Russia has managed to ramp up production of drones and missiles, and it has dropped many times more aircraft on Ukrainian positions in the run-up to the third winter of the war.
More than 6,000 drones and missiles were fired at Ukrainian territory last fall, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal based on data from the Ukrainian Air Force Command. That’s three times more than in the summer of 2024 and more than four times more than in the fall of 2023. An unprecedented number of Iranian Shahed drones and drones built on their basis at a factory in the Alabuga SEZ were used, and the number of ballistic missiles also increased. One new tactic is flotillas of cheap decoy drones designed to call in air defense fire and wear down Ukrainian forces.
A Ukrainian official said Alabuga could produce 1,200 drones a month. The Russian version, he said, uses different electronic components than the Iranian version.
