Inside the ‘world's biggest' factory making Russian kamikaze drones to attack Ukraine

South China Morning Post

22-07-2025

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.
A Russian drone attacks a building in Kyiv, Ukraine. File photo: AP
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.