Millerovo Geran-5 launch base sits about 910 km from Romania's coast

Satellite imagery published by Business Insider shows a new Geran launch compound near Millerovo air base in Russia's Rostov Oblast, and AirVeto measures it 910 km in a straight line from Sulina, Romania. That is 91 minutes for a drone flying 600 km/h, the speed Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) credits to the jet-powered Geran-5.

What the imagery shows: an empty field on 8 August, a launch compound by 12 October

Business Insider, using Vantor and Planet Labs images, reported that the field was almost empty on 8 August and had construction roads and cleared ground by 12 September. By 27 October the site had at least eight launch bays, and the outlet wrote that it was not operational on that date. Analyst Spencer Faragasso told Business Insider that two longer catapult rails on the edge of the site point to the Geran-5.

Militarnyi cited the Ukrainian OSINT channel Absolutely Reliable Source and an image captioned 13 October. It reported at least eight prepared launcher positions and 32 areas for preparing drones. It also reported a drone unloading operation and a build time of about six weeks. These images have not been independently verified.

The published coordinates put the site 23 km inside Russia's border with Ukraine

Militarnyi gives the site's location as 48.995968, 40.286255, near Millerovo in the Rostov Region. The coordinates come from the OSINT channel's imagery work; AirVeto has not checked them against its own imagery, so the distances below inherit that location. Business Insider places the compound roughly two miles from the Millerovo air base and about 14 miles (23 km) from Ukraine's internationally recognised border.

Nearest NATO territory is 871 km away, nearest EU territory 910 km

The straight-line distance to the nearest Turkish coast (Sinop headland) is 871 km. The nearest EU point AirVeto measured is Sulina in Romania's Danube delta, 910 km away. Poland, at the Dorohusk border crossing, is 1,198 km, and the Latvian border town of Zilupe is 1,158 km.

From the published site to	Great-circle distance	At 600 km/h
Sinop headland, Turkey (NATO)	871 km	87 min
Sulina, Romania (EU, NATO)	910 km	91 min
Zilupe, Latvia (EU, NATO)	1,158 km	116 min
Dorohusk crossing, Poland (EU, NATO)	1,198 km	120 min

The reference points are AirVeto's picks: the Sulina marker is the one used on its Sulina Geran page, the others are a town or headland, accurate to a few kilometres. Distances are to land, so a drone would reach Romania's territorial waters slightly sooner.

As a check on the method: Business Insider puts Kharkiv at about 200 miles and Kyiv at 450. AirVeto's figures are 313 km and 720 km.

At HUR's figures the Romanian coast is inside range, and Poland and Latvia are not

HUR's published profile, as Kyiv Post reported in January 2026, gives the Geran-5 a speed of up to 600 km/h and a strike range of nearly 1,000 km. Business Insider gives up to 370 mph, about 595 km/h. At nearly 1,000 km, Sulina (910 km) and Sinop (871 km) fall inside the stated range, while Zilupe (1,158 km) and Dorohusk (1,198 km) fall outside it. These are catalogue figures from one intelligence service, and Business Insider does not state a range.

The minutes are a minimum, not a forecast. They assume the top speed held on a straight line from launch to the point, with no routing around air defences, climb, or loiter. A real flight path from Millerovo to Romania would be longer than 910 km.

The same drone type has already been shot down off Sulina

Romanian F-16s shot down two jet-powered Geran-family drones off Sulina on 17 October, per the defence ministry, which AirVeto reconstructs in its Sulina Geran page. No source read for this brief ties those drones, or any drone that has entered NATO airspace, to Millerovo. The brief draws no such link; the distance only shows that the Romanian coast lies inside the reported range of a site now being built.

The Geran-5 is also the drone Ukrainian interceptors are being built against, as covered in AirVeto's interceptor-drone brief. Business Insider reports the compound could bring the Millerovo area to 12 launch bays, and DroneSec's Mike Monnik previously estimated the base could launch 100 Geran-5s a day.

What the measurement does not show

The figures do not show where any drone launched from Millerovo would fly, or that any would fly toward NATO. The site was not operational on 27 October, according to Business Insider. The range is HUR's estimate. The coordinates are an OSINT channel's. AirVeto does not detect or track drones and has no imagery of the site of its own.

For Romania's Danube delta border, AirVeto's Romania hub lists the incidents it has reconstructed there, and the live map shows current wind at the Black Sea coast.