The Russian government should soon establish a national project for the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

"The government is to prepare a relevant national project in the near future, the purpose of which is to support opportunities for broad operation of drones and, what is most critical, a high level of localization of their production," the head of state said.

"Unmanned systems are the real catalyst of end-to-end technologies," Putin stressed, highlighting the importance of these technologies for such areas as navigation, communications, energy storage systems, new materials, artificial intelligence, engines production, micro-and macro-electronics.

"We will discuss the results of the great collaborative effort at a special meeting in the spring," the President said.