August 25, 2026:
A growing number of Russian civilians are witnessing Ukrainian drone strikes in their vicinity. Major Russian cities are regularly being attacked, and for over a year Ukrainian drones have been destroying the fuel infrastructure to the point where Russians have an increasingly difficult time finding fuel for their vehicles. Commentators in Russian media dismiss the idea of another revolution, even as many Russians view another 1917 as a reasonable, if desperate, solution to their worsening situation. Contemporary Russia suffers high inflation, growing shortages and unemployment.
The most recent Russian Revolution was in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed into 14 new nations, including Russia and Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine was Russian leader Vladimir Putin's initial effort to reassemble the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians resisted to the point that a growing number of Russians question the wisdom of restoring the Soviet Union. The Special Operation, as Putin describes the war, has killed over half a million Russians and left three times as many with disabilities, visible scars, or bad memories of their time in Ukraine.
The Russian government outlaws public criticism of the war, and broadcast commentators and news readers must comply or lose their jobs. Russian media is full of people saying what people don’t want to hear: that the war will continue until it is won. The Ukrainians are not cooperating; instead, they are doing more of their fighting using air, land, and naval drones. The Ukrainians minimize their own casualties, and currently for every Ukrainian killed or wounded, there are eight Russians. Ukraine is working to make this ten-to-one or more.
Meanwhile, Russia is concentrating on preparing the younger generation for this forever war. In northwestern Russia, a Murmansk lyceum/high school hired former disabled soldiers who had served in Ukraine. The soldiers taught students about the many types of drones and how to care for and operate them. The students also watched videos and were directed to TV shows that showed more footage of the war in Ukraine. A state-controlled TV channel regularly shows videos about the war in Ukraine. Naturally, these videos ignore the enormous casualties Russian forces have taken. Instead, the videos focus on the practical aspects of how the war is fought. There are an increasing number of videos on drone warfare.
Most civilians know what really goes on in Ukraine. Wounded or disabled Ukraine war veterans are constantly returning home and telling their friends and neighbors about the war. The high school students hear about this. While some are discouraged about eventually going to Ukraine, others are willing to accept the challenge, and large signing bonuses are being offered. Large sums, over $20,000 per new soldier, used to be paid. But the state has run out of money, and current high school students will have to decide if much lower signing bonuses are worth the risks. Vladimir Putin says Russia will keep fighting until Ukraine is conquered. Only time will tell how that will work out.
Russia has established thirteen VOIN/Fighter centers. VOIN is used to expose teenagers to military life by giving them military uniforms, regular military orientation, and some training to prepare them for joining the military via conscription or volunteering. The VOIN training for teenagers also includes a lot of education and indoctrination about the importance of patriotism and preparing to defend Russia. This is one of the reasons Russia never refers to its invasion of Ukraine as an invasion. According to the government, the fighting in Ukraine is a Russian internal matter to suppress separatist activity by some people in southern Russia who call themselves Ukrainians and are fighting to create an independent country called Ukraine.
Since 2022, VOIN centers also trained Russian army reservists headed for Ukraine. Recently, the number of reservists called up has overwhelmed the VOIN system, and reservists are sent to Ukraine without any preparation. Losses are higher for these reservists.
The Russian government complains that the Ukrainians, which it calls separatists, have been a problem for a long time but that now they have massive military support from NATO countries. This fits the government claim that the NATO defensive alliance against Russian aggression is a Western conspiracy to surround and subjugate Russia. For centuries, Ukrainians have been fighting Russian efforts to turn them into Russians. When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Ukraine finally became independent. Russia wants Ukraine back as part of Russia.
Russia also revealed a list of several former parts of the ex-Soviet Union, now neighboring countries, that it wants to make part of Russia. Some of those neighbors are NATO members. Ukraine wants to join NATO, and NATO agrees, but only after the Russian invaders have been expelled. So far, the Ukrainian resistance has killed or disabled over a million Russian soldiers and destroyed most modern Russian tanks. In response, Russia took thousands of 1960s-era T-62 tanks out of storage and sent them to Ukraine to provide more targets for Ukrainian tanks and anti-tank weapons. A growing number of the Ukrainian tanks are Western models, which have demonstrated a clear superiority over any Russian tank they encounter.
Defeats and losses in Ukraine are downplayed by Russian media. The government explains, but cannot prove, that the fighting is taking longer because of NATO support; this is supposed to include NATO troops doing much of the fighting. No captured NATO soldiers have been revealed because there aren’t any.
Many Russians, including the teenagers and especially Russians who have served in Ukraine, are dubious about their government’s claims about a purported NATO plot to conquer Russia. Some older Russians remember why the Soviet Union fell apart. It wasn’t because of NATO aggression; it was because most citizens of the Soviet Union saw that the Soviet Union was a failed dictatorship that was not helping the people of Russia. That resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, something the Soviets could not suppress with persuasion, threats, or the use of armed force. The people had made up their minds, and the security forces refused to fight Russians over this. The Soviet Union lost half its population to newly formed nations, including Ukraine, one of the Union's most prosperous regions, and few Ukrainians wanted to remain under Russian domination. This is why a lot of the VOIN training for teenagers is ideological, stressing the importance of preserving Mother Russia above all else.
Another function of VOIN is to train army reservists in combat techniques before they are activated. Most of these reservists will be called up to fight in Ukraine, and VOIN concentrates on that because the VOIN training is likely all that they’ll ever get. Most of these men know what is going on in Ukraine and are not enthusiastic about going there and dying. For Russian troops in Ukraine, morale has been low for some time, and that is visible in the reluctance for Russian attacks to move forward with much determination. Even in the defense, Russian troops are more interested in retreating to Russia than in halting the growing number of Ukrainian attacks. There have been growing incidences of Russian troops deliberately seeking an opportunity to surrender to the Ukrainians. Since the invasion began in early 2022, Ukraine has lost about a third as many troops as Russia. In the last year, Ukraine has been losing proportionately less than before because Ukrainian morale and combat ability have improved, and the Russians have suffered because of that.
VOIN centers matter because, historically, newly conscripted Russians received nothing like the months of basic and advanced training Western recruits received. The results were more effective Western soldiers, and Russian leaders agree Russia should provide the same training and increase the proportion of volunteer, or contract, veterans in the military, especially the army. It was too expensive, as was extensive recruit training. Typically, new recruits get a week or so of orientation, such as how to wear the uniform, recognize different ranks, and respond to them. The recruits are quickly sent off to a unit, where they are supposed to receive “on the job” training but rarely do. Traditionally, this was even done in wartime when civilians suddenly in uniform had to cope and survive as best they could.
In general, VOIN is an effort to address the lack of training new recruits receive, and the lack of training reservists receive, many of whom are veterans of active service. Russia wants and needs to replace their poorly trained and easily killed troops with ones that have had some training to avoid or reduce that problem, with some training these troops had never received before. Whether they actually do so depends on traditional Russian corruption and official Potemkin Village games run by superior officers.
The VOIN training for teenagers is an enhanced version of the familiarization training many, but not all, high school boys have received. Russia wants to make VOIN available everywhere without making it too expensive to maintain everywhere. That will take a considerable effort, which Russia probably can’t afford.