Foreign Youth Exploited for Military Drone Production at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone

By Spencer Faragasso and David Albright

Key Findings

• JSC Alabuga dealt with an acute labor shortage to build Shahed 136 drones by raising salaries and exploiting high school-age students and immigrant employees recruited under false pretenses.

• JSC Alabuga has been using two programs to actively recruit young men and women, primarily aged 16-22, to make military drones:  Alabuga Polytechnic is used to recruit students within Russia, and the Alabuga Start program is used to recruit workers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (also known as CIS countries) and other countries, primarily African countries.

• This deceptive and manipulative recruitment effort is intended primarily to enable JSC Alabuga to meet its ambitious Shahed 136 kamikaze drone production goals for the Russian military, a project that Russia steeps in secrecy, to the point of calling it motorboat manufacturing.  

• Potential recruits are not told that they could be involved in producing Shahed 136 drones. Instead, when drone production work is mentioned, the recruitment process emphasizes the making of M5 drones, built in the same building as the Shahed 136 drones, but by a different company, Albatross LLC, and on a much smaller scale, and advertised for civilian use (but leaked documents and media reporting state that some fraction of the M5 drones have been used in Russian combat operations).

• Alabuga Polytechnic’s students and Alabuga Start’s recruits have produced thousands of Shahed drones and dozens, perhaps hundreds of Albatross M5 drones for Russian combat operations against Ukraine, often against civilian targets in the case of the Shahed 136 drones.

• For the Albatross M5 drone, participants are employed and trained in building the airframe, assembling and installing electronics, and testing the drone. For the Shahed 136 drone, they are involved in all aspects of making the drone. According to early internal Alabuga plans, many students and recruits worked on Albatross M5 production before participants were moved to work on producing Shahed 136 drones for JSC Alabuga. 

• The Alabuga Start program primarily targets African women, using the promise of a high monthly salary (double what can be earned on average in their native country; and more than such a position would normally earn in Russia), work training, long-term accommodations and integration into Russian society. 

• Twenty-seven countries are documented to have sent nationals to Alabuga through Alabuga Start. It is unknown whether any countries have withdrawn their participation, but they should do so immediately.  If they continue to send workers, these countries directly support a U.S. and EU sanctioned entity and support Russia’s military efforts, thus risk getting sanctioned themselves.

• The Start program uses deception and manipulation to attract low-skilled workers to perform the many relatively simple operations involved in making the airframes for Shahed 136 drones. 

• Both the Polytechnic and Start programs are exploitive of young people and require the students and recruits to work long hours, often more than full-time.  More than 90 percent of the Start program personnel and about one-third of the Polytechnic students are estimated to work in drone production, mostly the production of Shahed 136 drones.  

• Based on JSC Alabuga plans in early 2023, the design, planning, support, and production of Shahed drones would entail over 1000 personnel per daytime shift, of whom at least 70 percent would be from Alabuga Polytechnic and Alabuga Start.

• In the first half of 2023, about 100 Alabuga Polytechnic students received training in Tehran, Iran, from Iranian experts on making the Shahed 136 airframe.

•  Alabuga is actively indoctrinating the young participants at its site into supporting the Russian military through patriotic and military themed activities.

• The use of teenagers in the production of military drones used against Ukraine, including against civilian targets, should be viewed as a crime.

Washington, DC: The Institute for Science and International Security, 2024. 22P