Russia is gearing up to build 100,000 drones a year on NATO’s doorstep

• Russia is preparing to build a factory in Belarus that can make up to 100,000 drones a year.
• Moscow said the plant would bring “effective security” to Minsk but didn’t say if it’s for weapons.
• Russia aims to build millions of drones yearly, but a plant in Belarus brings production closer to NATO.

Belarus said on Thursday that it’s open to hosting a Russian factory that can build up to 100,000 drones yearly, expanding Moscow’s production to NATO’s backyard.

Russian representatives, including Maxim Oreshkin — the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff — proposed the idea at a drone exhibition in Minsk on Thursday.

“This is a huge prospect for us,” Belarusian leader Aleksander Lukashenko, who attended the event with Oreshkin, said in a statement from his office.

Belarusian officials at the exhibition said the plant would initially build 2,000 drones for agriculture and other logistics.

Though Oreshkin did not explicitly say the factory would also be used to build military drones, he said it would bring “effective security” to Belarus.

“This, of course, is a matter of ensuring sovereignty,” Oreshkin told Belarusian state media.

Lukashenko said that Belarus would consult drone specialists in April and May but did not specify when the plant is expected to finish construction.

Russia said in September that it’s already able to build 1.4 million drones a year, but official production has been focused deep in its territory through areas such as Tatarstan. Some Russian volunteer groups also provide their troops with cheaper drones.

A plant in Belarus would expand official production to a nation bordering Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. All three are NATO members seeking to rapidly scale up defense spending as concerns soar about a heightened Russian threat.

Those efforts also include drone production on their end: Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are part of a six-nation European coalition that plans to build a “drone wall” to police their eastern borders.

The rest of the world is also locked in an arms race to boost drone capacity, and Russia and Ukraine have been at the forefront. Both say they want to build 3 to 4 million drones each in 2025.

Still, military drones can vary in size and function, and it’s unclear what type of drone Belarus intends to help manufacture. The Kremlin, for example, has relied on Iranian long-range Shahed drones to harass Ukrainian cities.

At the same time, the war has seen the sharp rise of commercial drones fitted with explosives, which serve as a cheap, lethal, and precise way to attack troops and valuable equipment.

Regular reports from Ukraine’s air force say it typically shoots down about 1,000 Russian drones — a mix of Shaheds, first-person view drones, and reconnaissance drones — a week.

Belarus already hosts several significant Russian capabilities, including tactical nuclear weapons and advanced air defense systems. In 2022, Moscow’s troops used the country to station part of its invasion force to attack Ukraine’s northern border.

Press services for the defense ministries of Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.