- Russian schools are teaching children how to operate drones, independent outlet iStories reported.
- Some of the students are as young as 12 years old, iStories said.
Russian schools are teaching children how to operate drones, according to independent Russian news outlet iStories.
School administrators in several regions across the country are paying millions of rubles to equip their students with unmanned aerial vehicles and teach them how to pilot them, iStories reported, citing purchase contracts on public record sites.
One middle school in Kaliningrad paid around $177,000 to run drone training, the outlet said, according to a translation from the independent news website Meduza.
Another two schools in St. Petersburg spent one million rubles (around $12,000) on individual drones and plan on offering a course for students ages 12–15 later this year.
The introduction of drones into the school curriculum comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin said in April that "early career guidance will ultimately benefit the country," iStories reported. Several regional officials have also been promoting early military education since then, the outlet said.
The report comes amid a general militarization of Russian schools.
In an intelligence update earlier this year, the British Ministry of Defence tweeted that secondary school students in Russia will be learning basic military skills from September 1 onwards.
The training includes everything from "contingencies for a chemical or nuclear attack" to first aid and "experience firing Kalashnikov rifles," it said.
"The initiatives highlight the increasingly militarized atmosphere in wartime Russia, as well as being a (likely deliberate) evocation of the Soviet Union," it added.