Vladimir Putin is accused of directly brainwashing children in Russia with an alternate version of reality.
The Russian president faces the claims after he met a group of 'high-IQ' children from all over Russia at a school in Kaliningrad in the province of the same name on the Baltic coast.
Putin, responsible for the death of thousands in Ukraine, took an hour-long Q&A and said he was shocked children did not know that Ukraine was once a part of Russia and the Soviet Union.
He spoke of the 2014 'coup' in which a pro-Russian president was ousted in Ukraine.
Known as the 'Revolution of Dignity', it saw Viktor Yanukovych ousted as president, accused of looting around £86 billion from the country.
A new government was swept in on the basis of tackling corruption and quickly became increasingly allied with the West. Russia then invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in February and March 2014, sparking a war against separatists in the neighbouring Donbas region.
Rebel fighters in Donestk and Luhansk were able to take control of some areas of Ukraine, backed by Russia.
Putin claims the current escalation in the conflict - he launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022 - is merely a 'special operation' against a Nazi government on the borders of Russia.
This is an entirely false claim, but a lie Putin continues to spout to his own people to justify the war.
He told the children: "Everybody thinks that some kind of aggression is coming from the Russian side today. But nobody understands, nobody knows that, after the coup in 2014, the residents of Donetsk, a large part of Luhansk and Crimea did not want to recognise the coup."
He added: "A war was started against them - and it was waged for eight years. On the territory of today's Ukraine, they began to create an anti-Russian enclave that threatens our country.
"Therefore, our lads, who are fighting there, are protecting both the residents of the Donbas region, and defending Russia itself.
Another part of Putin's justification is his apparent view that Ukraine is 'ethnically Russian'.
In 2021, he published a 5,000-word essay titled 'On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians' which claimed the people of the two countries are "one people".
Putin and his Kremlin allies claim that after Ukraine declared independence in 1991, it is not a 'real' country, despite years of history that brought the country together.
Claiming that "Russia was robbed," Putin concluded that "I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia."
The school meeting comes amid a push from the Kremlin for schools to be more patriotic, with pupils beginning the week by raising the Russian flag and playing the national anthem.
