Russia last year began producing a new long-range attack drone called the Garpiya-A1 using Chinese engines and parts, which it has deployed in the war in Ukraine, according to two European intelligence agency sources and documents seen by Reuters.
The intelligence – which included production contracts for the new drones, company correspondence on the manufacturing process, and financial documents – indicated that IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey, produced more than 2,500 Garpiyas from July 2023 to July 2024.
The existence of new Russian drones equipped with Chinese technology has not been previously reported. IEMZ Kupol and Almaz-Antey did not respond to requests for comment.
The two intelligence sources said Garpiya, which means Harpy in Russian, has been deployed against military and civilian targets in Ukraine, causing damage to critical infrastructure and causing both civilian and military casualties.
He shared with Reuters photos of the Garpiya’s wreckage he received from Ukraine, but did not provide any further details. Reuters found information that supports this conclusion, but could not independently confirm these photos.
The sources asked that neither their identities nor those of their agency be revealed because of the sensitivity of the information. They also asked that some details about the documents, such as dates, be kept confidential.
Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington DC-based think tank, told Reuters that if Garpia is confirmed, it would end Russia’s reliance on Iranian designs for long-range drones.
“If this is happening, it could be a sign that Russia may now rely more on domestic development as well as, obviously, China, since both sides in this war rely on many Chinese components for drone production,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in May last year that Iran, which did not comment for this story, had supplied more than a thousand Shahid “kamikaze” drones to Russia since the invasion began in February 2022.
They have been used to destroy Ukrainian air defenses and target infrastructure away from the front lines. Iran has repeatedly denied sending drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this story. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement to Reuters that Beijing strictly controls the export of items with potential military applications, including drones.
“Regarding the Ukrainian crisis, China has always been committed to promoting peace dialogue and a political solution,” the statement said, adding that there are no international restrictions on China’s trade with Russia.
NATO appeal
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last week called on China to stop supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying Beijing’s assistance had been a key factor in keeping the conflict going.
The European agency said in a statement to Reuters that the Garpia “is very similar to the Shahed” but has several different features, including a unique bolt-on fin and a Limbach L-550E engine. The engine, originally designed and built by a German company, is now manufactured in China by a local firm, Xiamen Limbach. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters reviewed a contract worth more than 1 billion rubles (10 million euros) signed in the first quarter of 2023 between the Russian Defense Ministry and Kupol for the development of a factory to produce drones.
A former cement factory located in Izhevsk in the Udmurt Republic in western Russia – bought by Kupol in 2020 – is being used to manufacture drones, intelligence sources said.
Using video of a Russian drone production facility posted on the Telegram messaging app, Reuters was able to identify the site as a factory in Izhevsk from the colour and design of the building’s beams and interior architecture, which matched file imagery of the site. The location of the file imagery could be verified from nearby buildings, roads and trees that matched street views and satellite imagery.
Company communications showed that a prototype of the Garpia was launched in the first half of 2023. Production reached several hundred in the second half of 2023 and more than doubled to around 2,000 in the first half of 2024, the agency said.
Defense analyst Bendett said 2,500 drones per year would be a substantial portion of Russia’s production. Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Sirsky said last month that Russia had fired nearly 14,000 strike drones since the invasion in February 2022, including the Iranian Shahed as well as Russian-made Garan-2 and Lancet drones.
Corporate documents for the second quarter of 2023 reviewed by Reuters showed that supplier TSK Vektor has purchased parts from Chinese companies for assembly at the Kupol site; 800 Chinese engines were also to be delivered to the new plant, where the production line was to be ready by the end of the quarter.
TSK Vector did not respond to a request for comment.
The European intelligence service said in a statement that it was concerned that Chinese companies were providing Russia with components that would enable it to build large kamikaze drones. “The export of essential components to Russia must stop,” it said.
The United States expressed concern
Washington has repeatedly warned Beijing against supporting Russia’s defense industry. It has imposed hundreds of sanctions aimed at curbing Moscow’s ability to exploit certain technologies for military purposes. The State Department and the White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
In July, China said it would tighten drone export rules from Sept. 1. Beijing has said U.S. sanctions on Chinese entities over the Ukraine war are “illegal and unilateral.”
The production contract between Kupol and the Russian Defense Ministry states that the Garpiya weighs less than 300 kilograms at take-off and has a maximum range of 1,500 kilometers – roughly the same as Iran’s Shahed-136 drone, which Moscow has used extensively in Ukraine.
The Washington Post reported in August that Russia aims to increase production of a domestic version of the Shahed-136, known as the Garan-2, at a plant located in the Alabuga special economic zone of Tatarstan. Ukraine said in April that it had carried out a drone attack against a drone manufacturing plant in Alabuga.
A third document reviewed by Reuters – a delivery status update for the first quarter of 2024 between intermediary TSK Vector and manufacturer Kupol – details an order for 100 axles, carburettors and other Limbach engine parts supplied by two other Chinese companies: Zhuhang Aviation Technology and Redlepas Vector Industries, both based in Shenzhen.
Zhuhang was hit with British sanctions in February and US sanctions in May for providing drone equipment to Russia, and Redlepas did not respond to requests for comment.
Customs data obtained from a commercial supplier who records and compiles the information showed that from April 2022 to December 2023, TSK Vector imported goods worth $36.3 million from Chinese Zhuhang Aviation Technology and $6.2 million from Redlepas TSK Vector Industrial Shenzhen Co., Ltd.
According to customs documents, the goods included aircraft engines, transistors, electronic modules, connectors, plugs and sockets, spare parts and components, most of which were marked “for general civilian purpose”, “for general industrial purpose”, “for general civilian use”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
