Lemdro.id

[David Hughes] is one of the country’s foremost energy analysts and a geologist who worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for 32 years. Based in B.C., Hughes is neither an industry booster nor a green activist.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42880630

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Moscow has increasingly turned to foreign nationals to fill its ranks as it struggles with heavy battlefield losses that Ukraine says have exceeded one million since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a government agency that monitors and counters foreign propaganda, said ... that since the invasion began “Moscow has built a transnational system for recruiting foreigners using deceit and criminal schemes.”

“Russia has recruited foreigners from 128 countries of the world using fraudulent recruitment centers, private companies and state channels through its diplomatic and cultural institutions,” the center wrote on its Telegram channel.

“Hundreds and thousands of citizens of various countries were drawn into the aggression through deception, coercion or for money,” it added.

The center estimates that more than 18,000 individuals from 128 countries have joined Russian forces since 2022.

Dmitry Usov, who heads Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, told CNN that this figure does not include the separate contingent of around 12,000 North Korean troops deployed under a military cooperation agreement between Moscow and Pyongyang.

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According to the report, Russia has brought in 2,715 Uzbek nationals, 1,599 Tajik citizens, 1,190 from Kazakhstan and 687 from Kyrgyzstan to help wage its war, now approaching its fourth winter.

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The agency also lists 1,338 Belarusian citizens fighting for Russia. It added that around 3,300 of these foreign fighters have already been killed in combat.

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Earlier, OpenMinds, a defense-tech company specializing in information warfare, said in a report that Moscow has expanded its online recruitment campaigns aimed at foreigners to shore up its manpower, with the number of contract military advertisements rising more than sevenfold since last summer.

It added that about half of the foreign-targeted posts were directed at Russian-speaking citizens of post-Soviet states. Many of these ads falsely promised financial benefits, social guarantees and assistance obtaining a Russian passport, the report said.

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Over 200 Kenyans fighting for Russia in Ukraine, as per BBC.

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Russia is turning to African women and conscripted North Koreans to tackle its defence worker shortage, experts say.

... The military industry [In Russia] is not recruiting Russia’s women to work in most roles ... the reluctance to recruit Russian women into jobs in the defence industry does not extend to women from other countries. Around 200 women, mainly from central and west Africa, have been hired to work in defence industry factories located in the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan, a Russian republic located east of Moscow. Many of these factories build drones assembled from components imported from Iran – weapons that have been used extensively by Russia in its attacks on civilians in Ukraine.

The African women employed to build drones in Tatarstan were recruited through a programme called Alabuga Start, which targets young female migrant workers ...

It is advertised extensively on social media, including through paid influencers on TikTok ...

The Alabuga Start website appears to offer an attractive package of work experience, on-the-job training, accommodation ... However, once they arrive, the young women can find themselves living very different lives to those they had anticipated. There are reports of working long hours and exposure to dangerous chemicals, with passports being withheld to prevent women from leaving. For instance, Kenya has launched an investigation into Alabuga Start, which may see the programme shut down in that country ...

161 Ohm

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42880974

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The exact number of people living with HIV in Russia is unknown. Data on HIV-related deaths is no longer published.

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It’s no longer clear how many people in Russia have died of HIV. Starting in 2025, the authorities stopped releasing these statistics, along with most demographic metrics. Data on new cases, now published annually rather than monthly, is also harder to find.

Foreign nationals in Russia test positive for HIV less often than Russian citizens.

Like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, Russia is one of the few countries that deport foreigners with HIV. Foreign nationals are required to undergo HIV testing if they want to live in Russia for more than 90 days, work there, obtain a residence permit, or if they are refugees or have applied for refugee status.

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Russia’s worst HIV rates are in the Urals and Siberia. Conservative-leaning Vologda is among the regions with the highest number of HIV-positive pregnant women.

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To assess HIV prevalence across Russia’s regions, [researchers] examined several indicators, such as the share of infected pregnant women and the proportion of people with HIV receiving antiretroviral therapy. The situation proved most severe in the following regions:

• Kemerovo
• Tomsk
• Chelyabinsk
• Altai
• Krasnoyarsk
• The Leningrad region
• The Komi Republic
• Irkutsk
• Perm
• The Chukotka Autonomous Okrug

Because all pregnant women in Russia are advised to undergo HIV testing, this indicator provides an indirect measure of the situation in each region. “If more than 1 percent of pregnant women in a region are infected for three consecutive years, it means the virus has spread beyond vulnerable groups,” [researchers] authors conclude. On average, the rate across Russia is 0.6 percent, but it exceeds 1 percent in 14 regions, 11 of which have reported infection rates at this level for several years already.

Vologda Governor Roman Filimonov has lobbied to end local abortion services and promoted the region as a proving ground for “conservative” values. However, the data show that HIV among pregnant women is rising, from 0.17 percent in 2022 to 1 percent in 2023 and then 2 percent in 2024.