After a Kazakh media outlet recently published an advertising material offering young women from Kazakhstan an opportunity to get a new profession and job as part of the Alabuga Start program, Orda.kz has investigated what is known about the Alabuga special economic zone in the Russian region of Tatarstan and its Alabuga Start project, which recruits young women from Central Asian and African countries to work at a factory that assembles combat drones used by the Russian army in Ukraine.
The advertisement does not directly write that the “project” is related to the assembly of combat drones. It promises the chances for professional growth for women aged 16-22 and a monthly income of $860.
However, the advertisement does not conceal the fact that the real goal is to attract workers to Russia.
The Alabuga special economic zone was created in Tatarstan back in 2006, and before the war in Ukraine, it worked quite successfully, attracting foreign investors. It opened the Alabuga Polytech college, where students were taught blue-collar jobs right at the production facilities.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a mass exodus of investors. In order to save Alabuga, it was reoriented to fulfill the state defense order. In Alabuga, the assembly of Iranian Shaheed drones was localized under the name Geranium.
The Russian independent publication, Protocol, reported on a mass recruitment of young women from Africa to a drone assembly plant in Tatarstan.
In the first half of 2024 alone, Alabuga attracted 182 women from African countries. But that was not enough, and under the Alabuga Start program, which is now being advertised in Kazakhstan, they have begun recruiting women from Central Asian countries.
A journalist from Uzbekistan, Luiza Atabaeva, made an experiment and inquired about a job opportunity in Alabuga offered in a media advertisement. She was offered a monthly salary of 52,000 Russian rubles for work at a “high-tech production facility”. When she asked what kind of production they meant, she was given a very vague answer.
Photo: alabuga.ru
