Russia’s Putin calls for quick development of drone forces

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(Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that drones had played a major role in the conflict in Ukraine and called for the rapid development and deployment of separate drone forces within the military.

“We are currently creating unmanned systems troops as a separate branch of the military and we need to ensure their rapid and high-quality deployment and development,” Russian news agencies quoted him as saying at a meeting on arms development.

Drones have played a leading role for both sides in the more than three-year-old conflict pitting Moscow against Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has since the outbreak of the war in February 2022 stressed the importance of developing a domestic drone development and production industry.

Putin told the second day of the gathering that Russia was well aware how Ukraine was dealing with the issue.

“But on the whole, I do not believe we are lagging behind on anything,” he was quoted as saying. “More to the point, it seems to me we are bringing together good experience with a view to creating just such forces.”

Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov proposed the creation of a drone force late last year, setting a target date of the third quarter of 2025.

Putin also stressed developing air defences, which he said had destroyed more than 80,000 targets during the conflict that Russia still calls a special military operation.

“In this respect, a new state armaments programme must ensure the construction of a versatile air defence system capable of operating in any circumstances and efficiently striking air attack weapons, regardless of their type,” he said.

On the opening day of the meeting, Putin called for due attention to be paid to the nuclear triad of land-based, sea-based and aircraft-launched weapons.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Nia Williams)