差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
版主： Caravel， TheMatrix， molen
#46 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
Update: 2 thermal power plants targeted in Russian attack, DTEK says.
DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy company, said that two of its thermal power plants were targeted in a Russian attack on June 1, resulting in "serious damage" to the equipment.
“This is the sixth major attack on DTEK’s thermal power plants in two and a half months,” the company said.
Update: 2 hydroelectric power plants hit in Russian attack on energy infrastructure.Two hydroelectric power stations and nearby infrastructure were hit during a massive Russian attack on June 1, inflicting "critical damage," said Ukrhydronergo, the state-owned hydroelectric energy company.
#47 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
More than 9,000 acres of forest engulfed in flames in Kharkiv Oblast, State Emergency Service says.Massive forest fires have engulfed more than 3,700 hectares (9,140 acres) of forest in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine's State Emergency Service said on June 1.
#50 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
Lviv school graduates were given ribbons with a map of Ukraine without Crimea.Oops … ordered in China?
#52 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
As part of a new package of sanctions, the European Commission has proposed restrictions on lenders using the Russian central bank’s system for the transfer of financial messages, known as SPFS, to circumvent sanctions. Like SWIFT, it acts as a secure messaging network to facilitate interbank payments.
Use of the system nearly tripled last year compared with 2022. It’s now used by more than 150 foreign banks in some 20 countries including China, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, one of the people said.
The EU is aiming to agree to the package ahead of the G-7 summit, but several EU member states have pushed back against a blanket ban on SPFS over concerns that such a move could impact legitimate transactions and harm relations with third countries, the person said.
This is
level. "Russia you can't use SWIFT."- "Ok, fine I'll use Russian SPFS or China's CIPS."
"Nooo! You can't use non-SWIFT that is not fair!"
#53 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
Russian special military operation is creating the future of warfare
The weapons that shaped warfare in the 20th century still play significant roles on the battlefield in the 21st, but they are dwarfed in importance by one invention, from which multiple theaters have been affected: the drone.
“[US media] admitted how useless the Abrams [tank] is when tens of millions of dollars per tank can be taken out by a $500 drone. It is a new model of warfare,” Mark Sleboda, a security and international relations expert told Sputnik’s Fault Lines.
“But it is an evolution of warfare that is occurring before our eyes. So, the Chinese and Americans are certainly paying very close attention,” he noted earlier in the interview.
It is an opinion shared by former Marine and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter. Speaking on the Danny Haiphong show, he explained how everything from tactics to logistics has been changed by drones.
“These FPV drones are a nightmare for soldiers,” Ritter explained. “If I tried to take Marines into combat using the tactics that I was taught,” Ritter continued “[With] two platoons online, basic fire etcetera, my base of fire would disappear because it’d be swarmed by FPV drones… then my Marines attacking would be hit by these drones and they’re all dead.”
This was a lesson that the Ukrainian Army failed to learn during their counteroffensive. Rabotino was intended to be the first minor step during that offensive that would lead to Tokmak which would serve as the staging ground for an assault on Melitopol.
But as armor assault after armor assault was destroyed, it became apparent that the Ukrainians would never reach their goal. Yet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needed something to show his Western benefactors, so Rabotino became the goal. It took 71 days to capture the tiny village with a pre-war population of about 500 people, largely using the same tactics they began with. Ukraine lost dozens of expensive tanks and thousands of men capturing and then holding the village. The Ukrainian offensive never went any further and in May, Russia recaptured the village.
In WWI, the generals who failed to learn from the lessons of the Civil War and the Russo-Japanese War suffered the consequences on the battlefield. Russia learned its lessons already. Ukraine did not and we see the results of that. The United States pioneered drone warfare in the 2000s, but as evidenced by the number of MQ-9 Reapers taken down by the Houthis in Yemen, those are no longer effective. Will the lumbering behemoth of NATO be able to adjust as quickly as Russia and China, or will they, like the Generals of WWI, be stuck fighting with the tactics and equipment of the last century?
#54 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
China could arrange Russia-Ukraine peace conference, Lavrov tells RIA
China could arrange a peace conference in which Russia and Ukraine would participate, the RIA news agency cited Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Thursday.
Lavrov said such a move would be a continuation of Beijing's efforts to resolve the Ukrainian crisis.
"We share (China's) position that the root causes of the conflict need to be addressed in the first place and legal interests of all parties need to be protected, with subsequent agreements based on the principle of equal and indivisible security," Lavrov said in an interview with the agency.
"Let me underscore again, this entails respecting realities on the ground, which reflect the will of people living there."
Russia has repeatedly called for talks with a precondition that Kiev and the West recognise its territorial gains in Ukraine. Kiev has rejected those proposals.
#56 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
China-Arab ties strengthen amid multipolarity and geopolitical shifts Chinese-Arabian relations, particularly with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are rapidly growing due to the multipolarity trend, US pressure on China and conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
At the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized China's commitment to partnership for peace and stability.
The forum saw the participation of leaders from Egypt, UAE, Bahrain and Tunisia. Additionally, China and Russia have positioned themselves as leaders of BRICS, which now includes UAE and Egypt, with Saudi Arabia also invited to join.
Arab states have shown more support for China’s peace plan for Ukraine than Western proposals, with Saudi Arabia suggesting China as a key intermediary for a Gaza ceasefire.
Here is the economic foundation for this Arab-Chinese rapprochement:
China sources over one-third of its oil from six Gulf Cooperation Council members, with only Russia supplying more than Saudi Arabia (85.9 million metric tons in 2023). A significant portion of Saudi-Chinese oil trade is conducted in ‘petro-yuans’, attributed to "geopolitical risks," according to Silk Road Fund chairman Zhu Lun. De-dollarization and expansion of Arab-Chinese trade to the non-energy sectors were the goals set by Xi during his visit to Riyadh in December 2022. He called for more investment in AI and green tech. In June 2023, Riyadh signed a $5.6 billion deal with a Chinese electric carmaker to establish a joint venture in Saudi Arabia. Xi proposed creating a "joint space debris observation center" and developing space aircraft for scientific and passenger missions with Arab countries. At the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, China signed Belt and Road cooperation agreements with all 22 Arab countries and the Arab League, implementing over 200 major projects benefiting nearly 2 billion people. China expects diplomatic support from Arab nations on the Taiwan issue.#57 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/0 ... rm-ukraine#
There is an explosive flaw in the plan to rearm Ukraine
Europe lacks TNT and other propellants for shells and missiles
As ukraine comes under mounting pressure on the battlefield, Europe is desperately scrambling to boost its puny production of artillery shells and missiles. In January the EU admitted that it had fallen well short of its pledge to provide Ukraine with one million shells by March 2024. On March 15th it allocated €500m ($542m) to ramp up production. But the biggest bottleneck is something that was an afterthought until recently: a shortage of explosives.
The scheme in question is called the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (asap), and three-quarters of the funding, or some €372m, will be lavished on manufacturers of things that go boom. Europe needs bushels of combustibles to reach its target of producing 2m shells a year by the end of 2025. Each artillery shell is crammed with 10.8kg of a high-explosive such as tnt, hmx or rdx. Additional propellant charges are also needed to hurl the rounds over tens of kilometres. Other munitions require even larger amounts: the high-explosive warhead on a Storm Shadow missile, for example, weighs around 450kg. The trouble is that explosive makers are unsure that production can be cranked up and fear that the quirks of the industry will hamper the surge that Ukraine needs to remain competitive on the battlefield.
The end of the cold war sent demand for weapons plummeting, and forced many European explosive manufacturers to scale back operations, merge or simply shut up shop. Britain, for example, closed its last explosives plant in 2008. Europe’s last major producer of tnt is located in northern Poland. Elsewhere, many government-owned facilities were either privatised or mothballed. For decades their production has been calibrated for peacetime efficiency, not industrial-scale output, notes Johann Höcherl, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. As a result, there is very little slack left in the supply chain to meet surging demand.
Take the explosives that go into the main charge of an artillery round or missile. Only a handful of companies still produce nato-standard high-energy materials. One is Chemring Nobel, which occupies a sprawling plant in Saetre, Norway. Another is France’s eurenco, which runs a similarly huge facility in Karlskoga, Sweden. Both firms’ order books have swelled since Russia’s invasion. eurenco’s is chock-full until 2030 and Chemring’s Saetre plant is running at full tilt. Tim Lawrenson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, argues that turning mothballed plants back on will take time, given the need to retool and refurbish facilities.
Enticed by the asap subsidies, companies are pouring money into expanding capacity. But one industry insider notes that building a plant from scratch can take from three to seven years. A case in point: Rheinmetall, an ammunition provider, is building an explosives complex in Hungary; yet production will only start in 2027. A thicket of safety and environmental regulations can also impede expansion of capacity, says Christian Mölling of the German Council on Foreign Relations, another think-tank.
Explosive makers also face their own supply-side squeezes. One is an industry-wide shortage of skilled workers; grizzled engineers are retiring and few young people fancy handling explosives for a graduate job, says Mr Höcherl. Supplies of critical raw materials, like chemical precursors, are also under strain. Sourcing nitric acid, a crucial ingredient of tnt, hmx and rdx—and also of nitrocellulose, the basis of most military propellants—can be particularly challenging. At the moment, nitric acid production goes largely towards fertilisers. But as fertiliser producers suffer from higher energy costs, explosive makers have had to grapple with tightening supply. There are also supply-chain vulnerabilities: cotton linters, a type of fibre that is another key ingredient in nitrocellulose, are mostly imported from China.
Amid these difficulties, some ammunition providers are looking further afield for their explosives. Reports indicate that Indian and Japanese explosive makers are filling some of the gap. Some experts worry that explosives from abroad are of lesser quality and could therefore damage equipment. The rhetoric from European governments is bullish and it is true that some progress is being made: eu-wide annual shell production is projected to reach at least 1.4m by the end of 2024, up from around 500,000 a year ago. When he laid the first brick for eurenco’s propellant factory in Bergerac on April 11th French President Emmanuel Macron defended the performance of France’s “war economy”. The plant, he said, would open, in record time, by 2025. Yet as Russia’s summer offensive gets under way, that is not quick enough to help shell-starved Ukrainians. ■
There is an explosive flaw in the plan to rearm Ukraine
Europe lacks TNT and other propellants for shells and missiles
As ukraine comes under mounting pressure on the battlefield, Europe is desperately scrambling to boost its puny production of artillery shells and missiles. In January the EU admitted that it had fallen well short of its pledge to provide Ukraine with one million shells by March 2024. On March 15th it allocated €500m ($542m) to ramp up production. But the biggest bottleneck is something that was an afterthought until recently: a shortage of explosives.
The scheme in question is called the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (asap), and three-quarters of the funding, or some €372m, will be lavished on manufacturers of things that go boom. Europe needs bushels of combustibles to reach its target of producing 2m shells a year by the end of 2025. Each artillery shell is crammed with 10.8kg of a high-explosive such as tnt, hmx or rdx. Additional propellant charges are also needed to hurl the rounds over tens of kilometres. Other munitions require even larger amounts: the high-explosive warhead on a Storm Shadow missile, for example, weighs around 450kg. The trouble is that explosive makers are unsure that production can be cranked up and fear that the quirks of the industry will hamper the surge that Ukraine needs to remain competitive on the battlefield.
The end of the cold war sent demand for weapons plummeting, and forced many European explosive manufacturers to scale back operations, merge or simply shut up shop. Britain, for example, closed its last explosives plant in 2008. Europe’s last major producer of tnt is located in northern Poland. Elsewhere, many government-owned facilities were either privatised or mothballed. For decades their production has been calibrated for peacetime efficiency, not industrial-scale output, notes Johann Höcherl, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. As a result, there is very little slack left in the supply chain to meet surging demand.
Take the explosives that go into the main charge of an artillery round or missile. Only a handful of companies still produce nato-standard high-energy materials. One is Chemring Nobel, which occupies a sprawling plant in Saetre, Norway. Another is France’s eurenco, which runs a similarly huge facility in Karlskoga, Sweden. Both firms’ order books have swelled since Russia’s invasion. eurenco’s is chock-full until 2030 and Chemring’s Saetre plant is running at full tilt. Tim Lawrenson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, argues that turning mothballed plants back on will take time, given the need to retool and refurbish facilities.
Enticed by the asap subsidies, companies are pouring money into expanding capacity. But one industry insider notes that building a plant from scratch can take from three to seven years. A case in point: Rheinmetall, an ammunition provider, is building an explosives complex in Hungary; yet production will only start in 2027. A thicket of safety and environmental regulations can also impede expansion of capacity, says Christian Mölling of the German Council on Foreign Relations, another think-tank.
Explosive makers also face their own supply-side squeezes. One is an industry-wide shortage of skilled workers; grizzled engineers are retiring and few young people fancy handling explosives for a graduate job, says Mr Höcherl. Supplies of critical raw materials, like chemical precursors, are also under strain. Sourcing nitric acid, a crucial ingredient of tnt, hmx and rdx—and also of nitrocellulose, the basis of most military propellants—can be particularly challenging. At the moment, nitric acid production goes largely towards fertilisers. But as fertiliser producers suffer from higher energy costs, explosive makers have had to grapple with tightening supply. There are also supply-chain vulnerabilities: cotton linters, a type of fibre that is another key ingredient in nitrocellulose, are mostly imported from China.
Amid these difficulties, some ammunition providers are looking further afield for their explosives. Reports indicate that Indian and Japanese explosive makers are filling some of the gap. Some experts worry that explosives from abroad are of lesser quality and could therefore damage equipment. The rhetoric from European governments is bullish and it is true that some progress is being made: eu-wide annual shell production is projected to reach at least 1.4m by the end of 2024, up from around 500,000 a year ago. When he laid the first brick for eurenco’s propellant factory in Bergerac on April 11th French President Emmanuel Macron defended the performance of France’s “war economy”. The plant, he said, would open, in record time, by 2025. Yet as Russia’s summer offensive gets under way, that is not quick enough to help shell-starved Ukrainians. ■
#58 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
https://www.euractiv.com/section/defenc ... r-ukraine/
NATO chief Stoltenberg proposes revised €100 billion weapons fund for Ukraine
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Friday (31 May) for NATO members to spend together ‘equitably’, €40 billion a year for Ukraine, giving up on his original multi-year plan, nevertheless assuring this will provide a long-term perspective for Ukraine.
He said he was “asking” all NATO members to “maintain at least” the level of €40 billion worth of military support to Ukraine “each year” for “as long as necessary”, after chairing an informal meeting of the 31 foreign ministers.
NATO chief Stoltenberg proposes revised €100 billion weapons fund for Ukraine
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Friday (31 May) for NATO members to spend together ‘equitably’, €40 billion a year for Ukraine, giving up on his original multi-year plan, nevertheless assuring this will provide a long-term perspective for Ukraine.
He said he was “asking” all NATO members to “maintain at least” the level of €40 billion worth of military support to Ukraine “each year” for “as long as necessary”, after chairing an informal meeting of the 31 foreign ministers.
#59 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/one-10 ... 024-05-31/
Exclusive: One in 10 Republicans less likely to vote for Trump after guilty verdict, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
By Jason Lange
May 31, 20243:27 PM PDTUpdated 21 hours ago
WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday.
The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate's conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal.
The potential loss of a tenth of his party's voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction.
Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump's conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision.
The verdict could shake up the race between Trump, who was U.S. president from 2017-2021, and Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. U.S. presidential elections are typically decided by thin margins in a handful of competitive swing states, meaning that even small numbers of voters defecting from their candidates can have a big impact.
Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with 41% of voters saying they would vote for Biden if the election were held today and 39% saying they would pick Trump, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,556 U.S. adults nationwide.
Exclusive: One in 10 Republicans less likely to vote for Trump after guilty verdict, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
By Jason Lange
May 31, 20243:27 PM PDTUpdated 21 hours ago
WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday.
The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate's conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal.
The potential loss of a tenth of his party's voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction.
Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump's conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision.
The verdict could shake up the race between Trump, who was U.S. president from 2017-2021, and Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. U.S. presidential elections are typically decided by thin margins in a handful of competitive swing states, meaning that even small numbers of voters defecting from their candidates can have a big impact.
Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with 41% of voters saying they would vote for Biden if the election were held today and 39% saying they would pick Trump, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,556 U.S. adults nationwide.
#60 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
published 1-2 days before the "measured" lifting of using usa made weapons into russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... g-strikes/
U.S. concerned about Ukraine strikes on Russian nuclear radar stations
Washington conveyed to Kyiv that attacks on Russian early-warning systems could be destabilizing.
The United States fears that recent Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian nuclear early-warning systems could dangerously unsettle Moscow at a time when the Biden administration is weighing whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied weapons in cross-border attacks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... g-strikes/
U.S. concerned about Ukraine strikes on Russian nuclear radar stations
Washington conveyed to Kyiv that attacks on Russian early-warning systems could be destabilizing.
The United States fears that recent Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian nuclear early-warning systems could dangerously unsettle Moscow at a time when the Biden administration is weighing whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied weapons in cross-border attacks.
#61 Re: 差不多刚继续升了点儿级的乌克兰战争
https://www.wsj.com/world/the-russian-d ... e-7abd5616
The Russian Drone Plant That Could Shape the War in Ukraine
The factory uses Iranian tech and has hired a workforce from East Africa, but is now in Ukraine’s sights
Early last month, cellphone footage captured a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle slowly winding toward its final destination in a new installment in the spreading drone wars—a drone itself was being used to hit a site where enemy drones were being made.
The target was a high-tech college and manufacturing complex in the Russian steppes where Moscow is aiming to scale up production of the weapons it needs to gain an advantage in Ukraine.
Around 20 people were injured when the drone slammed into the dormitories at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, many of them young engineering students hired from East Africa. Russian authorities said the manufacturing facilities were unscathed. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said the blast caused significant disruption to production. The Alabuga Special Economic Zone didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did the Kremlin.
The attack highlighted an important new aspect of the war in Ukraine, military experts say: the speed with which Russia can scale up production of Iranian-designed surveillance and attack drones, drawing on Chinese components, an African workforce and logistics networks that Iran honed during its own yearslong standoff with the West.
Max speed: 115 mph
Max flying range: Up to 1,553 miles
Weight: 441 lbs.
Drones are playing an increasingly significant role in current conflicts, particularly in Ukraine. Russia has launched dozens of attacks using Iran’s Shahed drones, whose telltale buzz has earned them the name “mopeds” among Ukrainians.
Their low cost compared with the expensive missiles Ukraine uses means air-defense units have sometimes resorted to machine guns to shoot them down. Iran unleashed a swarm of drones in its recent attack on Israel, attempting to overwhelm Israeli air defenses and allow ballistic and cruise missiles to sneak through, a tactic Moscow also uses.
With Ukraine now building its own drones—which have struck oil refineries and other critical infrastructure deep in Russian territory—there is a race to gain an edge in drone warfare.
Soon after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine successfully used Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones to slow the initial march on Kyiv, radically changing Moscow’s plans for the war. In response, Moscow approached Iran for access to its drones, building on the growing commercial and security links between the two countries.
Since then, Russia has launched over 4,000 Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, according to the Ukrainian military, enabling Russia to target power plants and other critical sites deep inside Ukraine. While the initial models were shipped directly from Iran, more recent strikes were carried out with devices entirely manufactured in Russia, say military experts.
Moscow has since leveraged key alliances to build out its defense capabilities.
Senior Biden administration officials said in early April that China had provided Russia with optics, microelectronics and other dual-use materials that could be used in drones, along with other military hardware. A research arm of the Ukrainian military said in September that Russia was sourcing engines for the Shahed attack drones from China, identifying a company called Beijing MicroPilot UAV Flight Control Systems as a supplier.
In 2020, a United Nations report identified the company as a possible source of engines in Shahed drones found in attacks by Yemen’s Houthis and Iran on Saudi oil facilities the previous year. The engine has a rotary configuration, making it more efficient than piston engines and ideally suited to long-range drones. They can cost tens of thousands of dollars when constructed with high-grade materials, but the price can be cut to a few thousand if cheaper materials are used and longevity isn’t an issue, as would be the case in a suicide drone, experts say. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
But also key are Russia’s deepening ties to Iran and more African states. The manufacturing operation for the Iranian-designed drones, tucked away in a pair of hangars at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, on a tributary of the Volga river, shows how the different elements come together.
Russian business executives sealed the deal to build the drone plant in late 2022 when they flew to Tehran with a lucrative offer: $1.7 billion to be paid partly in gold bars. The unusual terms, corroborated by The Wall Street Journal with U.S. security officials, were revealed in February by a hacker group called the Prana Network, which said it broke into email servers associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The plan is for the Alabuga facility to churn out 6,000 Shahed attack drones a year, in addition to surveillance drones, according to a contract between the plant’s Russian managers and their Iranian partners leaked by the Prana Network and that was independently corroborated by two advisers to the British government. At the end of April, the factory was ahead of its production schedule, having already supplied 4,500 of the promised Shaheds, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based defense-focused think tank.
Russian soldiers are already being trained to operate the drones in Syria with instructors from both the Revolutionary Guard and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, according to Ukrainian military intelligence and a former Syrian officer with conflict-monitor group Etana.
Dozens of the M3 “Albatross” reconnaissance drones made at the Alabuga plant have obtained detailed photographic intelligence on Ukrainian positions and movements on the front line. Their manufacturer said the drones had already helped repel an attempted incursion by Ukraine on Russia’s border region of Belgorod.
Russia now produces its own warheads instead of waiting for Iranian ones, speeding up production of combat-ready weapons, said a former employee at the plant, Henry Thompson, a drone expert who previously worked for the United Nations, who has analyzed debris found in Ukraine and concluded that more recent versions of Shaheds had been made in Russia.
After another Russian drone barrage on April 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Ukraine would soon run out of air-defense missiles if the intensity of the Russian strikes continued.
Moscow’s pivot to drones is helped by tapping Tehran’s shadow logistics networks, in addition to Iran’s military technology.
Many of the front companies Iran has used over years of evading its own Western sanctions were based in places such as Hong Kong or Dubai—something Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once described as its “resistance economy.”
The U.S. has blacklisted scores of such firms playing a role in Iran’s clandestine financial system. Tom Keatinge at Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank, has described American efforts to shut them down as a game of whack-a-mole. The sanctions “expose small portions of a vast network momentarily, only for the networks to adapt and compensate with the formation and use of the new companies,” he wrote in a research paper.
One part of Russia’s drone project involved an Iranian front company in the United Arab Emirates called Generation Trading FZE, according to the U.S. Treasury, which imposed sanctions on the company in February. The Treasury said the company, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, sold drone models, spare parts and connected ground stations to Russia. On paper, the facility would produce boats, according to the contract signed between the Russian industrial park and Sahara Thunder, another Iranian entity the U.S. sanctioned in April as a front for Tehran’s defense ministry.
To expand its drone production, however, Russia needed skilled workers to assemble them.
Initial production runs of the Albatross reconnaissance devices had largely relied on students from nearby technical colleges, but there weren’t enough of them to meet Moscow’s ambitions. The manufacturers began looking farther afield—to Africa.
Early last year, Russian businessmen from the Alabuga Special Economic Zone rented a hall at an upscale school in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and gathered an audience of young female students to hear their pitch, according to Alabuga’s footage of the event and people who attended. The offer included a skilled job paying three times the wage at home in Uganda, with an airfare, free accommodation and a university diploma to join the work-study program.
The tone was calculated to be anti-colonial, echoing some of the language of the Cold War and reflecting Russia’s attempts to use soft power to dilute Western influence in East Africa.
“They get to crack our spirit,” a Russian delegate said at the event, referring to Western countries. With Moscow, he stressed, “you will never see that.”
Some of the recruiters are Ugandan schoolteachers, administrators and student leaders who quietly contact former students with the right skills. Joseph Kazibwe, one of the recruiters, who also doubles as a deputy headmaster at a secondary school in Lubiri, says the Russians are interested in young women who have excelled in science subjects in high school. Kazibwe said he was unaware they would be involved in building drones.
“Our job is to identify and reach out to the suitable candidates,” he said. “The Russians take full charge of the process after that. They don’t share with us their recruitment criteria and we have no knowledge of how and who they eventually select.”
Over a thousand women have since gone to the Alabuga free zone from all over Africa, an additional thousand students will likely join this year’s intake, say Ugandan officials.
Promotional videos posted by the Alabuga free zone show students roaming the corridors on skateboards to the sound of techno. The salary is nearly $1,000 a month, almost double the average Russian wage.
Other footage published by the free zone showed an African woman at the site, dressed in a hazmat suit and face mask to avoid contaminating the delicate components, as she glued two wings onto an engine-equipped body for one of the Albatross reconnaissance drones. Officials in Kampala confirmed that the recruits sent to Alabuga are used to assemble unmanned aerial vehicles.
Last month they found that their new jobs come at a risk.
“Those who attacked our hostel…wanted to intimidate us,” said a Kenyan woman who said she was studying hospitality at the industrial park. “You won’t scare me, because Alabuga is a strong place and we will get through this,” she said in a video published by the free zone.
The Russian Drone Plant That Could Shape the War in Ukraine
The factory uses Iranian tech and has hired a workforce from East Africa, but is now in Ukraine’s sights
Early last month, cellphone footage captured a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle slowly winding toward its final destination in a new installment in the spreading drone wars—a drone itself was being used to hit a site where enemy drones were being made.
The target was a high-tech college and manufacturing complex in the Russian steppes where Moscow is aiming to scale up production of the weapons it needs to gain an advantage in Ukraine.
Around 20 people were injured when the drone slammed into the dormitories at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, many of them young engineering students hired from East Africa. Russian authorities said the manufacturing facilities were unscathed. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said the blast caused significant disruption to production. The Alabuga Special Economic Zone didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did the Kremlin.
The attack highlighted an important new aspect of the war in Ukraine, military experts say: the speed with which Russia can scale up production of Iranian-designed surveillance and attack drones, drawing on Chinese components, an African workforce and logistics networks that Iran honed during its own yearslong standoff with the West.
Max speed: 115 mph
Max flying range: Up to 1,553 miles
Weight: 441 lbs.
Drones are playing an increasingly significant role in current conflicts, particularly in Ukraine. Russia has launched dozens of attacks using Iran’s Shahed drones, whose telltale buzz has earned them the name “mopeds” among Ukrainians.
Their low cost compared with the expensive missiles Ukraine uses means air-defense units have sometimes resorted to machine guns to shoot them down. Iran unleashed a swarm of drones in its recent attack on Israel, attempting to overwhelm Israeli air defenses and allow ballistic and cruise missiles to sneak through, a tactic Moscow also uses.
With Ukraine now building its own drones—which have struck oil refineries and other critical infrastructure deep in Russian territory—there is a race to gain an edge in drone warfare.
Soon after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine successfully used Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones to slow the initial march on Kyiv, radically changing Moscow’s plans for the war. In response, Moscow approached Iran for access to its drones, building on the growing commercial and security links between the two countries.
Since then, Russia has launched over 4,000 Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, according to the Ukrainian military, enabling Russia to target power plants and other critical sites deep inside Ukraine. While the initial models were shipped directly from Iran, more recent strikes were carried out with devices entirely manufactured in Russia, say military experts.
Moscow has since leveraged key alliances to build out its defense capabilities.
Senior Biden administration officials said in early April that China had provided Russia with optics, microelectronics and other dual-use materials that could be used in drones, along with other military hardware. A research arm of the Ukrainian military said in September that Russia was sourcing engines for the Shahed attack drones from China, identifying a company called Beijing MicroPilot UAV Flight Control Systems as a supplier.
In 2020, a United Nations report identified the company as a possible source of engines in Shahed drones found in attacks by Yemen’s Houthis and Iran on Saudi oil facilities the previous year. The engine has a rotary configuration, making it more efficient than piston engines and ideally suited to long-range drones. They can cost tens of thousands of dollars when constructed with high-grade materials, but the price can be cut to a few thousand if cheaper materials are used and longevity isn’t an issue, as would be the case in a suicide drone, experts say. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
But also key are Russia’s deepening ties to Iran and more African states. The manufacturing operation for the Iranian-designed drones, tucked away in a pair of hangars at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, on a tributary of the Volga river, shows how the different elements come together.
Russian business executives sealed the deal to build the drone plant in late 2022 when they flew to Tehran with a lucrative offer: $1.7 billion to be paid partly in gold bars. The unusual terms, corroborated by The Wall Street Journal with U.S. security officials, were revealed in February by a hacker group called the Prana Network, which said it broke into email servers associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The plan is for the Alabuga facility to churn out 6,000 Shahed attack drones a year, in addition to surveillance drones, according to a contract between the plant’s Russian managers and their Iranian partners leaked by the Prana Network and that was independently corroborated by two advisers to the British government. At the end of April, the factory was ahead of its production schedule, having already supplied 4,500 of the promised Shaheds, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based defense-focused think tank.
Russian soldiers are already being trained to operate the drones in Syria with instructors from both the Revolutionary Guard and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, according to Ukrainian military intelligence and a former Syrian officer with conflict-monitor group Etana.
Dozens of the M3 “Albatross” reconnaissance drones made at the Alabuga plant have obtained detailed photographic intelligence on Ukrainian positions and movements on the front line. Their manufacturer said the drones had already helped repel an attempted incursion by Ukraine on Russia’s border region of Belgorod.
Russia now produces its own warheads instead of waiting for Iranian ones, speeding up production of combat-ready weapons, said a former employee at the plant, Henry Thompson, a drone expert who previously worked for the United Nations, who has analyzed debris found in Ukraine and concluded that more recent versions of Shaheds had been made in Russia.
After another Russian drone barrage on April 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Ukraine would soon run out of air-defense missiles if the intensity of the Russian strikes continued.
Moscow’s pivot to drones is helped by tapping Tehran’s shadow logistics networks, in addition to Iran’s military technology.
Many of the front companies Iran has used over years of evading its own Western sanctions were based in places such as Hong Kong or Dubai—something Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once described as its “resistance economy.”
The U.S. has blacklisted scores of such firms playing a role in Iran’s clandestine financial system. Tom Keatinge at Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank, has described American efforts to shut them down as a game of whack-a-mole. The sanctions “expose small portions of a vast network momentarily, only for the networks to adapt and compensate with the formation and use of the new companies,” he wrote in a research paper.
One part of Russia’s drone project involved an Iranian front company in the United Arab Emirates called Generation Trading FZE, according to the U.S. Treasury, which imposed sanctions on the company in February. The Treasury said the company, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, sold drone models, spare parts and connected ground stations to Russia. On paper, the facility would produce boats, according to the contract signed between the Russian industrial park and Sahara Thunder, another Iranian entity the U.S. sanctioned in April as a front for Tehran’s defense ministry.
To expand its drone production, however, Russia needed skilled workers to assemble them.
Initial production runs of the Albatross reconnaissance devices had largely relied on students from nearby technical colleges, but there weren’t enough of them to meet Moscow’s ambitions. The manufacturers began looking farther afield—to Africa.
Early last year, Russian businessmen from the Alabuga Special Economic Zone rented a hall at an upscale school in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and gathered an audience of young female students to hear their pitch, according to Alabuga’s footage of the event and people who attended. The offer included a skilled job paying three times the wage at home in Uganda, with an airfare, free accommodation and a university diploma to join the work-study program.
The tone was calculated to be anti-colonial, echoing some of the language of the Cold War and reflecting Russia’s attempts to use soft power to dilute Western influence in East Africa.
“They get to crack our spirit,” a Russian delegate said at the event, referring to Western countries. With Moscow, he stressed, “you will never see that.”
Some of the recruiters are Ugandan schoolteachers, administrators and student leaders who quietly contact former students with the right skills. Joseph Kazibwe, one of the recruiters, who also doubles as a deputy headmaster at a secondary school in Lubiri, says the Russians are interested in young women who have excelled in science subjects in high school. Kazibwe said he was unaware they would be involved in building drones.
“Our job is to identify and reach out to the suitable candidates,” he said. “The Russians take full charge of the process after that. They don’t share with us their recruitment criteria and we have no knowledge of how and who they eventually select.”
Over a thousand women have since gone to the Alabuga free zone from all over Africa, an additional thousand students will likely join this year’s intake, say Ugandan officials.
Promotional videos posted by the Alabuga free zone show students roaming the corridors on skateboards to the sound of techno. The salary is nearly $1,000 a month, almost double the average Russian wage.
Other footage published by the free zone showed an African woman at the site, dressed in a hazmat suit and face mask to avoid contaminating the delicate components, as she glued two wings onto an engine-equipped body for one of the Albatross reconnaissance drones. Officials in Kampala confirmed that the recruits sent to Alabuga are used to assemble unmanned aerial vehicles.
Last month they found that their new jobs come at a risk.
“Those who attacked our hostel…wanted to intimidate us,” said a Kenyan woman who said she was studying hospitality at the industrial park. “You won’t scare me, because Alabuga is a strong place and we will get through this,” she said in a video published by the free zone.