Report: Up to 25,000 North Koreans may be building military drones in Russia
A sanctions monitoring report says tens of thousands of North Korean citizens are working in Russia's drone industry using student visas, including at the Alabuga zone in Tatarstan, with earnings funneled to Pyongyang's weapons programs.
The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) — a group that includes the United States, South Korea, Japan and eight other countries — reports that as many as 25,000 North Korean citizens may be employed in producing military drones in Russia. One site where these workers are based is the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan.
According to the report, North Korean laborers enter Russia using student visas, a workaround that lets them bypass United Nations sanctions imposed on their country. Wages in Russia can run up to five times higher than what workers could earn in neighboring China. On average, each worker brings in roughly $7,500 a year, though most of that sum is collected by North Korean state authorities rather than the workers themselves.
Labor spread across two countries
As of late 2025, an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 North Korean citizens were working in Russia, while a larger contingent — between 20,000 and 70,000 — was employed in China. Combined, North Koreans working abroad earned as much as $800 million over the course of 2025.
The MSMT states that this overseas income is a key funding source for North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, the very activities that the international sanctions regime is designed to restrict.
