, The Daily Beast ; Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids
"Children as young as 7 are now being forced to join Vladimir Putin’s dystopian drone war, which rained down attacks on Kyiv on Thursday that left 23 people dead, including four kids.
The 7-year-olds are not directly involved in the war in Ukraine, but in a chilling escalation, they will be trained as future drone pilots as part of their education in school from next year. And then, starting in ninth grade, children are being actively recruited to work in a drone factory that is part of a college where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are sent to kill civilians in Ukraine are being manufactured.
Conditions are brutal in the drone factory at Alabuga college, 600 miles west of Moscow, with allegations of bullying and physical abuse. One of the young workers, who asked to be called Kate, told the Daily Beast that she was being reprogrammed into an “unbreakable” part of Putin’s war machine...
Putin said drone piloting had to become a part of the school program to teach children “to pilot, assemble and construct drones.”
“I am convinced that it will make the kids busy with something useful and interesting, distract them from things they should not be doing,” he explained."
