Foreign IT companies have been moving their Russian staff out of the country to avoid international sanctions and others which shuttered their operations have seen staff escaping to greener pastures overseas.

Tsar Putin has come up with a brilliant, glorious plan to force technology experts who he might have once arrested for being homosexuals, or speaking out against the state, as a cheap labour force. Because the best way to get good coders is to lock them up for silly crimes, force them to work on code for companies they hate, and pay them nothing for their efforts.

Multiple Russian news outlets published stories on April 27 saying the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service had announced a plan to recruit IT specialists from Russian prisons to work remotely for domestic commercial companies.

Russians sentenced to forced labour will serve out their time at one of many correctional centres across dozens of Russian regions, usually at the centre that is closest to their hometown.

Alexander Khabarov, deputy head of Russia's penitentiary service, said his agency had received proposals from businessmen in different regions to involve IT specialists serving sentences in correctional centres to work remotely for commercial companies.

Khabarov told Russian media outlets that under the proposal people with IT skills at these facilities would labour-only in IT-related roles, but would not be limited to working with companies in their own region.