The United Kingdom on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 35 individuals and entities accused of trafficking vulnerable migrants to fight on Russia’s front line in Ukraine and of supplying components to the Kremlin’s drone manufacturing operations, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.

The package, announced by Sanctions Minister Stephen Doughty, marks the first use of the UK’s Global Irregular Migration and Trafficking in Persons (GIMTiPS) sanctions regime to target what the Foreign Office described as “the instrumentalization of migration to destabilize other countries.” The regime, launched as the world’s first dedicated sanctions framework for illegal migration and organized immigration crime, allows the office to designate people-smugglers, traffickers, financiers, and small-boat supply chains anywhere in the world.

British officials said the new designees have been “deceptively recruiting foreign migrants in search of a better life” and either deploying them to the front in Ukraine “as cannon fodder” or sending them to work in Russian weapons plants, including through Moscow’s Alabuga Start program, which feeds workers into a UK-sanctioned drone production facility.

“The practice of exploiting vulnerable people to prop up Russia’s failing and illegal war in Ukraine is barbaric,” Doughty said in a statement. “These sanctions expose and disrupt the operations of those trafficking migrants as cannon fodder and feeding Putin’s drone factories with illicit components to target innocent civilians and vital infrastructure.”

Among those designated is Polina Alexandrovna Azarnykh, who with backing from the Russian state allegedly facilitated the travel of individuals from Egypt, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen through Russia to Ukraine, where they were deployed to the front line “with minimal training and under dire conditions,” the Foreign Office said. Two other individuals with links to the Russian state were also sanctioned for their alleged role in recruiting foreign nationals to fight for Russia.

The sanctions also target suppliers of drone components and other military goods based in third countries, including Thailand and China, according to the announcement. Pavel Nikitin, whose company develops Russia’s VT-40 attack drone was among those designated. 

To date, the UK has blacklisted over 3,200 individuals, entities, and ships under its Russia sanctions regime, over 3,000 of which have been sanctioned since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.