Military expert comments on WSJ article about Russian drone plant

The expert commented on the recent article, titled The Russian Drone Plant That Could Shape the War in Ukraine, that was published in The Wall Street Journal.

"This article gives me an unpleasant déjà vu, with a flavor of journalistic necrophilia. After all, in February 2023 we read exactly the same article from The Wall Street Journal. In other words, without changing the context, the publication has produced a piece that will spend the next few days stirring the minds of our not particularly thoughtful journalists, who will talk about the prophesied Shahed-apocalypse," Kovalenko said.

For example, in November 2023, someone invented that Russia could produce up to a thousand Shahed-136 per month. Then the media, and instead of studying the issue in detail, only played along with the spread of this unverified and highly manipulative information.

From November 2023 to May 2024, Ukraine has never recorded a 1,000 Shahed-136 'kamikaze' drone strikes in a month. The maximum number of Shahed-136 attacks was recorded in 2024 in March with 603 'kamikaze' drones, and in the other months:

• January - 334;
• February - 356; 
• April - 295;
• May - 296 so far.

In addition, after Iran's large-scale combined strike against Israel, Russia's dependence on supplies from the Islamic Republic was clearly defined. Russia's use of Shahed-136 then sharply decreased, there were more long pauses of several days between raids, and only after the resumption of Iranian Air Force flights to Moscow, 'kamikaze' drone raids began to return to a systematic nature.

That is, Russia is still dependent on Iran for both finished products and components. And under such conditions, producing 6,000 per year is not a near-term prospect.

"I am not saying that Russia will never reach the figure of 6,000 Shahed-136 per year, I am saying that under the current conditions, it will not be able to produce 6,000 per year. And I also draw attention to the fact that The Wall Street Journal published an almost similar article a little less than a year and a half ago, which once again speaks of the need not only to double-check any information thrown into the space, but also at least to explain the basic reality of the current situation, so that no hype tales about a thousand Shahed-136 per month are born," Kovalenko summed up.

Such apocalyptic stories are useful for the Western audience to put pressure on our partners, because they move with the acceleration of a snail, but Ukrainians already have enough daily stresses to add more stories of such tailoring to their complicated life.