🛰️Generation Kamikaze: How Russia Turned Drone Games into a Child-Soldier Assembly Line...
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By: The WTF Global Times Investigation Bureau (Kid-Safe, Not Kremlin-Safe)
MOSCOW, JULY 2025 — In a scene that might make George Orwell crawl out of his grave just to yell "I told you so," the Russian Federation has perfected the fine art of turning video games, school competitions, and innocent teenage geekery into a conveyor belt of teen-engineered death drones. It’s not a sci-fi horror reboot — it’s state policy, and Putin signed off on it. Twice.
Welcome to Berloga, comrades — where your high school project might vaporize a Ukrainian kindergarten.
Berloga (which ironically means "Bear's Den" but functions more like "Drone Gulag for Gifted Teens") is a Russian state-backed platform that teaches kids how to build UAVs by gamifying war. Through cutesy metaphors like "bees" (read: Ukrainians) attacking "energy honey" (read: Russian resources), children as young as seven are taught the joys of soldering circuits that could one day drop a bomb on Kharkiv.
When you beat the final boss in Call of Duty, you get a cutscene. When you beat the final boss in Berloga, you get recruited by the Ministry of Defense.
From Lego to Lethal in Three Summer Camps
The system is elegant in its evil: start the kid on Berloga’s drone game, introduce them to Sirius Center’s "Big Challenges," hook them with extra exam points and scholarships, and by age 15, they’re building UAV targeting software for Almaz-Antey — the very company producing missiles that strike Ukrainian cities. And they’re proud of it. (Because patriotism + perks = plausible deniability.)
One 16-year-old, who we’ll call Vladislav the Drone Whisperer, designed a kamikaze drone that he proudly tested for electronic warfare systems. His Telegram channel (before it was mysteriously deleted) featured photos of his flying contraptions and testimonials from soldiers praising his 'designs.' He now interns — unpaid, of course — for defense contractors too embarrassed to put him on payroll but thrilled to have his designs.
Meanwhile, his classmate Sasha teaches soldiers how to pilot drones.
Sasha is 13.
The Homework Assignment Was: Build a Deathbot
The 'Big Challenges' competition is the Hogwarts of Kremlin militarism — just swap magic spells for missile telemetry. In one event, students worked with Yakovlev PJSC to improve drone navigation in forests (a.k.a. Ukrainian forests). In another, they built drone detection systems for Rosatom — yes, that Rosatom — which currently controls the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
Winners got bonus university points. Losers probably got PTSD.
Then there’s Archipelago — a tech boot camp so nakedly militaristic it might as well hand out camo Crocs. Assignments include "hitting moving targets," "drones in electronic warfare," and waking up lazy warehouse staff by hovering drones over their faces. (Because what's more motivational than a flying Roomba trained in psychological torture?)
Fedoseev, the headmaster of this airborne circus, shrugs off ethical concerns. It's dual-purpose, he says. Everything has dual purpose — especially children, apparently.
Zarnitsa 2.0: Now With More PTSD!
To ensure every child gets a shot at drone-ified glory, the state has resurrected Zarnitsa — a Soviet-era kids' military game — in a new and deeply disturbing avatar. Zarnitsa 2.0 blends dodgeball with drone strikes, air rifle disassembly, and quadcopter bombing practice. Sponsored by "The Movement of the First," a youth group under sanctions for deporting Ukrainian children, Zarnitsa now trains over 240,000 Russian kids annually.
One task in the competition: simulate water delivery to remote areas. The students designed bottles that just happened to look like mortar shells. Coincidence? Not in Putin’s Russia.
Funny Trump Comments
"I built towers, they build drones. The only flying thing I trained kids to use was a helicopter ride at Mar-a-Lago! And nobody got blown up! Not even the Democrats — though they deserved it."
"You know, Putin is out here building child drones, and Biden can't even build a sentence. SAD!"
The Ethics Fairy Has Left the Chat
International law is throwing legal dictionaries at this one. Human rights lawyers are lighting their hair on fire. The Convention on the Rights of the Child? Ignored. ILO Convention 182? Burned in a patriotic bonfire. The Geneva Conventions? Apparently, those are "Western myths" like climate change and honest elections.
One Russian Deputy Minister explained that in China, agricultural drone pilots are also trained as military drone operators. His idea? Russia should copy that. Because when you’re out of ethics, outsourcing child militarization becomes a form of innovation.
Top Comment Picks
@DroningOnAndOn: "I built Lego robots for a science fair. These kids build missile-guided hovercrafts. I feel both useless and terrified."
@MothersOfTheMotherland: "Can someone explain how 'energy honey' became a euphemism for murder? Asking for a traumatized third-grader."
@BoomerangBoris: "This reminds me of the time I cheated in CounterStrike and got banned. Now I see kids being rewarded for real-world kills. What a timeline."
Final Thought
In 2025, Russia has achieved something truly postmodern: the militarization of childhood as national policy, cloaked in patriotic ed-tech buzzwords. They don’t call it "child soldiering." They call it "career development." They don’t say "war." They say "energy honey defense."
And while the rest of the world debates AI ethics and teen screen time, Russia is gamifying genocide — one high school hackathon at a time.
Next Week on WTF Global Times:
"Nap Time in North Korea: How Kindergarteners Are Learning to Spot Spy Balloons During Recess"
Or...
"The AI That Prays for Putin: Inside Russia’s New OrthodoxGPT"
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