The presidential platform “Russia - the Land of Opportunities” (RSV) has launched a new large-scale season of the “Thank You, Brothers” project for demobilized students from the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republic.
“Today, we’re starting an upgraded “Thank You,Brothers” project for demobilized students of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics,” first deputy director general of the autonomous non-profit organization “Russia - the Land of Opportunities” Alexey Agafonov said at the project presentation press conference at the TASS news agency.
“We took into account the feedback to make the project more practical and suitable for demobilized students. We plan to help 2,000 youths to return to usual life so that they can make plans, dream and think about their first job and professional and personal self-fulfillment,” Agafonov said.
Professional psychologists and rehabilitation experts will work with demobilized students, while the teams of mentors and coordinators, responsible for students’ developmental trajectories will be trained at the Management Workshop under the RSV education center, he said.
A dedicated website has been launched to support this project. Participants are requested to register at the website, fill in a form and test their competences.
The project’s objectives are to ensure successful socialization of the demobilized students and build up a human resource pool of management specialists, the press service of the presidential platform said.
“An important project implementation guideline is rehabilitation of the demobilized students by involving specialists engaged in professional and timely rehabilitation of combatants,” it said.
In December 2022, more than 50 demobilized students from the LPR and DPR had rehabilitation in Moscow as part of the RSV project.
In mid-November 2022, President Vladimir Putin ordered to demobilize the students of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics and return them to their places of study. On November 18, 2022, LPR Acting Head Leonid Pasechnik signed a decree on demobilization of full-time and extramural students. Demobilized LPR students will enjoy the status of war veteran and receive state decorations, LPR military commissar Andrey Gubanov said.
On January 22, 2023, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament Sholban Kara-ool who supervises mobilization in the working group on SVO said that all LPR demobilizable students had returned from frontlines.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation on February 24, 2022 to protect Donbass residents from Ukrainian aggression. Prior to that, LPR and DPR Heads Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin asked the Russian leader to provide military assistance.
The Ukrainian government launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation against Donbass in April 2014. The peace talks failed to reach tangible results due to Kiev’s position to settle the conflict by force.
The Lugansk People’s Republic acceded to Russia on September 30, 2022 following the unification referendum.*i*ie