It's all emotion! You soar like a bird." Russia's Defense Ministry has begun publishing videos of students who dropped out to serve in the Drone Forces

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"It's all emotion! You soar like a bird." Russia's Defense Ministry has begun publishing videos of students dropping out to serve in the Drone Forces

Since early May, the videos have been published in the Telegram channels of Russia's Defense Ministry and the ministry-linked channel "Heroes of the Special Operation Z." In every video, the focus is on young men from well-off families studying technical subjects connected with drones, programming, or engineering.

Before publishing these videos, the Defense Ministry had been actively circulating statements by officials claiming that no one was forcing Russian students to go to the front and that the decision to sign a contract was made voluntarily.

◾️ The first video tells the story of Mikhail Guzanov, a student at Don State Technical University, who, according to the Defense Ministry, "fulfilled a long-held dream of flying by becoming a UAV pilot." "The most interesting thing is flying the real ones. It's all emotion! You soar like a bird," Guzanov says in the video.

◾️ The second video features another DSTU student, 21-year-old Alexander Rybasov. In the video he says that his interest in FPV drones came from video games. "Russia has quite a lot of military-themed games, and they also have their own 'little birds' there, I've flown those too, so I already have some kind of experience," Rybasov says.

◾️ The third video is devoted to Nikolai Ivanov, a student at Tomsk Polytechnic University from the city of Belovo in Kemerovo region. The video is titled "He was a student, and then became a drone operator." According to him, he was in his second year and getting top grades, and decided to go to war because "the motherland needs young, quick specialists."

📌 At the same time these videos were being released, in May 2026 the BBC also reported the first known case of a Russian student recruited into the drone systems troops being killed. According to the outlet, 23-year-old Buryatia resident Valery Averin was killed near Luhansk on April 6, just days after being sent to the front.

Video: Telegram channels of the Russian Defense Ministry, "Heroes of the Special Operation Z"

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