4 hours ago
3
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
After a stint with a drone unit led by a member of Parliament, Russian officials return to work, and promotions, garlanded as war veterans. Most soldiers are stuck in indefinite deployments.
May 25, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
For the past three years, many young men in Russia have been doing everything they can to avoid getting sent to fight in the war against Ukraine.
But some Russians are enthusiastically signing up for service in what President Vladimir V. Putin has called the battle for his nation’s survival by joining a drone brigade offering short stints far from the fighting.
Pro-war Russian bloggers have described the unit, Kaskad, as a “sinecure for officials.” Based in an undisclosed location in a part of Ukraine occupied by Russia, it provides a career boost to politically minded recruits, according to Kremlin watchers and military analysts who have labeled Kaskad a “V.I.P. unit.”
Hundreds of thousands of Russian men have been called up to fight in Ukraine since 2022 and have been kept at the front as a terrible death toll mounts by the day. But stints with Kaskad tend to be short-term. And given that it is a drone unit away from the front lines, the chances of being put in danger’s way are relatively small, analysts say.
Officials assigned to the unit usually stay three to eight months, get plenty of photo ops with automatic rifles and return to their jobs in Russia with a hero’s welcome, according to numerous social media posts in which recruits have documented their deployments, and accounts pieced together by military analysts.
“Enlistment with Kaskad allows Russian elite figures to sidestep statutory Russian military service requirements with guaranteed safety and potentially curry favor with the Kremlin,” Britain’s defense ministry said last year.
