- In 2027 Russia's draft federal budget gives 31.54 billion roubles to "Navigators of Childhood", the programme that places an adviser on upbringing in every school and college, against 15.9 billion for the federal programme to repair and equip kindergartens. One strand of the state's ideological work in schools costs almost twice as much as the whole kindergarten programme.
- The money goes mainly to the structures of everyday influence, not to the overtly military ones. Navigators of Childhood and the Movement of the First together take more than 50 billion roubles a year. The fastest growth is in the training of the people who run the system: the Mashuk Knowledge Centre, where the advisers are trained, rises from 1.46 to 3.14 billion roubles a year, an increase of about 115%.
- At the military end, the Voin centre for military and sports training receives 4.72 billion roubles over three years, about 27% more than before. Voin teaches tactics, marksmanship, drone operation, sniping and tactical medicine, and runs centres in the occupied territories. Yunarmiya is funded through at least two separate federal lines, so any figure based on one line understates it.
- These increases come as the plan for "national defence" in 2027 is raised by about 26%, to 17.1 trillion roubles. In the occupied territories, which Russia funds as its own regions, the budget turns the school adviser, the youth movement, the trained mentor, Yunarmiya and Voin into a permanent, funded institution rather than a campaign.
At the end of September 2026 the Russian government submitted its draft federal budget for 2027 to 2029 to the State Duma. Most commentary has focused on the defence line. This briefing looks at a smaller set of lines that matter more directly to children in the occupied territories: the programmes that make up Russia's system of state "upbringing" (vospitanie) and youth militarisation. It is based on an analytical note by the Centre for the Study of Occupation of 2 October 2026, checked against the current budget law, the Ministry of Education's own statements and the published coverage of the draft.
- 31.54bnroubles for Navigators of Childhood, 2027
- 1.98 : 1Navigators against kindergarten repair and equipment, 2027
- 62bn+roubles for the Movement of the First, 2027 to 2029 (reported)
- +115%Mashuk Knowledge Centre, 2026 to 2027
- +26%"national defence" in 2027 against the previous plan
Four layers of one system
The lines do not describe a set of one-off "patriotic" projects. They fund four layers that depend on one another. Navigators of Childhood keeps an adviser on upbringing inside schools and colleges; the Ministry of Education describes the programme as part of a "single upbringing space" for the country and says it now involves more than 40,000 advisers, coordinators and resource-centre experts. The Movement of the First, the state children's and youth movement created in 2022, provides the mass organisation outside lessons. The Mashuk Knowledge Centre trains the advisers, mentors and regional coordinators who staff both. Yunarmiya and Voin take part of this work into military-patriotic and pre-military training.
Read as a whole, this is a distinct branch of state spending with its own staff, organisations and budget, not an accompaniment to schooling.
Navigators of Childhood: the largest annual line
The draft budget gives Navigators of Childhood 31.54 billion roubles in 2027, rising to 35.51 billion by 2029. Against a 2026 base of about 29 billion, that is an increase of roughly 8.8% in 2027 and about 22% by 2029. A figure of +27.4% also circulates; it refers to a narrower component, the cost of maintaining the advisers themselves, and should not be read as the growth of the programme as a whole.
The growth rate is less telling than the size. At 31.54 billion roubles against 15.9 billion for the federal programme to repair and equip kindergartens, the ratio in 2027 is 1.98 to 1. A year of school advisers on upbringing costs the federal budget about as much as two years of kindergarten modernisation at the current annual level.
The Movement of the First: more than 62 billion over three years
The Movement of the First is funded through several lines, so no single figure shows its scale. In the current budget law, five main lines alone give it 18.81 billion roubles in 2026: 7.38 billion for involving children and organisations, 9.62 billion for regional branches, 622 million for the "Eaglets of Russia" programme for younger children, 146 million for staff training and 1.04 billion for promoting the movement. For 2027 to 2029 the draft is reported to give it more than 62 billion roubles, an average of at least 20.7 billion a year.
That three-year sum is about 14.3 billion roubles, or 30%, more than the 47.69 billion set aside for repairing and equipping kindergartens over the same period. It is also close to the whole federal programme for the major repair of colleges and technical schools in 2027, estimated at about 22 billion.
Mashuk: the fastest growth is in training the trainers
The Mashuk Knowledge Centre in Stavropol Krai receives 1.46 billion roubles in 2026 and 3.14 billion in each year from 2027 to 2029: an increase of 1.68 billion a year, or about 115%, and about 9.4 billion over three years. Mashuk is where the Ministry of Education trains school directors' advisers on upbringing, mentors and regional coordinators; in 2025 more than 1,800 advisers passed through one of its programmes alone, and in 2026 it ran dedicated courses for Navigators of Childhood. The increase is best read as investment in scaling up the cadres of the whole system, not in a single educational centre.
Yunarmiya: at least two federal streams
The line for involving children in Yunarmiya, the "Young Army" movement, is about 1.42 billion roubles a year in the draft, 4.26 billion over three years. Against the current annual level of about 1.05 billion that is an increase of about 35%. A widely reported figure of +77.5% compares the new sum with a different base and is not a like-for-like annual comparison, so it is not used here.
Separately, the Ministry of Defence funds the movement through a direct subsidy of about 202 million roubles a year in the current budget. Two clearly identified federal lines therefore give Yunarmiya at least 1.25 billion roubles a year at the current level, before regional budgets, the upkeep of "Yunarmiya Houses", equipment purchases and related programmes.
Voin: from upbringing to military training
The Voin centre for military and sports training receives 4.72 billion roubles for 2027 to 2029, about 27% more than its previous comparable level. Unlike the mass programmes, Voin's courses directly include tactical medicine, firearms training, the use of unmanned systems, tactics and sniping. In April 2026 the centre's own website reported more than 120,000 trained cadets and about 400 instructors, "practically all" of whom, its leadership said, had combat experience.
Voin operates in the occupied territories. TOT Insights has documented its network of branches in the four occupied regions, around 17,000 young people trained there in 2023, and a Voin complex under construction on the site of a former Ukrainian children's camp in Mariupol (see Voin: The Architecture of Child Soldier Training and The Voin Generation). In the budget chain, Voin is the clearest link between general "upbringing" and practical skills that carry directly into military service.
The comparison with kindergartens and maternity hospitals
| Line | 2027 to 2029, bn roubles | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Movement of the First | 62.0+ | reported three-year total |
| Mashuk Knowledge Centre | 9.42 | 3.14 a year |
| Voin centre | 4.72 | three-year total |
| Yunarmiya, child-involvement line | 4.26 | 1.42 a year; excludes the defence ministry subsidy |
| Total, excluding Navigators of Childhood | 80.4+ | conservative |
| Kindergarten repair and equipment | 47.69 | 15.9 a year |
| Maternity hospital equipment | ~27 | media estimate, about 9 a year |
| Kindergartens and maternity hospitals | ~74.7 | comparison base |
Four structures, leaving out Navigators of Childhood altogether, receive at least 5.7 billion roubles (about 7.6%) more than the federal kindergarten programme and the estimated maternity-hospital equipment line combined. The margin is small, but the comparison is lopsided in the other direction: one side is an incomplete basket of upbringing and military-patriotic lines, the other already includes two large infrastructure programmes. Adding Navigators of Childhood would multiply the gap, but adding annual and three-year lines on different bases risks double counting, so the conservative version is used here.
The wider budget: education grows, defence grows faster
It would be wrong to say that social and education spending is being cut across the board. Federal spending under the "Education" heading rises in nominal terms from 1.777 trillion roubles in 2027 to 1.851 trillion in 2028 and 1.937 trillion in 2029; health rises from 1.818 to 1.984 and 2.131 trillion. The point is not a cut to education but the internal order of priorities: which education and youth lines receive accelerated funding.
The sharpest change is in defence. The draft gives "national defence" 17.147 trillion roubles in 2027, 16.608 trillion in 2028 and 16.296 trillion in 2029, more than 50 trillion over three years. The previous plan for 2027 assumed about 13.57 to 13.63 trillion, so the new draft raises it by about 3.5 trillion roubles, or roughly 26%. Against that background the growth of the upbringing and military-patriotic lines looks like part of the state's wider adjustment to a long war, not a separate education policy.
What this means for the occupied territories
Russia funds the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts as Russian regions, and the same federal programmes run in their schools. The budget therefore does not finance a propaganda campaign that could be wound down; it finances an institutional model: an adviser in every school, a youth movement with regional branches, mentors trained at Mashuk, Yunarmiya detachments and practical military training at Voin. Long-term and rising funding makes this system more durable than any single information campaign, and gives it the resources for years of work on children's identity, behaviour and readiness to enter Russian state and military structures.
The hub's earlier briefing The Voin Generation cites a national allocation of about 46 billion roubles for patriotic education in 2024. That figure was compiled on a different basis and is not directly comparable with the line items here, but the direction is the same: the system is larger, better staffed and better funded each year.
Sources and method
Based on the Centre for the Study of Occupation's analytical note on the financing of upbringing and military-patriotic infrastructure in Russia's draft budget for 2027 to 2029 (2 October 2026). Annual averages for the Movement of the First and Voin are three-year totals divided by three. Percentages compare like with like (annual with annual, three-year with three-year); where a published percentage did not, it has been recalculated or left out.
- Federal Law on the federal budget for 2026 and the planning period of 2027 and 2028 (current law), ConsultantPlus.
- Explanatory note to the draft budget for 2027 to 2029, as summarised by Profile; defence allocations as reported by Finansovye Izvestiya.
- Previous budget guidelines for 2026 to 2028, Ministry of Finance, via Garant.
- Analysis of the draft budget tables, Mozhem Obyasnit (Telegram), and The Moscow Times, 2 October 2026.
- Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation: the "single upbringing space"; more than 40,000 participants in Navigators of Childhood; training of advisers at Mashuk; Navigators of Childhood trained at Mashuk.
- Voin centre, official website, 21 April 2026.
Corrections are reviewed by the research team and incorporated into the next update.