Russia has showcased what it calls the biggest drone factory in the world, broadcasting rare footage from inside a plant assembling the deadly attack drones it fires at Ukraine on a daily basis.
Moscow has launched record numbers of drones at Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, escalating aerial attacks as it ignores calls from US President Donald Trump to halt its offensives.
The video, published Sunday by Zvezda, a TV channel owned by the Russian defence ministry, showed workers with their faces blurred assembling jet-black triangle-shaped attack drones.
“This is the world’s largest factory producing unmanned combat aerial vehicles, and the most secretive one,” said Timur Shagivaleev, plant director who has been sanctioned by the United States.
The plant is near the town of Yelabuga in the central Russian region of Tatarstan, located in what was initially planned to be a special economic zone to boost science and business in the region.
More than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the Ukrainian border, it has now become a target for Kyiv’s own long-range attacks.
To support Russia’s escalating aerial barrages, the factory — which employees teenage apprentices — is churning out nine times as many drones as was initially planned, Shagivaleev said.
“Hundreds of machines, thousands of workers, and everywhere you look, there are young people. Boys and girls work and also study at a college here,” the narrator of the 40-minute film said.
Russia’s Geran drones are based on Iranian Shahed drones, which Tehran has also supplied to Moscow to support its offensive.
Above the entrance to the factory, a giant screen read, “Kurchatov, Korolyov and Stalin are living in your DNA,” featuring portraits of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov and the father of the Soviet space programme Sergei Korolev.
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© Agence France-Presse
