Russia’s economy has proven remarkably resilient, despite years of sanctions and economic statecraft. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t deep cracks in Russia’s unstable economic foundation, with only a thin veneer masking increasingly severe shortages — especially of workers.
Russia is in a desperate labor bind. The country has a shrinking, aging population — a fact it ignores as it sends its young men into the meatgrinder of the war in Ukraine. To generate military manpower, Russia has gotten creative, recruiting criminals out of prisons, North Koreans, and mental health patients. Regardless, the endless need for fresh troops on the front line has taken bodies away from industry just as Russia’s military-industrial needs are expanding rapidly.
Russia now desperately needs to fill jobs on assembly lines that make war materiel, but it has a plan: exploiting the Global South, including its so-called friends.
BRICS members India, Brazil, and South Africa have all been recruitment targets for what appears to be forced labor. Russia issues to their citizens a siren song against which many young women are unable to steel themselves, with devastating results.
For at least two years, Russian company Alabuga Special Economic Zone has been luring young women from developing countries with the promise of good jobs and educational opportunities. When they arrive, they are pressed into drone production. They are made to work with corrosive chemicals for long hours, with restricted communications and few or no rights. The women have faced sexual harassment and seen “deductions” taken from their already meager pay for things like rent.
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Educational institutions in Uganda and Burkina Faso have hosted Alabuga recruitment drives; economy-focused civil society organizations in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and Madagascar have met with Alabuga officials; and diplomats from African and Latin American states have visited and some have promoted Alabuga sites.
Alabuga SEZ has targeted 84 countries, prioritizing recruitment in Africa and Latin America. Although some countries have called out Russian labor fraud, it has been too little, too late. South Africa’s warning and investigation, which began in August, does little to help women already taken to these sweatshops.
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Well, I don’t think that Russia would have a chunk of Ukraine, as this will encourage the Kremlin to go for the next country. Another question is what happens with Russia after Putin?
Realistically Russia has put itself into an economic situation where it cannot pull out of the war unless they gain control over economic resources that allow it to transition from a war time economy.
There’s a reason most countries do everything they can to avoid having to go into a wartime economy. The immediate benefits are great, but it quickly becomes a sunk cost fallacy due to the guns vs butter model of opportunity detriment.
Military spending just has terrible opportunity cost ratios, and can only really be recouped as an investment if you are actively conquering new territory rich in resources. Even then, the cost eventually becomes greater than the opportunity it affords, eventually no matter how much you spend you aren’t able to control what you take over.
The only way the US was able to transition from the war time economy from WW2 without imploding was because it became the new banking capital of the world, and it got to keep it’s production capacity while their allies did not. This is almost a direct inverse of Russia’s current scenario.
In short, Russia will most likely have to extend its war against Ukraine, or start a new conflict as soon as it makes peace with Ukraine just in the hopes that they can maintain their current economic situation.
It became the new banking capital of the world because Europe was utterly devastated, needed to rebuild, but none of the currencies were worth shit.
It’s literally that which caused the United States to enter this wonderful golden age of capitalism.
I really hate it when American politician talk about this era as if America did something so right all by themselves. No, Europe was just destroyed. It made them money. You’re welcome.
To the next country… With what resources? They’re spending all their resources just to gain a few metres of territory over the course of an entire year.
All those young, able bodied working people dying to a drone attack after just two weeks of training.
Russia shouldn’t get a chunk of Ukraine as that will encourage them to invade other countries… If they’d have anything left to invade with.