“The Kids Don’t Like It There”: Students Flee the ‘Armata’ Military-Patriotic Camp

Another attempt to raise “future defenders” has flopped in Belgorod region. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov admitted at a regional government meeting that 80 schoolchildren have already left sessions at the Armata military-patriotic camp. Over 100 million rubles had been spent on creating and running the camp. According to Gladkov, the failure was due to a bureaucratic, checkbox approach to education and programming.

“Kids are bored, kids are miserable, kids don’t care. The lack of interest shows the process was poorly organized,” he said.

Just a month earlier, during the camp’s launch in May, Gladkov had confidently stated that “the kids will be thrilled” to attend. The plan was ambitious: from May 20 to July 26, the camp aimed to host 3,220 school and university students across 10 sessions.

“The kids wake up at 6 a.m., followed by morning exercises, drill training, tactical lessons — all the right things that will help shape our future defenders,” Gladkov had boasted at the time.

But things didn’t go as planned. In response to the mass dropout, the governor replaced those responsible for organizing the children’s summer programming. He also ordered a review of Warrior, the regional center for military-patriotic education, whose branches were recently set up in every municipality.