August M
Signing up for a specialized tech job sounds like a smart career move.
It offers advanced training, enhanced safety, and an opportunity to develop modern military skills. But in modern warfare, promises made on paper can disappear the moment a recruit arrives at the base, reports United24Media.
A grim trap
Young people across Russia are finding this out the hard way. Recruiters have targeted university students with promises of safe positions far from active combat zones, United24Media reported.
But once the ink dries, the reality changes. According to data from the outlet Militarnyi, these young recruits are quickly reclassified as standard infantrymen. From there, they are deployed directly into frontline assaults.
The Ukrainian project “I Want to Live” has tracked this shift. The group published tracking lists containing 1,059 and 262 contracted students caught in the system.
Shifting the paperwork
Many young men have no idea what they are signing. Russian legal specialist Sergey Mamontov explained that recruits are kept in the dark about how their paperwork allows commanders to reassign them to any role.
“But the UAV operator service is a dangerous high-tech assignment. According to available data, around one thousand UAV operators have already died since the beginning of the war. And the mortality rate of UAV operators is comparable to that of artillerymen,” Mamontov stated.
Families are now dealing with the devastating fallout. Mamontov noted that multiple parents reached out after their children were promised technical training but ended up in frontline assault units instead.
The ultimate betrayal
Journalists recently verified the first known casualty from this specific recruitment drive. A 23-year-old student named Valeriy Averin signed a contract during his final year at a technical school in Buryatia, entering the military without prior army experience.
Averin finished his drone training and went straight to the front. He died in the Luhansk region days later. His adoptive mother, Afanasyeva, recalled that he called her on April 2 to say he was heading into an area with no communication, only to die in a mortar strike six days later.
“The child studied for three months to be a UAV operator, and they put him in an assault, in the very meat grinder. Someone who had not served in the army,” Afanasyeva said.
This push fits into a larger military trend. To prepare the next generation for future global conflicts by 2030, a Russian lawmaker recently proposed mandatory military training starting as early as the fifth grade.
Sources: United24Media, Militarnyi
