Nevertheless, Russia’s efforts to recruit student drone pilots are on track to have 168,000 drone operators by the end of 2026. Kyiv Independent. In this sense, Russia is copying Ukraine’s success Unmanned Systems Force It became the world’s first independent military branch to focus on drones in June 2024.
Russian recruiting efforts typically promised that university students could serve as drone pilots without risking their lives in bloody infantry assaults on Ukrainian trenches and fortifications. As the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said in an interview, security is a relative term, as constant surveillance and the threat of drone strikes or artillery fire create a “kill zone” stretching up to 25 kilometers on either side of the front. Ukrainksa Pravda.
Russian-language news service BBC News Valery Averin, 23, was identified as the first known death among a new wave of Russian university students trained and deployed as drone operators. Avery’s adoptive mother, Oksana Afanasyeva, was informed that her son was killed in a mortar attack near the Russian-occupied city of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine on April 6.
Afanasyeva told BBC News: “The boy has been training on a drone for three months, and now we are throwing him into an attack, into a meat grinder, someone who has never served in the army.”
Russia has lost approximately 1.3 million soldiers in battlefield casualties since its large-scale invasion of Ukraine began. NATO official A February 2026 news report was cited. In comparison, Ukrainian losses Including killed, wounded and missing soldiers, it was estimated to be between 500,000 and 600,000 over the same period.
