At a leading Russian oil and gas university, students are being urged to recruit their relatives into the army

At the Ufa State Oil and Technical University (USOTU), students were urged to bring friends and relatives to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. As part of this campaign, recruits are to be assigned to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) units amid heavy losses suffered by the Russian army in Ukraine. 

This was reported by the publication "Grozha."

According to messages in student chat rooms, the university is willing to enroll students’ acquaintances and relatives in continuing education programs or fictitiously hire them for positions at the university to facilitate the paperwork. Those who sign a contract on behalf of the university are promised a one-time payment of 500,000 rubles. This amount is provided in addition to the regional allowance, which in Bashkortostan amounts to 1 million rubles starting in early 2026.

The active involvement of students in recruitment is linked to a decline in the influx of contract soldiers and a growing shortage of personnel in unmanned aviation units. Similar cases have previously been reported in other regions of the Russian Federation, where educational institutions are used as mobilization hubs to recruit specialists with technical education for combat operations. Students are being offered to act as intermediaries in the contract signing process, effectively handing over their peers to the ranks of the aggressor’s armed forces.

Students at the Kemerovo Polytechnic College in Anzhero-Sudzhensk are being threatened with deployment to the front lines if they refuse to undergo UAV pilot training.

In Russia, the recruitment of students into the drone forces has failed.