Russia ups publicity game online after International rights group damning report

"Alabuga Start" is a programme aimed at training and employing foreign nationals in Russia. [Courtesy] Russia's Special Economic Zone (SEZ), described by independent Russian and Western media as an exploitative cheap labour push to staff Russian war factories, has upped its publicity campaign weeks after a damning rights group report. Engaging new methods of generating marketing messages and spreading them through new media, the SEZ programme known as Alabuga Start seemed to put up a fight following the 8 May report by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GIATOC). The GIATOC report corroborated earlier media reports that revealed thousands of attack and reconnaissance drones are produced at the Alabuga SEZ, located in the Republic of Tatarstan, south-west Russia. GIATOC said the programme has relied on underage students from Alabuga Polytech and young migrant women from across the globe to staff its drone production facilities. Initially targeting African countries in its recruitment, Alabuga Start expanded to recruit women aged 18-22 from Latin America, South Asia, and former Soviet countries, said the GIATOC report. Armed with Artificial Intelligence technologies in generating messages, Alabuga Start has in the last few weeks employed the Telegram Messenger, founded in 2013 by Dubai-based Russian oligarch Pavel Durov. Telegram is described by search engine Wikipedia as a cloud-based, cross-platform, social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 October 2013. The app appears to offer real competition to WhatsApp, a product of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's Meta group. Telegram allows users to exchange messages, share media and files, and hold private and group voice or video calls as well as public livestreams. It is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, and web browsers, says Wikipedia - it offers end-to-end encryption in voice and video calls, and optionally in private chats if both participants use a mobile device. It has social networking features, allowing users to post stories, create large public groups with up to 200,000 members, or share one-way updates to unlimited audiences in so-called channels. Our Ukrainian sources in Nairobi said the Telegram Messenger group is also used in the larger Russian war effort in the recruitment of terrorists and other malicious activities. In the last few days since the GIATOC report, Alabuga has released AI-generated videos running on the Telegram group. Some of the short videos shared by sources who are members of the group show young African girls revelling in the hope of fulfilling their life's dreams in Russia. The video features a musical crooner, appropriately identified by our sources as an AI-generated voice with positive vibes, superimposed by video images of African women enjoying fortunes that appear abundant in Russia, only available to those who join Alabuga Start. "In a world full of dreams, I felt so small, searching for a chance to rise and stand tall," the crooner says. "I sought new horizons where I could explore, embracing the future with courage, wanting more. It is the industrial centre where innovation is at its core. High-tech factories abound with opportunities galore. Discover Russia, this vast and beautiful land. Meet the kindest people. The Russians you will find. Alabuga Start is the best. You need to pass business cats. No jest. For work and learning, I will strive. In Russia I will thrive. I'll revive." The video images in the piece show a Utopian society that promoters of Alabuga Start appear to claim is the true reflection of the state of affairs at the Tatarstan-based project. However, GIATOC said some testimonies revealed experiences of harassment, racism, and excessive surveillance by SEZ management. The GIATOC study found evidence of exploitation within Alabuga Start, including the use of misleading recruitment and repressive working conditions. The report calls attention to the need for further investigation and response from countries of origin and the international community to prevent young migrant women from continuing to be exploited in support of Russia's war economy. In January, we reported that the programme was holding at least 200 young African women and continues its practice with little resistance from governments of affected African countries. A list of questions sent to Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs drew a quick and tacit response. Principal Secretary, State Department of Diaspora Affairs, Roseline Njogu, said: "We're investing. As always, we insist that Kenyans looking for opportunities abroad should confirm that these are legit opportunities by checking with the State Department for Diaspora Affairs. And can confirm the status of recruitment companies." She said and shared links to some government websites which revealed little concern for the fourteen young Kenyan women that we reported in January are trapped in a slave-like camp under the Alabuga project. Principal Secretary, State Department of Diaspora Affairs, Roseline Njogu. [Courtesy] A click on the links shared by the PS was met with 'server error' and 'cannot open database'. On 16 March (last week), London-based MailOnline published a story about what it described as a 'living hell' compound where young African women are lured with promises of a better life, only to be subjected to grinding labour, racism, and even prostitution in Tatarstan. Working with a secretive Ukrainian investigative group, MailOnline was able to uncover a series of shocking revelations about a scheme that brings African students from across the continent to Alabuga. The story said Alabuga Start programme was set up in 2023 for foreign students who want to relocate to Russia. Its website declares that it is "designed for ambitious girls between 18-22 years." It promises job opportunities, scholarships, fully funded training, Russian language courses, accommodation, paid flights to Russia, and health insurance. Having accessed nude pictures of African young women forced into prostitution after the original promise collapsed, MailOnline published the pictures as evidence about the true state of the Alabuga programme. Following publication of the GIATOC report, which was captured by the Kenyan press (The East African and Sunday Nation), the Russian Embassy in Nairobi organised a furious response through a commentary on its website, dismissing the reports about Alabuga SEZ as ill-intended and claiming they arise from Russian dynamic relations with Africa becoming the object of a large-scale disinformation campaign. "The articles published by the Nation Group, with references to the report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GIATOC) on how African girls are allegedly forced to work in factories in the Republic of Tatarstan, seem to be part of the massive anti-Russian narrative that has been recently circulating widely across African media, promoted by the West-paid authors and so-called investigators," said the embassy on its website. The embassy added: "Today Russia, and especially its dynamically developing relations with Africa, has become the object of a large-scale disinformation campaign. Western countries, which realise that their position in the world is becoming increasingly precarious, are resorting to various, sometimes the most despicable, tools. Thus, we have come across such materials and 'investigations' mainly by Western and West-supported media, which allegedly reveal the facts about the fate of African women in the Alabuga SEZ more than once."

Russia ups publicity game online after International rights group damning report

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