Russian preschools, schools, universities have spent over $213 million on 'educational' drones since 2022, media reports

Prefer on Google by Francis Farrell Photo for illustrative purposes. A Russian boy seen putting together a toy drone. Photo taken from the website Russian national union of educational equipment providers. (NSPPO) Russian educational institutions — all the way from universities down to preschools — have spent a total of over sixteen billion rublers ($213 million) on drones of various shapes and sizes for "educational purposes," Russian independent media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on April 20. The figure, calculated in an investigation by the outlet , comes as Russia continues to militarize its society, with a specific focus on children, preparing the next generations for joining the country's future wars. Before the full-scale war, the figure for drones bought stood at only 350 million rubles (around $4.7 million at current rates) per year, the piece wrote, with most of that sum coming from technical colleges. Now, drones are being bought even by kindergartens, including the "Little Light" preschool in Tyumen Oblast, and the "Pearl" kindergarten in the far eastern city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. While schoolchildren are often taught how to fly drones at a young age in Russia, the article pointed out that it is not possible to determine what exactly the drones bought would be used for. One of the main recipients of contracts to provide educational institutions with drones, the article wrote, was St Petersburg company Geoscan, linked directly to a foundation chaired by none other than Yekaterina Tikhonova, daughter of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Moscow's effort to militarize and indoctrinate its young people into preparedness to fight Ukraine and Russia's other "enemies" in the West continues to deepen, also reaching Russian-occupied territories inside Ukraine and the Ukrainian children living there.