VimpelCom is making major job cuts in its core market of Russia as CEO Jean-Yves Charlier tries to boost the group’s cashflow.

The group expects to cut “thousands” of jobs in Russia from within middle management within six to eight months.

The jobs cull emerged in an interview given by Mikhail Slobodin, head of Russia, with the Rossiya 24 television channel, and reported by Bloomberg.

Customer-facing employees will not feel the cuts at the company, which employs approximately 27,000 staff in Russia.

“We don’t yet see sales declining,” said Slobodin. “Still, it’s obvious that the industry is under serious risk of moving toward a revenue drop.” In VimpelCom’s most recent results, the Russia operation reported a slight rise in mobile service revenue on a year-on-year basis.

However, future threats include the planned entry of Tele2 Russia, the country’s fourth largest operator, to Moscow’s mobile market in October. VimpelCom is also facing macroeconomic factors, as Russia’s economy shrinks because of a fall in oil prices and sanctions.

VimpelCom has swallowed steep falls in revenue and EBITDA during 2015 at group level, mainly as a result of currency fluctuations. Stripping out the currency effect, group-level revenue and profit are still falling but at a more moderate rate.

Jean-Yves Charlier (pictured), who took over as the group’s CEO in April, established the target of generating “ sustainable annualised cashflow improvements of $750 million by year three”.  The cashflow target was announced at last month’s quarterly results.

In addition to a domestic redundancy programme, the group is looking at other methods to improve its balance sheet. In Italy, the company has seen declines in service revenue, both actual and organic. In response, the group announced in early August its intention to merge its local operator, Wind, with CK Hutchison’s 3 Italia. However, the proposed merger is likely to undergo stringent regulatory analysis before it is approved.