The Russian President, Vladimir Putinannounced today the early launch of a national program for the development of drone technology, devices that Moscow has had to import from countries like Iran for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.
"Shortly the Government should launch a national project whose objective is to guarantee the potential for a wide exploitation of drones”, Putin said during a meeting on the strategic initiatives of the Russian state.
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Putin stressed that unmanned systems are “the true catalyst of cutting-edge technology” in fields such as aviation, navigation, radio electronics or artificial intelligence, for which reason he considered the concentration of drone production on Russian territory “extremely important”.
In addition, he commissioned the Strategic Initiatives Agency create a system for training cadres in the development of unmanned aviation.
The Russian leader told his interlocutors that in a few months he will convene a special meeting to analyze the progress in this area.
At the end of last year, he already assured that each platoon of the Russian Army must have a drone to combat the "enemy" in Ukraine, whose infrastructures have been subjected to massive bombing since the attack on the Crimean bridge in October 2022, of which Putin blames Kiev.
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“The experience of the special military operation shows that the use of drones has become practically widespread. Said arsenal must be present in each unit, platoon, company and battalion., Putin said during a meeting with the senior staff of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
In the first months of fighting in UkraineUkrainian soldiers they had more unmanned devices than the Russian troopsdespite the fact that the war Nagorno Karabakh 2020 has already been decided largely thanks to drones supplied to Azerbaijan by its main ally Turkey.
Iran categorically denied this week the construction of a drone factory in the Russian region of Tatarstan, as the US press had reported.
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"Iran does not interfere in the war in Ukraine and does not ally with any of the parties”, assured the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Naser Kanani, to the Tehran Times newspaper.
Tehran initially rejected kyiv's accusation that it had supplied the drones to Moscow, but later admitted that it had sold drones to Russia "before the war."
