Russia woos students for its drone forces in Ukraine with large financial packages

(Reuters)

MOSCOW, April 2 – Students across Russia are being offered large financial incentives to join drone units fighting in Ukraine as operators and engineers, while companies in Russia’s central Ryazan region have been ​given quotas to sign up workers for the army, documents show.

The recruitment effort, which comes as Russian forces continue to grind forwards on the battlefield in ‌Ukraine and as U.S.-brokered peace talks are on ice due to the Iran war, suggests Moscow is diversifying its push to replenish its army’s ranks in what is the fifth year of its war.

But it is not part of a general mobilisation drive, something the Kremlin said this week was not on the agenda. Nor, say top officials, is Russia running short of recruits despite Ukrainian claims – dismissed by Moscow – that Kyiv is eliminating Russian troops faster ​than they can be recruited.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, told state media on Friday that Russia’s rolling recruitment system, which offers substantial financial packages to volunteers ​who sign up, continues to deliver. More than 400,000 people had signed up last year and over 80,000 so far this year, he said.

Kremlin spokesman ⁠Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that he had not seen the official documents concerning student recruitment and corporate recruitment quotas in Ryazan, but confirmed that students were being encouraged to join Russia’s ​drone forces, a new division of the armed forces set up at the end of last year at President Vladimir Putin’s behest.

“This (recruitment) offer exists; it is, as they say, on the market, and ​it applies equally to everyone: to workers, to students, to the unemployed, and so on and so forth. This is a completely open offer, an offer to join a new type of unit,” Peskov told reporters when asked about the matter.

Russia’s move to target students suggests that Moscow is keen to pour more skilled human resources into its drone forces which – like those of Ukraine – play an increasingly pivotal role in what has long become ​a grinding war of attrition.