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Russia is ramping up Shahed drone production using European-made components.
Investigations

Investigation: How Russian drones exploit European technologies to strike Ukraine, and beyond

by Alisa Yurchenko

Editor's note: This story is part of a cross-border investigative project that involved eight newsrooms, initiated by De Tijd (Belgium) and coordinated by the Kyiv Independent and OCCRP. Other stories published within the project are linked at the bottom of this investigation. A tiny Austrian sensor designed for precise motion control made an impressive journey across the globe. Some time after being sold to a company in Hong Kong, it turned up in Ukraine inside a long-range military drone laun

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Ukraine war latest: Russian glide bomb attack on Kramatorsk kills 3, including 13-year-old boy, governor says

Key developments on March 28-29: * Russian glide bomb attack on Kramatorsk kills 3, including 13-year-old boy, governor says * Pro-Ukrainian partisans disable electronic warfare equipment in Russia's Novgorod Oblast, group claims * 'Explosion in production area' — Ukraine confirms Flamingo missiles hit explosives plant in Russia's Samara Oblast * Russian strikes kill 2 Naftogaz employees in 3 days * Russia strikes maternity hospital, educational institutions in Odesa, killing 2, injuring 1

War in Iran, war in Ukraine: Europe must act where it counts

"Flying balalaika" or a "death moped with wings" is how Ukrainians refer to the Iranian-Russian Shahed drone. On March first, one of these crude, cheap, but devastatingly effective killing machines struck a US military operations center in Kuwait, killing six American soldiers. The youngest was twenty years old. In the first week of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, more than 1,000 of these murderous balalaikas were launched by the Revolutionary Guards and regime-aligned forces, targeting everyth

A person stands on a roof looking at a plume of smoke following a strike in Tehran, Iran, on March 3, 2026.

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