The BBC has identified the first verified case of battlefield losses among Russian college students recruited to serve in the country’s drone forces. The publication found that Valery Averin, a 23-year-old student from Buryatia, died near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on April 6, just days after being sent to the front.
Averin signed a contract with Russia’s Defense Ministry in early January and trained as a drone operator. His foster mother, Oksana Afanasyeva, said his training ended in late March. On April 2, he called her for the last time and said he was going somewhere with “no network coverage.” On April 8, she was told her son had been killed by mortar fire.
“The boy spent three months training how to fly drones, and then they sent him into an assault, into the worst meat grinder — someone who had never served in the army,” Afanasyeva said. She said Averin had wanted to serve in the military but had not been accepted: “They said he was mentally unstable or something. He deceived me, said he had gone to earn money at [retail platform] Wildberries. And when I found out he had signed a [military] contract, I nearly lost my mind.”
Valery Averin was raised in an orphanage until age 11, then placed with a foster family. At the time he signed the contract with the Russian armed forces, he was in his final year at the Buryat Republican Technical Vocational School of Construction and Industrial Technologies.
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced the creation of the Unmanned Systems Forces in mid-2025, establishing a counterpart to the military branch created in Ukraine in early 2024. A campaign to recruit students from educational institutions across the country soon followed.
The Insider has reported that Russian college students are being drawn into service with promises of large payments or tuition-free places, while also facing threats of expulsion or being barred from exams.
