The underground movement Black Spark says its members managed to infiltrate production of Geran-2 and Geran-3 drones at the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan. In the Russian military, these are the names used for drones assembled on the basis of Iranian Shahed models.
According to the group, its members spent several months working inside the SEZ, collecting information from servers and covertly downloading databases on people involved in assembling those UAVs. Black Spark also says its representatives worked directly at the enterprise.
“During assembly, we loaded surprises from Black Spark into the latest batches of UAVs. When attempts are made to launch these drones, they will explode,” the movement’s representatives said.
The same statement says this is intended to reduce the number of people directly involved in launching Geran drones at Ukrainian cities. The movement also claims it hacked the Alabuga website.
As one piece of evidence, the group points to a copy of the site preserved in a web archive, where a message about the infiltration of the enterprise was posted. Black Spark said the hack was a response to the involvement of 15-year-old teenagers in drone assembly at Alabuga.
At the Alabuga SEZ, drones based on Iranian Shaheds have been assembled since 2023; the report says they are then used in attacks on Ukrainian cities. The zone includes the Alabuga Polytech college, which recruits students for the production process.
In spring 2026, the Alabuga SEZ and Alabuga Polytech launched advertising in which teenagers described how they earned money assembling drones. That campaign had previously drawn attention in a T-invariant report about the involvement of minors in such production.