“He studied drones for three months – and yet they still threw him into a frontal assault, into the meat grinder,” said Valery Averin’s foster mother Oksana Afanayeva.
The 23-year-old is among the first Russian students known to have been killed in Ukraine after signing up as part of a new large-scale drive to recruit young people from universities and colleges into Russia’s drone forces.
“He had never even served in the army,” Afanasyeva complained.
The campaign to encourage students at universities, technical colleges and vocational schools to sign army contracts began early this year, as Russia sought to sustain its war effort into a fifth year. It has focused particularly on those struggling academically or considering taking a break from their studies.
Drone units have been presented as a more elite and technically advanced path through the war.
Averin grew up in an orphanage in eastern Siberia until he was taken into foster care aged 11. By the time he was recruited into the army he was in his final year at the Buryat Republican Technical School of Construction.
Early in April, he called his foster mother to say he was being sent somewhere “with no [phone] signal”, and that she should not worry.
Initially he said he had gone away to earn money at Wildberries, a Russian online retailer, and she was shocked to find out he had signed a military contract and had completed training as a drone operator.
“He told me: ‘Nothing will happen to me, everything will be fine.'”
A week later, on 8 April, she learned he had been killed in a mortar strike near Russian-occupied Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
Vladislav Gorbunov, an 18-year-old from the small town of Unecha 70km (43 miles) north of the Ukrainian border died 4 months after signing a contract – on 6 April.
He had studied railway construction and maintenance at his local State Technical School of Sectoral Technologies and Transport and was initially sent to an infantry frontline assault unit before being transferred to a drone operators’ unit.
Rakhim Abdullin had enrolled at Kumertau Mining College to train as a welder two years ago, but his studies did not work out and in January, little more than two weeks after his 18th birthday, he signed a military contract aiming to become a drone operator as it seemed a safe option.
“But once he got there, it turned out not to be safe at all,” his mother Elena explained. “Because they see the assault troops too, and they are right on the front line.”
By 13 March he was dead. “He left quickly, and he came back quickly,” she said.
The three former students – Abdullin, Gorbunov and Averin – are among 230,407 Russian soldiers and officers whose deaths have been verified by the BBC, based on analysis of cemeteries, war memorials, government registers and obituaries.
The real death toll is believed to be far higher, and military experts believe our analysis of open source reflects 45-55% of the total number. That would put the real death toll at between 417,000 and 509,500. The UK’s biggest spy agency, GCHQ, said in May the number was almost 500,000.
Ukraine’s losses are also very high. President Volodymyr Zelensky last acknowledged 55,000 deaths in February 2026, as well as a large number who were missing.
An anonymous Ukrainian website suggests the total number of military deaths may reach 213,000, and Dutch military intelligence puts the number of dead, wounded and missing at about 500,000.
