Russia looks to students to make up for mounting losses in Ukraine
Students are offered one-year drone contracts with large payments and technical training, while rights groups warn many are later sent into frontline combat.
- Russia is actively recruiting university and college students into "unmanned systems troops" for the war in Ukraine, offering financial rewards and specialized training through an initiative launched by Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov.
- The campaign targets students struggling academically or considering breaks, aiming to sustain the war effort into its fifth year, with recruitment drives appearing in at least 95 institutions across Russia.
- Recruits like Valery Averin, a student at the Buryat Republican Technical School, are ending up in dangerous front-line assaults despite promises of technical roles; his foster mother Oksana Afanayeva said, "He studied drones for three months."
- Drone operators face extreme risk, with at least 920 killed since the invasion began in February 2022; while authorities pitch one-year contracts, military decrees mean service effectively continues indefinitely.
- Total Russian military casualties are estimated between 417,000 and 509,500, as rights activists warn that financial incentives remain unenforceable, leaving young recruits vulnerable to deployment in combat roles rather than technical units.
7 Articles
7 Articles
Kreiszeitung
Russia's losses in the Ukraine war continue to rise. To close the gaps, Moscow is now targeting students with money and career promises.
Valery Averin is among the first Russian students whose death in the war was confirmed after recruitment campaign carried out in VK/Kyakhtinsky District educational institutions "He studied on drones for three months — and yet they launched him in a frontal attack, directly to the meat grinder," said Oksana Afanasyeva, adoptive mother of Valery Averin. The 23-year-old is among the first Russian students whose death in Ukraine was confirmed after…
"He studied drones for three months - and yet the lan aram in a frontal attack, directly to the meat grinder," said Oksana Afanasyeva, m and adoptive of Valery Averin. Read more (07/04/2026
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