Russian Foundation Sends Crimea Book to Serbian Schools
The Russkiy Mir Foundation, on the EU sanctions list since 2022, sent 16 schools in Serbia and 27 in Republika Srpska with a Russian-language manual that calls the annexation of Crimea a referendum.
- The Russkiy Mir Foundation equipped 16 schools in Serbia and 27 in Republika Srpska with books, laptops and interactive boards.
- The shipment included a 2015 Russian-language manual whose chapter on Crimea is titled The Return of the Republic of Crimea to Russia.
- The foundation has been on the European Union sanctions list since 2022, listed as a vehicle for Moscow's influence abroad.
- Ministries in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina did not answer questions about the content.
A foundation the European Union blacklisted four years ago has just stocked school libraries on both sides of the Drina. The Russkiy Mir Foundation, sanctioned by the EU in 2022, delivered teaching equipment and books to 16 schools in Serbia and 27 in Republika Srpska. One of the titles is a 2015 manual for learners of Russian that treats Vladimir Putin’s rule as an era of growth and describes Russia’s annexation of Crimea as the outcome of a referendum.
The Serbian handover took place in early July at the Eighth Belgrade Gymnasium. In Republika Srpska it was held on July 2, 2026 at the National Library in Banja Luka. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced the donation in advance. The foundation says that during July, with help from Russian diplomats, it equipped 60 educational institutions across Serbia, the Bosnian entity and Tunisia.
What the book actually says
The manual covers the geography, history and culture of Russia for students of Russian as a foreign language. Its chapter on the peninsula is titled “The Return of the Republic of Crimea to Russia” and states that residents held a referendum in 2014 and chose to break away from Ukraine and join Russia. The book does not mention that the annexation has never been recognized internationally.
The passage on Putin ties his rise to power in 1999 to an economic turnaround, saying the economy grew considerably and living standards rose, and presents that record as the reason he was re-elected.
Why is Russkiy Mir under EU sanctions?
Brussels added the foundation to its sanctions list in 2022, with a rationale stating that the Russian Federation uses it to advance its interests in post-Soviet countries. The foundation describes itself as a promoter of the Russian language and culture.
Researcher Aleksandar Majenberger, who has written a book on how the organization operates, argues that language work is only the visible layer.
Even though the foundation does not usually operate as a direct propaganda channel, its educational and cultural activities contribute to spreading readings of history and international politics that can be used to justify Russian foreign policy, including narratives around Ukraine and Crimea.
He described the longer aim as building durable networks of Russia sympathizers and a favorable image of the Russian state.
The size of the delivery
The Ministry of Education and Culture of Republika Srpska said the package covers teaching materials, textbooks and manuals, plus 25 laptops, 15 video projectors and 14 interactive boards, distributed to 27 primary and secondary schools. Assistant Minister for Preschool and Primary Education Natasa Cvijanovic attended the ceremony.
She called the donation “significant support for improving Russian language teaching, because it will give pupils and teachers better working conditions”.
Russian is studied by 7,166 primary and 2,994 secondary pupils in Republika Srpska, nine percent of all students there. Since 103 institutions in the entity teach Russian language, literature or Russian history, roughly one in four of them got a share. In Serbia, the recipients include the Isidora Sekulic primary school in Sajkas.
Nobody signs off on a gift
Serbia’s Institute for the Advancement of Education pointed out that a book sitting in a library does not thereby become an approved textbook. That answer also marks the limit of oversight: a textbook goes through review, a donated volume on a shelf goes through nothing. Ministries in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the schools themselves, declined to answer questions about the content.
The gap is wider than one manual. Serbia is an EU candidate that has not aligned with sanctions on Moscow, which is why an organization on the European list can furnish 43 schools in two neighboring administrations without obstruction. Until someone writes a rule on who reads donated literature before it enters a collection, the same route stays open for the next shipment, from any country.
The books are already catalogued. The new school year will show whether any authority asks for an inventory of what came in, or whether a 2015 manual stays on the shelf like any other foreign gift.
