Russia’s shortage of workers is so severe that it is luring foreigners into sweatshops

October 17, 2025

Russia’s shortage of workers is so severe that it is luring foreigners into sweatshops

Russia’s economy has proven remarkably resilient, despite years of sanctions and economic statecraft. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t deep cracks in Russia’s unstable economic foundation, with only a thin veneer masking increasingly severe shortages — especially of workers.

Russia is in a desperate labor bind. The country has a shrinking, aging population — a fact it ignores as it sends its young men into the meatgrinder of the war in Ukraine. To generate military manpower, Russia has gotten creative, recruiting criminals out of prisons, North Koreans, and mental health patients . Regardless, the endless need for fresh troops on the front line has taken bodies away from industry just as Russia’s military-industrial needs are expanding rapidly.

Russia now desperately needs to fill jobs on assembly lines that make war materiel, but it has a plan: exploiting the Global South, including its so-called friends.

BRICS members India, Brazil, and South Africa have all been recruitment targets for what appears to be forced labor. Russia issues to their citizens a siren song against which many young women are unable to steel themselves, with devastating results.

For at least two years, Russian company Alabuga Special Economic Zone has been luring young women from developing countries with the promise of good jobs and educational opportunities. When they arrive, they are pressed into drone production. They are made to work with corrosive chemicals for long hours, with restricted communications and few or no rights. The women have faced sexual harassment and seen “deductions” taken from their already meager pay for things like rent.

Moreover, Russian military-industrial sites — including Alabuga facilities — have been subject to Ukrainian strikes, putting the women’s lives at risk — a risk to which they never consented.

The international Forced Labor Convention of 1930 considers forced labor as work “extracted…under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.” The United Nations’ protocol on human trafficking includes “recruitment” of workers “by means … of fraud, of deception … to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” The Alabuga SEZ may be guilty of both violations.

Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan owns and controls Alabuga SEZ . Alabuga also works hand-in-glove with Russia’s diplomats and has assembled Iranian drone components for Russia’s military. Russia’s cultural center in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, served as a launch pad for a hiring fair. A Russia House in Bangui, Central African Republic, hosted at least one interview with a program recruit. Messaging presents the recruitment initiative as “a revival of Soviet cooperation with African countries and other regions.”