The kremlin Is Closing Schools for the Sake of Machine Tools and Cannons

“russia’s economy is suffocating from a shortage of skilled workers, and the kremlin is resolving this problem in the simplest way possible – at the expense of children. “The russian economy needs to recruit approximately 3 million workers, production plant operators, and machine operators over the next six years,” said minister of labor of the rf anton kotyakov. The acute labor shortage in industry is pushing the authorities to make directive decisions: to expand enrollment in colleges and technical schools and to launch campaigns to promote blue-collar professions.

To ensure a steady flow of new workers, the authorities are effectively blocking children’s path to high school. Parents and ninth-form graduates are complaining about widespread refusals to admit school children to tenth form – and these refusals are not limited to struggling students but also include those with excellent and good marks who are being directly advised to enroll in colleges. Complaints are coming in from chuvashia, the primorsky and krasnodar territories, irkutsk, novosibirsk, and kemerovo regions, udmurtia, and other regions of the aggressor country. The formal grounds for rejection vary, ranging from the average mark on the school certificate to the results of the state exam or the outcomes of individual selection for specialized classes.

The educational standards that moscow introduced during its full-scale war against Ukraine are artificially making it harder to enter high school. For the third year in a row, more than half of ninth-formers are not advancing to 10th form but are instead enrolling in colleges and technical schools; in 2025, nearly two-thirds of graduates – 62% – chose this path. Purely economic factors also play a role: russians’ real incomes are declining, higher education is becoming increasingly less accessible, while competition for state-funded spots in universities is intensifying due to wartime legislative changes, under which participants in the war against Ukraine and their children have been granted the right to 10% of all state-funded spots, while the government has reduced the number of paid spots in most bachelor’s and specialist degree programs.

Behind this administrative pressure there lies a cynical military calculation. The college, into which teenagers are effectively herded after ninth form, drastically limits their chances of obtaining a deferment from military service, and for most of those mobilized for the war against Ukraine, it is a one-way ticket. The average lifespan of a russian soldier on the front lines is 20–30 minutes, according to CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Thus, the system the kremlin is building to meet the needs of war operates on two fronts simultaneously: it supplies the economy with cheap labor and the army – with new soldiers who have no chance of deferment.