The Russian military TV channel "Zvezda" showed a factory described by its director as the largest producer of strike drones in the country. There, teenagers are helping to build kamikaze-type drones designed to strike Ukraine, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
A documentary broadcast on the Zvezda channel yesterday showed hundreds of large Geran 2 attack drones lined up in rows at a secretive factory that has been the target of attacks by Ukrainian long-range drones.
Ukraine says Russia is using Geran drones to terrorize and kill civilians in various parts of the country, including the capital Kiev, whose residents are hiding in the metro during the attacks, Reuters reported.
Russia says it is only targeting military targets and denies deliberately targeting civilians, although the United Nations estimates that more than 13,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the war in Ukraine. citizens.
The "Zvezda" television station reports that the factory in the "Elabuga" industrial zone in the Russian republic of Tatarstan, has invited ninth-graders from a vocational school it runs to intern with it so they can start working there once they graduate.
Young workers, including teenagers, with their faces deliberately blurred, are shown studying computer screens and the making of individual components, as well as the assembly of the drones themselves.
The factory's general director, Timur Shagivaleyev, would not disclose details about drone production, but told television that the original plan was to produce a few thousand of them, and now they are producing nine times that many.
A Russian think tank close to the government reported last month that drone production in Russia rose 16.9 percent in May from the previous month, after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for it to be increased.
Putin said in April that the country produced more than 1.5 million drones of various types, but added that Russian forces in Ukraine need even more.