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Russian drone factory director badly injured in car explosion
AP News • • world
Key Points:
- Vladimir Tkachuk, director of the Uraldronzavod factory supplying drones to the Russian military, was seriously injured and his driver killed in a car explosion near Yekaterinburg.
- Tkachuk developed the Upyr drone, praised by Russian troops for its resistance to jamming, and had recently presented his designs to President Putin.
- Tkachuk, a vocal supporter of Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, also runs a popular Telegram channel called Obsessed with War.
- Another drone manufacturer’s head, Andrei Cherezov, was shot and wounded in Tula a week earlier, amid a series of attacks on Russian military officials blamed on Kyiv.
- The explosion follows a deadly bombing at a Moscow restaurant, which Russian authorities and the embassy in Rome blamed on Ukraine, though no suspects have been officially named.
