Kathrine Frich
It will be interesting to see if they have more succes here than in Ukraine.
One would think Vladimir Putin is too busy waging other battles since his country is fully occupied in Ukraine.
Still, officials in Moscow always seem to find time to open up another front. Now, his people have decided to fight a much smaller, and far tastier, enemy.
Out with the cheese
According to TASS and United24 Media, Elena Yampolskaya, who advises the Russian president, wants pizza kicked out of school cafeterias across the country.
Speaking on November 5, she argued that the dish is unhealthy for kids and clashes with Moscow’s wider push toward “returning what is ours.”
“Pizza is definitely not the kind of food that should be present in educational institutions. It is not healthy for students. It is one thing when a child enjoys it somewhere with their parents’ permission, perhaps while celebrating something, and another when pizza is available in a school cafeteria. I am very surprised that this is even possible,” Yampolskaya said, according to TASS.
Instead of foreign lunch options, she wants schools to bake kulebyaka, a traditional Russian stuffed pie. Because many busy parents lack the time or money to prepare classic dishes from scratch at home, Yampolskaya told TASS that state lunchrooms should take over that job.
“We have an enormous heritage, including wonderful Russian cuisine and a wonderful Russian table. Let’s at least give our children a chance to try it,” Yampolskaya said.
Politics on a plate
Her push follows an earlier campaign by Vitaly Borodin, a Russian activist known for filing complaints to restrict cultural and public life, United24 Media reported.
Borodin demanded a school pizza ban on purely political grounds. Since Italy sends weapons to Ukraine and sits on Moscow’s official list of “unfriendly” nations, he says Italian food does not belong on student trays.
“For a thousand years our grandmothers baked pies, and now they are selling us an Italian flatbread with ketchup… This is not ‘just food’ at all, but soft power in a cardboard box,” Borodin said, as cited by U24 Media.
He urged cafeterias to serve local staples like kurnik, rasstegai, and kulebyaka instead.
According to United24 Media, the food fight fits into a broader ideological overhaul of Russian education, where Putin has called the battle for children’s minds a “new front” and ordered a “federal programme of upbringing” that brings patriotic lessons all the way into kindergartens.
