Last Thursday, in one of its largest attacks against Ukraine (since the start of its war of aggression and invasion), Russia launched an attack of 600 drones and at least thirty missiles against the capital city of Kyiv – killing at least 23 civilians, four of them just children.
But what most people do not know is that the hands that assembled these drones belong to young African women, most of them aged between 18 and 22 – although the people with blood on their hands are really the Russians, as has been the case since February 2022, when Russia’s president Vladimir Putin launched his bloody war on sovereign Ukraine.
The African girls who make these drones, most of them Iranian Shaheds, are as innocent as the victims of these murderous strikes by Vladimir Putin, a man whom the International Criminal Court has designated a war criminal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and who has an international arrest warrant on his errant head.
This is because, as investigations by Z have revealed, and both Reuteurs and CNN have confirmed, the African girls making these Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones), day in, night out, are actually forced labour in Tatarstan, lured to the Russian Federation by false promises of training for “jobs in the hospitality industry,” only to have their passports taken and forced to work long hours in inhospitable conditions in drone factories, in hostile and toxic work environments.
The main company behind this virtual enslavement is called the Alabuga SEZ with its Start Program, which practices its human trafficking through the savvy use of social media like Instagram and Telegram, as well as the use of Influencers and sleek videos to reach its target audience of young African women, 18 to 22 years old, in Kenya, Uganda, South , Central Africa (and even Nigeria) whom they help process passports for and give ‘free’ flight from Africa to Moscow through “work study programs” in their college– with the promise of ‘good work with great salaries’, afterwards, as the General Director of the factory Timur Shagivaleyev blatantly lies.
The Alabuga videos feature influencers and token young African females with ‘friendly’ Russian female trainers, pristine dorms, work spaces and ‘free’ cafeterias where the girls will supposedly live and study for free.
Once they land in Moscow, however, the young women are bussed off to Tatarstan to begin enforced labour of factory work assembling drones in 12 hour shifts with shifty pay, in toxic chemical conditions (that will probably damage their lungs for life), work that the Russians won’t offer to their own young women, but racially and ruthlessly exploit our poor African girls. Others are turned into factory cooks and cleaners, and considering their age and attractiveness, who knows what else?
“The Russians are also using these girls as human shields to prevent Ukraine from striking factories like Alabuga, as their deaths would taint the thus far clean image of Ukraine in Russia’s unconscionable war,” a highly placed diplomat told us. “This is wrong!”
Social media influencers like Sima Sainbuchi in South Africa recently fund themselves in a social media storm after they were flown to Russia and did optically catching but information-thin videos about Alabuga. “How can you take Russian blood money to traffic your young sisters?”
This was one of the many questions put to the influencers, but while Sima later apologized, took down the videos and pleaded ignorance, others like the oga David Hundeyin doubled down and denied that Alabuga SEZ is an African labour trafficker outfit, eating his dirty money given by the Russian ‘drone’ recruiters, as he does this cruel ‘content’ creation.
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Some of the Russian recruiters of Alabuga SEZ, which Interpol has flagged, are head HR recruiter Anastasia Barysheva, Aisur Sahabutdinova, Arseny Egorov, Oleg Dmitriev, Elizaveta Goldfayn, Savsan Yusupova, Alabuga Project Manager Elmir Saifullin, Chulpan Islamova, their main man in Moscow Andrey Vorobyov, Alsu Bikchurina, the content creator behind their deceptive videos and Daniela Davydova, who is on the ground in Yaounde to directly recruit young Cameroonian women to go work for Alabuga SEZ in the Kyzyl-Yul.
No serious international organization would be recruiting through I.G. and Telegram, and that in itself should be a huge red flag, but bogey companies like Alabuga prey on gullible young women, of 18 to 22 years – and there are dozens of them from Ethiopia to South Africa, including a Kenyan girl of 21 called Victoria Kimani, who is a waitress in the Alabuga complex every evening (after an 8-hour day making drones in the assembly line), all trapped in Tatarstan making these UAVs as this war of invasion by Russia upon Ukraine drones on, with no end in sight.
Russia Intensifies Large-Scale Attacks on Ukraine
Just this July, the Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia launched a record 6,129 Shahed-type drones, surpassing June’s previous record of 5,337, according to the Kyiv Independent. Compared to July 2024, when 423 drones were launched, this represents a more than fourteenfold increase year-over-year.
Due to Russian aggression, 1,482 cultural heritage sites and 2,302 cultural infrastructure facilities have been damaged in Ukraine, as per The Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine
On July 3-4, Russia delivered record-scale mass attacks with drones and missiles: over 700 drones targeted eight regions of Ukraine hitting apartment blocks, kindergartens and hospitals in an effort to “terrorise and demoralize the people of Ukraine,” according to the war hero president of Ukraine, Volodymr Zelensky.
On July 31, as the consequence of a massive strike, 31 people were killed and 159 were injured in Kyiv; residential buildings were destroyed, and a children’s hospital was damaged.
According to the regional and Kyiv City Military Administrations, in July, Russia damaged 11 cultural heritage sites in different regions of Ukraine, all this damage and injury caused mostly by the UAVs. The Russians have also been killing a lot of Ukraine’s cultural practitioners, as per a report this writer sought and got from PEN Ukraine.
Last month, the funeral of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity last year, was held in Kyiv on 8 August 2025. Earlier in August, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posthumously awarded Roshchyna the Order of Freedom.
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Victoria was abducted on August 3, 2023, while performing her professional duties in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. In May 2024, Russia admitted that she had been held in captivity.
Investigators of the National Police have flagged the former head of Detention Facility No. 2 in Taganrog, Russia, regarding the torture, abuse, beatings, and humiliation of Ukrainian journalist Roshchyna. According to the investigation, a system of repressive treatment of Ukrainian prisoners was organized at Detention Facility No. 2 in Taganrog. Among them was Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was transferred to Taganrog from the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region.
On the front line, on January 30, 2025, Bohdan Zaiats, a journalist for the municipal TV channel “Novyi Chernihiv” and a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, was killed but this information became known in August. The search and official confirmation of his death took several months. Bohdan died on the Donetsk front due to a Russian shelling of Ukrainian defenders’ positions. Bohdan had worked at the TV channel since August 2016, starting as a news anchor. He was mobilized in September 2023 from the position of deputy head of the news editorial department.
Tony Mochama is a journalist, author and PEN Intl (Kenya) Secretary General. Email: [email protected]
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