TASS, May 4. The Nenets Autonomous Region in the current year will be a pilot region to test drones, which will deliver cargos to hard-to-reach settlements, the regional administration's press service said following a meeting with the Ecolibri technology developer and the T1 Group on Wednesday.

"First routes have been chosen - drones will fly to Nelmin Nos, Indiga, Velikovisochnoe, Andeg and Toshvisk," the press service said. "We also plan flights will be made to the Kolguev Island and to the Varandey airport."

"Flights will begin in early June," the press service added.

The main task is to deliver cargos to the region's any destination within not longer than a five-hour flight, T1's representative Konstantin Shadrin said. "The maximum load now is 25 kg, and I believe that we will proceed to drones with bigger loads to solve more tasks and to reach more settlements within one flight," the press service quoted him as saying. "This way, we will drop the delivery costs."

The Nenets Autonomous Region does not have a road network. Getting to most settlements is possible only by air transport. "We have destinations to test drones, and we have a demand for deliveries. I mean not even the Russian Post, but rather regular medicines, which we deliver to hard-to-reach settlements," the press service quoted the region's Governor Yury Bezdudny as saying. "Right now is the season, where we expect high waters, and it would be most complicated to get to many settlements."

"It is the season, during which we would need badly to have drones deliver medicines to local medical stations," he said. Drones would be used also for aerial photography to survey important infrastructure facilities such as pipelines and gridlines, as well as for the environmental monitoring.