Nonetheless, according to the Kyiv Independent, Russia’s efforts to recruit student drone pilots are moving toward its goal of having 168,000 drone operators by the end of 2026. In this sense, Russia is copying the success of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force which in June 2024 became the world’s first standalone military branch focused on drones.
Russian recruitment efforts have generally promised that university students could work as drone pilots without risking their lives in bloody infantry attacks on Ukrainian trenches and fortifications. But security is a relative term meaning constant surveillance and the threat of drone strikes or artillery fire has created a “kill zone” stretching up to 25 kilometers on both sides of the frontline, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Force said in an interview with Ukrainsk Pravda.
BBC News’ Russian-language news service identified 23-year-old Valery Averin as the first known death among the new wave of Russian university students who trained and deployed as drone operators. Averin’s adoptive mother, Oksana Afanasyeva, was informed of her son’s death in a mortar attack on April 6 near the Russian-held city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
“The kid had been training on drones for three months, and now we’re throwing him into an assault, into a meat grinder, having never served in the army,” Afanasyeva told BBC News.
According to a NATO official quoted in news reporting in February 2026, Russia has lost an estimated 1.3 million troops on the battlefield since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By comparison, Ukrainian casualties over the same period were estimated to be between 500,000 and 600,000, including killed, wounded and missing soldiers.
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