African women tricked into making Russian drones: It skinned me

On her first day on the job, Adau realized she had made a big mistake.

“We got our uniforms without even knowing exactly what we were going to do. From the first day of work, we were taken to the drone factory. We walked in and saw drones everywhere and people working. Then we were taken to our different work stations.”

Twenty-three years old and originally from South Sudan, Adau says she was lured to the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia last year with the promise of full-time work.

She applied to the Alabuga Start programme, a scheme to recruit women aged 18 to 22, mainly from Africa, but increasingly from Latin America and South-East Asia. It promises participants professional training in areas including logistics, catering and hospitality.

But the program has been accused of using deception in its recruitment practices and of forcing its young recruits to work in dangerous conditions for less than advertised pay. He denies all these allegations, but does not deny that some employees helped build the drones.

The Alabuga Start (AS) program recently made global headlines when South African influencers promoting the program were accused of promoting human trafficking. The BBC contacted the influencers involved and the promoter responsible for connecting them to the programme, but no one responded to our requests.

According to some estimates more than 1,000 women were recruited from across Africa to work in the weapons factories of Alabuga. In August the South African government launched an investigation and warned its citizens not to sign up.

Adau asked the BBC not to use her surname or photograph as she did not want to be associated with the programme. She says she first heard about it in 2023.

“My friend posted about a scholarship in Russia on their Facebook status. The ad was from the Ministry of Higher Education of South Sudan,” she says.

She contacted the organizers via WhatsApp.

“I was asked to fill out a form with my name, age and why I wanted to join Alabuga. And then I was asked to choose three areas I wanted to work in.”

Adau says she chose to be a tower crane operator as her first choice. She has always been into technology and even once traveled abroad to participate in a robotics competition.

“I wanted to work in fields that are not usually done by women. It is very difficult for a woman to come across fields like tower crane work, especially in my country.”

It took a year to apply because of the long visa process.

In March of last year, she finally reached Russia.

“When I first went there it was very cold, I hated it. We were traveling towards the end of winter. The second we left the airport it was freezing cold.”

But driving in the Alabuga special zone left her with a good first impression.

“I was very impressed. It was everything I thought it (would be). I saw a lot of factories, cars and agricultural companies.”

Adau had three months of language courses before starting work in July. Then things went downhill.

She says she and the other participants had no choice whether to work at the drone factory. They had signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), so they couldn’t even discuss their work with their families.

“We all had a lot of questions. We had all signed up to work in technical fields — manufacturing operations, logistics, tower crane operator — but we all ended up working in the drone factory.”

Alabuga denies using fraud to recruit workers. “All the areas in which our contributors work are listed on our website,” it said in response to our questions.

Workers were not allowed to take pictures inside the facility, but the BBC showed Adau footage broadcast on Russian state TV station RT of a factory in Alabuga producing Iranian Shahed 136 drones. She confirmed to us that this is where she works.

“The reality of the Alabuga SEZ is that it is a military production facility,” says Spencer Faragaso of the Institute for Science and International Security.

“Russia has openly admitted to manufacturing and building Shahed 136 drones there in videos they’ve released publicly. They’re bragging about the facility. They’re bragging about its achievements.”

Spencer says that, like Adau, many of the women interviewed who worked in the program said they had no idea they would be creating weapons.

“On the face of it, it’s an amazing opportunity for many of these women to see the world, gain work experience and earn a living wage. But in reality, when they’re brought to Alabuga, they get a rude awakening that those promises haven’t been kept and the reality of their work is far different from what they were promised.”

Adau says she immediately knew she could not continue working at the factory.

“Everything started to click: all the lies we were told from the moment we applied. I felt like I couldn’t work around people who lied to me about these things. And I wanted to do more with my life than work in a drone factory.”

She handed in her notice but was told the notice period was two weeks during which she had to work. During that time, she painted the outer casing of the drones with chemicals that she said burned her skin.

“When I got home I checked my skin and it was peeling. We were wearing protective gear, white cloth coveralls, but the chemicals kept coming through. They would make the fabric hard.”

Alabuga says all staff are provided with the necessary protective clothing.

And that wasn’t the only danger. On April 2, 2024, just two weeks after Adau arrived in Russia, the Alabuga Special Economic Zone was targeted by a Ukrainian drone strike.

“The other day I woke up to our fire alarm, but this one was unusual. The upstairs windows of our hostel were broken and some of the girls had been woken up by an explosion. So we went outside.”

As they started walking away from their hostel in the cold morning air, Adau said she noticed others starting to run.

“I see some people pointing up, so I look up at the sky and I see a drone coming through the sky. Then I started running too. I ran so fast that I left the people running before me.”

The BBC has checked the footage that Adau sent us of the day of the attack and confirmed that it was filmed on the same day and in the same location on the deepest strike by a Ukrainian drone on Russian territory at that time.

“The drone hit the hostel right next to ours. It completely destroyed that building and our building was also damaged.”

Months later, when she found out she worked at a drone factory, she returned to the attack and realized that was why they were targeted.

“Ukraine knew that the African girls who came to work in the drone factories were living in that hostel that was taken down. It was in the news. When Ukraine was accused of hitting civilian houses, they said, ‘No, these are workers working in drone factories.'”

Several women left the program without notice after the drone attack, prompting organizers to confiscate workers’ passports for a time.

Asked why the hostel attack and existing reports that Alabuga was at the center of Russian drone production had not raised her suspicions, Adau said she had been repeatedly assured by staff that recruits would only work in the areas they signed up for.

“Claims that we’re going to build drones struck me as anti-Russian propaganda,” she explained.

“There is a lot of fake news when it comes to Russia, trying to make Russia look bad. There were people from Europe and America working in the Special Economic Zone, but they all left after the Ukraine-Russia war because of the sanctions against Russia. So when Russia started looking for Africans to work there, it felt like they were just trying to fill the places that the Europeans left.”

After Adau served her notice, her family sent her a ticket home, but she says many women can’t afford to pay for a return flight and end up staying there – especially because their pay is much lower than advertised. Adau was supposed to earn $600 (£450) a month but only got a sixth of it.

“They withheld money for our rent, for our Russian lessons, for Wi-Fi, for our transportation to work, for taxes. And then they also said that if we miss a day of work, they’ll deduct $50. If we set off the fire alarm while we’re cooking, they’ll deduct $60. If we don’t turn in our Russian homework, or if we skip a class, they’ll deduct from your paycheck.”

The Alabuga Start program told the BBC that salaries partly depend on performance and behavior in the workplace.

We spoke to another woman from the program who did not want to be named for fear of social media backlash. She says she had a more positive experience in Alabuga.

“To be honest, every company has rules. How can they pay you your full salary if you miss work or don’t perform well? It’s all logical, nobody is subjected to what they don’t want. Most of the girls who end up leaving missed work and didn’t follow the rules. Alabuga doesn’t hold anyone hostage, you can leave at any time,” the unnamed woman told the BBC.

But Adau says working for the Russian war machine is devastating.

“I felt terrible. There was a moment when I went back to my hostel and cried. I thought, ‘I can’t believe this is what I’m doing now.’ I felt terrible for being involved in the construction of something that took so many lives.”