Classes aimed at introducing schoolchildren to the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have started in Russia’s Kursk Region, which declared itself one of the first in the country to have fulfilled a corresponding instruction from the federal government, according to a report by Governor Alexander Khinshtein.
The first lessons were held at School No. 23 in the city of Kursk. Those attending included upper-grade students from the school, as well as students from the Goncharovskaya School in the Sudzha District, who are now studying there as well after their town was taken and held by Ukrainian forces from August 2024 through March 2025. The children learned about various types of unmanned aerial vehicles, their characteristics, and their range of potential uses. They also learned how to detect enemy drones.
Similar classes are slated to appear in all schools in the region — which borders Ukraine — in the near future. Teaching will be done by six active-duty servicemen from the “North” grouping of forces who are personally involved in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Khinshtein explained the choice of the teachers by saying that they “continue to hone their skills daily in practice.” The lessons make up part of a course titled “Fundamentals of Security and Defense of the Motherland” (or OBZR after its Russian-language acronym).
The introduction of lessons on UAVs in Russian schools is taking place against the backdrop of a large-scale militarization of education. In January 2026, the Russian government approved a list of equipment for OBZR classrooms that included drone construction kits, hardware-and-software complexes for drone piloting, and equipment for drone races. As early as 2023 — before such training became part of a nationwide standard — schools in several Russian regions bought their own “training UAVs” for sums of up to 9.4 million rubles (over $122,000).
Kursk Region governor Khinshtein, for his part, called the new lessons a “reincarnation of [Soviet-era] aeromodeling clubs” and said he was confident that having skills in operating drones would give schoolchildren a competitive advantage in the future.