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“We have created a huge team of kids, who understand how to broadcast government values and our organisation’s values,” Vladislav Golovin, a former soldier and chief of the general staff of Russia’s Young Army cadets movement, said in a statement released by the group.
In a promotional video from the event, children were shown cheering a cadet racing against Golovin to see who could reload a sniper rifle the fastest.
Another organisation, the Movement of the First, runs competitions offering rewards for teenagers with the best blogs and biggest followings. ‘Easy to radicalise’
The training camps are part of what Keir Giles, director of the UK-based Conflict Studies Research Centre, calls a “concentrated campaign to restore the prestige of the Russian military.”
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“These 14–16-year-olds have grown up in an environment where they have never known anything other than Putinism. This is their reality, and so we should not be surprised if these new efforts to spread information reflect that reality,” he told AFP.
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Social media content can be “direct and radical” or “very subtle, aimed not at generating support for Russia, but at decreasing solidarity with Ukraine,” said Dietmar Pichler, a disinformation and propaganda analyst at INVED.
At the training camp in Moscow, the Young Army cadets were quick to grasp the power of their new skills.
“When you are the one behind the camera filming the entire process, making audiences happy, you realise … you are the one who has aroused these emotions in people,” a girl said in a promotional clip published by the organisers.
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