Personally I would be very surprised if they introduce seperate crews for the freighters. And as for foreign bases, that's just fantasy. It will never happen. The company likes to have complete control over your life. If you screw up (or even if they just think you might have screwed up) they like to be able to immediately put you on "log" (cancel your exit permit and stop your bank account.)
As for recruitment, there are problems with training, especially on 777/787: 18 trainers from the Boeing fleets have resigned from training over the last few months, so there is a nice backlog developing. As they show no interest in finding out why trainers are resigning, it's not likely to improve anytime soon.