By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) -A Russian factory, described by its director as the world’s biggest maker of strike drones, has been shown on the Russian army’s TV channel with teenagers helping make kamikaze drones to attack Ukraine.
The footage, in a documentary film broadcast by the Zvezda channel on Sunday, showed hundreds of large black completed Geran-2 suicide drones in rows inside the secretive facility, which has been targeted by Ukrainian long-range drones.
Ukraine says Russia has used the Geran drones to terrorise and kill civilians in locations including the capital Kyiv, where residents often shelter in metro stations during attacks.
Russia says its drone and missile strikes target only military or military-related targets and denies deliberately targeting civilians, more than 13,000 of whom have been killed in Ukraine since the war began in 2022, the United Nations says.
Zvezda said the Alabuga factory, in Russia’s Tatarstan region, invited school pupils to study at a college the factory runs nearby once they had completed ninth grade (aged 14-15) so that they could study drone manufacturing there and then work at the factory when they had finished college.
Young workers, including teenagers, were shown with their faces blurred out, studying computer screens or making and testing individual components, or assembling drones.
Timur Shagivaleyev, the factory’s general director, did not disclose detailed production figures. But he told Zvezda the initial plan had been to produce “several thousand Geran-2 drones” and that the factory was now producing nine times more than that. He did not say what period the figures referred to.
A Russian think tank close to the government last month suggested Russia’s drone production had jumped by 16.9% in May compared to the previous month after President Vladimir Putin called for output to be stepped up.
Putin said in April that more than 1.5 million drones of various types had been produced last year, but that Russian troops fighting on the front line in Ukraine needed more.
HUGE-SCALE USE OF DRONES
Both sides have deployed drones on a huge scale, using them to spot and hit targets not only on the battlefield but way beyond the front lines.
Zvezda said the Alabuga factory had its own drone testing ground and showed rows of parked U.S. RAM pickup trucks carrying Geran-2 drones.
It also showed one of them launching a drone.
In May, Russia paraded combat drones that its forces use in the war in Ukraine on Moscow’s Red Square in what state TV said was a first.
The design of the Geran-2, which has a known range of at least 1,500 km (932 miles), originated in Iran where an earlier version was made. They have been used to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Zvezda set the documentary to upbeat music, part of its mission to keep Russians interested in and supportive of the war.
The factory is part of the so-called Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is near the town of Yelabuga, which is over 1,000 km from the border with Ukraine.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)
