Social media ads promised free plane tickets, money, and faraway adventures. But instead of exciting work-study programs, some African women found only a factory where they make weapons of war to fight Ukraine.
A factory in an area of Russia called Alabuga is now Russia’s main plant for making one-way, exploding drones. There are plans to produce 6,000 of them per year by 2025, according to leaked documents and other sources.
Finding workers for Alabuga has been a problem. Many Russians are already working in military industries, fighting in Ukraine, or have fled abroad. So plant officials started using vocational students and cheap foreign labor.
The Kremlin has been recruiting women aged 18-22 from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. Officials also recruited in the South Asian country of Sri Lanka.
The recruitment of young people puts some of Moscow’s key weapons production in inexperienced hands. About 200 young African women are working alongside Russian students as young as 16 in the Alabuga plant.
Some female African workers talked to Associated Press reporters. “I don’t really know how to make drones,” says one woman. She abandoned a job at home for the Russian offer of good pay and an education. Only after arriving in Russia did she and other women learn they would be toiling in a drone factory.
One woman excitedly documented her journey. She took selfies at the airport and shot video of her airline meal and of the plane’s in-flight map. She focused on the word “Europe” and pointing to it with her long, manicured nails.
But when she arrived in Alabuga, she learned what she would be doing. She realized it was “a trap.”
Workers are under constant surveillance in their dorms and at work, she says. The hours are long and the pay is less than expected. Workers speak of broken promises about wages and areas of study—and of working with chemicals that harm their skin.
About 90% of the foreign women recruited via the Alabuga Start program make drones, particularly the parts “that don’t require much skill,” says David Albright. He is a former UN weapons inspector.
One woman claimed she could talk to an AP reporter only with her manager’s permission. Another says her “messages are monitored,” and a third says workers are told not to talk to outsiders about their work. Yet another reported that managers encourage them to inform on co-workers.
The African women are “maltreated like donkeys,” one worker says.
The Alabuga plant’s production target is ahead of schedule. Workers have assembled 4,500 drones so far this year. But there are questions about quality and whether manufacturing problems due to unskilled labor are causing malfunctions.
“The company is all about making drones. Nothing else,” a woman who assembled airframes says. “I regret and I curse the day I started making all those things.”
A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape. — Proverbs 19:5
