1) Students at HSE with low academic performance are offered a choice: a contract to participate in the “SMO” or expulsion.

Students are offered to take a one-year academic leave and go to the front, which is a lie — the contract is signed until the end of the war.

In addition, this “program” does not guarantee re-enrollment if the student survives and returns from the “SMO.”

2) Universities have received a new “promotion”: sign a contract for the “SMO” — receive a one-time stipend of ₽50,000

Letters describing the terms of this “generous promotion” were sent on February 17 to St. Petersburg State University, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, GUAP, LETI, RANEPA, SPbGASU, the Forestry University, Pushkin Leningrad State University, MIPT, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, RUT (MIIT), IPTiD, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, HSE, and others.

According to the terms of the “promotion,” the contract is supposedly “only for one year,” during which students allegedly receive an academic leave and then continue their studies.

However, there is one catch: for at least two years the Ministry of Defense has not offered one-year contracts — they are signed until the end of the “SMO.”

3) At MIREA, the possibility of retaking tests and exams was closed in order to “offer salvation from expulsion” in the form of a contract for the “SMO.”

At the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation, students with academic debts are invited to a “meeting” in a special office where they are already awaited by a psychologist-recruiter from the Ministry of Defense.

The “conversation” quickly turns into threats and psychological pressure: the choice is between “expulsion, shame, and a career as a loader at the Dixy supermarket chain,” or “a noble one-year service* at the front with millions of rubles and the opportunity to continue studies afterward.”

4) At Volgograd State Medical University, a quota was issued — recruit 168 students for the “SMO.”

The vice-rector for youth policy was made responsible for recruiting medical students.

Students at VolgGMU, as in other universities, are being lured with nonexistent “one-year contracts.”

5) Students recruited for a “one-year contract in UAV troops” were deceived — the contract includes a clause allowing transfer to “other branches.”

“Everything is not as written in the manuals or as they lie to students in university assembly halls — that the selection will supposedly take place according to the law during medical examinations or professional psychological screening before signing the contract. No. The selection will take place after the contract is signed. This was obvious to us, but now you can read the actual legal wording.”

— said lawyer Artem Klyga.

The contract states that students will first undergo a “three-month probation period,” and only after that will it be decided which branch of the armed forces they will be assigned to (lawyer Klyga says this will likely be the infantry).

Clause 2(d) also states the possibility of transfer to “other military positions not related to UAVs.”


*A one-year contract does not exist — this is a lie.