On December 31, 2024, MakanDay released a report on Russia’s Alabuga programme, which ostensibly offers a work-study opportunity but faces allegations of exploiting and indoctrinating young African women. The programme entices with promises of high salaries, free flights, and integration into Russian society, yet lacks transparency and credible evidence of benefits. In July 2023, independent Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot jointly uncovered exploitative conditions at the Alabuga SEZ drone factory, including long working hours and harsh punishments imposed on teenagers as young as 15. We republish the story from the Russian outlet here.
In the first part of our investigation, we talked about how “Alabuga” turned from a promising special economic zone into a village for assembling Iranian drones. But how did this happen? After all, drones are not assembled on an automated conveyor belt at the push of a button from the Kremlin. Drones that subsequently fly to kill people are assembled by the same people. They screw the warhead to the aircraft, develop production plans and make presentations for the bosses.
The situation in Alabuga is special. Here, the main role in the production of kamikaze drones is played by students. Often minors who came to the advertised college for knowledge in the field of new technologies and dizzying career growth. We will talk about the college “Alabuga Polytech”.
We will tell you how students are forced to dig trenches and assemble Iranian Shahed drones, how students from African countries were lured to enroll in college using Tinder, and how the management of the special economic zone treats students. This is the second part of the series of investigations by Protocol and RZVRT about Alabuga.
Chapter I. Advertising
On April 5, 2021, Tatarstan head Rustam Minnikhanov opens the Alabuga Polytech College. This college is needed to “grow Elon Musks” – brilliant engineers who will work in high-tech production.
Now the college’s main page states that “Alabuga Polytech” is a place where they teach the professions of the future, leaders enroll there, everyone envies them, and the students themselves will receive up to 70,000 rubles a month already in their first year. Teenagers are invited to enroll in the “dual program” – this means that right from the first year they will be able to study and work at the same time. Gain knowledge, and along with it a “world-class” salary and work experience.
They are calling to apply not only from the sites of “Alabuga”. The management of the Polytechnic is conducting an active PR campaign both online and in real life. A week before the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an advertising video with Instasamka appeared on the YouTube channel “Alabuga Polytechnic”. Earlier, the general director of the special economic zone Timur Shagivaleev was interviewed by blogger Dmitry Puchkov, known as “Goblin”. Puchkov himself, together with his co-author Klim Zhukov, specially went to the Polytechnic, where the bloggers were given a detailed tour. Every day, videos, posts and articles with advertising “Alabuga Polytechnic” appear in various social networks: they come out from entertainment bloggers with an audience of 3-7 million subscribers, from bloggers larger and smaller , and even from auto bloggers .
Even the main square of New York had an advertising banner with the Alabuga logo and the text in Russian: “Time to go home.” Even the Prime Minister of Russia Mikhail Mishustin paid attention to the Alabuga advertisement, which he personally told the head of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov about .
Former student Nastya (from here on the names of sources have been changed for their safety – editor’s note ) says that she decided to enroll in the college “Alabuga Polytech” precisely because of the impression of the advertisement: ” The expectations were exactly what they show in the advertisement, that everything is really cool here. In reality, there are all sorts of jambs here after all . “
Chapter II. Paintball and attitude towards students
Perhaps, “all sorts of screw-ups” are Alabuga’s approach to management and training. From time to time, bits of information about what is really going on inside the college appear in the media. At the end of March this year, a polytechnic student committed suicide in the college dormitory. This is not the first suicide of an Alabuga college student. In 2021, another student committed suicide . He did it at home, not in the college — this is what allowed Alabuga to distance itself from the tragedy. After all, the body was not found on its territory. In interviews with journalists, acquaintances of the deceased students named the fear of expulsion and the attitude of the Alabuga management towards students as the reason for the suicides .
On September 1, 2022, students lined up so that Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov, who was flying over the Alabuga Polytechnic College, could admire the students from a bird’s eye view and take a beautiful photo. The president was late and the students waited for him for about five hours.
— In general, at first they told us that he was already flying, was flying, and would be here soon, — says Nastya, a former student at Alabuga. — We lined up. We waited, waited, waited — he wasn’t there. Then we relaxed, started sitting on the asphalt, because they wouldn’t let us into the Polytechnic. They only let us in to go to the toilet or get a drink of water, and that was it. A lot of people got sick there. My friend almost fainted, they just took her into the Polytechnic, she was sitting in the administration.
Many students are busy with their studies or work from eight in the morning until late at night and they simply do not have time to cook, wash clothes, play sports, or have a simple rest. They do not have the opportunity to buy food – the shift bus to the nearest store runs once a week. The rest of the time, students have to eat in the canteen, but this is only if they are lucky enough to work in the main office building of “Alabuga”. The rest are content with vending machines, the range of which is limited to chocolate bars, chips, instant noodles, and sometimes canned food. The situation with medicine is no better: the nearest doctor, with the exception of a nurse at the college, is in the city, where you can only get by appointment and only by taxi. The cost of a one-way trip is from 400 rubles. You also have to go to the pharmacy for medicine. Students learn about all this after admission.
There are problems with education here too. Formally, “Alabuga Polytechnic” is not a college. All students are enrolled in “Yelabuga Polytechnic College”, and “Polytechnic” on paper is just additional courses. Accordingly, the diploma upon graduation is also not from “Alabuga”. All general education subjects are taught by teachers from EPC, and on a residual basis. Also, teachers from EPC cannot boast of a high level of quality of teaching. As a result, students’ knowledge in various fields remains at the level of the ninth grade of school.
Contrary to the statements on the official website of the Polytechnic and in advertising, there is often a complete discrepancy between work tasks and the training program. Students are generally perceived as general workers, they are assigned work that does not require qualifications: making calls, preparing simple documents, sending letters – boring and monotonous work. Most of the training programs at the Polytechnic are related to high-tech production. But now in Alabuga there is only a robotic pallet project left , there are only two dozen work places for students. At the same time, more than 1000 people study at the Polytechnic. Therefore, in order to maintain the principle of the dual system, students are necessarily assigned to other departments, where employees simply dump on them the amount of work that they themselves do not have time to do.
Students, most often without any work experience in life, immediately find themselves “on the front lines” and, of course, fail to cope with the tasks set before them. This gives rise to a lot of discontent and even bullying towards them from the staff.
Another illustrative story that speaks about the attitude towards potential “Elon Musks”. At the beginning of the school year, paintball is played on the territory of the economic zone. The event is so large-scale that a whole truck of paintballs was ordered for it. When it arrived in “Alabuga”, it turned out that there was no equipment to unload it. Several students had to unload it throughout the day, without rest or food.
The point of paintball is not to entertain students, as one might think. One of our sources says that he heard the following explanation from one of the initiators of the game, Deputy General Director of the SEZ Sergey Alekseyev: “The goal of paintball is to weed out weaklings and brats at the initial stage. They should drop out themselves .” When discussing the rules of the game and the organization of the playground, Sergey Alekseyev said: “Students should suffer, they should be in pain .” Sergey Alekseyev is the only top manager of Alabuga who responded in writing to a request for comment: “Okay, I will be happy to share the answers with you as soon as I have time next week after the business trip. I understand how important it is for you to provide an objective presentation of the material and not rush me .” At the time of publication, no answers were received. We will publish them as soon as they are available to us.
One of the students claims that instead of the intended team building, simplifying the acquaintance of hundreds of people who have just entered the same college, paintball leads to the emergence of hazing. Paintball is also intended to develop patriotism in students. According to the plot, the first month the students compete with each other, and then “fight” against the fascists, professional paintball players, allegedly reconstructing the battles of the Great Patriotic War near Stalingrad. An interesting detail – the flag of the fascists looks like the flag of Nazi Germany, but instead of a swastika in a white circle – the symbols of the NATO bloc.
In 2022, the games were held from September to October, every weekend. It is worth remembering that the students’ schedule is already very busy. As the students themselves say, they have to work until midnight, or even until two in the morning (and this is after half a day of studying). Students often face a choice: to complete tasks at work (and not get a fine) or to study well, be active in various corporate events and get good grades and, as a result, a high rating, which affects promotion.
You can refuse to participate in the game, but refusal can result in a reprimand or expulsion. Participation in corporate events is mandatory according to the contract that every college student signs: “For refusing to participate, you could be called in for a talk with the HR department . And if you are called in for a talk with the HR department, it is worse than death. It would be better to be shot ,” says one of the students. She claims that the HR department influences the learning process so much that even teachers obey them. If the HR department doesn’t like something about a student or their behavior, “then they can simply fail you. Even if you study and work well . ”
For two months in a row, more than 600 students wake up at five in the morning every weekend and run to the paintball field. It’s not enough to just participate. You have to win. The losing teams are punished. The most common punishment is execution: “The execution wasn’t against the wall, but on the street, just at a distance of, probably, three meters,” says Yulia, a student at the Alabuga Polytechnic College . “Different teams were punished differently, some were forced to run around the Polytechnic until late at night in the rain (supposedly to increase their endurance) . ”
Former Alabuga student Nastya also mentions executions: “ They sometimes punished you harshly there, when your team lost, they could just shoot you with the same balls. In general, it’s very painful. Especially for those with sensitive skin and bruises that don’t go away for a long time. For me, they didn’t go away in a week. The captain himself said: “You played badly today. Let’s shoot each of you in turn now . ”
The already mentioned deputy general director of “Alabuga” Sergey Alekseyev went further, considering the usual execution as insufficient punishment. His team was forced to storm the mountain without weapons, on which Alekseyev had stationed his employees, handing each one one or even two markers, promising each one ten thousand rubles if at least one student could not “take” the mountain. All the students completed the task, but one student had a nervous breakdown. We have a video at our disposal that shows the consequences of the paintball game. This is the back of one of the students and the result of this “punishment”.
Another punishment mentioned by former student Nastya is digging trenches: “At the end, the results were summed up, and the teams that played the worst, they dug trenches. And it was still raining, but they wouldn’t let us go home. Somewhere towards the end, someone took pity.” According to another source, about 400 people dug trenches . Everyone was involved, except for the teams that took first and second place in the competition. Students called their parents and complained. Several parents wrote a complaint to the local prosecutor’s office. They demanded to find out what happened to the students during paintball, but “Alabuga” provided documents that everything was legal, and the students voluntarily took part in the game and in digging trenches.
When we were preparing this material, a certain Vadim Ivanov, an intern in the marketing and PR department, contacted us. He asked for an interview himself, saying, “I tell everything to the media.” Vadim did not ask to change his name. He offered to talk about paintball, including: “The guys really learned how to interact with the team. Firstly, they became friends with each other faster. Secondly, internal communication, it improved, because they kind of gained experience and developed that very feeling when, you know, you are driven into a corner, and you need to quickly make some kind of decision. This is called critical thinking. In the special economic zone “Alabuga”, we have a corporate culture that everyone follows, because it comes straight from the lips of the CEO.”
In addition to the philosophical reasoning that “critical thinking” is the ability to think in critical situations, Vadim Ivanov sees other advantages and health benefits in paintball: “ We all know that active games like paintball, football, and sports in general in any form, are good for health. And it’s pretty cool when the college itself organizes some kind of sports events to strengthen the spirit and, so to speak, the body.”
According to one source, 50 people were expelled from the 2022 games. In total, more than 600 people took part in the game , and more than 30 million rubles were spent on it. It so happened that paintball in 2022 almost coincided with mobilization. The games began two and a half weeks before it began. Then it was decided to make them larger. It was for the final battle that students dug trenches. And then the general director of the special economic zone Timur Shagivaleev came up with a plot for another PR video . Two BRDMs (combat reconnaissance and patrol vehicles, – editor’s note ) were brought to the battlefield as decorations , and improvised actors were given weapons. According to the plot of the video, some terrorists infiltrated the territory of “Alabuga”, and a mobile group of students in paintball uniforms had to neutralize them.
In addition to the staged fight against terrorists on the battlefield, the students reconstructed battles from the Great Patriotic War. The best first-year students were sergeants, the most talented seniors were captains, and the generals were the management staff. Timur Shagivaleev was among the latter. During the game, you could hear Shagivaleev saying that everything was not going according to plan. Sometimes he would snap at the students and shout at them.
On one of the game days, after the defeat of Shagivaleev’s team, already in the evening, Shagivaleev decided to conduct a training session under his own command. Several girls complained of headaches and high blood pressure – asked to let them rest, to which Shagivaleev replied: “What rest?! Those with headaches can immediately fuck off home, we don’t need such students! The country is in a mess! The country needs heroes!”
Timur Shagivaleev read the message from the co-author of the investigation from RZVRT, Daria Litvishko, asking for a comment on what was happening in Alabuga, but ignored it.
Chapter III. Juvenile Slavery
Paintball is an illustrative story, but not the most terrible in the context of describing the modern life of Alabuga students. Here we return to the main topic of our series of investigations about “Alabuga” – to the assembly of combat drones. After all, the bulk of the production of combat UAVs is planned to be organized by their own hands.
Currently, there are about 1,000 people studying at the Polytechnic. Several hundred of them are already involved in assembling the Shaheds, which are delivered from Iran. First of all, the source claims, we are talking about children aged fifteen to seventeen who entered the college after the ninth grade of school. Initially, the choice in favor of underage students was made due to the fact that adults are, as a rule, students in their last year of college. They were already involved in other projects, were doing other important things, and there was no point in involving them. This is no longer the case. All possible forces are now being transferred to the Shahed assembly project. Some production facilities are being stopped, and some are being completely liquidated.
Last October, the Minister of Construction and Housing and Utilities of Russia Irek Faizullin and the head of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov were presented with new projects of “Alabuga”. Among others – the production of prefabricated houses. It was planned to build a huge production, unique for Russia, with an investment volume of 21 billion rubles, capable of producing ready-made block-rooms, already with communications, interior and exterior decoration. Assembling a house from such blocks requires only a few days and a minimum amount of labor and equipment. In the spring of 2022, the leadership of Alabuga planned to supply these blocks to Ukraine for the mass development of the captured territories.
According to our information, this project was completely closed and disbanded, and all the students involved in the project were transferred to assemble the “Shaheds”. At the time of our conversation with the students of Alabuga, students continued to arrive to produce kamikaze drones.
— Literally the day before yesterday, one hundred and fifty new students, from the second and third years. When to train them? They were all transferred from projects in other departments to our project, because now all the efforts, all the money are going to it, — complains Alyona, a student of Alabuga Polytech, who works on the project to assemble the Shaheds.
The salary of students involved in production depends on the fulfillment of the plan. On average, this amount is around 30-40 thousand rubles. Students receive their salary officially – employment contracts are concluded with them. But the work schedule approved by the contract does not correspond to reality. Students are not paid extra for overtime: “We also worked on the 8th and 9th of May. No one paid us anything extra. No one paid anything for overtime work on weekends either,” says one of the students.
Students say they sometimes have to work for days without sleep and “almost without food.” When asked why the students themselves do not rebel against this attitude, one of them answers: “Everyone is afraid. I am not allowed to say this at all. The management is very intimidating about this . ”
Those who are involved in assembling drones are prohibited from talking about what they are doing, under threat of expulsion. According to student Alena, paragraph 6.1 of the training agreement states that they are prohibited from disclosing information about Alabuga as a whole, about the stages of training. In case of violation of these requirements, the student will be forced to pay from one and a half to two million rubles.
— No one is saying anything and no one will say anything, — one of the students claims. — I am sure that I am also taking quite a risk now, because we have cameras and wiretaps and everything else everywhere. But in principle, I am not really scared, because I understand that something completely crazy is happening here. I feel very sorry for the people who want to get here so much. They come and are very disappointed.
According to the students, the security service of Alabuga takes away the phones of everyone involved in the production of the “boats” (let us recall that this is what kamikaze drones are called in the special language of the special economic zone) before they start working and read their correspondence: “This is not a bluff. There were a lot of deductions for disseminating information. For example, you sit with friends, chat, tell them something. Then you get expelled and that’s it . “
It is possible to refuse to work on the project, as well as to play paintball, but this is fraught with consequences: “We really don’t like all this, in principle. But it is impossible to leave the project. You either get expelled or stay on the project ,” says another student.
Not everyone is ready to be expelled. When students are admitted, their parents sign a document describing the conditions of study. Behind the beautiful words is, in fact, teenage slavery. When parents understand what is hidden behind this “contract”, there is no way to extract their children from this system without paying a huge amount.
Students say that the amount of payments in case of expulsion depends on the field of study and the period of study. For example, lawyers and economists, in case of expulsion from the first year, will pay 420 thousand rubles. In all other fields, the amount of payments will be about 170 thousand rubles.
It is also impossible to be expelled and “disappear”, because the employment contract is tripartite. It is signed by “Alabuga Polytechnic”, the student himself and his parents. In case of expulsion and “disappearance” of the student, all fines will be paid by his parents.
Total employment in the project to assemble Iranian combat drones could not but affect the academic performance of the students involved. Many of them work from morning until night, leaving no time for studying. The teachers are aware of what the students are doing: “They also want us to study. But we just don’t have time, we try to explain this,” says Alena. At the same time, 300 hours of missed classes lead to expulsion. Elvira Fomina is in charge of the educational cluster administration service, but she does not want to solve this problem, sources claim. Fomina blocked Protocol journalist Sergei Podsytnik in two messengers at once in response to a request to comment on what is happening in “Alabuga”.
“Alabuga completely breaks a person and builds him into the person the leadership wants to see,” says one of the students when we touch on the topic of general student sentiments about the war.
And, frankly speaking, from conversations with students it is clear that Alabuga is good at “breaking”. During the entire time of preparing this material, we were unable to find a single student who clearly understood what he was doing. Some voluntarily transferred to the project of assembling “Shaheds” because on another project they had to work “out of their specialty” and the students, quote, “ did very little” . But for most, the main argument is salary.
— People often come to us and tell us about military actions, Ukraine and so on. So to speak, they develop patriotism. But, like me, most students went to work there only for the money. And personally, I don’t understand much in this situation, so I don’t know how I feel about the military operation, — says one of the students .
Chapter IV. International Slavery
In addition to teenagers from Russia, female students from African countries are also involved in the production. The same underage students are involved in attracting “mulatto women”, as they are called in “Alabuga”. The idea of ??the scheme for attracting “mulatto women” belonged to the general director of the special economic zone of the production type “Alabuga”, and part-time deputy of the State Council of Tatarstan, Timur Shagivaleev.
The interlocutors say that earlier Shagivaleev had good ideas for the development of the region, for the development of foreign production. He planned to attract investments to the Polytechnic. With the beginning of the war in Ukraine, everything changed. When it began, in Alabuga they decided to organize cooperation with other countries. Based on the input of the new reality, the Alabuga Polytechnic College began to attract students from third world countries. A campaign was organized to attract students, but it was not crowned with success – people from Africa were not particularly willing to enroll in Alabuga voluntarily. Then they decided to attract them with the help of dating applications Tinder and Badoo.
Here’s how it was organized. All students were given premium accounts in the aforementioned apps. Timur Shagivaleev, according to the source, personally wrote “scripts for communication” with potential foreign students – a separate meeting was held for this. The CEO’s direct participation was due to the fact that he knows English perfectly, but the students do not. Shagivaleev told them where to put which emoji and what to write. The students were looking for people from certain African countries. The emphasis was on girls, allegedly because guys from African countries “can be too aggressive and dangerous . “
So, the students casually met the girls and, under the pretext of getting to know each other, suggested going to study together in Alabuga. They sent a website where you had to leave an application for admission. And only after that did the “specialists” contact the “mulatto girls”. The entire recruitment procedure lasted about nine months. The young people from “Tinder” and “Badu” themselves disappeared somewhere, and two weeks later they wrote: “I didn’t wait for you, I’ve already gone. It’s just awesome here.” They sent photos against the backdrop of buildings in Alabuga, which a photographer had taken in advance.
In the fall of 2022, the first enrollment of African female students took place — Alabuga managed to attract several dozen people. At first, the female students were isolated from the rest of the students. Separate buildings for studying and living were built for them. The “mulatto girls” are taught in English. In the future, they will be involved, until 2024 , in the most low-skilled work. For example, they will wash floors and clean up trash. The concept of “Alabuga” does not include service personnel such as cleaners and loaders — all this is shifted to the students.
We have, for example, the staffing schedule of Alabuga. Here you can see that all workers are divided into three types – mulattos, Tajiks and, the upper class, specialists. As you may have guessed, by mulattos in this document they mean those same African students, and Tajiks in the progressive economic zone are called general workers with knowledge of Farsi.
We also asked Vadim, who introduced himself as an intern in the marketing and PR department, about the current situation with foreign students: “There are foreign students, naturally. This is the “Alabuga Start” project. And it consists of recruiting ladies from CIS countries to work in the Alabuga special economic zone .” Why was it necessary to talk about “ladies from CIS countries” when the official website of the “Alabuga Start” project has a list of countries from which the students arrived? At the time of writing: Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Pakistan were not members of the CIS. Of the listed countries, only Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan are members of the commonwealth.
Chapter V. Conclusion
Rustam Minnikhanov recently said that his main desire is to win in the “SVO”. Talking to sources, studying documents and analyzing data, we understand that he does not think about the means, trying to achieve this goal.
Now, many students, having seen colorful advertising, go to apply for admission to the college “Alabuga Polytech”. They do not even imagine that instead of a quality education and work in high-tech production, they will face “executions”, digging trenches, disgusting treatment from the management and, the worst thing, assembling deadly kamikaze drones “Shahed”. Share this text so that those who have not yet entered “Alabuga” have the opportunity to get acquainted with the truth about this place and make a choice – to participate in the dubious initiatives of the “Alabuga” leadership and the murder of civilians of Ukraine or to avoid this participation.
As for those who are already studying at this college. The main question is why do students continue to participate in this? Conformism and some detachment from global problems play a key role here: “I don’t understand why all this is necessary, but since they told me to, I will do it. There are no fools at the top.” The fine that must be paid upon expulsion is huge and completely unaffordable for those who enter the Polytechnic. These are mainly the nearest small towns, villages and hamlets. Considering the not very good financial situation of students’ families, there are good salaries from the very first year. For example, many fourth-year students (who already have good positions) in December, having received a salary recalculation, were able to pay off all their parents’ loans, buy themselves a MacBook, the latest iPhones, and some even cars. The primary role here is not even played by access to material goods, but by the feeling of escaping poverty, pride, approval from parents and school friends.
You have read the second part of our investigative series about “Alabuga”. In the near future, we plan to release another article. In it, we will dwell in more detail on who and how manages the special economic zone and what “Alabuga” employees encounter when getting a job there.
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