YouTube begins taking down videos advertising Russia’s Shahed drone-building Alabuga Polytech college, at least 61 clips disappear overnight

Judging by copies preserved in the Web Archive, all the deleted videos contained advertising integrations for Alabuga or Alabuga Polytech. Some of the removed videos even included links to Alabuga in their descriptions. At the same time, other YouTube videos with similar advertisements remain available. It is not yet possible to determine whether this was a one-off action or the start of systematic moderation. There is currently no information about channel-wide bans, as only individual videos have been removed.

The Insider previously reported that anti-war activists and bloggers had begun circulating a list of YouTube creators who advertised Alabuga and its associated polytechnic school. The list includes bloggers who published sponsored integrations without mentioning reports that students may have been involved in producing attack drones. As of now, the list includes 472 bloggers with a combined audience of more than 531 million subscribers.

Gubanov told The Insider that YouTube, like Twitch, may be taking into account Alabuga’s sanctions status and the risks associated with promoting an organization that appears on sanctions lists. TikTok had earlier begun removing videos advertising Alabuga. At least 122 videos were blocked, along with the pages of several major creators, including Sasha Otesayy, Regina WTF, Yan Shaimukhametov, and Sofia Raikunova.

On April 27, reports confirmed that Twitch had blocked more than a dozen Russian accounts that streamed from an Alabuga Polytech tournament and carried advertising for it. According to Esports.ru, the reason was the fact that the venue is under EU sanctions.

Alabuga Polytech is located in the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan. Earlier investigations by Current Time, T-invariant, and The Insider reported that students at the center are involved in drone production, including of the Shahed-type drones that are used in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The college’s advertisements from recent years have featured students openly describing their work in drone production and showing drone assembly workshops.