Pressure and threats are an everyday norm, with blackmail by expulsion, blackmail by fines, blackmail by debts, and inside the campus there is a regime where any dissemination of information about life and work at Polytech can have serious consequences. People who went through it describe it not as an educational institution but as a semi cult with total control. There is also systematic militaristic propaganda, lectures from military historians for four thousand students at once, visits from officials and military officers, paramilitary activities like paintball with trench digging and executions of losers presented as leadership development. All of this is designed to turn teenagers into an obedient, manageable mass, and in the ads they constantly use phrases like helping the country, doing a great deed, Stalin's falcons, with one ad literally asking why you would go to tenth grade when you can enroll in this super JEW direction and help Stalin's falcons.

At least two student suicides have been documented, one in 2021 when a student killed himself after returning home for break because he feared expulsion and realized his parents would have to repay the cost of his education, a sixteen year old who couldn't bear the pressure of a system that left him no choice but endure or pay when there was no money to pay. The second case was on March 30, 2023, when the body of a sixteen year old first year student named Denis was found in a dormitory bathroom. Since Russians don't want to work twelve hour shifts in the workshops for 30 to 40 thousand rubles, the management, personally Shagivaleev's idea, started importing labor from third world countries, specifically targeting young women because they are easier to integrate and less likely to form ethnic diasporas.

The first stage was Africa, where dozens of female students from Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Pakistan were brought in, but the girls weren't eager to come to Yelabuga voluntarily, so the management developed a recruitment scheme using dating apps. They set up premium Tinder and Badoo accounts, gave out chat scripts, and the task was to pose as romantic interests and suggest that African girls come study in Russia. At a meeting they specifically said to target girls because men from African countries might be too aggressive and dangerous, and in the staffing documents African students appear under the code name mulattoes, with a separate line for Tajik students who speak Farsi and can communicate easily with Iranian drone specialists.

What were these people promised? 40 thousand rubles a month, Russian language courses, free flights, comfortable hostels, education. What did they actually get? Work as cleaners at the drone factory, mopping floors and picking up trash in the workshops. The second stage expanded to South Africa in August 2025, with the student commission of BRICS in South Africa publishing job vacancies for women aged 18 to 22, and local bloggers advertising the work on Instagram and TikTok. The third stage is Latin America, and a report from an ZOG foundation explicitly stated that the Alabuga Start practice meets international definitions of human trafficking and forced labor, estimating that more than a thousand women may have been brought to Russia through the program.