Russian teacher punishes student for wearing hoodie with American flag

A high-school biology teacher in the northwestern Russian city of Kostomuksha in the republic of Karelia made a seventh-grader, who came to school wearing a hoodie with an image of the American flag, sit through an entire lesson facing the wall.

According to the student’s father Aleksei Kulikov, the incident occurred on November 15, The Insider reports, citing Mediazona.  

As the schoolboy said, the teacher got angry at the sight of the sweatshirt and said: “Go to the end of the class, sit with your back to me, and so I won't see this flag the whole lesson.”

The hoodie his son wore to school that day has the number “62” with stars and stripes sewn onto the front, Kulikov said.

The schoolboy’s father said he would appeal to Karelia’s Ministry of Education if the teacher doesn’t apologize to his child and the entire class. According to the man, the teacher had spoken out on political topics before, for example, she called President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenski a “scoundrel” and a “scumbag.”

The director of the lyceum told Mediazona that the teacher moved from Ukraine to Kostomuksha in 2019 – she used to live in Kryvyi Rih.

“She's already around 60 years old, and she's actually from Kryvyi Rih. She fully supports the [Special Military Operation], but the fact that the Americans started it all – she, of course, takes it all very painfully. And when she came to class, she saw a boy sitting there with an American flag…she asked him to turn away,” said the principal, adding that a one-to-one meeting between the parents and the teacher will take place.

“It's clear that she snapped, I understand that the teacher behaved inappropriately,” the school principal added.