A Russian made Zala drone. PHOTO/Wikimedia Commons.
By EW CORRESPONDENT
Kenyan women are among over 200 recruits from East and West African countries enlisted to assemble drones to be used by Russia in its war against Ukraine.
According to an investigation by Associated Press, the startling development, highlights the extreme measures Moscow is undertaking to mitigate labour shortages within its wartime industries.
The AP report says the Kenyan women and their colleagues from West African countries were lured by social media ads that promised young African women a free plane ticket, money and a faraway adventure in Europe. They were just required to complete in a computer game and a 100-word Russian vocabulary test.
But instead of a work-study program in fields like hospitality and catering, some of them learned only after arriving on the steppes of Russia’s Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with The Associated Press, some of the women complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching.
To fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia, the Kremlin has been recruiting women aged 18-22 from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
That has put some of Moscow’s key weapons production in the inexperienced hands of about 200 African women who are working alongside Russian vocational students as young as 16 in the plant in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow, according to an AP investigation of the industrial complex.
“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.
Remains of Russian missiles and drones in Kyiv, Ukraine. PHOTO/Wikimedia Commons.
The AP analyzed satellite images of the complex and its internal documents, spoke to a half-dozen African women who ended up there, and tracked down hundreds of videos in the online recruiting program dubbed “Alabuga Start” to piece together life at the plant.
The woman who agreed to work in Russia 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.
When she arrived in Alabuga, however, she soon learned what she would be doing and realized it was “a trap.”
“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.”
One possible clue about what was in store for the applicants was their vocabulary test that included words like “factory” and the verbs “to hook” and “to unhook.”
The workers were under constant surveillance in their dorms and at work, the hours were long and the pay was less than she expected — details corroborated by three other women interviewed by AP, which is not identifying them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
Factory management apparently tries to discourage the African women from leaving, and although some reportedly have left or found work elsewhere in Russia, AP was unable to verify that independently.
For more details, read the AP story here.
