Russia: African Girls brought to Tatarstan to Build Drones
Update
How China helps Russia's Alabuga drone production
The Telegraph has found that Chinese companies directly supplied parts and materials worth at least £47m to Russian firms sanctioned for producing drones, from 2023 to 2024, a period when Moscow was building large-scale logistics infrastructure for its domestic drone programme.
Nearly a quarter of the value of those shipments – £10.7m – were sent to sanctioned Russian firms linked to the production of Iranian-designed Shahed kamikaze drones, operating in a special economic zone (SEZ) in the town of Alabuga, according to Telegraph analysis of global trade records compiled by Sayari, a risk and data intelligence company.
Goods directly exported by China to Russia included aircraft engines, microchips, metal alloys, camera lenses, fibreglass, emulsion binders for fibreglass, and carbon fibre yarns – all key components to produce the drones that wreak nightly havoc on Ukraine.
In all, The Telegraph identified 97 Chinese suppliers. (The Telegraph)
Lured by promises of high pay, European travel, education, and the possibility of “finding love,” African girls are being brought to Tatarstan’s “Special Economic Zone” located about 1000 kilometers (625 miles) east of Moscow. Their passports are then taken away and they are made to handover their nominal $700 a month salaries to pay for company housing and other necessities. They are then put to work for long hours gluing together the composite suicide drones.
The Russian military company JSC Alabuga dealt with an acute labor shortage to build Shahed 136 drones (for the Ukraine war) by raising salaries and exploiting high school-age students and immigrant employees recruited under false pretenses. JSC Alabuga has been using two programs to actively recruit young men and women, primarily aged 16-22, to make military drones: Alabuga Polytechnic is used to recruit students within Russia, and the Alabuga Start program is used to recruit workers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (also known as CIS countries) and other countries, primarily African countries.
This deceptive and manipulative recruitment effort is intended primarily to enable JSC Alabuga to meet its ambitious Shahed 136 kamikaze drone production goals for the Russian military, a project that Russia steeps in secrecy, to the point of calling it motorboat manufacturing. Potential recruits are not told that they could be involved in producing Shahed 136 drones
Alabuga Polytechnic’s students and Alabuga Start’s recruits have produced thousands of Shahed drones and dozens, perhaps hundreds of Albatross M5 drones for Russian combat operations against Ukraine,
Aware of the Russian legal problems of hiring workers under 18 years old, defined as children by the United Nations, JSC Alabuga lobbied Russian authorities to change labor laws to allow minors under 18 to work in riskier work environments, which includes Alabuga because of the use of toxic chemicals in making the airframe and the danger of explosions from fuel and high explosives.
The Wall Street Journal reported since its inception that over one thousand women from all over Africa went to Alabuga under Alabuga Start, and another thousand are likely to go this year, based on Ugandan officials aiding or knowledgeable about the recruitment effort. At least twenty-seven countries have sent participants through Alabuga Start to work at Alabuga, most are in Africa, but also seven are in Commonwealth of Independent State countries
Alabuga Start uses several tactics to attract foreign females to join its program. It offers a generous pay of 60,000₽ per month ($673 USD) and a certificate of professional training such as in “Quality Management of Products, Processes and Services” from the technological college Kazan National Research Technical University The participants are not formal students at the technical college and are only listed on the school’s roster to obtain a professional training certificate.
Alabuga Start notes that the salary it offers is at least double the average monthly salary in countries such as: Zimbabwe, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Rwanda. The program even goes as far to claim through videos and advertisements that Alabuga Start participants can “find love” and start families in Russia, and that the Alabuga Polytech offers a great way to do that.
As mentioned earlier, more than an estimated 90 percent of them work in drone production. In some leaked documents from 2023, they were called "mulattoes," a term referring to people of mixed race but apparently used here in a derogatory manner. The modules where they worked were labelled with an additional “M,” or “MM, for “mulatto module.”
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)
Russian companies are widening their campaign to find young African women to help fill a labor shortage, heightening concern many are being deployed in Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
The latest drive is in South Africa, a fellow member of the BRICS block of large emerging market economies. One of the main recruiters, Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan, produces military drones. South Africa’s government is now investigating what Russian companies are doing and what their intentions are, a person familiar with the situation said.
“Russia is sitting with a demand for workforce,” Lebogang Zulu, who chairs the women’s alliance and inked the deal on a trip to Russia earlier this year, told Bloomberg. “South Africa is sitting with a crisis of unemployment.”
Russia’s aging and shrinking population, coupled with the loss of hundreds of thousands of men to the front line in Ukraine and a spike in salaries, has left a hole in the labor market. At the same time, a third of the workforce in South Africa is unemployed. But while the economics might make sense, the recruitment push is drawing increasing scrutiny.
The Alabuga zone, for example, has been accused in three research reports from organizations including the Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, of tricking African women into working at the plant assembling Shahed 136 kamikaze drones. Women are viewed as more reliable than men for the specific kind of work, according to ISIS.
Officials in Pretoria may summon Russia’s diplomatic representatives to answer questions, the person familiar with the situation said. They asked not to be identified because a public statement hasn’t been made.
“The South African government is actively investigating reports of foreign programs that recruit South Africans under false pretenses,” the Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in response to questions. “The South African government is yet to find any credible evidence that job offers in Russia are inconsistent with their stated purpose. However, the government has noted the alleged recruitment of youth by the Alabuga company.”