The authorities’ campaign to recruit students into unmanned systems troops, launched across Russia amid difficulties replenishing losses on the front in Ukraine, has already affected at least 91 universities and more than 100 technical colleges across the country. However, young Russians are not rushing to respond to such recruitment attempts, which in reality involve being sent to the front. For example, at Voronezh State University of Engineering Technologies, students reacted without enthusiasm to an attempt to motivate them to “defend the homeland” in Ukraine, for which they received a reprimand from the dean of the Faculty of Management and Informatics in Technological Systems, Alexei Skrypnikov.

The dean told students that Ukrainian soldiers allegedly “tattoo swastikas not only on their bodies but also in their hearts,” and also claimed that Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters kill pregnant women and children and abuse elderly civilians—something Skrypnikov admitted he had seen “on a federal TV channel.”