Anti-war YouTube users and bloggers are circulating a list of creators who have promoted the Alabuga special economic zone and its affiliated college, Alabuga Polytech, located in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan. The zone is home to a factory producing one-way attack drones used by the Russian military in Ukraine, and the factory boasts among its workforce an untold number of Alabuga Polytech students. In March, several of these students were featured in a promotional campaign involving some of the creators named on the anti-war activists’ list.
The list is being amplified by Alexei Gubanov, better known by his blogger name Jesus, but also known as JesusAVGN. Gubanov, who opposes Putin’s war in Ukraine and who has been designated as a “foreign agent” in Russia, previously drew attention to an Alabuga Polytech-linked tournament on Twitch, helping to publicize the names of streamers who promoted the center. Those streamers were later banned.
Who is on the list
The description of the list says these videos “create a false impression of Alabuga’s activities as exclusively educational or technological,” and that bloggers who placed the ads, knowingly or not, help justify the militarization of education and human rights violations.
At the time of publication, the list included 472 bloggers with a combined 531.6 million subscribers. Some advertising videos about Alabuga were published quite some time ago. For example, blogger HiMan, who has about 19.5 million subscribers, posted a report about the college three years ago. The video has not been deleted or changed.
The list’s author told The Insider that he tries to include all videos advertising Alabuga Polytech published since 2022, but that the main criterion is whether there is proof the video contained an ad. He said the evidence includes saved WebArchive pages with descriptions and links, as well as subtitles that directly mention the advertising integration.
According to the author, if bloggers quickly delete ads or cut them out of videos, it becomes difficult to document them, as YouTube updates subtitles and third-party services do not always preserve the data in time. He cited blogger Deadp47 as an example, saying the creator cut out the ad in question after publication and reuploaded the video. In some other cases, he said, the past presence of an ad can be judged only by indirect signs, such as user comments.
“I don’t have a specific goal. Ideally, of course, these accounts would be blocked, but I would also be satisfied if Alabuga advertising on YouTube stopped completely. I’m just trying to document it, while others can handle the complaints, restrictions, and so on,” the list’s author told The Insider.
How it worked on Twitch
On April 27, Twitch blocked more than a dozen Russian accounts after they streamed an Alabuga Polytech tournament and carried related advertising. Esports.ru reported that the formal reason was the venue’s inclusion under EU sanctions, which limits the platform’s ability to promote it. The bans were set for 30 days, pending a final decision by moderators.
How students are forced to assemble combat drones
The Alabuga Polytech educational center is located in the Alabuga special economic zone in Russia’s Tatarstan. In 2024, the independent outlet Current Time published an investigation presenting evidence that the polytechnic hires foreign students, including from neighboring Kazakhstan, as interns to assemble drones that are later used in attacks on Ukraine. The polytechnic’s own students also assemble drones.
In March, the independent science-focused outlet T-invariant reported that Alabuga Polytech and the Alabuga special economic zone had launched a major advertising campaign to recruit college students to assemble Iranian-designed Shahed one-way attack drones, whose Russian-manufactured variants are known as the “Geran” (meaning "Geranium").
The outlet said it obtained nearly 6.5 gigabytes of promotional videos in which underage students openly discuss working in drone production. It said the materials marked the first time Alabuga-linked ads directly mentioned combat drone assembly; notably, they showed workshops featuring the distinctive black drones.
In one video, a 16-year-old first-year student says she expects to start earning a significant salary next year by assembling drones, and that her parents are proud of her. Another student says he already earns 150,000 rubles ($1,900) a month by working as an incoming inspection specialist at the “largest drone production plant in the world.” Another participant in the videos says his father called him “a real man” after he began working at the factory. The archive was titled “Lodki” (lit. “Boats”) — a term open source intelligence (OSINT) researchers say Alabuga has used for several years to disguise its production of combat drones.
The Insider established that at least some of these teenagers are indeed students at Alabuga Polytech, and that they are from various regions of Russia, including Tatarstan and Moscow.
It is also reported that an advertising agency offered bloggers paid integrations using these videos. According to one blogger, companies looking to post a 25-second advertisement in this format must pay influencers between 250,000 ($3,200) and 1.5 million rubles ($19,000), depending on the size of the channel’s audience. While such compensation from companies looking to promote their product is not uncommon, the blogger said this was the first time a potential advertiser had specifically made mention of Shahed drone production. By his estimate, tens of millions of rubles are spent on a campaign of this kind. One promotional post using these videos has already appeared on the pro-war “Rybar” channel, which has an audience of more than 1.5 million subscribers.
