Russia pressures university students to become wartime drone pilots

俄罗斯向大学生施压，要求其成为战时无人机驾驶员

Russian universities are promising free tuition and up to $70,000 to students who are willing to serve as drone pilots in the Russian military for a year—all while claiming students can avoid the risk of frontline combat duty in Ukraine. But there has already been one confirmed battlefield death and possibly more among the new cadre of student drone pilots. 俄罗斯各高校承诺，愿意在俄军服役一年担任无人机驾驶员的学生将获得免除学费以及最高 7 万美元的奖励，同时声称学生可以避免在乌克兰前线作战的风险。然而，在这一批新招募的学生无人机驾驶员中，已经有一人被证实阵亡，且可能还有更多伤亡。

That specific recruitment offer appeared on pamphlets distributed at Bauman Moscow State Technical University, according to Bloomberg. Other universities have dangled incentives such as tax holidays, loan forgiveness, and sometimes free land. The independent magazine Groza counted at least 270 Russian academic institutions promoting military contracts to their students in the fifth year of the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 据彭博社报道，这一具体的招募信息出现在莫斯科鲍曼国立技术大学分发的宣传册上。其他大学也抛出了诸如免税期、贷款减免，有时甚至是免费土地等激励措施。独立杂志《Groza》统计显示，自 2022 年 2 月俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰以来，这场战争已进入第五个年头，至少有 270 所俄罗斯学术机构在向学生推广军事合同。

This new wave of recruitment is targeting a population of approximately 2 million men attending Russian universities, including gamers and students with technical skills that could make them suitable trainees as drone pilots, according to Bloomberg. Russia’s Defense Ministry has specifically called for drone pilot recruits with expertise in flying drones, model aircraft, electronics, and radio engineering, with computer skills also being desirable, NBC News reported. 据彭博社报道，这波新的招募浪潮针对的是俄罗斯各大学约 200 万名男性学生，其中包括游戏玩家和具备技术专长的学生，这些技能使他们成为合适的无人机驾驶员受训人选。据美国全国广播公司（NBC）新闻报道，俄罗斯国防部特别要求招募在无人机飞行、航空模型、电子和无线电工程方面有专长的无人机驾驶员，同时也欢迎具备计算机技能的人员。

However, the effort carries the risk of further depleting Russia’s future educated workforce on top of the country’s existing brain drain—a research study found that 24 percent of top Russian software developers active on GitHub may have left the country within the first year of the war. Some students have also expressed a similar lack of enthusiasm for the Russian war effort. “No one wants to join,” a student named Andrey told NBC News. “No one is interested.” 然而，此举除了加剧俄罗斯现有的人才流失外，还存在进一步耗尽该国未来受过高等教育劳动力的风险——一项研究发现，在 GitHub 上活跃的俄罗斯顶尖软件开发人员中，有 24% 可能在战争的第一年内就离开了该国。一些学生也表达了对俄罗斯战争努力的冷淡态度。一名叫安德烈的学生告诉 NBC 新闻：“没人想加入，没人感兴趣。”

Nonetheless, Russia’s effort to recruit student drone pilots goes toward its goal of having 168,000 drone operators by the end of 2026, according to the Kyiv Independent. In that sense, Russia is copying the success of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force that became the world’s first standalone military branch focused on drones in June 2024. 尽管如此，据《基辅独立报》报道，俄罗斯招募学生无人机驾驶员的努力，旨在实现其到 2026 年底拥有 16.8 万名无人机操作员的目标。从这个意义上说，俄罗斯正在效仿乌克兰无人系统部队的成功经验，后者于 2024 年 6 月成为世界上第一个专注于无人机的独立军事分支。

The Russian recruitment efforts have typically promised that university students can serve as drone pilots without risking their lives in bloody infantry assaults on Ukrainian trenches and fortifications. But safety is a relative term as constant surveillance and the threat of drone strikes or artillery fire has created a “kill zone” stretching as far as 25 kilometers on both sides of the frontlines, according to the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force in an interview with Ukrainksa Pravda. 俄罗斯的招募工作通常承诺，大学生可以担任无人机驾驶员，而无需在针对乌克兰战壕和防御工事的血腥步兵突击中冒生命危险。但安全是一个相对的概念，据乌克兰无人系统部队指挥官在接受《乌克兰真理报》采访时表示，持续的监视以及无人机袭击或炮火的威胁，已经在前线两侧创造了一个延伸达 25 公里的“杀戮区”。

The Russian-language news service of BBC News identified 23-year-old Valery Averin as the first known death among the new wave of Russian university students who trained and deployed as drone operators. Averin’s adoptive mother, Oksana Afanasyeva, was informed of her son’s death in a mortar attack on April 6 near the Russian-occupied city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. “The child had been training on a drone for three months, and now we’re throwing him into an assault, into the meat grinder, someone who had never served in the army,” Afanasyeva told BBC News. BBC 新闻俄语频道确认，23 岁的瓦列里·阿韦林（Valery Averin）是新一批受训并部署为无人机操作员的俄罗斯大学生中，首位被证实的阵亡者。阿韦林的养母奥克萨娜·阿法纳西耶娃（Oksana Afanasyeva）获悉，她的儿子于 4 月 6 日在乌克兰东部被俄军占领的卢甘斯克市附近的一次迫击炮袭击中丧生。阿法纳西耶娃告诉 BBC 新闻：“孩子才训练了三个月无人机，现在就把他扔进突击行动，扔进绞肉机里，他甚至从未在军队服过役。”

Russia has lost an estimated 1.3 million soldiers as battlefield casualties since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a NATO official cited by news reporting in February 2026. By comparison, Ukrainian casualties were estimated as being between 500,000 and 600,000 over approximately the same period, including killed, wounded, and missing soldiers. 据 2026 年 2 月的媒体报道援引北约官员的话称，自全面入侵乌克兰以来，俄罗斯估计已损失了 130 万名士兵。相比之下，在同一时期内，乌克兰的伤亡人数（包括阵亡、受伤和失踪士兵）估计在 50 万至 60 万之间。

Into the meat grinder

投入绞肉机

Elite university students are still luckier than many Russian men—including trained specialists—who are being sent directly into frontline combat. Going back to 2023, the Russian space corporation Roscosmos was already recruiting its own employees to join a militia for the war in Ukraine. By early 2026, Russia had organized three “motorized rifle regiments” for frontline duty by pulling personnel from its Navy, Aerospace Forces, and Strategic Missile Forces, according to the Ukrainian publication Euromaidan Press. 精英大学生仍然比许多俄罗斯男性（包括受过训练的专家）要幸运，后者正被直接送往前线作战。早在 2023 年，俄罗斯国家航天集团（Roscosmos）就已经在招募自己的员工加入民兵组织参加乌克兰战争。据乌克兰媒体《欧洲广场新闻》（Euromaidan Press）报道，到 2026 年初，俄罗斯已通过从海军、空天军和战略导弹部队抽调人员，组建了三个用于前线任务的“摩托化步兵团”。

The Russian military’s desperation to fill out its infantry ranks may have even led to the indiscriminate waste of trained drone pilots. In September 2024, a pro-Russian military blogger sparked a Russian government investigation after alleging that Russian drone operators had died in combat when commanders “disbanded their specialized drone unit and committed them to a frontal assault,” according to the nonprofit research organization Institute for the Study of War. 俄罗斯军方为填补步兵缺额而表现出的绝望，甚至可能导致了对受过训练的无人机驾驶员的无差别浪费。据非营利研究机构战争研究所（Institute for the Study of War）称，2024 年 9 月，一名亲俄军事博主引发了俄罗斯政府的调查，此前他声称，当指挥官“解散了他们的专业无人机部队并将他们投入正面突击”时，俄罗斯无人机操作员在战斗中丧生。

Russia’s emphasis on frontline infantry comes as Russian military forces have mostly abandoned armored vehicle assaults in favor of advancing on foot, motorcycle, or even horseback in the face of Ukraine’s innovative drone warfare. The result has been a series of bloody, attritional attacks resulting in Russian territorial gains measured in the tens of meters per day at best—though attacks are often stopped completely by Ukrainian defenders. 俄罗斯对前线步兵的重视，正值其军队在面对乌克兰创新的无人机战术时，大多放弃了装甲车突击，转而采取徒步、摩托车甚至骑马的方式推进。结果是一系列血腥的消耗战，俄罗斯每天的领土收益充其量只有几十米——尽管这些进攻往往会被乌克兰守军完全阻止。

Ukraine is also facing its own infantry shortage and recruitment issues after starting at a manpower disadvantage compared to Russia. But Ukraine seems to have generally avoided Russia’s indiscriminate approach to filling out the infantry ranks. Instead, Ukrainian military commanders are deploying more ground robots to fight on the frontlines. Recent battlefield assessments indicate that the Russian spring-summer 2026 offensive against Ukraine’s “Fortress Belt” has mostly stalled, and the Russian military’s recruitment rate has dipped below replacement rate for the first time in the war. This comes after SpaceX cut off Russian forces’ access to Starlink satellite Internet terminals, and as the Ukrainian military has used medium-range drone strikes beyond 20 kilometers to devastate Russian supply lines by striking ammunition de… 在人力资源方面处于劣势的乌克兰，在战争开始后也面临着步兵短缺和招募问题。但乌克兰似乎总体上避免了俄罗斯那种填补步兵缺额的无差别手段。相反，乌克兰军事指挥官正在部署更多的地面机器人进行前线作战。近期的战场评估显示，俄罗斯针对乌克兰“堡垒地带”的 2026 年春夏攻势已基本停滞，且俄军的招募率自战争以来首次跌破了补充率。此前，SpaceX 切断了俄军对星链（Starlink）卫星互联网终端的使用权限，同时乌克兰军队利用 20 公里以外的中程无人机打击，通过袭击弹药库摧毁了俄罗斯的补给线。