This article is devoted to a pilot study of Russian students’ social perceptions of military violence in the course of the special military operation. A psychological experiment with four student groups was used as the main research method. The obtained data partially confirmed the subjects’ sharing of more humane social perceptions of military violence. However, the author revealed a number of problems and limitations, whose solution is significant for further improvement of the methodology aimed at the study of social perceptions of all citizens of the Russian Federation. The main limitations of the study are related to the small sample and the lack of in-depth statistical processing, which reduces the generalisability of the results.