Six criminal proceedings, ties to the Artaši organized criminal group, and inflated prices: how lawyer Yaroslav Hryshyn made billions from the war

Recently the owners of the drone manufacturer brand "General Chereshnya" found themselves at the center of a high-profile scandal after threatening employees of one charitable foundation. The conflict arose because the foundation refused to buy their drones at inflated prices.

So the editorial team decided to revisit General Chereshnya’s background and trace all stages of their rise — from drug trafficking, racketeering, and contract killings to participation in political projects and theft of humanitarian aid.

Who stands behind General Chereshnya

General Chereshnya is one of the largest suppliers of unmanned aerial vehicles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, manufacturing about 100 thousand drones per month. In February 2026 General Chereshnya became one of the Ukrainian companies selected by the U.S. Department of Defense to participate in the Drone Dominance Program with a budget of 1,1 billion dollars.

Officially the brand is owned by LLC “Center for the Study of Unmanned Systems” (EDRPOU code 45208113, English name “CENTER OF UNMANNED TECHNOLOGIES” LLC), registered in September 2023.

The official beneficiary of LLC “Center for the Study of Unmanned Systems” is Yaroslav Volodymyrovych Hryshyn; the general director is Zaporizhzhia city council deputy Mykhailo Viktorovych Prasol; and the public face of the General Chereshnya brand is the shadow media operator Rudolf Akopyan.

According to unofficial data, the “political roof” for General Chereshnya is provided by the well-known Kharkiv politician and businessman Borys Lozhkin, who controls General Chereshnya through his “right hand” — former MP Hryhoriy Shverka, who, according to media reports, is also a co-founder of the project.

The Artaši OCG: how General Chereshnya began

All three main representatives of General Chereshnya — Yaroslav Hryshyn, Mykhailo Prasol, and Rudolf Akopyan — are members of the Zaporizhzhia ethnic Armenian criminal group Artaši.

The leader of the Zaporizhzhia Artaši OCG is criminal Artašes Avetikovich Sargsyan, who was sanctioned by the National Security and Defense Council in 2021.

Mykhailo Prasol, Artašes Sargsyan, Yaroslav Hryshyn. Yerevan, August 2021

Within the Artaši OCG the current beneficiaries of General Chereshnya held the following roles:

– Yaroslav Hryshyn – legal support, raiding, blackmail;

– Mykhailo Prasol – “spokesperson”, raiding;

– Rudolf Akopyan – media hitman.

It is worth noting that before the brand was registered, Yaroslav Hryshyn not only regularly posted photos with Artaši leader Artašes Sargsyan, but also officially represented his interests in courts, something he frequently boasted about on his social media.

Yaroslav Hryshyn is trying to lift sanctions from his boss — head of the Artaši OCG, Artašes Sargsyan

The start of Yaroslav Hryshyn’s career — from working for Kadyrov’s associates to serving the Artaši OCG

Notably, before working for criminal authority Artašes Sargsyan, Yaroslav Hryshyn served the interests of Kadyrov’s associates.

Hryshyn’s career as a lawyer began with a contract with the well-known Chechen criminal authority Murad Saidov, who until 2012 controlled part of Zaporizhzhia’s criminal world and today serves as an assistant to the representative of Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov in Crimea.

Yaroslav Hryshyn began his career as the lawyer and “fixer” for Murad Saidov

Hryshyn was Saidov’s trusted representative, handling all his affairs — from legal support for raiding attacks to communications with law enforcement. It was Murad Saidov who launched the previously unknown Zaporizhzhia lawyer Yaroslav Volodymyrovych Hryshyn into public life.

After Saidov’s forced departure from Zaporizhzhia to Crimea, Hryshyn was taken in by Saidov’s “partner” in the drug business — Artaši leader Artašes Sargsyan. At the same time, Murad Saidov joined Ramzan Kadyrov’s inner circle and initially became the overseer for Crimea, and after the Russians captured Enerhodar and Melitopol he became the overseer for those two cities as well.

Hryshyn’s new patron, Artaši OCG head Artašes Sargsyan, unlike Murad Saidov, was able to remain in Zaporizhzhia thanks to the protection of Yura Yenakiyevskyi, with whom he established relations through the now-eliminated pro-Russian criminal authority Armen Sargsyan (Horlovskyi).

Armen Horlovskyi also enabled Artašes to enter the alcohol business during Yanukovych’s time. The chain of beer kiosks “Leprikon” and the illegal pouring points across Zaporizhzhia, controlled by Yaroslav Hryshyn and Mykhailo Prasol, are remnants of what was once a powerful alcohol empire belonging to Artašes Sargsyan and Armen Horlovskyi.

Notably, after the Artaši OCG leader’s forced move to Yerevan, the friendship between the two criminal figures only strengthened, since Artašes Sargsyan and Armen Horlovskyi were able to meet regularly in third countries.

Hryshyn attended some of those meetings and was responsible for the legal aspects of the Artaši OCG’s illegal business in Zaporizhzhia. What else was discussed at those meetings, especially after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, can only be guessed.

Thanks to powerful patrons like Murad Saidov and Artašes Sargsyan, Hryshyn regularly felt practically immune from Ukrainian law.

For example, in 2018 Hryshyn, already a deputy of the Zaporizhzhia regional council under the protection of the Artaši, reportedly fatally struck a man with his car on the Simferopol–Kharkiv highway.

After effectively causing the man’s death, Hryshyn financed a large paid PR campaign against the deceased and his family, claiming that the victim “was drunk, naked, and threw himself under Deputy Hryshyn’s car.”

At the same time, Hryshyn was hiding from justice, about which an official notice appeared on the Interior Ministry’s website and was later removed with an error 404.

Hryshyn was put on the Interior Ministry’s wanted list for attempting to evade justice under article 286 part 2 (Violation of traffic safety rules or operation of a vehicle by persons who operate vehicles).

Eventually Hryshyn managed to bury the case related to the traffic accident. The deceased left behind two young children, to whom Hryshyn offered no assistance.

Mykhailo Prasol — from ordinary raiding to Zaporizhzhia city council deputy and general director of General Chereshnya

Mykhailo Prasol is a close friend of Yaroslav Hryshyn. Both are well known in Zaporizhzhia as members of the Artaši OCG.

Members of the Artaši OCG Mykhailo Prasol and Yaroslav Hryshyn

While Hryshyn handled legal matters for the Artaši, Mykhailo Prasol was placed in the Zaporizhzhia city council to defend their criminal interests at the municipal level. During his tenure Prasol has been involved in several dozen scandals related to corruption, raiding, and various “gangland showdowns.”

According to Pershyi Zaporizkyi, Mykhailo Prasol is involved in seizing land from local farmers. In October 2016 Prasol, accompanied by burly men in balaclavas from a private security firm, effectively attacked workers from the farm "Shchaslyvyi I.A." who were harvesting sunflowers. They detained them in the field all day, using force and threatening them with weapons. The farm’s tractor driver was beaten.

The outlet also recalls a case of a raiding attack involving the Artaši OCG and Mykhailo Prasol against the Zaporizhzhia establishment “Pivna Bochka.”

PHOTO: raiding attack by the Artaši OCG and Mykhailo Prasol on the establishment Pivna Bochka

“We experienced a real attempt at a ‘raider’ takeover. There were threats, intimidation, and pressure. All our documents for operating the network comply with legal requirements, but the deputy and his team weren’t interested in that at all,” recalls the administrator of the Pivna Bochka chain.

One can also recall the story involving the Preobrazovatel plant, where Mykhailo Prasol and Yaroslav Hryshyn attempted to seize a controlling stake in favor of a plant shareholder called “F.S.B. plus.”

It is worth noting that Prasol’s love of raiding put the Zaporizhzhia city council deputy in an extremely awkward situation.

During yet another attempt by Prasol and the Artaši to seize property in Zaporizhzhia, he was caught by members of another local OCG, “Tayson,” who represented the interests of the affected entrepreneur and publicly humiliated the deputy.

According to PROBLEMATIC with reference to the Telegram channel Eto Zaporizhzhia, the incident occurred on 15 November in the El Cafe restaurant at about 8 a.m.

“A group of physically fit young men, having apparently spotted the elected official from the street, entered El Cafe and headed to the table where Mykhailo Prasol and Rudolf Akopyan were sitting.

Probably sensing danger, Mykhailo Prasol immediately declared that he was a deputy and could not be beaten. After that, a group of young men from the Tayson OCG, numbering 20, began spitting at Prasol while shouting accusations of dishonesty and corruption, ruining the deputy’s clothes, hair, and mood,” the outlet reports.

It is worth noting that despite periodic public humiliations, raiding proved quite profitable for Prasol. In 2018 the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) accused Mykhailo Prasol of undeclared income totaling nearly 3,5 million dollars.

PHOTO: Screenshots from the NACP website PHOTO: Screenshots from the NACP website

It should be noted that, as with Hryshyn, the publication was later removed from the official NACP website, with the preservation of “error 404.”

Rudolf Akopyan — black PR specialist in service of the Artaši OCG

The biography of Artaši OCG member and the public face of General Chereshnya, Rudolf Akopyan, is also noteworthy.

PHOTO: Member of the Artaši OCG, public face of General Chereshnya Rudolf Akopyan

Rudolf Volodymyrovych Akopyan is from Zaporizhzhia and entered high politics thanks to childhood friends: the well-known political technologist brothers Denys and Roman Pyatyorotsi.

Together with the Pyatyorotsi brothers, Rudolf Akopyan participated in various political actions and built the necessary connections that allowed him in 2010 to become a deputy of the Zaporizhzhia city council while working in political consulting. It should be noted that Akopyan became a city council deputy thanks to criminal authority Yevhen Anisimov, who at the time was the “overseer” for the Party of Regions in Zaporizhzhia region.

But as soon as the political situation began to change, Rudolf Akopyan joined the Zaporizhzhia ethnic OCG “Artaši,” where he developed close ties with Yaroslav Hryshyn and Mykhailo Prasol.

Since January 2018 Akopyan has been an adviser to then-governor Kostyantyn Bryl, where he continued to cooperate closely with the Artaši OCG. We remind readers that it was Kostyantyn Bryl who handed Enerhodar over to the Artaši to plunder, where, with the help of Artašes Sargsyan’s controlled mayor Pavlo Muzyka, huge sums began to disappear from the city budget.

Interestingly, Akopyan’s first criminal case and searches were connected to his participation in the Artaši OCG. In October 2022 law enforcement conducted searches at the homes of Rudolf Akopyan, Zaporizhzhia lawyer Yaroslav Hryshyn, and deputy Mykhailo Prasol. A photo of the search warrant appeared online indicating that pretrial investigation data established that former mayor Volodymyr Buriak colluded with the criminal organization Artaši and transferred the municipal enterprise “Zaporizhrynok” under their control.

The scheme involved collecting extortion money from entrepreneurs at Zaporizhrynok, and if they refused to pay, Artaši members intimidated them and deprived them of the ability to conduct business at the city’s municipal markets. The scheme allegedly involved: Yaroslav Hryshyn, Oleh Kolomoyets, Rudolf Akopyan, Mykhailo Prasol.

Within the Artaši OCG structure, Rudolf Akopyan is fully responsible for media activities. In particular, he promoted the Zaporizhzhia Telegram channel Hnyla Chereshnya, from which the drone manufacturer brand General Chereshnya took its name.

So it is logical that Rudolf Akopyan became the media face of General Chereshnya.