Russia facing labor shortage in middle of war
Russia's worker shortage is so bad, the nation is increasingly leaning on prison labor to prop up its ailing industries and make up for a lack of manpower.
In 2022, Russia pulled in an estimated 19.1 billion rubles, or around $204 million from forced prison labor, The Moscow Times recently reported, citing dating from Russia's finance ministry. That exceeded estimates that Russia made the year prior, when budget makers anticipated bringing in just 15.8 billion roubles from forced prison labor.
The nation expected to rake in 15.9 billion rubles in 2023 and 16.2 billion rubles in 2024, according to 2021 budget estimates.There are around 26,000 Russian prisoners forced into labor across 1,700 organizations, according to August 2023 data from Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service. That's more than double what was reported in 2022, when 9,300 prisoners were forced to work, according to the research and analytics firm Jamestown Foundation.
Those trends have been sparked by a record workforce shortage in Russia, with around a million Russians having fled the country to avoid fighting or escape Russia's difficult economic situation.
"The Russian economy is facing harsh structural challenges, including the lack of a qualified work force," Jamestown senior fellow Sergey Sukhankin said in a note on Monday. "The Kremlin has sought to integrate prison labor with certain sectors of the domestic economy to solve this issue."
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Russia is also using prisoners in its meat grinder attacks on Ukraine. It looks like the war is contributing to its labor shortage along with the migration out of the country that began with the war.
See, also:
Ukraine-Russia war - live: Putin pushes more soldiers to frontline despite failing offensive
And:
Ukraine shows off a new ground drone meant to drive under Russian tanks and blow up
Russian tanks are now faced with drone attacks from above and below.
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