Russians Conducted Secret Tests of Shahed Systems in Other Countries

Ukrainian investigators from the Molfar Intelligence Institute have uncovered a secret scheme involving the testing of Russia’s Shahed-type kamikaze drone systems in foreign countries.

This was detailed in a report published by the Molfar team.

According to their findings, employees of the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, where the localized version of the Shahed, known as the Geran-2, is assembled, performed unauthorized tests of new SIM cards.

The Russians needed to confirm the functionality of route correction and navigation, improved resistance to electronic warfare, remote control capability, telemetry and intelligence data transmission, and the ability to analyze the operation of air-defense systems to bypass them.

Timur Konovalov, a staff member born in 2005, was involved in these tests, which were likely not coordinated with the government of Kazakhstan.

In the territory of the neighboring sovereign state, Konovalov was tasked with “conducting tests” – checking whether the trackers on all the drones were functioning correctly. In 2022–2024, Russians referred to the Shahed drone family and their Russian modifications as “boats.”

Timur was to carry out this assignment on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense, flying from Russia to Astana on July 23, 2024.

Ildus Sagitov, the advisor to the general director and head of security and access control, approved the business trip. Sergey Alekseev, the deputy general director, initiated the trip.

Konovalov was not sent to the “tests” empty-handed. The internal memo stated that he would travel to Kazakhstan with special equipment and SIM cards from mobile operators in Ukraine, Spain, the Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova, Poland, Turkey, Lithuania, and Slovakia.

Another table obtained from a source in Alabuga shows test launches of Shaheds equipped with SIM cards from foreign mobile operators. The tests were conducted daily from December 1 to 5, 2024, and were canceled on December 7 due to unfavorable weather conditions.

For these tests, SIM cards from a Russian operator and from European operators that Russians typically use when traveling abroad were used.
In addition, tourist SIM cards from operators in Luxembourg, China, and Lithuania were tested on the Shahed drones.

As indicated by internal memos and tables on SIM-card procurement, the geographic range of their operators is extremely broad. It almost completely matches the list of countries where “unknown” drones had previously been detected.

In March 2025, a Geran-2 (Shahed-136) drone with the tail number Ы18358 was found on the territory of Kazakhstan.