Students of one of Russia’s leading technical universities are receiving a lucrative offer: drop out of school for a year, fly drones for the military, and upon return earn more than 5 million rubles, as well as free tuition.
Flyers distributed at Bauman State Technical University in Moscow promise students who sign up for unmanned systems units that they will fly drones far behind the front lines but still qualify for war veteran status.
It is part of a wider effort across Russia to recruit university and college students using lavish signing bonuses, academic leave and even outright coercion to persuade young men to join the fight. At least 270 institutions are actively pursuing military contracts, according to the independent magazine Groza, which specializes in higher education and student issues.
People also ask
Artificial intelligence reinforced the insights from this story
•5 QUESTIONS
Russian universities are recruiting college students to become drone pilots as part of a wider military recruitment drive. This initiative aims to fill positions for the invasion of Ukraine and utilize a large pool of young, trainable individuals, many of whom have the technical skills appropriate for expanding unmanned forces.
Students are offered lucrative incentives such as signing bonuses exceeding 5 million rubles, free tuition upon return, academic leave and war veteran status. Some promotions also include tax holidays, loan forgiveness and even free land.
While Russian officials deny pressure, reports indicate that students face threats of expulsion or problems with their academic standing if they refuse to be drafted into the military. Some students were told they had already been expelled, with military recruitment presented as the only way back.
Drones have significantly impacted traditional military roles, with snipers having their jobs reduced due to drones’ reconnaissance and targeted killing capabilities. Drones offer advantages in visual range, maneuverability, and expandability, making them more effective and cost-effective than snipers in many situations.
AI tools like ChatGPT contribute to grade inflation, making “A” grades more common, especially in writing and coding intensive courses. This increase in “A” grades makes them less reliable for employers trying to assess the true skills and learning of college graduates.
“Universities have turned into recruitment centers,” said Ivan Chuviljaev, who works with the Idite Lesom project, which helps Russians avoid conscription or leave the country. “The main reason many boys go to university – the draft deferment – no longer works.”
The campaign underscores how the Kremlin is adapting to sustain its all-out invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year. The military is trying to tap into a population that was once largely protected from front-line recruitment, as earlier pipelines that targeted prisoners may be nearly exhausted. At the same time, Kremlin forces will suffer heavy losses on the battlefield, making the recruitment of new soldiers all the more urgent.
With more than 2 million men in Russian higher education, universities offer a vast pool of young, trainable recruits—many with technical skills suited to the military’s plan to greatly expand unmanned forces, whose role has grown in importance as the conflict has evolved. Yet it risks gambling young lives as well as future talents who could one day rule the country.
Chuviljayev said Idite Lesom has received more than a hundred requests for help from parents and students from dozens of universities across the country. He said students gather in assembly halls and mandatory meetings to hear sales pitches to join.
The campaigns are run by universities and colleges, and their administrators sometimes act as the public face for them. The rector of the Moscow State Academy of Law presented a performance by several students who applied, praising their “brave, worthy and responsible act”.
The Moscow State Law Academy and the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in Moscow also created their own departments for potential student recruits.
Representatives of the Moscow State Law Academy and Plekhanov University did not respond to a request for comment.
Promotional materials at St. Petersburg State Medical University say priority is given to “e-sportsmen, drone pilots, gamers and programmers”, with offers of up to 3.4 million rubles – an amount that exceeds average wages in Russia. The Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok confirmed in a statement to local media that it offers academic leave during military service and free tuition and accommodation upon return.
Other universities advertised tax holidays, loan forgiveness of up to 10 million rubles and even free land on their official websites.
Recruiters portray unmanned force units as safer and far removed from the brutal “meat grinder” service in the infantry, but students, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, say the pitch is sometimes backed by threats from universities about their academic status if they refuse.
Several students described threats of expulsion from their institutions, while a college director at Kazan Innovation University told a group of students that they had already been expelled and the only way back was to talk to military recruiters, according to videos posted by Groza on Telegram.
Kazan Innovative University did not respond to a request for comment.
“We have never received so many calls from students,” said Polina Usoltseva, the editor of Groza, who left Russia after the war began. “There are hundreds of them and they express nothing but hopelessness and despair.”
Russian officials deny that the students were pressured. A Defense Department official said last month that students will volunteer and are not forced into contracts. On the same day, Russia’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education denied reports of expelling students to get them to sign service contracts, Interfax news agency reported.
Although recruiters advertise year-long stints, lawyers say that can be misleading and could be harder to get out of the military under Russia’s current wartime legal framework. The contracts cannot be terminated until the special military operation ends, said Artem Klyga, a lawyer who has been based in Germany since leaving Russia on a part-time call in 2022, using the Kremlin’s term to describe the war.
Once registered, the military can also transfer recruits to other branches, including the trenches as infantry, Klyga said.
Earlier this month, the BBC reported the first known death of a student in the war, which occurred in April, just three months into his service.
Still, it’s not clear that the campaign is producing many volunteers.
In the Sverdlovsk region, only 21 students have agreed to sign a contract for military service in the past five months, Dmitry Demenkov, head of the recruitment center in Yekaterinburg, told local television last month. Most of them were from technical schools and colleges because there are virtually no university student volunteers, he said.
This article was generated from an automated news agency source without text modification.
