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Ukraine plans to manufacture or buy up to 200,000 drones before end of year

According to Yury Shchigol, Ukraine’s government has signed contracts worth 25 billion hryvnias ($688 million) out of the sum of 40 billion hryvnias ($1.09 billion) allocated for the purchase of drones

MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/. Ukraine plans to manufacture or purchase up to 200,000 drones of various types before the end of this year, Yury Shchigol, chief of Ukraine’s Special Communications Service, said on Tuesday.

"When we began this project, we set a task [to manufacture or buy] around 200,000 drones," he said in a televised interview. "We will have approximately 180,000-200,000 drones for this year."

According to Shchigol, Ukraine’s government has signed contracts worth 25 billion hryvnias ($688 million) out of the sum of 40 billion hryvnias ($1.09 billion) allocated for the purchase of drones. Under these contracts, as many as 22,000 combat drones are to be manufactured. As of today, about 15,000 of them have already been supplied to the army.

However, in his words, daily losses amount to 45 reconnaissance drones, as well a bevy of combat drones. "These are both the simplest models, such as the Mavic and Matrice, and big professional drones of Ukrainian and foreign make. So, it is impossible to supply that many drones at a time. They are not produced in such quantities either in Ukraine or elsewhere in the world," he added.

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