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Replacing the dead and wounded has become key to maintaining Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and authorities have presented the scheme that Averin [a former student turned soldier whose death has been verified by the BBC] was recruited through as a voluntary route into a modern, high-tech and relatively safe branch of the military.

Students are offered a special one-year contract to serve in a new branch of the military known as “unmanned systems troops” - as drones have become central to the war in Ukraine.

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[Averin’s] mother believes he was not used as the protected technical specialist he had expected to become: “He said nothing would happen to him.”

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