Putin recruits university students to avoid a new mobilization

Moscow“Are there men in the audience? No? What a shame! Take off your trousers and put on a skirt!” With these words, the dean of the Voronezh State University of Engineering, in southeastern Russia, tried to pressure his students to go and fight in Ukraine. The Kremlin has demanded that the rectors of the centers send 2% of enrolled students to the war. They are promised a year of service in a drone unit far from the front lines, astronomical salaries, and a secure future, but activists warn that it is a trap and that they have a high chance of getting caught and losing their lives.

astronomical salaries and a secure future, but activists warn that it is a trap and that they have a high chance of getting caught and losing their lives.

Since the end of 2025, higher education institutions have been organizing talks with combatants, who try to convince young people of the benefits of being part of the new branch of the army on unmanned aerial vehicles. According to student sources to ARA, veterans, some of whom have amputations, fly drones, show subjective videos from the front, and aim to stimulate them with the appearance of a video game. One of the attractions of the proposal is that the Ministry of Defense guarantees all the facilities in the world to those who decide to enroll to continue their studies for free later, with priority for access to master's degrees and job offers.

All these commitments are false, warn activists. Artiom Kliga, a military lawyer for the Conscientious Objectors Movement, tells ARA that, in Russia, contracts with the army do not expire until the mobilization decree approved by Vladimir Putin in 2022 expires, that is, until the war ends. “Once signed, they have no option to terminate it”, he warns. When the stipulated one-year period ends, the commitment is automatically extended, and commanders can transfer soldiers wherever they deem appropriate.

There is also another pitfall: drone units have limited places, and not all candidates are accepted. Therefore, young men may be sent directly to infantry battalions. Furthermore, being a drone pilot is no longer a safe task carried out tens of kilometers from the front line; many operate from trenches, participate in assault missions, and are a highly coveted target for Ukrainian unmanned vehicles. For all these reasons, Kliga concludes that the possibility that they will end up at the front in very dangerous positions “is not just theoretical, but an almost inevitable risk”.

Recruiters tend to approach the most ambitious students, those who want to pursue a political career, or the most vulnerable, who accumulate debts or have poor results. “They are told that by signing a contract they will be able to solve their academic problems,” the lawyer points out. Some rectors even go so far as to threaten students with expulsion if they refuse to enlist in the army. “Today, university is over for you, but you have an opportunity: the country needs warriors and believes in you,” the director of the Faculty of Innovation of Kazan told them in a video leaked by students to the press.

Students and professors resist

This coercion responds to the quotas imposed by the authorities. According to calculations by journalist Farida Rustamova, if all universities and technical institutes are obliged to provide one in fifty students to the Armed Forces, 76,000 university students would have to be sent to Ukraine. The administrations order professors to cooperate and encourage the boys to take the step. Nevertheless, many find a way not to cooperate with the war machinery. “It will be our fault if they sign a contract,” an anonymous teacher wrote in a letter to the independent newspaper Vajnie Istorii. “I told them: listen, but don't sign anything, don't accept anything,” he recalls.

Nor are the students enthusiastic about the initiative. The same student sources assure that they do not know anyone who has succumbed to the pressure campaign. This suggests that the propagandistic effort and threats have not borne fruit because, if they had succeeded, examples of successful students turned drone operators would be publicized.

Soldiers are missing at the front

The Kremlin's decision to raid universities in search of volunteers indicates the extent to which the Russian army is struggling to maintain a positive balance between deaths and new soldiers. According to a source from the Moscow recruitment point who spoke to the opposition media Viorstka, hiring plans have failed. Instead of the expected increases of 30% or 40%, registrations have plummeted. This week, Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted that partial mobilization is not part of the president's plans, who will resort to all possible stratagems before making the most unpopular decision since the war began.