Such a message was circulated on telegram channels and pro-Russian media. It says that the Estonian Ministry of Defense will replenish its reserve with the help of high school students. Like, Estonia will teach its children “how to die for Ukraine”, that is, will plan to send children to war in Ukraine. However, this is a lie.

The fact-checkers of the StopFake project drew attention to the case and found out that the headlines about “the replenishment of the Estonian army with schoolchildren” appeared in the Russian media after the proposal of the Minister of Defense of Estonia Hanno Pevkur to make national defense a compulsory subject for high school students.

The minister himself emphasized that there was no talk of conscripting schoolchildren into the Estonian army, and that it was only about introducing a compulsory thematic lesson in high school. Pevkur is sure that young people need to know how to protect themselves when conducting hostilities.

Russian propaganda repeatedly manipulated statements on sending children to the front. Thus, propagandists want to nourish the narrative that there is no one to fight in Ukraine, so children have to be sent to the front, even from other countries. Detector Media has already analyzed disinformation stuffing that teenagers are handed draft notices or they are mobilized for war.