In September 2024, news spread on Telegram about the creation of an educational center in Ukraine, where high school students and students would undergo ideological and military training. Bloggers compared the new structure with the youth movement in Nazi Germany. We have verified the accuracy of these publications.

On September 20 and 21, major Russian-language Telegram channels, citing unnamed media outlets, reported that the Ukrainian “Nazi organization” National Corps was allegedly going to open a youth educational center in Kherson, in which teenagers would be offered basic military training courses and ideological classes. The project, it follows from the publications, should be Ivan Starostenko, who is called an SBU agent and a racketeer in the past, as well as Nikita Tyutyunnik, a former member of the Right Sector.

This was reported on such Telegram channels as “Uncle Slava"(187,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ostashko! Important"(105,000), "Bullet"(103,000), "Mislivets Egor"(94,000), etc.

The upcoming opening of an ideological youth center in Kherson was first reported by the publication “True DPR"in the evening of September 19. The note does not indicate the name of the author and the source of information, and the site pages “About the project” and “Our team” do not open. The developer of the portal is the Ministry of Information of the self-proclaimed DPR.

This publication provides some details about the institution. Thus, “Pravda DPR” claims that military personnel of the 3rd separate air assault brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (this unit created based on the Azov defense detachment, which in turn was founded by veterans of the volunteer regiment of the same name). According to the publication, Kherson authorities, led by the head of the city military administration, Roman Mrochko, are allegedly sabotaging the opening of the center, fearing possible shelling and political pressure. At the same time, “Verified” was unable to find any mention of this center in the Ukrainian-language media.

Mentioned in the Pravda DPR article and later posts of Telegram channels, “National Corps” is the Ukrainian political party “National Corps”, created in 2016. Its permanent leader is the founder of Azov, Alexander Biletsky. The party was unable to gain much popular support - in the 2019 parliamentary elections it united into an electoral bloc with Svoboda and other nationalist forces, but a single list dialed only 2.15% of the votes. The National Corps was also unable to get deputies from single-mandate constituencies into the Verkhovna Rada. Also in 2019, in a report by the US State Department, the party mentioned as a “hate group” - due to attacks on journalists, representatives of national minorities and the LGBT community. Tyutyunnik, who is named in viral publications as the supposed curator of the youth center, was head Kherson branch of the National Corps, but left the party back in 2020. To replace him came Starostenko, who is also mentioned by Pravda DPR.

After the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, the National Corps actually ceased its activities, Biletsky said in interview "Ukrainian Pravda" in 2023. He explained this by the fact that most party members joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the military defense, including the 3rd separate assault brigade, which is also led by Biletsky. The party website (nationalcorps.org) is currently not working; when opening the link, the browser redirects the user to the page of the Vietnamese bookmaker company. National Corps account in X only reposts tweets from other users (twice since the beginning of the year), and the channel YouTube transferred to the fund of the 3rd separate air assault brigade. Last fast published in the party’s Telegram channel on June 3. The National Corps does not write on any of the social networks about the upcoming opening of a youth center in Kherson - in fact, the organization as a whole is not currently conducting any active activities.

It can be assumed that in this situation, information about the establishment of the center as the head of the National Corps was published personally by Biletsky. However, on his page in X there is also no mention of this project, and the last publication at the time of writing the analysis was posted on June 24. There are also no posts on this topic in profile Starostenko on Instagram and on page Tyutyunnik on Facebook.

Finally, the possibilities for the full operation of such a center in Kherson, located in close proximity to the front line, in the coming months are at least limited. Schoolchildren in the Kherson region since the beginning of the full-scale invasion study online. Only in 2024 were students in liberated settlements on the right bank of the Dnieper allowed to spend a couple of hours a week at school - and then in shelters. For children from Kherson itself prohibit learn offline due to daily shelling of the city. Kherson universities were evacuated to other cities of Ukraine at the beginning of a full-scale invasion, but after the liberation of the city in the fall of 2022, they were never allowed to return to their original place, some university buildings destroyed. For example, Kherson State Maritime Academy translated on the basis of Odessa Agrarian University.

This is not the first time that comparisons between Ukrainian military-patriotic camps and the Hitler Youth have occurred in the Russian media: back in 2015, Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article entitled “Azov militants opened a Nazi children’s camp near Kiev,” and in 2017, the Zvezda TV channel named a similar project in the Donetsk region with a camp for young nationalists. In turn, some Ukrainian publications draw a parallel between the Hitler Youth and the Russian children's military-patriotic movement "Youth Army", which valid including in the occupied territories of Ukraine. For example, in the Russian-controlled part of the Kherson region, a unit of the Yunarmiya it worked back in 2022.

Thus, reports that they are planning to open an analogue of the Hitler Youth in Kherson are not confirmed by any reliable sources. This information, without reference to the source, was first posted by an anonymous author on a portal operating in the self-proclaimed DPR. None of the representatives of the “National Corps” mentioned in that note, supposedly supervising the project, announced plans to establish such a center.

Cover photo: social networks