Russia plans to produce 1,300 Shahed UAVs by year-end - intelligence

Vadym Skibitskyi, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine, Ukrinform reports.

According to him, Russia has started working on setting up a powerful production of unmanned aerial vehicles on its territory.

"We are working to find out where exactly UAVs are manufactured (since more than one company is involved in the production of drones and spare parts for them) and what the actual production capacity is," he said.

Skibitskyi noted that preliminary military intelligence data indicate that Russia planned to manufacture 1,300 units of the so-called Geran-2 drone (Shahed) in the second half of this year.

"Russians can use components of both foreign and domestic production. At the same time, in fact, they are not capable of producing such a number of UAVs today," he said.

According to him, following the latest attacks by Shahed drones, military intelligence discovered components in them that indicate that the final stage of the assembling of these UAVs is already taking place in Russia. That is evidenced, in particular, by the increase in the number of Russian parts in the drones.

"In addition, according to information available to us, the aggressor plans to expand the production of Shahed on the territory of the Russian Federation. Also, it was announced at one of the Russian defense industry exhibitions that Moscow wants to master nearly 60 UAVs of various modifications by 2030," he said.

As reported, the Security Service of Ukraine detained an agent of the Russian Federation who helped to direct Russia’s Grad MLRS and Shahed UAVs at Kherson.