Russia Expands Youth Militarization With Drone Racing Championship in Temporarily Occupied Luhansk

In temporarily occupied Luhansk, Russian authorities have staged a drone racing championship designed to train children and young people for future involvement in war.

This was reported by Oleksii Kharchenko, head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, in a Telegram post on February 22.

“In the so-called ‘LNR ,’ children and youth are being prepared for war in advance. They are currently searching for candidates for the ‘LNR’ drone control team. To do this, a qualifying round was organized in Luhansk, where only school pupils and students were allowed to participate, calling these war-preparation gatherings the ‘first LNR drone racing championship,’” he stated.

Kharchenko also noted that the occupying forces are training participants in weapons handling as part of various competitions that have become compulsory, with the number of such events significantly increasing in recent years.

This policy of militarizing children in temporarily occupied territories aligns with broader findings documented by international investigators.

A report published by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab found that abducted Ukrainian children have been forced to work in Russian facilities producing drones and other military equipment for Moscow’s armed forces. The investigation identified 210 sites connected to what researchers described as Russia’s system of kidnapping, deportation, indoctrination, and coerced adoption of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.

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The report outlines eight categories of facilities, including a military base, where children have reportedly been held as part of a forced assimilation program. At the “All-Russian Children’s Centre Change” in Krasnodar Krai, researchers documented cases in which Ukrainian children were required to assemble drones, mine detectors, robots, and rapid loaders for assault rifles.

“More than 300 children from Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were taken to this facility between 2022 and the present day,” the report states.

Earlier, the Russian city of Perm announced plans to launch drone training centers in selected kindergartens, introducing preschoolers to the basics of operating unmanned aerial vehicles through interactive lessons and practice with educational drones.

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