Africans Labourers Building Iranian Attack Drones in Russia

Investigations have revealed that Africans, mostly young ladies from Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone and among others, South Sudan.

The investigation, conducted by the Associated Press, AP, indicates that the young female workers were recruited through the social media ads which promised them free plane ticket, money and a faraway adventure in Europe.

As part of the recruitment exercise, they were requested to complete a computer game and a 100-word Russian vocabulary test after which the successful ones were airlifted to Russia as promised.

Upon their arrival however, they discovered that there would be no work-study programme in hospitality and catering but toiling in an assembly plant making weapons of war, including assembling thousands of Iranian made attack drones for use in Ukraine.

AP, which interviewed a number of the women disclosed that they complain not only of long hours under constant surveillance, but also of broken promises about wages and areas of study. Among others, they complained of working with caustic chemicals that pokemarked and left their skin itching.

The medium noted that the young women recruitment exercise was put in place by Russian authorities to provide a buffer for the "urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia". It disclosed that while the exercise is also focused on Sri Lanka, Russia is equally looking the way of other countries in Asia and Latin America.

AP reports that by the recruitment exercise, Russia authorities endorsed the recruitment exercise which places the country’s key weapons production in inexperienced hands, mostly made up of about 200 African women working alongside Russian vocational students, said to be as young as 16, in Tatarstan's Alabuga Special Economic Zone-based plant, about 1,000 kilometers east of Moscow.

"I don't really know how to make drones," said one African woman who had abandoned a job at home and took the Russian offer.

The AP added that it spoke to a half-dozen recruited African women while also tracking down hundreds of videos in the online recruiting program christened, "Alabuga Start" to gather information about life at the plant, concluding that what the recruits envisaged to be a hopeful journey ended up as 'a trap'.

One of the women who spoke to the medium admitted agreeing to work in Russia and "excitedly documented her journey, taking selfies at the airport and shooting video of her airline meal and of the in-flight map, focusing on the word "Europe". and pointing to it with her long, manicured nails.

Upon arriving in Alabuga, she found to her dismay that it was a trap as realized the reality of what she would be doing.

"The company is all about making drones. Nothing else," said the woman, who assembled airframes.

"I regret and I curse the day I started making all those things," she told AP.

AP also disclosed that the recruited workers, as indicated in the interviews, were paced under constant surveillance both in their work place and dormitories. They were obliged to work long hours with abysmal pay, without any concern about their safety.

The report revealed that 182 young women were recruited from mainly Central and East African countries within the first half of 2024. The recruitment exercise, falsely premissed on helping them to "...start their career", had Russian recruitment officials visiting over 26 embassies in Moscow to push the program.

In particular, it cited the recruitment in Uganda where they attempted to recruit from orphanages. This is, according to messages gleaned on Alabuga's Telegram channel.

Apart from the recruited Africans, the drone assembly factory is also said to be drawing workers from Alabuga Polytechnic, a nearby vocational boarding school for Russians age 16-18 and Central Asians, age 18-22. The recruited workers are allocated local SIM cards for their phones but are not allowed to bring the phones into the factory, regarded as a sensitive military site.

Shortly after launching the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia signed a $1.7bn drone import deal with Iran. The assembly plant is now Russia’s main plant for making the one-way, exploding drones, with plans to produce 6,000 a year by 2025.

As parts of the effort to facilitate quick assembly of the imported Iranian attack drones, Kremlin began the recruitment of young African women, between the ages of 18 and 22, totalling about 200, to work alongside Russian vocational students.