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Satellite Imagery Reveals Scale of Russia’s Drone Factory Expansion in Alabuga
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Russia is constructing new facilities to scale up the assembly of Shahed-type strike drones at its main production plant in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone.
Open-source intelligence analysts from the Dnipro-Osint group discovered the expansion after reviewing recent satellite photographs of the industrial hub in Tatarstan, located in Russia's Volga region, as reported by RBC on July 2.
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The facility sits approximately 1,200 kilometers away from the Ukrainian border.
The newly detected construction area spans roughly 340 hectares on the southern side of the economic zone, where workers began erecting new assembly workshops in May 2026.
The Alabuga facility functions as Russia's largest industrial hub and has become the primary site for assembling Shahed and Geran strike drones following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Previously, it was reported that Russia's Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez oil refinery in Kstovo had suspended activity after being hit by a Ukrainian drone.
The sources said the attack damaged the refinery's primary crude distillation unit, CDU-5, which processes around 12,000 metric tons of crude oil per day—roughly one-quarter of the plant's total refining capacity.
They added that the refinery could potentially resume partial operations in the near term by utilising its remaining processing units.
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