talking to reporters.

The Google translation of the Mediazona article is a little spotty, but one passage sticks out: “So, from paragraphs that give examples of the heraldry of different states, including flags, a few years ago it was strongly recommended to remove the flag of Ukraine and replace it with the flag of any other country. If it is necessary to give an example of the capital in the chapter, Kyiv was replaced by another capital. ‘A couple of times I had to remove the US flag as well, but it’s simpler there, our program pays little attention to world history,’ says one of the [Prosveshcheniye] employees. Now editors should remove references to Ukraine wherever possible.”