Ed ministry to check 'pro-Putin history manuals'

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 20 - Italy's education ministry said Wednesday it was going to check reports of allegedly pro-Putin history manuals being used in some Italian schools.
    The Ministry of Education and Merit said it has initiated checks to ascertain "whether the contents of history and geography textbooks present critical issues following the news of the distribution of school textbooks for secondary schools with a biased and distorted view of historical reality, in favour of a narrative of Putin's Russia and the communist Soviet Union".
    Newspaper la Repubblica reported earlier Wednesday that the allegedly pro-Putin distortions of facts in history and geography manuals had been reported by a group of Ukrainian activists, by Ukrainian journalist Irina Cascei, and by the director of he Ukraine Observatory at the Istituto Gino Germani, Massimiliano di Pasquale.
    An analysis of textbooks published between 2017 and 2023 threw up distortions including maps of Russia containing Ukraine and captions stating that Crimea had been annexed in 2014 at its own request. (ANSA).