„Sie säen nur Chaos, Aggression und Böses“ Wie russische Universitäts- und Hochschulleitungen Studenten in den Krieg schicken

**Translation:**

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The recruitment of Russian students into contract military service has reached a new level of scale and coercion. Human rights defenders are already calling it a second mobilization — this time among college and university students. It all began with persistent agitation, when students were literally locked in rooms during screenings of patriotic films. Now, after university administrations were given “recruitment quotas,” students are threatened with expulsion for refusing to sign contracts, and are also deceived with promises that they will not have to fight. Some of those who signed contracts under pressure are set to be sent to the front as early as late February.

**“Now I am very scared”**

A second-year student from Vladivostok, 19-year-old Artem (the names of all interviewees have been changed for security reasons), signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense under threat of expulsion. He was promised service in a local military unit; no one mentioned deployment to another region, let alone the war in Ukraine.

— All January they were supposed to attend some strange events. Meetings with SVO participants, films (rah-rah patriotic). At first they focused specifically on students in “instrument engineering” and “informatics.” Then other technical majors were brought in. And after that they started “working on” everyone, — Artem recalls. — They said they were forming a special “university company” of “drone operators.” At first they convinced us that we “wouldn’t even cross the border.” At the third gathering they said we would remain in Vladivostok, serving in a local unit — just testing drones that would later be sent to the front. When even that didn’t attract volunteers, they began to threaten us. My classmate and I, who had both failed one subject in the winter session, were told we would not be allowed to retake it before the end of the academic year (as they had promised in January). That is, we would be kicked out of the university for “poor performance” if we didn’t sign the contract. They promised an academic leave for the contract year, saying we would return later and finish our studies. “And if you don’t sign, no one will reinstate you later.” I signed because I was afraid my parents would kill me when they found out about the expulsion.

At the beginning of February, Artem told his mother about the contract.

— Mom found a lawyer. He said they won’t leave me here as any kind of “drone operator”; I need to file a refusal, even though it’s late. We submitted a contract withdrawal on the Defense Ministry website; now I’m being summoned to the military enlistment office on Uborevich. I’m afraid to go there. The lawyer believes they might take me away right from there — at the very least to a unit. He will go himself with my mom, — Artem says. — Now I am very scared. And I can’t even leave — I don’t have a passport.

Students at Petrovsky College in St. Petersburg say they signed contracts under pressure around the same time and are now being threatened with deployment to the front as early as late February.

— I study programming at Petrovsky College. In January recruiters from the enlistment office on Fontanka (the commissariat at 90 Fontanka Embankment) started coming to us, — says 18-year-old student Sergey from Vyborg. — They said you could “get a 200,000-ruble salary repairing and testing UAVs… Basically paid internship.” They said we would be handling security remotely and only in St. Petersburg. That no student would be sent to the front because “they’re not beasts.” I’m on paid tuition; my mother struggles to find the money. I thought I would help her and, well, get practical experience. Now they are telling us to prepare to be sent “beyond the line” as UAV operators. My mother found out and now won’t let me go to college.

According to Sergey, at least 10 Petrovsky College students signed contracts. The project “Get Lost,” which helps people leave Russia, including those seeking to avoid participation in the war, reported that several students from this institution contacted them in early February. This week they sent human rights defenders a panicked message saying they were being threatened with “deployment to the front” at the end of February.

The project also received another complaint from a Higher School of Economics student who received a “notice of expulsion.”

— In the letter, the student is offered an “alternative to expulsion” — to sign a “special contract” with the Russian Ministry of Defense for a one-year term “on a voluntary basis.” The text states that the student will be granted academic leave for the duration of the contract and will be able to resume studies afterward, — says one of the project’s coordinators. — The letter also asks for a decision within three days.

According to human rights defenders, the emails to HSE students were sent by a specialist in academic support at the undergraduate program office of the Faculty of Computer Science at HSE.

— We have received reports of similar deception and coercion from students in various regions. At Bauman Moscow State Technical University, recruitment materials appear in the official student app. In Nizhny Novgorod, students were forcibly gathered for a meeting with people in uniform. In Essentuki, recruitment took place right during a class at a technical school, and at RUT MIIT contract offers were sent to both male and female students, — representatives of “Get Lost” say. — At the Moscow college named after N. N. Godovikov, students were assigned a mandatory meeting about contracts in the UAV troops. This is an absolute lie — there will, of course, be no deployment specifically as “drone operators.” A signature on the contract means the Defense Ministry can send the servicemember anywhere and as anyone. Most often — as an assault trooper.”

**‘The new army — is you’**

Students of the college affiliated with Kazan Innovative University who refused to sign a contract are also being intimidated with expulsion.

Without explanation, students who had outstanding credits and exams were called to a meeting, the outlet *Groza* writes, where director Yulia Khadiullina stated that all of them would be expelled, but first “military commissars” would speak to them.

‘The conversation will be about the fact that at the present moment our country is in a special military operation. At the present moment the country needs warriors. Among those who may become warriors are young men who are 18 years old. And therefore the new army will be created from those students who can no longer be considered students — that is you,’ Khadiullina said.

According to her, they “can no longer remain” at the college, and the lists of people who “do not attend classes and are maximally failing the curriculum” can no longer be “hidden” from the military enlistment office.

‘Each of you spat on what we warned you about. And I do not feel the slightest pity that each of you will be expelled. But each of you has opportunities. The country believes in you,’ the college director stated.

When students said they still had time left to retake exams, Khadiullina replied that she had “said what she said.” She also promised to hold a discussion “in a different tone” with students who have no academic debts.

‘With them there will be a conversation about duty to the motherland, about their voluntary consent or refusal. With you we are speaking differently, because for you life at the college is over.’

After the director spoke, a representative of the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, who introduced himself to the students as Andrei, addressed them. According to him, he came from Yeysk, Krasnodar Krai, to “open someone’s eyes, to persuade someone.”

He spoke about the “favorable conditions” from the Ministry of Defense, according to which former students would allegedly serve “not on the territory of the SMO,” but in a unit in Yeysk. At the same time, the serviceman called such a contract “alternative service.” He then explained that he cannot mention “the word starting with ‘k’” (contracts) so as not to frighten them. For this reason, the serviceman explained, he called the service for students “alternative.”

‘Do not think that we travel around cities, regions, and republics and offer young guys to go to war and die there <…> For some reason every parent thinks that if a son goes into the army — not for conscription, but for alternative service — they think their son will go and die, that we took their son and we are such villains. But that is not so.’

Another serviceman told students about the unmanned systems troops and offered them to join the ranks of “drone operators.” He explained that such troops “must be assembled in the shortest possible time” from students “who know computers.” In return, he promised not to send the students “to the ass-end of the world.”

For the entire hour and a half that the meeting lasted, the college students were not allowed to leave the room.”