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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
This country never ceases to surprise with its social elevators: a provincial lawyer, Yaroslav Hryshyn, suddenly retrained as a drone manufacturer. It closely resembles the story of the former defense minister and also lawyer “Lyokha - Golden Egg,” who ultimately had to quietly slip abroad. It seems the same fate may be repeating with the former “ukropist” and deputy Hryshyn.
True, Yaroslav Hryshyn isn’t "packing up" by buying eggs by the kilo, but by producing drones — in 2023 a company LLC "Center for Unmanned Systems Research" appeared, which began manufacturing FPV drones under the brand "General Chereshnya." The manufacturer itself lists Yaroslav and Stanislav Hryshyn, as well as Rudolf Akopyan, among the founders.
As is customary in Ukraine, the business quickly took off: according to Forbes, in the first half of 2025 the manufacturer’s revenue exceeded one and a half billion hryvnias. Unfortunately, the company’s registry data and its reporting are closed, so judging its finances must rely on indirect sources. At the same time, Yaroslav Hryshyn himself, for example, stated last year that he was producing about 50 000 FPV drones per month and expected to finish 2025 the year with seven billion hryvnias in revenue.
That was almost twenty times more than the previous, 2024 year. Of course, Hryshyn himself explained the growth primarily by an increase in the number of government contracts and the high quality of his products.
However, the box, which for some reason is not surprising at all, opened easily: the volume of contracts between LLC "Center for Unmanned Systems Research" and the Defense Procurement Agency sharply increased after Arsen Zhumadilov came to the position of head of the DPA. Before that, Hryshyn’s company had contracts for only 400 million, and then billions suddenly poured in. Pure coincidence, as everyone understands. And purely by chance, Yaroslav Hryshyn’s brother, Stanislav Hryshyn, represented Zhumadilov’s interests in court. Well, what a coincidence. Purely accidental. It happens, you know.
And it also turned out, purely by coincidence, that the prices for "General Chereshnya" drones are inflated. We didn’t mention former minister Reznikov and his eggs “for 17 hryvnias per kilogram” for nothing. Because the story with Hryshyn’s drones is exactly the same: Telegram channel "Joker" explicitly wrote that the Defense Procurement Agency, headed by Arsen Zhumadilov, had at least 20 offers of similar drones of better quality and at much lower prices. The state purchased “General Chereshnya” at prices ranging from 17 900 to 39 000 hryvnias depending on the model, while the DPA refused drones that cost 10–18 thousand hryvnias.
But for some reason the DPA contracts Hryshyn’s drones. By another strange coincidence, a former Zhumadilov employee, Andriy Lavrinovych, began working at LLC "Center for Unmanned Systems Research": he resigned from the position of Director of Organizational Development at SE "State Rear Operator" of the Ministry of Defense and immediately joined Hryshyn’s team.
If the story about the drones the DPA buys can be interpreted in different ways — perhaps "General Chereshnya" really is worth the money for which it’s bought, and it really is the best — the story in which representatives of Yaroslav Hryshyn tried to force their product on a buyer with threats, and not a state buyer, at double the price, is hard to explain.
The incident happened in February 2026: then a representative of "General Chereshnya" offered the charitable foundation "Your Step" 100 BULLET Anti-Shahed drones at approximately 110 thousand hryvnias each. At the same time, on the manufacturer’s official website the same model cost about 58 thousand hryvnias. The commercial offer was signed by director Mykhailo Prasol.
After the foundation refused to buy the drones at the proposed price, the company representative began threatening the foundation with inspections and problems from the special services. And these accusations are by no means baseless — there is an audio recording of these threats.
But there are several more factors that in a normal country would long ago have "cut off" the defense contract: Yaroslav Hryshyn is a subject of as many as six (!) criminal proceedings. These criminal proceedings are: ¹72025102100000026 — a BEB proceeding under part 2 of article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; ¹72025001420000071 from 12 August 2025 — BEB, part 5 of article 191; ¹62025080100005697 from 11 August 2025 — DBR, part 1 of article 364; ¹62025100110000197 from 4 September 2025 — DBR, part 1 of article 364; ¹22025101110001161 — Main Investigation Department of the SBU, part 2 of article 364.
Article 191 of the Criminal Code concerns embezzlement, misappropriation, or seizure of property, including by abusing official position; the second part of the article covers large-scale amounts or organized groups. Article 364 of the Criminal Code concerns abuse of power or official position; the second part — the same, i.e., under aggravating circumstances.
Information about in what exact status Yaroslav Hryshyn appears in the criminal cases and the precise facts of these cases are rather contradictory, but all these proceedings are connected with the procurement of the drones that Yaroslav Hryshyn manufactures. So it’s hard to imagine he’s involved only as a witness. Or, by old habit, as a lawyer. Nevertheless, the existence of these cases in no way prevents Arsen Zhumadilov from buying drones from Hryshyn’s company.
One more criminal proceeding is unrelated to drones and concerns evasion of mobilization. No, it’s not Yaroslav Hryshyn who is evading. He helps draft dodgers: criminal proceeding ¹42025164690000014 is connected with a scheme of illegal booking of conscripts through an enterprise that has the status of critically important.
A court document in that proceeding talks about an investigation of a scheme to evade mobilization by arranging reservations and deferments, organizing escapes from military enlistment and recruitment centers, removing people from wanted lists, arranging disabilities, and other ways of avoiding conscription. In it, besides Yaroslav Hryshyn himself, his brother Stanislav Hryshyn and the former director of their company, Oleksandr Rusakov, are mentioned.
Yaroslav Hryshyn also has another extremely unpleasant case — a fatal traffic accident. Yes, ultimately the case against Yaroslav Hryshyn was closed, which he himself happily reported on the official page of his law firm.
We do not question the court’s verdict that closed the case, but it should be taken into account that the case was closed not for exonerating circumstances: the proceeding regarding the traffic accident was closed due to the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution expiring, not because the investigation established the absence of the traffic accident or Hryshyn’s innocence.
And during the investigation Hryshyn himself managed to be placed on the wanted list: in 2019 he was notified of suspicion in absentia under part 2 of article 286 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, after which he was declared wanted.
So he simply went into hiding while his partners at the law firm "resolved the matter." The matter was successfully resolved, the case was closed. What really happened — a question shrouded in the mists of time.
There is one more extremely serious accusation against Yaroslav Hryshyn: in some publications he is directly called the lawyer of the Zaporizhzhia group that various resources call the OCU "Artashi." Yaroslav Hryshyn is linked to Rudolf Akopyan and other figures, and his current business is being presented as a continuation of old criminal ties.
Notably, Rudolf Akopyan is now one of the public representatives of "General Chereshnya": he officially holds the position of Director of Strategic Communications at the company, and Yaroslav Hryshyn himself calls him one of the people who were at the origins of the project.
Moreover, even before the appearance of "General Chereshnya," the surnames Hryshyn and Akopyan appeared together in law enforcement investigation materials regarding the Zaporizhzhia municipal enterprise "Zaporizhrynok."
In a court document published online in 2022, among the persons whose actions were being checked by the investigation were Hryshyn, Akopyan, and Mykhailo Prasol: the investigation linked them to the activities of the group that sources called OCU "Artashi." And the story was extremely unpleasant — aside from outright criminality, information surfaced that all current "General Chereshnya" manufacturers had worked for the FSB.
Of course, the figures involved deny everything. Moreover, information was leaked to the public that the SBU, in responses to lawyers’ inquiries, stated it had no information about the existence of OCU "Artashi" as an active organized criminal group. And Rudolf Akopyan himself reported in May 2025 that an attempt on his life in Zaporizhzhia had been prevented, claiming that Russian special services were behind the attack.
Perhaps, of course, that is indeed the case, since one should not discount the fact that during business disputes in our country — and we are talking about billions, let’s not forget that — it is fashionable to accuse one another of working for the FSB. But in Hryshyn’s case there is a nuance: accusations linking him to OCU "Artashi" and to the FSB emerged before he began receiving huge defense orders. These stories date back to 2022–2023, years when the current "General Chereshnya" still worked in Zaporizhzhia as a lawyer.
If one sums up, of course, one could call all publications about Yaroslav Hryshyn the machinations of competitors in the field of defense procurement. But these “machinations” include real criminal proceedings, real price inflation, and equally real “coincidences” connected to the current head of the Defense Procurement Agency, Zhumadilov. Too many coincidences, in our view.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "«Генерал Черешня» Ярослав Гришин: як сумнівний адвокат перетворився на не менш сумнівного виробника дронів". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
