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Ukraine invasion forces Russia to use convicts to make Lada cars
Acute labour shortages caused by the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbour are forcing car manufacturer to employ gangs of prisoners
Russia is using convicts to manufacture the iconic and unreliable Lada family car amid a shortage of workers caused by the war in Ukraine.
Maxim Sokolov, head of Russian car manufacturer AvtoVAZ, said that labour shortages caused by the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine were forcing him to employ gangs of prisoners.
He told RBK, a Russian news outlet, that AvtoVAZ would employ “hundreds, maybe 100, maybe 200” prisoners in its factories.
Russia’s mobilisation of more than 320,000 men, its first since World War II, and the flight abroad of an estimated 1 million people has created a labour shortage that analysts have said will cripple Russian industry.
In May, the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy said that a third of Russian factories were short of labour, the highest proportion since the dark economic days of the 1990s.
Officials have tried to encourage more migrant workers from former Soviet Central Asia, a traditional pool of manual labour for Russia, to fill vacancies but reports of mistreatment, poor pay and army drafts have undermined this drive.
So instead, the Kremlin has again turned to its prisons, which have a population of roughly 300,000 people, for the extra manpower.
The Kremlin has already deployed tens of thousands of rapists and murderers as mercenaries and soldiers in Ukraine, promising a pardon in return for a six-month frontline tour.
It’s been a tough 15 months for Lada which has seen demand for its cars plummet as the Kremlin refocuses the Russian economy and society on supporting its military, forcing consumer manufacturers such as AvtoVAZ to cut corners.
Last year, AvtoVAZ released its 2022 Lada without airbags and antilock brakes and at the St Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday a new model failed to start in a test run in front of dozens of cameras.