（CNN） “Everything has changed this year.”
“University ‘tops’ are now calling on students to go to war.”
“There are posters all over the university related to the drone squad. Literally everywhere.”
“The pressure is tremendous.”
These are all what Russian students said in direct messages to CNN. Their names and universities are being withheld for fear of retaliation, but these testimonies and a growing body of publicly available evidence suggest that Russia is quietly escalating its campaign to induce and coerce students into joining its drone fleet.
Such a move threatens to strain Russia’s education system and highlights the deepening challenges faced by the Russian government. Specifically, it is securing troops for the four-year war in Ukraine.
Despite mounting losses on the battlefield, the Kremlin has managed to avoid a repeat of its disastrous partial mobilization in the fall of 2022. This has caused hundreds of thousands of men to flee the country. But experts say the latest round of student-specific mobilizations is one sign that more aggressive recruitment tactics are on the rise again.
Students watch a military recruitment video at Novosibirsk University Law University/Novosibirsk Law University
Unlike previous initiatives, students are promised a one-year fixed-term contract, the opportunity to work far from the front lines and learn cutting-edge technology.
But experts and lawyers tell CNN that this is likely actually a pretext to hide a standard open-ended military contract. Additionally, many students are skeptical of the benefits promised, and universities are reportedly using coercion and threats to get students to join the military.
Recruitment for students
CNN analyzed university websites, social media pages, local media coverage, and interviewed multiple students in Russia to find evidence of a wide-ranging, multifaceted student recruitment campaign. This initiative appears to have begun in earnest in January of this year. Two months earlier, Russia’s Ministry of Defense officially announced the creation of a new military unit, the Unmanned Systems Force, which will specialize in combat using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drones.
Universities across Russia began posting sophisticated recruitment videos and posters on their social media accounts. Some university accounts even featured in-person lectures by soldiers and veterans of Russia’s so-called Special Military Operations (SMO).
Groza, an independent Russian student media outlet, provided CNN with a database of 269 universities and colleges in Russia and occupied Ukraine that are allegedly involved in the recruitment campaign, based on publicly available information and direct communications from students.
This includes some of Russia’s most prestigious universities. St. Petersburg State University (Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alma mater) openly advertises these agreements on its website. It also includes long video lectures by university and military personnel detailing the benefits of joining the military.
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