Young women from a dozen Latin American countries came to Russia seeking travel and opportunity with plans to break into the hospitality industry through a work exchange – and ended up manufacturing “kamikaze” drones used in Moscow’s war with Ukraine.
Beginning just months after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, corporate recruiters targeted the women, mostly age 18-22, reeling them in through ads stressing sport and cultural exchange, according to a review of the material by The Post.
Manufacturing company Alabuga Start made slick pitches on TikTok, Instagram, and other online platforms, tailored to the countries where they were seeking cheap laborers to manufacture the Geran-2, Russia’s version of the Iran made Shahed-136 drone.
In Brazil, recruiters offered such prizes as laptops and smartphones at an event promoting “financial literacy,” according to company ads.
A video posted by Bolivian recruiter Sara Valentina Enriquez on her trabaja.en.rusia TikTok showed images of smiling women taking classes and wearing backpacks and exchanging high-fives.
The list of requirements includes being between the ages of 18 and 21, completing school education, and having “good health and disposition to learn.”
The Spanish-language video describes the work the Latin American transplants would perform as “cooking, industrial production, cleaning, administration, logistics, assembly, and hospitality” for $541 to $1,783 per month — but leaves out the part about deadly munitions.
In Ecuador, Alabuga Start is the official sponsor of the biggest sports club in the country, El Nacional, and its name, appears on the team’s latest red jerseys. Women who register with the company can win free tickets to games.
The team and Alabuga Start didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
“If it’s able to gain this much traction with sports club like El Nacional, you know, I think they can continue to push the limits of how they can keep recruiting women and getting away with it,” said Maria Riofrio, a research assistant with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which published a detailed report on the effort in December.
Ads that ran in Venezuela in 2024 promised jobs with monthly pay of $555 and dangled scholarships to attend Russian universities and take Russian language courses.
“It’s pretty deceptive, no question about it,” said Max Lesser, a senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who co-authored the report.
The women were offered free flights to Russia from the company, which then steered them to work in a Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan, an eastern European republic of Russia 600 miles from Moscow — in a recruitment drive researchers say amounts to a form of “human trafficking.”
Workers who signed up faced multiple controls and extreme monitoring.
They got placed in dormitories and factories with constant video surveillance, according to the report.
“There’s also financial penalties, massive wage deductions, so women might be promised an initial salary of around $600, but things like dormitory costs are deducted from that. Penalties for minor infractions result in deductions,” said Riofrio.
“A lot of this classifies as forced labor and human trafficking and makes it incredibly difficult for women to leave.”
Russia, which is experiencing a labor shortage, began the program by focusing on Africa.
“Once the program started getting sort of exposed there, recruitment got more difficult,” Riofrio said.
The company then expanded to different regions, “specifically Latin America,” he noted.
The program has been a success for the Motherland.
Since 2023, Russia has been able to “massively” boost its drone production.
By June, according to the Ukrainian military, the number hit 2,700 per month — or enough for Russia to launch 90 each day.
The US Treasury Department in 2024 sanctioned the joint stock company of the Alabuga “Special Economic Zone,” calling it the “main plant” for making one-way attack drones.
Ukraine’s military intelligence estimates the number of workers in the special ECONOMIC? zone have jumped from 1,000 to 40,000.
An Institute of Science and International Security report concluded 90% of the women sent to the Tatarstan economic zone make drones.
After Ukraine carried out a drone strike on the factory deep inside Russian territory in April 2024, injuring 12 workers, some women had their passports confiscated and others had to pay a fine to leave, according to the report.
The company’s own brochure speaks to its exponential growth. In 2023, it recruited 22 individuals from seven countries. In 2024, the number of recruits jumped to 327.
In 2025, the company said it recruited 8,500. The recruits themselves are asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.
“Once they’re in, it’s a black box,” said Lesser.
