Factors Behind the Entry of the Donbas Youth Into DPR and LPR Terrorist Organizations

The question of attracting young people to the ranks of the militarized units of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic (LPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (DPR) is currently very acute in the conditions of a full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war.It permanently rose at the state level in 2014-2022, before the beginning of Russia's invasion of the territory of Ukraine.Currently, the situation developed in such a way that many former 'graduates' of paramilitary units, which operated on the territory of the occupied Donbas for eight years, join the armed forces of the Russian Federation as part of the terrorist organizations of the DPR and LPR.From 2014 to 2022 the Kremlin occupation administration in the East of Ukraine have conducted permanent ideological work with the youth.Thus, there are no educational institutions in the occupied territories where members of illegal armed formations are not periodically involved in order to hold lectures on the topic of the "civil war in Ukraine" and demonstrate weapons and propagandistic documentaries about "new heroes of the so-called people's republics".Since 2014, the terrorist organizations LPR and DPR managed and supported from the Kremlin are actively recruiting minors who are under the influence of propaganda or who, as a result of coercion, take direct part in hostilities against the Armed Forces of Ukraine.A high level of misinformation had a negative impact on the process of formation of children and adolescents, given that the vast majority of people in the temporarily occupied territories did not have access to Ukrainian media.In 2014, one of the first steps of the occupation authorities was to shut down Ukrainian