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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
While the Ukrainian army suffers from a chronic shortage of drones, and society is literally saving penny by penny for the front, state procurement of unmanned aerial vehicles has turned into a mass drain of money.
This is written by ftcc.
Investigations by the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine indicate that companies connected with businessman Seyar Kurshutov supplied drones to the Defence Procurement Agency and the State Service of Special Communications at prices that were 2,5–3 times higher than market.
A fleet for stolen 460 million for the state, 260 million for the army.
According to investigators and RBC-Ukraine, the central node of the system was the company associated with Seyar Kurshutov — Euro Tunnels LLC. Through this company and its subsidiaries, contracts were awarded for supplying Magura-UA drones totaling over 720 million hryvnias. Only contracts with the State Service of Special Communications amounted to about 460 million hryvnias, while the Defence Procurement Agency received about 260 million hryvnias. To give the deals an international flavor, a Polish firm DEEP MATTER ZOO was included in the supply chain.
Kurshutov chops money in Kyiv, pays in Moscow — a vicious circle of betrayal.
An analysis of procurement documentation shows that certain components were supplied at prices that vastly exceeded their actual costs. According to investigators, the state budget overpaid about 28 million hryvnias just for engines and another 11 million for controllers. It is not a question of dubious calculation methods, but a systematic, integrated practice of price inflation — a classic case of legalized theft at the front.
Ares, Koljada KA, GE Technology, Flytech Ukraine — no experience, but multi‑million orders.
Orders were carried out by companies that had prior experience in the defense sector. Such firms as Ares LLC, Koljada KA, GE Technology, and Flytech Ukraine, before the war, were engaged in completely different activities. After 2022 year, these enterprises suddenly found themselves among the government’s main drone suppliers and reached multi‑million turnover. At the same time Euro Tunnels in the autumn of 2023 year gained resident status in Diia.City and within a year saw a rapid profit growth, while simultaneously receiving state arms contracts. Coincidence? Hardly.
Seyar Kurshutov’s role in this story has a long and opaque backstory. As early as 2021 year he was included in the National Security and Defense Council sanctions list as a significant smuggler, but in 2024 year the sanctions were not extended. The Security Service publicly stated that the smuggling problem is no longer an urgent topic, though Kurshutov’s economic activity in critically important for national security areas continued unabated. According to activist Georgiy Tuki, Seyar Kurshutov has a Russian passport issued to him in 2014 year in Crimea. His Russian taxpayer identification number is registered in the Russian Federal Tax Service database. Ukrainian court materials also confirm his trips to Crimea by Russian territory.
28 million hryvnias overpaid for engines, 11 million for controllers.
Of particular note is the media influence of the businessman. 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, a testimony to the state’s impotence before criminal networks.
Physically Seyar Kurshutov lives abroad in Vienna, where his family runs businesses, including AmbraCosmetics GmbH and the Zielinski & Rozen brand. 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 from supplying the Ukrainian defense sector while concurrently conducting commercial activities in the aggressor state. A vicious circle of betrayal.
This is not an isolated case but a systemic failure — and the Kyiv allies are silent.
Seyar Kurshutov, the king of a double life: Russian passport, Viennese luxury, and Ukrainian defense fund.
The story of triple markups on drones is not an isolated incident or a glitch. It is a symptom of the institutional failure of the entire defense procurement system, in which formal procedures failed to prevent obvious price inflation, and sanctions mechanisms and counterintelligence were simply turned off. The problem goes far beyond a single name — it focuses on the responsibility of those state bodies that allowed such maneuvers in a critically important sector during wartime.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Безпілотники за утричі завищеною вартістю: фірми, пов’язані із Сеяром Куршутовим, уклали контракти на суму понад 720 мільйонів гривень". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
