Russia has established a program in China to develop and manufacture long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two European intelligence agency sources and documents seen by Reuters.
IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of the Russian state arms company Almaz-Antey, has developed and tested a new drone model called Garpiya (Garpiya)-3 (G3) in China with the help of local experts, according to one of the documents. It is about the report that Kupol sent to the Russian Ministry of Defense earlier this year in which he presented this project.
Kupol said in a subsequent update that it is able to produce drones, including the G3, on a large scale at a factory in China so that these weapons can be deployed in a "special military operation" in Ukraine, Moscow's term for the war.
Kupol, Almaz-Antey and the Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the allegations.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters it was not aware of such a project, adding that the country has strict measures to control the export of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Fabijan Hinc, a research associate at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that the delivery of drones from China to Russia, if confirmed, would represent a significant development and change.
"If you look at what China has delivered so far, it's mostly been dual-use goods - they've been components and sub-components that could be used in weapons systems," he told Reuters.
"That has been reported so far. But what we really haven't seen, at least from open source, are documented transfers of entire weapons systems," Hinc added.
Still, Samuel Bendet, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), said Beijing would be reluctant to expose itself to international sanctions for aiding Moscow's war machine and that information was needed to establish that China had facilitated production of Russian military drones on its territory.
The US State Department and the Ukrainian government did not respond to requests for comment. US officials expressed concern last Sunday about what they said was China's support for the Russian war machine, declining to provide details.
The G3 can travel about two thousand kilometers with a payload of 50 kilograms, according to Kupol in reports to the Russian ministry. Samples of the G3 and some other models of Chinese-made drones were delivered to Kupol in Russia for further testing, again with the involvement of Chinese experts, according to the documents.
They did not identify the Chinese drone specialists involved in the project and Reuters could not ascertain their identities.
Kupol has taken delivery of seven Chinese-made military drones, including two G3s, at its headquarters in the Russian city of Izhevsk, according to two separate documents reviewed by Reuters. These are invoices sent to Kupola in the summer by a Russian company which, according to two European intelligence sources, serves as an intermediary for Chinese suppliers. The invoices, one of which requires payment in Chinese yuan, do not specify delivery dates or identify suppliers in China.
Two intelligence sources said the delivery of a sample of drones to Kupol was the first concrete evidence their agency had found that entire Chinese-made drones had been delivered to Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
They asked that neither they nor their organization be identified due to the sensitivity of the information. They also requested that certain details about the documents, including their precise dates, be withheld.
The sources showed Reuters a total of five documents, including two Kupol reports to the Ministry of Defense in the first half of the year and two invoices, which support their claims about the existence of a Russian project in China to produce drones for use in Ukraine. The program has not been previously reported.
Kupol's reports to the ministry did not provide more precise locations related to the project. Reuters was also unable to determine whether the Russian Defense Ministry had given the company the green light to proceed with the proposed series production.
USA worried
The United States of America (US) is deeply concerned by reports that Russia has a secret military drone project in China that appears to be an example of a Chinese company providing lethal assistance to a Russian firm under US sanctions, a National Security Council spokesman said on Wednesday. houses.
The White House has seen nothing to suggest the Chinese government was aware of these transactions, the spokesman said, but China has a responsibility to ensure the companies are not providing lethal aid to Russia for use by its military.
China denies supplying weapons to Russia
China has repeatedly denied that its companies supplied Russia with weapons for the war in Ukraine, saying it remains neutral. The Foreign Ministry told Reuters that China's position contrasted with other nations with "double standards in arms sales" that it said had "fuelled the fire of the Ukraine crisis".
The ministry said earlier this month that there were no international restrictions on China's trade with Russia when it responded to a Reuters report that Kupol had begun manufacturing the Garpia-A1 long-range military drone in Russia using Chinese engines and parts.
New documents reported here show that state-owned Kupol has gone further by acquiring complete drones from China.
Both Russia and Ukraine are racing to increase their production of drones, which have proven to be highly effective weapons in war.
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who heads a research group at the Institute for Science and International Security and has extensively analyzed Chinese and Russian cooperation in the production of unmanned aerial vehicles, told Reuters that Kupol could circumvent Western sanctions by setting up a production facility in Russia. China with access to advanced chips and expertise.
But Bendet from CNAS believes that Beijing has reason to act carefully.
"The official existence of a factory that makes drones for the Russians exposes China to some of the more serious effects of the sanctions, so it's not clear to what extent it would be willing to do that," Bendet points out.
Comparable to the American Reaper drone?
The G3 is an upgraded version of the Garpiia-A1 drone, Kupol reports. It is added that it was redesigned by Chinese experts who worked on the designs of the Garpiia-A1.
Kupol pointed out that within eight months the project in China will be ready for the production of the REM 1 unmanned aerial vehicle of Chinese design, with a payload of 400 kilograms. Two European intelligence sources said the system would be similar to the US Reaper drone.
These sources added that another Russian defense firm called TSK Vektor acted as an intermediary between Kupol and Chinese suppliers in the project. They said the Russian firms cooperated with Chinese company Redlepus TSK Vector Industrial, based in Shenzhen, without specifying Redlepus' role.
TSK Vektor and Redlepus did not respond to requests for comment.
A separate document reviewed by Reuters reveals plans involving Kupol, TSK Vektor and Redlepus to establish a joint Russian-Chinese drone research and production center in the Kashgar Special Economic Zone in China's Xinjiang province.
Reuters could not determine who prepared the document, which bore the logos of three companies, or identify who it was intended for.
The 80-hectare "advanced drone research and production base" could deliver 800 drones a year, the document said. No time frame has been given for when this facility will be operational.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last Sunday that his army received about 2023 drones in 140 and that Moscow plans to increase that number tenfold this year.
"Whoever reacts faster to demands on the battlefield wins," he said at a meeting in St. Petersburg on drone production.
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