“We must not say it’s for the war”: Hundreds of thousands of Russian schoolkids are building drones that kill Ukrainians

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We say “bees,” we mean “Ukrainians”

In July 2022, a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, a ceremony in occupied Sevastopol marked the launch of the “Berloga” program (literally “Bear’s Den”), a “cyber-physical gaming platform” for school students. The organizers pledged to return Russia “to the top tier of global tech leaders,” pinning their hopes primarily on schoolchildren, who were expected to meet this objective by using special games to pilot drones and develop software for their use. The time and location of the event were described as being “symbolic” — a hint at the likely future target of the drones piloted by the program’s participants.

Officially, Berloga has no connection to the war in Ukraine, even if the legend dreamed up for the “gaming platform” was less than subtle. For Berloga’s young participants, the journey from the classroom to the war begins on a fantastical planet inhabited by “intelligent bears,” who must defend themselves against “bees.” In one game, players use drones to protect a precious resource called “energy honey” from cyber-insects, repelling “increasing waves of enemies.” In another, they learn to pilot quadcopters and deliver cargo to precise coordinates. Future releases promise players the opportunity to modify the drone’s design, create flight paths, and share code with other players.

The organizers’ real objectives are not hard to guess. The Berloga project is part of an ecosystem created by Russia’s Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI), which also encompasses the NTI network of science and technology clubs and the Archipelago intensive training course. The latter explicitly mentions testing military drones in its curriculum.

The idea is that once a promising student enters ASI’s pipeline, they never leave it. After starting off on the Berloga gaming platform, they move on to NTI competitions and clubs, eventually reaching the Archipelago course or events organized by the Sirius Center — programs that already serve as recruiting grounds for the armed forces and war-related state corporations. The interconnected nature of these projects is also evident from government funding patterns.

Vladimir Putin personally approved the launch of Berloga, and the project has enjoyed strong administrative support ever since. Its main draw — and the key to the platform's popularity — is the bonus of 10 extra points in the EGE, Russia's unified state exam for high school students. Students themselves admit that, while the Berloga tasks are difficult, the additional credits are a powerful incentive.

The platform’s developers, however, are counting on students staying engaged even after their exams. They aim to ensure that more than 600,000 players battling cyber-bees will eventually transition to the programming and assembly of real drones.

The bridge from this virtual world to reality is built by Aleksey Fedoseev. A 42-year-old teacher with two decades of experience, Fedoseev now heads Berloga and the NTI Club Movement, running projects that foster the development of future engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

In its very first year of operation, the platform — which is now in talks to be integrated into China’s education system — resulted in several in-person competitions. One such contest, a hackathon focused on unmanned systems, tasked student teams with upgrading and programming real drones. At another event, teenagers could be seen soldering components and flashing firmware to electronic modules.

Fedoseev also played a key role in the creation of another platform — Talant (“Talent”). This portal keeps track of students’ achievements, both in video games and in real-life academic activities. The platform has already logged over 1 million student achievements, with 10,000 students named as finalists or winners in 2025 alone. Winners in the digital portfolio competition can also earn up to 10 extra points in state exams. Additionally, the juries of academic contests can access Talant, using its database to find promising candidates and encourage them to apply.

From drones to super-heavy launch vehicles

After battling digital space bees, successful Berloga participants move on to the level of “Big Challenges,” a series of themed competitions. In the final round, more than 430 high school students from across Russia work on problems in 12 subject areas, from genetics and biomedicine to modern energy. Each sector includes between four and 15 tasks. This large-scale event for 7th to 11th year students is organized by the Sirius Educational Center, headed by Putin’s close associate Yelena Shmeleva.

Fedoseev’s NTI Club Movement cooperates closely with the Sirius Center, and applicants to Big Challenges can include a link to their Berloga portfolio or their profile on the Talant platform. In 2025, the competition received a record 16,500 applications from CIS countries.

In addition to the opportunity to earn extra university entrance points, high school students can qualify for presidential scholarships and internships at partner companies. Sirius head Shmeleva has openly stated that the competition helps partners “look for talented young staff while they’re still in school.” In practice, students contribute to real-world projects at key partner companies. “Tasks are trialled, results obtained — and then they are taken into production,” Shmeleva explained in a television broadcast.

But Shmeleva left out the critical fact that more than 80% of these partner companies (especially in the UAV and space sectors) turn up serious red flags — many maintain direct links to the Russian defense sector, while others fall employ senior executives who are or have been under sanctions. Some of them openly admit they are struggling with import-substitution problems, and Big Challenges has become a resource in the search to find solutions. Contestants are required to design products that are economically feasible and operate on domestic components, in line with Putin’s goal of technological sovereignty. The students themselves internalise this mission, openly presenting their projects as state-oriented. One team working on a laser charger for a drone listed the primary potential customer as the Russian army.

The fact that the tasks presented to students strongly resemble military objectives is not a coincidence. It was at a Big Challenges competition in the summer of 2024 that high school student Murat and his team worked to improve the accuracy of UAV navigation systems — an assignment from longtime defense contractor PJSC Yakovlev. In the finals, the team presented their creation: an enhanced drone that could be used even in hard-to-reach areas such as forests.

At the same event, a schoolboy named Nikita and his team presented an automated UAV-detection system. The partners for this task were the Rosatom state atomic energy corporation, which currently controls the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, which works closely with Rosatom. The students explained the utility of their work, noting that “drones are becoming more popular among private users.” As a result, they said, drone operators might “violate Russian law” by piloting their craft into restricted areas, thus necessitating the development of a system for tracking unauthorized drones.

Another task — creating an unmanned system for conducting warehouse inventory — was supervised by Russia’s largest drone manufacturer, the Geoscan Group. In 2023, a foundation run by Putin’s daughter, Ekaterina Tikhonova, acquired a 10-percent stake in the company. A year later, Geoscan posted a record profit of 1.27 billion rubles ($16.2 million). And it was at a Geoscan facility in Ufa in April 2023 that Bashkortostan regional head Andrey Nazarov announced the production of drones for the war in Ukraine.

There are even more alarming examples. High school students were tasked with developing a concept for a super-heavy launch vehicle with a water-based launch system — one intended specifically for the military-industrial complex. The partners for this assignment were the Baltic State Technical University, one of Russia’s leading military engineering institutes, and Almaz-Antey, a state-owned defense conglomerate. Missiles produced by Almaz-Antey regularly strike Ukrainian cities.

The list of “friends of the contest” features notable players in Russia's military industry: Lavochkin Research and Production Association, Roscosmos State Corporation, ASCON, Rostec, Proton Plant JSC, and Sukhoi Company JSC. One company, NT-MDT, proudly claims that it manages to circumvent Western sanctions while continuing to work with Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

“A project must always have a dual purpose”

A journalist for The Insider spoke with three teenage finalists from Big Challenges (their names have been changed), posing as a reporter from a state media outlet. One of them, Vladislav, who had just turned 18, is a true prodigy: he has independently designed several drones, gives talks at the Academy of Sciences, and is being headhunted by FPV-drone developers. He previously documented his experience in a Telegram channel but has recently taken it down.

Vladislav explained that the competition focuses on projects that have no “mass-produced solutions.” Partner companies bring real, unsolved problems to Big Challenges for the contestants to tackle. The most capable youngsters are offered specialized academic courses funded by these companies and can begin interning with them — at Yakovlev PJSC, for instance — while still in school. Other companies, such as Geoscan, openly request help with real-world projects. According to Vladislav:

“Schoolchildren are actively involved in modeling system nodes for various drones, that much I know. If we're talking about interacting outside of the competition, then obviously everyone keeps [each other's] contacts.”

It is after such competitions that companies begin to actively involve minors in their activities. Vladislav himself is no exception. He developed a fixed-wing drone capable of searching for people, transporting cargo, or carrying a payload, and he now offers it to organizations that train UAV operators, including for the war in Ukraine. A private company that “works with the state” has tested its electronic warfare equipment on his design. When pressed for details, Vladislav refused to name the companies he works with, mentioning only that he had begun cooperating with them at the age of 16 or 17.

A few days after the interview, Vladislav blocked The Insider’s journalist on Telegram and shut down his channel.

Our second interviewee, 17-year-old Maksim, also refused to name the companies he works with, citing “reputational risks” for businesses that could be associated with child labor connected to the war. At the same time, he said, kids always respond to requests from the military. “We need to help our own. We don’t get paid for it, but it’s our conscious choice,” he said. As a consequence of such “consciousness,” children are put to work creating mounts, 3D models of equipment, and release mechanisms for use on the front.

But the cooperation goes even deeper. According to Maksim, some companies that collaborate with the Ministry of Defense set up special “military laboratories” for engineers that include school students. As Maksim’s 15-year-old friend Stas later added, the teenagers are offered flexible hours and piecework pay. Minors need only to present parental permission and sign a contract:

“Almost the same technologies are used for children’s projects and for something serious. I went on a tour of a laboratory that deals with military stuff and was very surprised. The chip [on the drones], the computer — they’re the same as we used in the competition. The technologies are the same, and the software too.”

Maksim believes that the academic supervisors of competitions like Big Challenges understand the dual purpose of the tasks being assigned perfectly well:

“When we were defending [our project in the final], we were forbidden to say that it was needed for the war, and we invented civilian applications. It’s a children’s program. A project must always have a dual purpose, especially when you’re a school student. It's an unwritten rule I've observed at every competition. If the project’s relevance is connected only with the military, that’s very bad. They always tell you to come up with something else.”

In practice, however, the children's ideas are indeed in demand with Russian corporations and are put into practice after being refined. Maksim said this happened with a drone prototype one of the teams created for PJSC Yakovlev. Interestingly, the company failed to mention that the concept was based on a children's contest project.

School students are told not to speak about any of this in public, especially when it comes to the secret military labs. After much persuasion, Maksim named one initiative that routinely recruits academic contest winners: Mashpribor — in all likelihood, the Mashpribor Capacity Building Institute, a Roscosmos entity training specialists for the space and missile industry.

“Normally, companies set up two separate entities — one focused purely on military projects, the other on civilian ones,” Maksim explained. “From what I understand, that’s the case with Geoscan. If a company works in the civilian sector, it doesn’t want to publicize its involvement in military activities.”

Maksim’s friend, the aforementioned Stas, also spoke proudly of his current project for the front: a kamikaze drone designed to strike targets at high speed. As Stas described things:

“Similar projects already exist, but a single unit costs our army 800,000 rubles (around $10,000). It self-destructs when hitting its target, and that's expensive. My task is to bring the cost down to 150,000 rubles (just under $2,000)... I will be testing my design jointly with a group that can put it into production and provide me with funding.”

The idea came from the leader of a UAV club that Stas has attended since he was seven. Stas refused to share the name of the organization, but he revealed that as soon as the full-scale invasion began, the military approached him:

“He was immediately enlisted to help the army build something new. In the first year, we helped train soldiers in piloting and assisted with assembling drones... At the beginning of the special military operation, cool specialists who could teach something were few and far between, so the army enlisted even kids who attended relevant hobby clubs and extracurricular courses.”

Information available in open sources suggests that Stas attends a science club at the Engineering Education Center in Moscow's Vorobyovy Gory area — one led by Konstantin Voloshchuk, a famous “drone racing mentor.”

Stas says that he was 13 when he was training soldiers, while his peers were no older than 16 or 17. He also confirmed that other projects at his science club had a dual purpose:

“We worked on a project titled ‘Delivering water to hard-to-reach places.’ I think it’s obvious what those bottles of water are, right? Think of the shape of a shell and the shape of a water bottle. There's a certain similarity, don't you think?”

“We don't do that. And if we do, it's unofficial.”

To get confirmation from the companies themselves, The Insider’s correspondent, posing as a Big Challenges methodologist, spoke with Mikhail Lutsky, head of educational projects at Geoscan.

Lutsky openly confirmed that last year at Big Challenges there were “guys who were making a drone for the ‘special military operation.’” He added:

“But I didn't monitor whether it went any further than that. There was a topic very similar to the [‘special military operation’]. It was veiled, which I don't like very much...but at the time, I didn't really have a choice.“

Lutsky was referring to the assignment on “drone relays,” which was supervised by the Moscow Polytechnic University and Sky Tech Irbis. On paper, the wording of the assignment sounded completely different — the project task innocuously mentioned that Russia had a large number of territories where it was difficult to deliver cargo, and schoolchildren were supposed to come up with ways to help hard-to-reach regions. In reality, however, they were working on a military task with direct implications for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

As another example of a successfully “disguised” task, Lutsky cites last year's project on a drone detection system supervised by Rosatom. He says that at the time, he was “properly assigned to civilian work, with justification.” Again according to Lutsky:

“The military has its own competitions — INTERA, Aerobot, SKAT — which are directly supervised by the Ministry of Defense. But ordinary people need to be shown where drones will be used in civilian life… Otherwise, children will think that drones are bombs, carriers of death. Even if children themselves want to participate in something military, we must remember that adults, their parents, also read the projects. It could be a completely different story.”

Lutsky confesses that, in 2024, several schoolchildren “helped a little” with Geoscan. At the same time, he maintained that the company had no “connection with the Armed Forces” and that “Geoscan should not be involved in such things.” He then added that it was not within his authority to “talk about what we do” when it comes to technological developments with applications for the frontlines:

“If it's not written anywhere on our official website, then it's not there. We don't do that, I mean. And if we do, it's unofficial.”

When listing the competitions directly associated with the Ministry of Defense, Lutsky mentioned SKAT, which has been held since 2022 under the auspices of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In addition, SKAT was recently allocated a grant from the “Movement of the First,” a state-sponsored youth organization that has been sanctioned by Canada, the European Union, and the United States in connection with the militarization and deportation of Ukrainian children.

The contest's sponsors call it “the place where employers and future employees find each other.” Among its partner companies are Kronstadt, the Ural Civil Aviation Plant (UZGA), and TsNIIAG, all of which are subject to Western sanctions.

The technical specifications for the competition are being developed by the organizing committee. The Insider spoke with its head, Nikolai Tsaturyan, with the correspondent introducing herself as an employee of “Movement of the First” who was reaching out in connection with the grant mentioned above. During the conversation, Tsaturyan referenced the sanctioned aviation company UZGA while confirming that “everything that flies is dual-use”:

“I can't give you specific examples, but UZGA [under international sanctions for manufacturing drones used by the Russian military in Ukraine — The Insider] is regularly interested in the ideas in the report. They are sometimes inspected for this reason. Let's be honest: when schoolchildren and students come and read our assignments, of course, they don't think of a drone delivering grandma's pies, but of a related combat mission.”

According to Tsaturyan, companies often come to the organizers with requests to find employees, and they reciprocate by seeking out talented students who could be useful to their partners.

Archipelago: No child’s play

Berloga's partners also hold another technology event, an intensive program called “Archipelago.”

Back in 2022, Archipelago was a regular multi-sector accelerator that aimed to bring technological sovereignty closer. At that time, it focused on startups, the digital economy, and only occasionally on drones. But in 2023 the intensive course underwent a radical reorientation, after which it has been devoted mainly to unmanned aerial vehicles.

Among the tasks are FPV drone races, hitting moving enemy targets, launching drones from a surface station, conducting reconnaissance and evacuation, searching for targets using thermal imaging, and facilitating autonomous cargo delivery. There are also some original tasks. For example, in one of them, participants had to find a warehouse employee who was sleeping during working hours and make a drone hover over him while flashing blue. How this was supposed to wake the employee up was not specified, but from a technical point of view, the task algorithm is similar to military scenarios: the drone finds the target and hovers over it, signaling capture. Schoolchildren can also take part in the intensive course, provided that they are at least 14 years old.

Archipelago makes no secret of its military orientation. A year ago, the intensive course included the Borshchevik exercise focused on the combat use of drones. The exercise was organized by the Novorossiya Assistance Coordination Center, which prepares drone operators “for the needs of the ‘special military operation.’” Among other tasks, adult participants were instructed to detect and destroy enemy armored vehicles using drones, and they were given the chance to demonstrate their flying skills in conditions of electronic warfare.

Every year, this intensive course is held in different cities, but in July 2022, the occupied city of Sevastopol was chosen as the venue. At the event, companies and individuals talked about their own technical developments, including those in the field of drones. Minors were also involved in the event, as can be seen from the announcement seeking volunteers.

Zarnitsa 2.0: Voluntary-mandatory “education”

Berloga also cooperates with other military initiatives. In 2024, the platform began collaborating with the military-patriotic game Zarnitsa 2.0 (the original Zarnitsa was a Soviet-era capture-the-flag style game that was organized for Young Pioneers). Berloga developed an online course called “Drone Academy,” which participants in Zarnitsa 2.0 use in order to learn basic quadcopter piloting skills. According to the organizers, by the end of 2025, more than 240,000 students will have completed the simulator. The Russian government directly finances the game: in April 2025, the Cabinet allocated 304 million rubles ($3.87 million) for the implementation of Zarnitsa 2.0.

Zarnitsa takes place in several stages, from school contests to federal finals, and it combines physical training with digital tests. Those aged between 7 and 21 can take part, with participants choosing a military specialty for team play: Squad Commander, Military Correspondent, Engineer-Sapper, Medic, UAV Operator, Political Instructor, or Assault Trooper. Almost all of the key tasks reflect real combat missions: schoolchildren compete in air gun shooting, learn to operate reconnaissance drones, and disassemble Kalashnikov assault rifles for speed. At the same time, teachers in some schools have already begun to complain that they and their students are being forced to take part in Zarnitsa 2.0.

Today, the game is run by Movement of the First, along with the military-patriotic association Yunarmiya (lit. “Young Army”) and the military-sports center VOIN (lit. “Warrior”). Yunarmiya, created in 2016 on the initiative of Russia’s Ministry of Defense, now has about 1.8 million members. It is headed by “hero of Russia” Vladislav Golovin, who, according to legend, destroyed three Ukrainian combat vehicles, killing upwards of 20 enemy soldiers over the course of his service. It is expected that in 2025, Yunarmiya will receive a record one billion rubles ($12.7 million) in subsidies from the state budget.

Berloga’s links to Zarnitsa were confirmed by none other than Berloga’s head Alexei Fedoseev in a conversation with a correspondent from The Insider, who identified as a methodologist from the Agency of Strategic Initiatives. When informed that ASI was looking for information on training teenagers to support the front, Fedoseev called these activities “normal practice” and “dual purpose.” He then cited Zarnitsa 2.0 as an example, noting that his initiatives at Berloga align with it.

“These kids need to be found while they’re still very young!”

The mass training of schoolchildren to become part of the Russian military’s drone army is clearly being overseen at the highest level of the Russian government. In June, Putin gave instructions to hold annual drone races for children aged 7 and older, and unsurprisingly, the “Pilots of the Future” competition will be organized by the “Movement of the First.” At the same time, school and university classes on the subject of “Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Homeland” increasingly focus on the topic of UAVs, several Russian students told The Insider.

The “Berloga” platform is clearly intended to have a future. In 2023, Vladimir Putin approved a national project on unmanned aerial systems that aims to develop and distribute drones on a large scale by 2030. It is precisely for this purpose that University 20.35 — another initiative founded by ASI — launched the project “Personnel for Unmanned Aerial Systems.”University 20.35 itself is one of the organizers of the aforementioned Archipelago.

This past June, ahead of the annual intensive course, a “Personnel Forum” was held to discuss how to attract new workers to the industry. One of the speakers was David Ovakimyan, director of the Center for Unmanned Systems at Samara University. Under his leadership, students develop, manufacture, and repair drones. Two years ago, the same center organized activities at the same Archipelago event.

This time around at the “Personnel Forum,” Ovakimyan boasted that he works not only with university students, but also with schoolchildren. And it seemed to be quite by accident that he mentioned the fact that their work is being used for the war:

“Starting in 2022, young people aged 15-18 and older... All these young people have gained value not only at the university but also in the labor market. Some of them are launching their own startups, and many are receiving orders from private individuals. Even more people, if not all, are helping the front as best they can.”

Ovakimyan spoke at length about gifted children who had a “spark in their eyes”: “These kids need to be found while they’re still very young and given the right direction.”

Vasily Shpak, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, was also present at the forum. When asked whether the value of civilian applications for drone development could compensate for the amount of resources that are currently going towards the training personnel for military operation of drones, he replied emphatically that the two spheres were inseparable — a concept that may explain why the development of components for agricultural drones has attracted the support of major military partners such as PJSC Yakovlev and JSC Sukhoi Company. According to Shpak:

“The world is moving in such a way that there is no longer anything purely military or civilian… Technologies that appear on the civilian market are scaled up and then enter the special-purpose markets with a high degree of reliability.

It is obvious that monitoring is a reconnaissance task. Delivery is a task that is relevant both in the civilian market and for special tasks… Transporting something somewhere, dropping something off, getting somewhere, monitoring something, reconnaissance... This is a range of tasks that can be solved using the same algorithms on the same platforms.”

Shpak’s line of argument was backed up by Russia’s Deputy Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Afanasyev, who noted that the government plans to create a unified digital platform that will make “accumulated human resources available to all employers.” Speaking about the plans, he gave a flowery but humorous example from China: “...an agrodrone operator who obtains the relevant qualification in China also receives a military specialty.”

To find out why Afanasyev made this comment — and whether Russia plans to equate agricultural drone operators with military personnel — a correspondent from The Insider called the minister under the guise of a Big Challenges methodologist. Afanasyev confirmed that “dual-purpose specialist training” could be organized in Russia:

“Here's a specific example: when they train agrodrone operators [in China], they also give them a military specialty in special-purpose drone control. There's no clear line; the tech can be used for both military and civilian purposes. When a driver is trained in the DOSAAF system, he can drive a civilian car, a regular car, and a military vehicle. It is a universal specialty. For example, such work could be organized based on DOSAAF…”

Afanasyev mentioned that in the Sakhalin Region, the practice of involving schoolchildren in the topic of unmanned aerial vehicles is being implemented from elementary school. He called it a “valuable and useful initiative” that should be expanded — “Especially since the president's directive implies this.” The deputy minister continued:

“Early involvement creates a funnel from which professionals and specialists will then be formed. And you have to start at an early age, with simple tasks, teaching piloting, programming, design, and repair.

We all heard the president’s directive to hold competitions in the field of drones! The Ministry of Education has decided to include a drone-related category in the All-Russian School Olympiad in Informatics. The development of the [NTI] ‘Club Movement’ includes all the tools that engage schoolchildren and students in this new technological sector.”

It seems that the Russian authorities are gradually trying to legitimize the involvement of children in the production of military drones, and this is evident not only from the words of the deputy minister, but also from narratives spread by state propaganda. Zvezda, the official TV channel of Russia's Ministry of Defense, recently aired a report (shown below) that openly showed and described how schoolchildren are involved in the assembly of Shahed drones (known in Russia as “Geran” after the geranium plant). Thousands of these drones are being used by the Kremlin to terrorize the civilian population of Ukraine.

Not only unethical, but also illegal

Involving children in the projects described above is not only unethical — it also raises serious questions among lawyers. Waging a war of aggression is a crime under both international and Russian criminal law, meaning that the organizers of initiatives that help supply weapons to the front in Russia would qualify as accomplices to a crime, regardless of whether children — or merely adults — were involved. But the recruitment of children represents an aggravating circumstance.

For example, Dr. Sergei Golubok, a prominent lawyer and human rights defender who is admitted to practice before the International Criminal Court notes that involving minors in the production of weapons is illegal: “Such actions violate Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 3 of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 182. The latter prohibits the worst forms of child labor, in which Russia participates.”

International lawyer Ekaterina Deikalo, in turn, also notes that these initiatives violate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:

“This is the deliberate involvement of children, including the use of their abilities and talents in the technical sphere, in assisting with the production of weapons for a war that the state itself has unleashed. All of this certainly does not contribute to the moral development of children and is directly contrary to their preparation for life in a free society ‘in a spirit of peace, dignity, and tolerance’, as required by the convention.”

The lawyer also notes that such centers for the production and development of military drones possibly qualify as legitimate military targets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which means that the Russian state is deliberately putting its own schoolchildren at risk.

For comparison, Ukraine works with schoolchildren in a completely different way. State schools are limited to an updated course called Zahist Ukraini (lit. “Defense of Ukraine”), where children train on simulators, learn first aid, and study the basics of civil defense. Combat FPVs are assembled in local volunteer workshops and sports clubs, and systematic courses on the combat use of drones are only available to adult military personnel. Not to mention that, in ethical and educational terms, preparing children to defend their country is not at all the same as preparing them to participate in a war of aggression, even if the skills required in both cases are largely the same.

At the same time, Russian authorities are actively cultivating a generation that is being taught not to distinguish between civilian and military uses of technology — and which may be prepared to take part in a war of aggression in exchange for a boost to exam scores or the offer of better career prospects.