{"id":1257854,"date":"2025-07-08T12:29:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T09:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/gray-partnership-russia-and-china-are-preparing-a-massive-supply-of-drones-for-the-war-in-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T12:29:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T09:29:02","slug":"gray-partnership-russia-and-china-are-preparing-a-massive-supply-of-drones-for-the-war-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/gray-partnership-russia-and-china-are-preparing-a-massive-supply-of-drones-for-the-war-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cGray\u201d partnership: Russia and China are preparing a massive supply of drones for the war in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the relentless pressure of sanctions, a small Russian firm, Aero-HIT, located far from the front lines, has developed an ambitious plan: to partner with Chinese companies to fill a critical need \u2014 the mass production of combat drones.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This scenario is outlined<\/a> in documents and correspondence obtained by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

The state-funded firm reportedly plans to produce ~10,000 drones per month from a factory near Khabarovsk. They are being actively used in the Kherson region, a region that the Kremlin wants to fully control under any peace agreements.<\/p>\n

Among the key developments is the Veles drone with FPV mode – the operator sees everything in real time through video in glasses. Under the March contract, one drone cost about 8 million rubles (about $ 1,000).<\/p>\n

In June 2024, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Aero-HIT, calling its products a tool for attacks in Kherson. But the company did not stop there and is negotiating with Chinese suppliers to circumvent the restrictions.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg documents show that Autel Robotics, one of the well-known Chinese manufacturers, initially broke off cooperation under pressure from sanctions, but negotiations resumed at the end of 2024. And since May 2025, the parties have been discussing the localization of production facilities in Russia.<\/p>\n

However, Autel categorically denies any connection to Aero-HIT or support for production on Russian territory. The company claims that it stopped cooperation with the Russians back in February 2022 and has never supplied equipment to the military.<\/p>\n

However, evidence suggests that the relationship between Aero-HIT and Chinese suppliers has been ongoing since the second half of 2022. Through them, Russia was able to set up mass production of Veles drones.<\/p>\n

The documents also confirm that Aero-HIT cooperates with the Russian Ministry of Defense and actively uses Chinese components. In particular, through the intermediary Renovatsio-Invest, which in June 2024 also fell under sanctions for supporting the Russian drone program.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, the press service of the Security Service of Ukraine reported that the drones with which Russia attacked Kyiv on the night of July 4 contained Chinese-made components.<\/a><\/p>\n

As reported, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has strongly rejected accusations that Beijing is providing military assistance to Russia in the war against Ukraine<\/a> . The official statement was made by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun after NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s statement on “China’s indirect participation in supporting Russia’s military efforts.”<\/p>\n

By the way, the occupation administration of Crimea plans to involve Chinese business in the development of transport infrastructure on the peninsula<\/a> . The corresponding decision was made by the head of the occupation administration of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov.<\/p>\n

In addition, hacker groups associated with the PRC have repeatedly hacked Russian institutions to search for Russian military secrets<\/a> .<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the relentless pressure of sanctions, a small Russian firm, Aero-HIT, located far from the front lines, has developed an ambitious plan: to partner with Chinese companies to fill a critical need \u2014 the mass production of combat drones. This scenario is outlined in documents and correspondence obtained by Bloomberg. The state-funded firm reportedly plans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1257850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76874],"class_list":["post-1257854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1257854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1257850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1257854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1257854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}