Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Enslaved people are being sold to the Russian army for up to 100,000 rubles ($1,240) each, according to anti-slavery campaigners. The issue highlights Russia's hidden but chronic problem with modern slavery, which Putin's government has failed to tackle. ⬇️

2/ Russia has by far the worst record on modern slavery of any country in Europe, with an estimated 1.9 million people living in servitude. This reflects a combination of extreme corruption, weak enforcement of anti-slavery laws, and government collaboration with slavers.

3/ According to the Global Slavery Index, Russia has the eighth-highest slavery rate in the world, at 13 slaves per 1,000 people. In absolute terms, only North Korea has a larger number of slaves. Russia's government does less about slavery than all but 6 other states.

4/ While Russia had serfdom until 1861, modern slavery in Russia is largely the work of criminal gangs in collusion with corrupt officials and police. The victims are usually migrant workers from central and east Asia but also include ethnic Russians, some of whom are kidnapped.

5/ Slaves are typically confined in factory basements or put to work in remote agricultural enterprises where escape is impractical (Stalin's gulags often did not have fences because there was nowhere to go). One Moscow supermarket held 11 slaves in its basement for 5-10 years.

6/ Male slaves are often 'pacified' by being given alcohol and barbiturates to keep them docile before being put to work as manual labourers. Female slaves are often trapped into sexual servitude and forced to work as prostitutes.

7/ Slavery is an open secret in many areas. An anti-slavery campaigner explains: "If we are talking about such "workhouses" or "farms", then, unfortunately, they all settle together and there are often cases when these are entire villages."

8/ "There, not only the relatives of the slave owners are in on it, the neighbours are also more or less aware of what is happening and support this lawlessness. Either they are involved in this in some way, or they simply prefer to remain silent."

9/ Although Russia has signed conventions against human trafficking and modern slavery, the practice is widespread and the Russian state has done less to combat it than any other European government. Only 53 cases have gone to court in the last 15 years.

10/ Russian military recruitment drives are now colliding with the country's endemic slavery. The authorities of several Russian regions offer bonuses of 35,000 to 100,000 rubles to anyone who brings in a 'volunteer' to a military recruitment office.

11/ This has proved irresistable to slavers, who were previously getting far less money for reselling slaves. Numerous slaves are being sold to the army by traffickers and slave owners, who find it far more lucrative than simply selling them to other slavers.

12/ The usual price for slaves varies, according to Dagestani anti-slavery activist Zahir Ismailov. In the south of Russia, "if you're skinny, the price is 15,000 rubles ($186). If you have a speciality – mechanic, tractor driver, driver – it's around 20-30 thousand ($248-372)."

13/ Ismailov is a member of the Russian anti-slavery organisation Alternativa ('Alternative'), which helps to rescue slaves. It says it is coming across significant numbers of people who are being sold to military recruitment offices in exchange for sign-up bonuses:

14/ "They often become victims of fraud [and] slave owners. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of forced recruitments that ended with the signing of a contract pass us by. We simply pick out some isolated cases when people manage to escape.

15/ "And then they tell us that at the same time 5-10 people "went to the Special Military Operation" in the same way. And all the time some new methods appear – that is, these 100,000 rubles are not enough for them [the traffickers/owners].

16/ "Somewhere people are simply kidnapped, brought in in a state of insanity, they sign contracts where other people's [payment] cards are indicated as the cards of the "volunteer" himself.

17/ "As a result, he goes to war, he's lucky if he stays alive in the first months. The money for his service is received by the fraudster. Why do you think so many soldiers complain about non-payment of allowances? Completely different people receive their money.

18/ "Often such victims are even embarrassed to say that they simply do not remember how they signed the contract. This is in the best case. In the worst case, they die in the first week, sometimes without ever sobering up.

19/ "Sometimes, before being sent to the front, the swindlers manage to sign over all the property of the "volunteers" to themselves."

Military commissariat staff are in on the scam, according to Alexey Tupitsyn, an opposition politician in the Irkutsk region.

20/ "In Ust-Kut, for 2024, the military registration and enlistment office workers received a million rubles in bonuses, which they divided among themselves.

21/ "That is, they registered everyone who came to the commissariat as personally recruited and received 100 thousand rubles for each "body". That is, in a year they allegedly "brought in" 10 people."

22/ In one example, Andrey, a man from Penza with learning difficulties, was working in construction when slavers persuaded him to take a new job paying an extravagant 300,000 rubles ($3,721) a month. Instead, he was sold to a livestock farm in the Samara region.

23/ His sister says: "It was so remote that it was impossible to walk or run to a more or less populated area. It was “lucky” that this “farmer” decided that my brother was strong enough to “sell” him to the military registration and enlistment office.

24/ "They gave him a passport for this short period of time, drove him around Samara – and there he ran away."

Andrey was badly beaten and threatened with death to make him cooperate with the recruitment office. Fortunately, he was able to call his family and get rescued.

25/ Ivan from the Volga region had a similar narrow escape. He was taken to a slave workhouse in Syrzan and was told he would be sold to the army, as also happened to another 'resident'. He tried to escape but was caught and taken to another house on the city's edge.

26/ Ivan managed to escape a second time and fled into a forest. He was able to contact his family, who rescued him. It's unlikely that either case will result in prosecutions, as ex-slaves are often too afraid to testify and cases are too difficult to bring. /end

Sources:
🔹 sibreal.org/a/sbezhal-so-v…
🔹 walkfree.org/global-slavery…
🔹 cdn.walkfree.org/content/upload…
🔹 meduza.io/feature/2016/1…
🔹 hir.harvard.edu/putin-and-huma…
🔹 zakon-i-poryadok.com/2019/09/popast…