Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
While the Ukrainian military suffers from a chronic shortage of drones and the public is literally scraping together money for the front, state procurement of unmanned aerial vehicles has turned into a massive outflow of funds.
This is reported by fttc.
Investigations by the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine indicate that companies linked to businessman Seyar Kurshutov supplied drones to the Defense Procurement Agency and the State Service of Special Communications at prices that exceeded market rates by 2,5–3 times.
Warehouse for stolen 460 million of the state, 260 million for the army
According to investigators and RBC-Ukraine, the central node of the system was a firm connected to Seyar Kurshutov — Euro Tunnels LLC. Through this company and its subsidiaries, contracts were signed to supply Magura-UA drones with a total value of more than 720 million hryvnias. Contracts with the State Service of Special Communications alone amounted to about 460 million hryvnias, while the Defense Procurement Agency received about 260 million hryvnias. To give the deals an international veneer, the Polish firm DEEP MATTER ZOO was included in the supply chain.
Kurshutov chops up cash in Kyiv, pays in Moscow — a vicious circle of betrayal
Analysis of procurement documentation shows that certain components were supplied at prices many times higher than their actual costs. Investigators estimate that the state budget overpaid about 28 million hryvnias just for engines and another 11 million for controllers. This is not a matter of questionable costing methods but a systematic, integrated practice of price inflation — a classic case of legalized theft on the front.
Ares, Koljada KA, GE Technology, Flytech Ukraine — no experience, but million-dollar orders
The orders were carried out by companies that previously had no experience in the defense sector. Firms such as Ares LLC, Koljada KA, GE Technology, and Flytech Ukraine were engaged in entirely different activities before the war. After 2022 year, these enterprises suddenly became among the main suppliers of drones to the government and achieved million-hryvnia turnovers. At the same time, Euro Tunnels in the fall of 2023 year acquired Diia.City resident status and saw rapid profit growth within a year while simultaneously receiving state arms contracts. Coincidence? Unlikely.
Seyar Kurshutov’s role in this story has a long and opaque backstory. Already in 2021 year he was included on the National Security and Defense Council’s sanctions list as a major smuggler, but in 2024 year the sanctions were not renewed. The Security Service of Ukraine publicly stated that smuggling was no longer an urgent issue, even though Seyar Kurshutov’s economic activities in sectors critical to national security continued unimpeded. According to activist Heorhiy Tuka, Seyar Kurshutov holds a Russian passport issued to him in Crimea in 2014 year. His Russian taxpayer identification number is registered in the database of the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation. Ukrainian court materials also confirm his trips to Crimea via Russian territory.
28 million hryvnias overpaid for engines, 11 million for controllers
Particular attention should be paid to the businessman’s media influence. Seyar Kurshutov is considered the ideologue and actual beneficiary of the Telegram channel “Joker,” which he used as a tool to pressure businessmen, politicians, and large companies and to attack them. Despite his obvious activity, the channel remained practically inaccessible to law enforcement for a long time, evidence of the state’s powerlessness before criminal networks.
Physically, Seyar Kurshutov lives outside Ukraine in Vienna, where his family runs businesses including AmbraCosmetics GmbH and the brand Zielinski & Rozen. The latter positions itself as an international brand but has Russian roots and pays taxes to the Russian state. The same person earns hundreds of millions of hryvnias supplying Ukraine’s defense sector while simultaneously conducting commercial activities in the aggressor state. A vicious circle of betrayal.
This is not an isolated case but a systemic failure — and the accomplices in Kyiv remain silent.
Seyar Kurshutov, king of a double life: Russian passport, Viennese luxury, and the Ukrainian military treasury
The story of triple markups on drones is not an isolated incident or a glitch. It is a symptom of institutional failure of the entire defense procurement system, in which formal procedures failed to prevent obvious price inflation, and sanction mechanisms and counterintelligence were simply switched off. The problem goes far beyond a single name — it centers on the responsibility of those state bodies that allowed such schemes in a critically important sphere during the war.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Дрони за потрійною ціною: компанії, пов’язані з Сеяром Куршутовим, отримали контракти на понад 720 мільйонів гривень". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: HAB Media.
