About 200 women ages 18-22 from across Africa have been recruited to work in a factory alongside Russian vocational students assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine. In interviews with The Associated Press , some of the women said they were misled that it would be a work-study program, describing long hours under constant surveillance, broken promises about wages and areas of study, and working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. The AP analyzed satellite images of the complex in Russia's republic of Tatarstan and its leaked internal documents, spoke to a half-dozen African women who ended up there, and tracked down hundreds of videos in the online recruiting program to piece together life at the plant in what is called the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow.
What to know from AP’s reporting: Russia and Iran signed a $1.7 billion deal in 2022 after President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of neighboring Ukraine, and Moscow began launching Iranian imports of drones later that year. Satellite images show the plant at Alabuga quickly expanded.
It is now Russia’s main plant for making the one-way, exploding drones , with plans to produce 6,000 a year by 2025, according to the internal documents and the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. Facing a wartime labor shortage in Russia, Alabuga has recruited from African countr.
