A plant in Russia’s Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan plans to produce six thousand Shahed attack drones annually. This is reported by The Wall Street Journal, Ukrinform reports. It is noted that Russian businessmen signed an agreement to build a drone manufacturing plant at the end of 2022, when they flew to Tehran with a favourable offer: USD 1.7 billion to be partially paid in gold bullion.
The terms of the contract were disclosed in February by a hacker group called Prana Network, which claimed to have hacked into email servers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The details of the deal were confirmed to the publication by representatives of the US security service.
According to the contract between the Russian managers of the plant and their Iranian partners, the plant plans to produce 6,000 Shahed attack drones a year – in addition to reconnaissance drones. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based defence-oriented think tank, the plant was ahead of its production schedule at the end of April, having already delivered 4,500 of the promised Shaheds.
According to the newspaper, citing Ukrainian military intelligence and a former Syrian officer, Russian soldiers are already learning to fly drones in Syria with instructors from the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
It is noted that dozens of Albatross M3 reconnaissance drones manufactured at the Alabuga plant have received detailed photo reconnaissance of Ukrainian positions and movements on the front line. Their manufacturer stated that the drones have already been tested in the Belgorod region.
Russia is also producing its own warheads, accelerating the production of combat-ready weapons, as experts believe that the newer versions of the Shaheds were made in Russia, said drone expert Henry Thompson, who previously worked for the UN. After analysing the wreckage of the UAVs found in Ukraine, he concluded that the latest versions of the Shahed were made in Russia.
According to the newspaper, to expand drone production, Russia first of all needed skilled workers. The first series of Albatross reconnaissance devices were made mostly by students from neighbouring technical colleges, but they were not enough, so the manufacturers began to look further afield – to Africa.
In early 2023, Russian businessmen from Albatross rented a room in a high-class school in Uganda, gathering an audience of young female students. The latter were offered skilled jobs with salaries three times higher than in their home country, airfare, free accommodation, and more. Since then, more than a thousand women have travelled to Alabuga from all over Africa. Another thousand students are likely to join this year’s intake, Ugandan officials say.
As Ukrinform reported, last June, the White House released satellite photos that identified two buildings near the Alabuga zone as a key part of Iran’s attempts to help Moscow increase its drone production. “We are also concerned that Russia is working with Iran to produce Iranian UAVs from inside Russia,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, at the time.
source ukrinform