Moscow Seeks to Quadruple University Students Training to Manufacture Drones

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 19 – The Russian government wants to boost the number of university-level students preparing to manufacture drones to 40,000 by 2025 and to 180,000 by 2030 and has committed 57.7 billion rubles (570 million US dollars) to the project, 5.3 billion rubles (53 million US dollars) in the next year alone.

            According to a study by the Groza portal, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the transformation of higher education in the Russian Federation intended to put the country on a war footing for decades ahead and to lead graduates to view all aspects of life through a military lens (groza.media/posts/militarizazzzia).

            Among the other ways in which Moscow is militarizing higher education in Russia, Groza lists the following, documenting the situation in various universities and providing extensive footnotes for its reporting:

·       Introducing courses on hybrid war which argue that all actions by the West regarding Russia should be seen as part of a war against it rather than as the norm of international relations,

·       Introducing or expanding military training at the university level,

·       Expanding the training for military journalists,

·       Redoing history coursework to include more on Russia and on the Russian state,

·       Providing free stipends to children of siloviki and those who have fought for Russia in Ukraine,

·       Introducing siloviki into positions of authority in universities,

·       Expelling anti-war faculty and students from higher educational institutions,

·       Having students and faculty collect materials for the army, and

·       Redecorating universities to stress military and patriotic themes.