Russia is rapidly closing the gap with Ukraine in drone warfare thanks in part to covert support by China that is supplying Russia with all the parts and technology it can, but strictly staying within technical limits imposed by sanctions, Kyiv claims, reports Politico.

Beijing has been supplying Moscow with technology and components critical to the production of unmanned aerial vehicles in the ongoing drone war arms race, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official told Politico on June 5.

“Chinese manufacturers provide them with hardware, electronics, navigation, optical and telemetry systems, engines, microcircuits, processor modules, antenna field systems, control boards, navigation,” Oleh Aleksandrov, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service, told Politico. “They use so-called shell companies, change names, do everything to avoid being subject to export control and avoid sanctions for their activities. Yet officially China sticks to all the rules; yet only officially.” The West has called China the “main enabler” of Russia’s war machine, but has stopped short of accusing Beijing of supplying Russia directly with arms or materiel or threatening China with sanctions.

Beijing has repeatedly denied supplying weapons or drone parts to Russia, dismissing Ukraine’s allegations as “baseless accusations and political manipulation.” However, trade between China and Russia has doubled over the last three years to some $200bn per year and China has become the economic backstay to the Russian economy. The Western technology sanctions have failed in large part because China has stepped into the breach and supplies Russia with much of the technology it can no longer import from the West, including increasingly sophisticated electronics.

Drone warfare arms race

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a drone warfare arms race with the advantage swinging backwards and forwards between the two that is changing the face of modern warfare. Azerbaijan was the first to demonstrate the deadly utility of drones in the first short Nagorno-Karabakh war with Armenia in 2020, when it deployed Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones to crush Armenian resistance. However, the Bayraktar drones have long been overtaken by Russian, Iranian and Ukrainian innovations.

As reported by bne IntelliNews, in the early days Ukraine had the advantage after it rapidly weaponised simply commercially available drones, by strapping remotely controlled explosives to them or hanging WWII era grenades underneath them. Russia quickly countered with its own drones and rapidly developed effective electronic warfare (EW) counter measures. Ukraine has responded again with more innovations, including controlling drones using fibre-optic cables that remove their vulnerability to jamming. The battlefields in Donbas are now covered with spider-like gossamer web of such cables. In the latest development, the drones used in Operation Spiderweb on June 1 were partly controlled by AI, which allows the drone to independently navigate to pre-selected targets if radio contact with its controller is broken during the operation.

Ramping up production

Desperately short of Western-supplied long-range missiles and artillery ammunition, Kyiv has been pouring resources into drone production. They are cheap, easy and quick to make, and are the only counter Ukraine has to Russia’s vast military production after Russian President Vladimir Putin put the entire Russian economy onto a long-term war footing.

Ukraine’s drone production has soared in the last two years, by more than 500% , according to Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin). Ukraine initially gained a tactical advantage in the drone war, producing up to 1mn tactical drones in 2024 and aiming for 2.5mn tactical and 30,000 long-range strike drones this year and is capable of manufacturing 10mn a year, according to Deputy Minister of Defence of Ukraine Oleksandr Kozenko in recent comments, if more investment is made available by Western partners.

And it is the drones that have kept the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the game. Russia still has the overwhelming artillery advantage, but it cannot follow up in the classic strategy of bombarding Ukrainian positions and then sending in waves of infantry, because as soon as the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) soldiers enter no-man’s land they are targeted by drones that operate in lethal hunter-killer pairs. According to unconfirmed estimates, half of all Russian casualties are caused by Ukrainian drones, which have extremely high kill rates.

Russia too has been ramping up production and has also proved itself to be adroit with innovation, especially in EW measures.

Initially, Russia imported Iranian-made Shaheed drones that were converted from observation UFVs to “kamikaze” drones by packing them with explosives and flying them into targets. But in the meantime, Russia has set up factories deep in the interior behind the Ural Mountains and elsewhere to manufacture its own version of the Shahed drones that are becoming increasingly sophisticated every month.

Russia's main production facilities are concentrated in the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan, as well as in the Moscow region, St Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and Izhevsk, where the Kupol plant builds Garpiya drones.

According to recent reports, Russia has now overtaken Ukraine again in terms of the volume of drones it is producing. Their effectiveness was shown after Ukraine deployed the much-vaulted German-made Leopard II main battle tanks (MBT) that were supposed to be a game-changer for Kyiv, but which got bogged down on the battlefield where they faced “swarms” of Russian drones that destroyed or disabled them.

Chinese drone production support

In what has become an existential arms race, China is playing an increasingly crucial role by facilitating the Kremlin’s efforts to ramp up Moscow’s drone production and retake its lead from Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials say Russia has become heavily reliant on Chinese components for both tactical and long-range drones. Russia is now producing 300 long-range drones daily – three times Ukraine’s current rate – and aims to increase that to 500, Zelenskiy recently warned.

According to Aleksandrov, Russian manufacturers have more than doubled long-range drone output to over 30,000 units in 2025, with up to 2mn first-person-view (FPV) drones also planned. “They aim to produce about 30,000 long-range drones of those types plus 30,000 false target drones they use to exhaust Ukrainian air defences in 2025,” he said, as cited by Politico.

Ukraine's top commander, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the Russian military is copying Ukrainian drone tactics while scaling production. “We must maintain the pace of development and constantly increase our capabilities to be one step ahead,” he said.

Zelenskiy added that Chinese DJI Mavic drones, originally for civilian use, are being deployed as improvised munitions. “They are so cheap and effective, they are used daily as artillery shells,” he said, noting that China has blocked access to such drones for Ukraine and EU countries but not for Russia, Politico reports.

Moscow has also adopted the fibre-optic cable control systems, copying Ukraine’s innovation, which have been used effectively to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines in contested areas such as the months-long battle for control of Pokrovsk. Battlefield commanders say the AFU must now use acoustic sensors and alternative methods to detect incoming drones in the latest cycle of innovation and counter-innovation. On the front line, radio frequencies change every two weeks, which causes problems, as the lag between production and innovation means that when fresh supplies arrive as few as only one in five drones are actually usable. The rest have already been made redundant by Russian EW innovations, Politico reports.

Western drone support

As the US commitment to supporting Ukraine with more military support wanes, drone production is becoming yet more important. Ukraine’s European partners are also shifting from supplying Ukraine with materiel from their own dwindling stockpiles to investing into Ukrainian domestic arms production.

In the latest innovation, Ukraine and its allies are developing and producing interceptor drones to counter the new Russian shaheds. Three Ukrainian companies are currently manufacturing these drones, which cost about $5,000 each, though some interceptors can be as inexpensive as $300 per unit, according to Oleksandr Kamyshin, an adviser to the Ukrainian president on strategic issues. For comparison, the Russian-produced shahed, known as the Geran-2, costs approximately $35,000.

The operational principles of the interceptors vary; some are designed to explode near the enemy drone, while others require a direct hit. Ukraine is enhancing its production of devices that effectively engage Russian drones on the outskirts of Kyiv and throughout the region.

Latvian drone interceptor manufacturer Origin Robotics plans to send drones, designed to detonate near enemy drones, to Ukraine in June for testing. Skyfall, one of Ukraine's largest drone manufacturers, is reconfiguring its popular FPV model for strikes against UAVs. The cost of the interceptor ranges from $300 to $500, depending on the configuration, and it can target reconnaissance and strike drones

The introduction of AI-controlled drones – still in its early stage of development – promises to take the technological battle to a new level.

Ukraine has deployed an AI-based strike drone capable of transporting FPV over 300 km for the first time in May. The strike drone autonomously uses AI to locate and target threats, ranging from enemy aircraft to air defence systems and critical infrastructure. In missions where the drone travels no more than 100 km, the drone is able to return for reuse. A single mission using this system costs $10,000, and it does not rely on GPS for navigation. The SmartPilot system employs visual-inertial navigation, using cameras with LIDAR-enhanced accuracy, UBN reports.

The Western allies have formed a drone coalition to fund and support Ukraine’s drone development and production and have allocated €2.75bn for support for this year.

Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds announced during the international drone coalition summit in Riga last month that Turkey and Belgium also want to join this coalition, raising the total number of members to 20 countries.

"We will be able to deliver more drones to Ukraine, while strengthening the defence industries of Latvia, the EU and Nato countries. The joining of new allies to the coalition will allow us to provide Ukraine with the necessary support in the fight against the aggressor," Spruds said at the summit.