Day: August 20, 2025

• Russia has officially launched a pilot program that teaches patriotic lessons to preschoolers.
• The program, ‘Conversations about Important Things,’ targets children from three to seven.
• It comes amid Putin’s push to strengthen local support of Russia’s national identity and war actions.

A new Russian pilot program with 100 preschools aims to teach children as young as three to be “worthy citizens” and “cultivate respect for the culture and history of Russia,” the country’s education ministry said.

The lesson series, called “Conversations about Important Things,” is to be tested in schools for children from three to seven in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions, Moscow, Kaliningrad, and at least 17 other Russian oblasts and autonomous regions.

On Tuesday, Russia’s education minister, Sergey Kravtsov, said the classes would be tailored to young children with “colorful illustrations, interactive tasks, and game elements.”

“This will help children better absorb information, form correct ideas about important life values, and ultimately grow up to be worthy citizens of their country,” Kravtsov said.

While the education ministry said the program involves lessons on citizenship, morality, and families, it is also meant to foster a “love for the motherland.”

“Conversations about Important Things,” which promotes Russia’s national identity and past war actions, has been compulsory learning in high schools since 2022, the year that Moscow invaded Ukraine.

The new push into preschools comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin said in October that he supported the program being rolled out to the country’s “youngest children.”

Putin said he was disappointed, for example, that the Soviet Union’s heavy losses in the Battle of Stalingrad were not discussed in children’s textbooks about World War II.

“All this shows that, of course, at the very earliest age we must instill certain basic things in a child,” he said at a meeting with Russian teachers that month. “But everything, I repeat, must be within the bounds of reason.”

War-themed lessons for preschoolers

The education ministry didn’t specify what activities would be included in the pilot lessons. However, social media posts from some Russian preschools and kindergartens indicate that they’ve already voluntarily introduced some form of these programs.

Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent news organization founded by exiled Russian journalists, wrote in October that over 560 Russian preschools and kindergartens had posted about introducing “Conversations for Important Things” to their students.

The outlet analyzed social media posts from over 10,000 kindergartens about war-themed lessons. It found that at least 19,000 of these activities were about supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In other posts seen by Business Insider on the Russian social network VKontakte, preschools and kindergartens uploaded photos of children video-calling a Russian soldier purportedly fighting in Ukraine and of students lining up in formation to honor the Russian flag.

For example, one kindergarten in the Orenburg region said in October that it held a version of “Conversations about Important Things” to discuss the local farming industry. It posted a photo of young children holding up the region’s coat of arms.

Another preschool, in Kursk, said it invited a former helicopter pilot who fought in Afghanistan to speak to students. The post said he “read poems of his own composition about the exploits of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War and participants in a special military operation.”

In January, the city of Vologda also said in a statement that all of its kindergartens were planning patriotic and war-themed classes for “Conversations about Important Things.”

“Children will be told about the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, military professions, hero cities, monuments, awards for military exploits, and much more,” the statement said, referring to World War II.

One analysis by the independent Russian media outlet Agency found that the classes in Vologda discussed military awards, taught kids how to be bandaged, and included games about armored vehicles.

All of this comes as Russia goes all out to shore up local support for the war in Ukraine. Moscow has also sought to assimilate the population of occupied Ukrainian territories, offering parents cash sums to send their children to Russian-controlled schools.

Public favor is especially key for the Kremlin, which relies on costly infantry assaults to fight against Ukraine — a tactic requiring a steady flow of fresh recruits from the civilian population.

Ukrainian intelligence says that Russia has repeatedly hit its recruitment targets through hefty sign-up bonuses and payments made to families of wounded or killed soldiers. This year, Russia reportedly plans to recruit 343,000 new troops.

• Anton Osika is the cofounder and CEO of Lovable, a Swedish vibe coding startup.
• Osika said he wasn’t bothered by Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive AI hiring spree at Meta.
• Lovable is looking for a “very different type of talent” than Meta, Osika said.

Lovable CEO Anton Osika says he isn’t bothered by Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive AI hiring spree at Meta.

In an interview that aired Monday, Osika told podcaster Harry Stebbings that his vibe-coding startup was looking for a “very different type of talent” than Meta.

“For Zuck, it’s like there’s these 10 people that know everything about how to train foundation models and he’s paying more for that knowledge than for these people,” Osika told Stebbings.

But that sort of talent isn’t what Lovable is looking for, Osika said.

“They wouldn’t perform as well as the engineers in my team, doing what we are doing. So it’s a very different type of talent,” he added.

Representatives for Osika and Meta did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Osika said hiring at Lovable doesn’t involve dangling hefty bonuses to make it easier for him to find good candidates.

“If I knew who was the perfect engineer to hire, I could maybe step up our compensation bands to get exactly those. But I don’t know who are the best people,” Osika said.

“So I need to just figure out — are these really, really good people to work with? Are they moldable? Are they going to work well together in this team?” he continued.

Osika did not elaborate further on the traits he looks for in candidates, though he did say that he is drawn to those who can adapt quickly to their environment.

“If I talk to someone and I learn a lot of things from them, and I notice that my conversation is very dynamic and exciting, that is usually a very good indicator,” he said.

The cutthroat competition for AI talent has seen tech giants like Meta shelling out $100 million signing bonuses to lock down hires.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a June podcast that he found it “crazy” that Meta was willing to spend so much to acquire talent. Altman added that he was “really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”

“The strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like really the degree to which they’re focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture,” Altman said on the podcast.

Osika and Altman aren’t the only ones who think big pay packages aren’t a silver bullet for securing AI talent.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said in an interview with Wired published last week that she didn’t think she would ever offer a billion-dollar pay package to a potential hire.

“I think competition for talent is fierce. I am a believer, though, that money is important, but frankly, it’s not necessarily the most important thing when you’re attracting talent,” Su told Wired.

“It’s important to be in the ZIP code of those numbers, but then it’s super-important to have people who really believe in the mission of what you’re trying to do,” she added.