Shahed drones

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Ukraine Business Roundup — Shadow economy crackdown

Editor's note: The following is the May 13, 2026 edition of our Ukraine Business Roundup weekly newsletter. To get the biggest news in business and tech from Ukraine directly in your inbox, subscribe here. This newsletter wasn’t meant to be about illegal e-cigarettes in Ukraine. But I stumbled across a law enforcement operation yesterday — and immediately knew it would be the focus of this week's edition. While running an errand on Tuesday afternoon at Kyiv’s central Gulliver mall, I noticed t

About Shahed drones

Shahed drones are Iranian-designed unmanned combat aerial vehicles and loitering munitions developed by Shahed Aviation Industries. Manufactured both in Iran and at Russian production facilities, the drones have become one of Russia’s primary weapons in its full-scale war against Ukraine. Russia first deployed Shahed drones against Ukraine in the fall of 2022, and their use has since escalated, with Moscow launching more than 54,500 Shahed-type UAVs against Ukrainian targets in 2025 alone.

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