Ukraine's production capabilities in the manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles will be several times higher than Russia's by the end of this year.
This was announced by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov during a telethon, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
"Even this year, we explained to the market that we would be purchasing more than a million drones. For our part, we did not say how many drones we could produce, but we can produce several million drones, of which the state budget pays for some things, and we find some funds from partners. That is, our capacity is more than a few million drones, and we are able to produce them. Next year, we will not let the enemy bypass us, because this year we will produce several times more," Umerov said.
He also said that "we are doing everything possible to make our missile programme as close to the drone programme in terms of numbers".
"We have developed a missile programme, it is quite powerful. We have already exchanged it with our partners and we are waiting to see how much of that capacity, how much we can build missiles and drones, they will support. But they have already given us a verbal agreement that they will finance this, and we will soon receive a final written response from our partners," Umerov said.