Seeing the number of drones that Russia sends almost every day to Ukraine, one wonders how inexhaustible their resources in this area are. Just during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, Ukrainian Air Force reported two waves of combined attacks on Ukrainian soil using 659 Shahed-136 unmanned vehicles, 19 missiles and 25 rockets. Last March, Russia launched an average of 208 drones per day towards Ukraine.
Since the start of 2026, the Ukrainians have seen 15,963 Russian drones of the Geran-2 type, the Moscow-made version of the Iranian Shahed-136 model, crash on their territory. According to theInstitute for Science and International Security (ISIS), over the last fifteen months, no less than 70,501 devices of this type have taken off from Russia to try to reach targets in Ukraine. And these staggering figures do not even take into account the other unmanned vehicles deployed by Putin’s army, such as the Gerbera or Itlamas models.
Large-scale industrialization
The Geran-2s are therefore basically Iranian drones, now manufactured under license directly in Russia. “It is quite easy to explain that Russia has so many drones because it has industrialized their manufacture on a large scale,” explains to 20 Minutes Xavier Tytelman, aeronautical and defense consultant and specialist in the war in Ukraine. For this, a gigantic industrial complex was created in the Yelabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation.
According to the Center for Strategy and International Studies (CSIS), analysis of satellite images “shows continued expansion of infrastructure at the Yelabuga drone factory until early 2026.” The aeronautics specialist estimates that “around 200 Geran-1 and Geran-2 type drones leave this factory every day”. A factory which is no longer a secret, the Russian military television Zvezda having dedicated to it, in July 2025, a video report showing the mass production of these machines.
In itself, the Geran-2 design is not an engineering folly. According to the Phenomenal World website, the drone’s wing is a delta wing 3.50 m long and 2.50 m wide made of fiberglass. The Geran-2 is powered by a 50 HP thermal engine equipped with a propeller that resembles a motorcycle engine. In terms of electronics, the first versions were as simple as possible, with an autopilot, GPS and data module. The advantage is that this machine flew at nearly 200 km/h and could carry a military load of 40 kg over 2,000 km. In terms of manufacturing costs, the available figures range from $7,000 to $50,000 per unit depending on the equipment, although with a more recurring price of $35,000. Or around $2.5 billion from Shahed-136 sent to Ukraine since January 2025.
Economically profitable, for the moment
But the rate of interception of these drones by the Ukrainians is particularly high. “With Sting-type interceptors at 2,000 euros each, the Ukrainian army manages to stop more than 90% of the Shahed-136s sent by Russia,” assures Xavier Tytelman. Not to mention the electronic warfare systems put in place by kyiv which made it possible to jam the guidance of drones, or even send them back to the sender. “The Russians had to significantly modify their drones to try to counter this by integrating new guidance systems, which significantly increased manufacturing costs,” specifies the expert.
However, at least until then, the use of drones is economically profitable for Russia. According to the CSIS“precision bombing by Shahed-136 type drones costs Russia around $350,000 per target hit” while the use of a Kh-22 type missile costs “around one million dollars per target hit”.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
Despite everything, the drone war seems to be tipping in favor of Ukraine which, last March, “launched more drones than Russia for the first time”, explains the aeronautics expert. Especially since, according to him, Moscow should soon run out of components to manufacture its drones. “The chips delivered by China are of poor quality and Russia is not capable of manufacturing this type of components itself,” he specifies.
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