China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, known collectively as CRINK, are seeking to undermine U.S. leadership by weakening the rules-based international order. Human rights violations and trafficking at the Alabuga complex in the Russian town of Yelabuga illustrate the increasingly complex ties among the CRINK regimes.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 created a demand for drones that Moscow could not initially meet. Its answer was an arrangement to manufacture the Iranian-designed Shahed on Russian soil. This report contends that the burgeoning labor force that powers the Alabuga drone factory has become a site of gross human rights abuses and human trafficking.
Between March and May, Russia fired more than 200 drones each day into Ukraine, totaling over 8,000 launches in May and taking a terrible toll on Ukrainians. These drones, produced at Alabuga with trafficked labor, are fired indiscriminately at Ukrainian cities and power grids and used to kill Ukrainian soldiers and citizens. Global action is required to hold accountable the perpetrators of human rights abuses in this sector of Russia’s war machine.
The CRINK countries, though not in a formal alliance, increasingly enable one another to evade pressure, sustain conflicts, and threaten the free world.4 Democracies therefore must recognize that human rights and security are inextricably connected and respond collectively:
The U.S. Department of State should lead efforts to inform targeted Global South countries of false labor recruitment practices that support Russia’s military industry.
- The U.S. Department of the Treasury should pursue and enforce sanctions against front companies and educational institutions that are enabling the human trafficking network.
- The United States, working through the United Nations, should establish a multilateral team to investigate the Alabuga complex.
- Democratic allies and the international community should consistently and publicly highlight the actions of complicit individuals, regimes, and firms to discourage future business partnerships and diplomatic engagement with CRINK.
- The U.S. administration should invest in existing alliances and build new coalitions with allies and partners to counter CRINK threats.
Yelabuga demonstrates how the converging interests of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are supporting Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, strengthening these authoritarian regimes’ interests, and enabling gross and blatant human rights violations. The consequences of CRINK’s growing coordination extend beyond Yelabuga.
