Will Belarusian Students Be Sent To Siberia?

Russia plans to involve them in the construction of the highway.

Deputy Head of the Supervisory Board of the Russian Student Brigades (RSO) and member of the Public Council of the Russian Ministry of Transport Alexey Poteyko announced to the TASS news agency plans to involve Belarusian students in an “international project as part of the construction of the Omsk Northern Bypass” as early as 2027.

According to him, the project is set to be designated as an international one: “We want to designate the construction of the Omsk Northern Bypass as an international project. We plan to organize the ‘Irtysh—River of Friendship’ project here. Preliminary agreements have been reached with student groups from both the Republic of Belarus and the Republic of Kazakhstan.”

According to TASS, in 2025, the Russian Student Corps (RSC) included over 400,000 students and high school students from 85 Russian regions, who, it is claimed, “gained their first work experience, received a decent salary, and made a significant contribution to the country’s development.” No data is provided on the number of international students involved in such projects.

The Omsk Northern Bypass is a 66-kilometer highway whose construction began last fall. The project involves the construction of two bridges across the Irtysh and Om Rivers, five interchanges, and nineteen overpasses. According to the plan, the four-lane highway, designed for a speed of 120 km/h, is intended to divert transit traffic outside the city—which has a population of over one million and is located in the southern part of Western Siberia, beyond the Ural Mountains.

As previously reported by the Mogilev-based project of human rights activists and journalists MAYDAY TEAM, a 26-member student team from the Belarusian-Russian University set out at the end of May for the second year in a row to work in the railway industry in Russian Yakutia. The students, who were trained by BelZhD as track maintenance workers, are engaged in restoring the railroad tracks on the so-called “Small BAM” — a 400-kilometer section connecting the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is noteworthy that this line was originally built by prisoners of Soviet labor camps in permafrost conditions.

According to “Pozirk”, it is known that the Mogilev and Bobruisk medical colleges are sending student teams to Perm and Chelyabinsk to participate in the all-Russian national projects “Parma” and “Clinic,” implemented by order of Vladimir Putin.

It is worth noting that the situation in most Russian regions remains unsafe today. For example, on July 6, Omsk—which was mentioned earlier—was attacked by Ukrainian drones, even though this region of the Russian Federation is about 2,500 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. The strike hit a local oil refinery.

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