Moscow university tightens expulsion rules as students allege military recruitment drive

Russia’s Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics, and Automation (MIREA) has changed its student expulsion policy, students at the university told the Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti. Under the new rules, students with even a single outstanding academic debt face expulsion. Previously, students were not expelled until they had accumulated five or more unresolved course failures. All outstanding academic debts must be cleared by April 15.

Students said the new rules, which they learned about from the university’s academic office, were introduced following an “active campaign” to recruit students with academic debts into the drone forces.

“In practice, almost no tuition-paying students will be left at MIREA after this, and they want to expel them as quietly and imperceptibly as possible — most likely to then direct the expelled students toward signing a contract, since the contacts and names of debtors have been collected very actively in recent months,” students told the Russian Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti.

On April 1, the independent Russian political newsletter Faridaily reported that authorities had set Russian universities a quota for recruiting contract soldiers for the war — 2 percent of their student enrollment. Before that, the independent Russian investigative outlet iStories reported that Russia’s Defense Ministry planned to recruit 78,800 people into the drone forces by the end of 2026, including students.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked by journalists to comment on reports of students being recruited for the war, said he had no knowledge of the matter. He did acknowledge that a campaign was underway in Russia to recruit for “new forces,” without specifying that these were the drone forces.