The Liquidation Of A Russian Student Who Signed A "special" Contract Has Been Confirmed For The First Time
He was recruited to be a "UAV operator" and was thrown into attack aircraft.
It has become known about the first Russian student liquidated in Ukraine, who was recruited to join Russian unmanned systems forces in the war. Russian authorities had promised that such recruits would not end up in assault units, but in the case of liquidated Valery Averin from Buryatia, this promise was broken.
Death caught up with the newly minted occupier two weeks after completing his training in Ukraine's Lugansk region. Averin's reported elimination was brought to the attention of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
For the first time, the elimination of a Russian student who signed a "special" contract has been confirmed
Reporters from the Russian Service of the Air Force found a report in open sources about the elimination in Ukraine of a student from the Russian Federation who signed a contact "for UAV operators." This is the first confirmed case after Russian authorities launched an aggressive "recruitment campaign" at educational institutions across Russia.
The case concerns 23-year-old Valery Averin, who was in his final year at the Buryat Republican Technical School of Construction and Industrial Technologies.
He signed a contract on January 3 this year, completed his training as a drone operator on March 24, and was already eliminated in Luhanshchina on April 6, two weeks after his training, according to a post in the official group of Buryatia's Kyakhta district on the Russian network Vkontakte and a BBC publication.
The adoptive mother of the liquidated hijacker Oksana Averina told reporters that she last spoke to Valery on April 2, a few days before he was liquidated. Then he told her that he was "going to a place where there is no communication".
The version of the Russian commanders, the student died as a result of mortar fire.
"The child studied for three months on a UAV, and we put him into an assault, into a meat grinder himself, someone who did not serve in the army," said the occupier's adoptive mother.
She said in a conversation with journalists that earlier in the army Valery was not taken because he was "mentally unstable".
"To serve very much wanted to serve, but in the army he was not taken, mentally unstable, or something, they said. He lied to me, he said he went to earn money at Wildberries. And when I found out that he signed a contract, I almost went crazy. I said, "What have you done? Where did you go?" He said: "Nothing will happen to me, everything will be fine, don't worry," Afanasyeva added.
She claims that together with her adopted son died another student of the same college.
What unit Valery served in, the Russian woman does not know. The ISW, however, indicated that he could have served in the 147th engineer-sapper regiment of the 36th Combined Arms Army of the Russian Armed Forces, which is based near the educational institution in Buryatia where the liquidated student studied.
Russia continues its campaign to recruit students for war
A massive campaign to recruit students for the occupation army in Russia has been launched since December 2025. Educational institutions are holding propaganda events and taking measures to force young Russians to sign contracts.
Students are persuaded: after completing a one-year contract, they will allegedly be able to complete their service and return to their studies. They are promised service "far from the front" exclusively in the ranks of UAV units, from which it is allegedly impossible to transfer them to assault units.
Opposition Russian media have repeatedly emphasized that lawyers who have studied the "special" contracts for the students claim that in fact their service will be indefinite, and that their transfer to the "storm troopers" is absolutely real - unlike the promised return to their studies.
But even in the ranks of UAV units, the life span of the newly minted occupants may turn out to be very short. According to the Air Force, drone operators are a "priority target" for both warring parties. Therefore, "the established figures of losses of drone operators on the Russian side are comparable to the mortality rate in artillerymen units, which shows how dangerous the specialization of 'drone operator' can be now.
In open sources, journalists have found obituaries of at least 920 Russian UAV operators since the beginning of the year.
"Roznaryadka," which the Russian authorities have lowered to educational institutions, provides for the recruitment of at least 2% of students for the contract. That's between 44,000 and 76,000 recruits a year. By the end of this year alone, a plan has been set to recruit 58,000 contract workers into the occupation army in educational institutions.
Sometimes the administrations of educational institutions promise those who sign contracts additional payments.
All these efforts, ISW believes, are part of the "forced secret mobilization" deployed in the Russian Federation against the backdrop of declining recruitment rates and rising casualty rates.
"Russian military bloggers have previously criticized the ineffectiveness of the drone recruitment campaign due to numerous reports and fears that the Russian military command will transfer these students from their units 'to assault units,'" the piece said.