Russia looks to students to make up for mounting losses in Ukraine

Submission statement: An article examining how the Russian state is targeting young students to fill the ranks of their high-casualty drone units, increasingly drawing from the civilian sphere as losses mount in Ukraine.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both sides have increasingly relied on drone warfare to further their objectives. But on the Russian side, drone units are among the most exposed to Ukrainian strikes, with at least 920 documented deaths since February 2022 – comparable figures to losses recorded in artillery units.

To replace these losses, Russian authorities are prioritizing under-35s, considered more receptive to drone technologies and innovations, by directly drawing into the educational system. BBC reports that teachers and educators are increasingly involved in the recruiting process alongside military authorities, who present students with a variety of persuasion tools, from promising them transferrable skills and career advancements, to bribing them with hefty cash payments or shortcuts to admission into academic programs, to coercing struggling students with peer pressure or threats of expulsion.

Matching earlier patterns, recruitment seems to be mainly targeting students who are struggling academically or personally, in vocational schools rather than prestigious universities, and in more peripherical regions of Russia. Institutions in Siberia and the Far East were reportedly faced with recruitment targets, and the profiles of the students enlisted and killed corresponds to more marginalized people: a young man raised by a foster mother and a Muslim student from Bashkortostan who flunked out of vocational school are among the newly recruited drone operators confirmed killed weeks after they arrived on the frontlines in Ukraine.