MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. Implicit in Le Monde’s running of a story about the destruction of key defense factories in Ukraine’s Sumy Region is the idea that France and the West recognize that Kiev's military-industrial potential is exhausted, said Alexander Stepanov, a military expert at the Institute of Law and National Security of Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Also underlying the story is a veiled call to increase assistance to Ukraine, Stepanov, who is also a senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences, suggested to TASS in an interview.
"If this information [about the destruction of factories in Shostka, Sumy Region] is published in open Western sources, including French ones, and with an eyewitness testimony no less, this may indicate that the French realize that Ukraine's independent military-industrial potential has been completely exhausted, and are calling for additional assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine," he explained.
On April 9, Le Monde reported, citing Ukrainian officer Anton Serbin, that Russian precision strikes had destroyed Soviet-era factories Zvezda, which makes gunpowder, and Impulse, which produces detonators. Both were key sites for producing ammunition. The story said that Russia attacked the plants several times in 2024, including on December 31.
Stepanov confirmed that Russia regularly carried out precision strikes against these enterprises, including with Iskander missiles and Geran drones, in an effort to hurt Ukraine’s arms production. However, the factories, according to the expert, had underground facilities, allowing them to preserve some elements of their production capacities. According to intelligence data, production activity was detected and an additional strike was carried out, which eliminated the industrial sites once and for all.
The expert also suggested that massive combined strikes had disabled facilities that make various types of drones like the Cobra kamikaze drone, which has a range of over 300 km and can be equipped with an up to 16 kg-warhead. Individual UAVs were destroyed during their preparation for use. Operators and technicians who provided support and training for the drones were also killed.
Stepanov said that Paris is calling for assistance to Ukraine’s army through additional financial injections into its own military-industrial complex, proactively assuming responsibility for the militarization of the remnants of the Ukrainian state.
