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Inside Russia’s School-to-War Pipeline, Where Students Help Build Drones and Ammunition
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Students at no fewer than 40 civilian educational institutions across Russia are helping produce military drones and munition components, according to an investigation by Vot Tak published on October 22.
The outlet noted that 33 universities, 5 colleges and 2 technical schools were involved. Participants include not only future engineers but also lawyers, political scientists, teachers and agronomists.
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One of them, 19-year-old Nikita Kazakevich, studies agricultural machinery repair at a technical college in Nazarovo, Krasnoyarsk region. Outside class, he assembles FPV attack drones that are shipped to the front.
“Then these drones are sent to our army, to Donetsk and Luhansk,” Kazakevich told Vot Tak.
Vot Tak noted that the college has assembled the drones since January 2025 from nine-inch carbon frames delivered to the school. Students install electronics and motors, program the aircraft and test-fly them in the gym. Kazakevich explained that he can build one in about half an hour.
Shipments leave every month, he added, with nine drones sent in September. Students are not paid, but teachers reward participation with good grades and sometimes release them from lessons.
The drone assembly program at the technical college in Nazarovo began when Alexei Yolkin, head of a local veterans' organization, was asked by troops for quadcopters. Alexander Aul, a former director of a local insulation plant, buys the frame kits. According to Kazakevich, local Cossacks also help deliver the finished drones. Vot Tak requested interviews with 18 students involved in such work, and only two agreed.
The practice extends well beyond extracurricular workshops. In March 2023, a bakery in Tambov began producing Bekas suicide drones , and students of a local transport college joined within weeks, according to local media.
Vot Tak wrote that production left the bakery in early 2024, and the business closed in July 2026 amid falling demand. The technology was transferred to India, and the EU sanctioned the producer the same month.
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Other students are employed rather than volunteering. Under Rostec's “Wings of Rostec” program, launched in 2020, participants work at partner enterprises from their first year and receive a salary plus stipends. Rostec deputy director general Nikolai Volobuev stated that drones are a priority through 2036.
In August 2026, the Moscow Aviation Institute and Rostec completed their first intake for a drone-design degree, with 17 of 60 state-funded places going to program participants. The Kalashnikov plant in Izhevsk joined the list of partners in 2026.
The People's Front movement acts as an intermediary, Vot Tak found, working with at least 11 civilian institutions. It supplies 3D printers and plastic so students can print tail sections, striker parts and electronic drop mechanisms for VOG-17 grenade rounds. By March 2026, Volga State University of Technology had sent 2,500 sets of VOG-17 parts to the front, the university stated.
Some students go further than assembly. Sergei Berstnev, 25, designed the "Russian Mavic" strike drone while studying at Vladimir State University. Vot Tak established that operators of the 28th motorized rifle regiment used one to destroy a building in the Kherson region. Berstnev, who is listed in the Myrotvorets database, told the outlet that Russian security services monitor his team and warned him against publicity.
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Student design bureaus follow a similar pattern. At Pacific National University in Khabarovsk, the PolitechProm bureau builds suicide drones, and its members include students of the university's law institute and its institute of social and political technologies. Vot Tak found comparable bureaus in Korolyov, Tomsk and Ulan-Ude.
Universities often leave frontline use off their websites. In Ulan-Ude, graduates made propellers for the Burya-10 drone system. Buryatia deputy premier Ivan Alkheev confirmed in January 2025 that 21 such complexes had been handed over to the combat zone, with three more being transferred. The university's website still contains no mention of this.
The use of students in weapons production has a precedent at the Alabuga complex in Tatarstan, Russia's largest drone-production site.
Ukraine first struck Alabuga in April 2024, when a drone hit a dormitory at its “Alabuga Polytech” college. Students there, including minors, have been drawn into assembling Geran drones. Russian authorities have also used an international youth festival in Yekaterinburg to promote the college to foreign visitors, promising rapid employment.
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