MOSCOW, March 17 (Reuters) – A senior Russian security official warned on Tuesday that the pace and development of Ukrainian drone production meant that no Russian region was safe from attack.
Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council and a former Russian defence minister, told a meeting of officials in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg that the number of Ukrainian sabotage attacks against Russia had increased by 40% in 2025 to 1,830 incidents.
“…the pace of development of weapons systems, primarily unmanned drone systems, and the sophistication of the methods used to deploy them are such that no region of Russia can feel safe,” Shoigu was quoted by the TASS state news agency as saying.
The mayor of Moscow said on Monday that air defence systems had foiled the biggest attempted attack on the Russian capital in at least a year, downing 250 Ukrainian drones over the weekend. The Russian Defence Ministry reported on Tuesday that 421 Ukrainian drones had been shot down in the last 24 hours.
Russia has bombarded Ukrainian targets with artillery, drones and air strikes, while Ukraine has struck deep inside Russia with sabotage groups and drones, killing Russian generals and attacking oil refineries and oil pipelines.
In separate comments at the same meeting on Tuesday, Shoigu said a network of intelligence agencies from 56 countries was operating against Russia to facilitate what he called “sabotage and terrorist” attacks. He did not name the intelligence agencies.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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