This country never stops surprising with its peculiar version of social mobility: provincial lawyer Yaroslav Hryshyn has suddenly reinvented himself as a drone manufacturer. The story bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the former defense minister, also a lawyer, “Lyokha — Golden Egg,” who ultimately had to quietly leave the country. With former UKROP member and MP Hryshyn, it appears the same pattern may be unfolding again.
However, Yaroslav Hryshyn is not “lining his pockets” through the purchase of eggs by weight, but through drone manufacturing. In 2023, the company LLC “Center for Unmanned Systems Research” appeared and began producing FPV drones under the “General Chereshnya” brand. The manufacturer itself lists Yaroslav and Stanislav Hryshyn, as well as Rudolf Akopyan, among its founders.
As is often the case in Ukraine, the business suddenly took off: according to Forbes, in the first half of 2025, the manufacturer’s revenue exceeded UAH 1.5 billion. Unfortunately, the company’s registry data and financial reporting are closed, so its finances can only be assessed using information from indirect sources. At the same time, Yaroslav Hryshyn himself, for example, stated last year that the company was producing around 50,000 FPV drones per month and expected to end 2025 with revenue of UAH 7 billion.
That was almost twenty times more than in the previous year, 2024. Naturally, Hryshyn himself attributed this growth primarily to an increase in the number of government contracts and the high quality of his products.
However, the explanation — unsurprisingly — turned out to be simple: the volume of contracts between LLC “Center for Unmanned Systems Research” and the Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) surged after Arsen Zhumadilov took over as head of the DPA. Before that, Hryshyn’s company had contracts worth only UAH 400 million, and then suddenly the figures jumped into the billions. Pure coincidence, as everyone understands. And purely by coincidence, Yaroslav Hryshyn’s brother, Stanislav Hryshyn, represented Zhumadilov’s interests in court. Well, it just happened that way. Pure coincidence. These things happen, you know.
And, purely by coincidence, it turned out that the prices of “General Chereshnya” drones were inflated. We did not mention former Defense Minister Reznikov and his “eggs at 17 hryvnias per kilogram” for nothing. Because the story with Hryshyn’s drones is exactly the same: the Telegram channel “Joker” explicitly wrote that the Defense Procurement Agency, headed by Arsen Zhumadilov, had at least 20 offers for similar drones of better quality and at significantly lower prices. The state purchased “General Chereshnya” drones at prices ranging from UAH 17,900 to UAH 39,000, depending on the model, while the DPA rejected drones priced at UAH 10,000–18,000.
Yet, for some reason, the DPA contracts Yaroslav Hryshyn’s drones. In another strange coincidence, Andrii Lavrynovych, a former employee of Zhumadilov, went to work for LLC “Center for Unmanned Systems Research”: he resigned from his position as Director of Organizational Development at the Ministry of Defense’s State Enterprise “State Logistics Operator” and immediately joined Hryshyn’s team.
If the story involving the drones purchased by the DPA can be interpreted in different ways — perhaps “General Chereshnya” really is worth the money being paid for it and is indeed the best — then the story in which Yaroslav Hryshyn’s representatives allegedly tried, through threats, to force their products on a buyer, and a non-state buyer at that, at double the price, is difficult to explain.
The incident took place in February 2026, when a representative of “General Chereshnya” offered the “Tvii Krok” charitable foundation 100 BULLET Anti-Shahed drones at approximately UAH 110,000 each. At the same time, a similar model was priced at around UAH 58,000 on the manufacturer’s official website. The commercial offer was signed by director Mykhailo Prasol.
After the foundation refused to purchase the drones at the proposed price, a company representative allegedly began threatening the foundation with inspections and problems involving the security services. And these accusations are by no means unfounded — there is an audio recording of these threats.
But there are several other factors that, in a normal country, would have long since “killed” any defense contract: Yaroslav Hryshyn is named in no fewer than six (!) criminal proceedings. These include the following criminal proceedings: No. 72025102100000026 — a case handled by the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) under Part 2 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; No. 72025001420000071 dated August 12, 2025 — BES, Part 5 of Article 191; No. 62025080100005697 dated August 11, 2025 — State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), Part 1 of Article 364; No. 62025100110000197 dated September 4, 2025 — SBI, Part 1 of Article 364; No. 22025101110001161 — Main Investigation Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Part 2 of Article 364.
Article 191 of the Criminal Code concerns misappropriation, embezzlement, or seizure of property, including through abuse of official position; Part 2 of the article concerns large-scale offenses or offenses committed by an organized group. Article 364 of the Criminal Code concerns abuse of power or official position, while Part 2 covers the same offense committed under aggravating circumstances.
Information about Yaroslav Hryshyn’s exact status in these criminal cases and the precise circumstances underlying them is rather contradictory, but all of these proceedings are connected with the procurement of drones manufactured by Yaroslav Hryshyn. It is therefore difficult to imagine that he appears in them merely as a witness. Or, for old times’ sake, as a lawyer. Nevertheless, the existence of these cases does not in any way prevent Arsen Zhumadilov from purchasing drones from Hryshyn’s company.
Another criminal proceeding is unrelated to drones and concerns evasion of mobilization. No, it is not Yaroslav Hryshyn who is evading mobilization. He is helping draft evaders: criminal proceeding No. 42025164690000014 is connected with a scheme involving the illegal exemption of persons liable for military service through a company designated as critically important.
A court document in this proceeding refers to an investigation into a scheme for evading mobilization by arranging exemptions and deferments, organizing escapes from Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCCs), removing individuals from wanted lists, arranging disability status, and using other methods to avoid conscription. In addition to Yaroslav Hryshyn himself, the document also names his brother Stanislav Hryshyn and the former director of their company, Oleksandr Rusakov.
Yaroslav Hryshyn has another extremely unpleasant story in his past — a fatal traffic accident. In the end, 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 ruling to close the case, but it should be taken into account that the case was by no means closed on exonerating grounds: the proceedings over the traffic accident were terminated because the statute of limitations for criminal liability had expired, not because the investigation established that the accident had not occurred or that Hryshyn was innocent.
During the investigation, Yaroslav Hryshyn himself was even placed on a wanted list: in 2019, he was notified in absentia of suspicion under Part 2 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, after which he was declared wanted.
In other words, he simply went into hiding while his partners at the law firm were “taking care of the matter.” The matter was successfully “taken care of,” and the case was closed. What actually happened remains a question shrouded in the mists of time.
There is another extremely serious allegation against Yaroslav Hryshyn: some publications explicitly describe him as the lawyer for a Zaporizhzhia criminal group that various sources refer to as the “Artashi” organized crime group. Yaroslav Hryshyn has been linked to Rudolf Akopyan and other individuals named in these reports, while attempts have been made to portray his current business as a continuation of old criminal ties.
Notably, Rudolf Akopyan is now one of the public representatives of “General Chereshnya”: he officially serves as the company’s Director of Strategic Communications, while Yaroslav Hryshyn himself describes him as one of the people who stood at the origins of the project.
At the same time, even before “General Chereshnya” appeared, the names of Hryshyn and Akopyan appeared together in materials from a law-enforcement investigation concerning the Zaporizhzhia municipal enterprise “Zaporizhrynok.”
In a 2022 court document published online, Hryshyn, Akopyan, and Mykhailo Prasol were mentioned among the individuals whose actions were being examined by investigators: the investigation linked them to the activities of a group that sources referred to as the “Artashi” organized crime group. Moreover, the story was extremely troubling — in addition to allegations of outright criminal activity, information also surfaced alleging that all of the current figures behind “General Chereshnya” had worked for Russia’s FSB.
Of course, the individuals involved deny all of these allegations. Moreover, information was leaked into the public domain claiming that, in responses to lawyers’ inquiries, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) stated that it had no information confirming the existence of the “Artashi” organized crime group as an active organized criminal organization. Rudolf Akopyan himself reported in May 2025 that an assassination attempt against him 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 overlook the fact that during business conflicts in our country — and we are talking about billions, let us not forget that — it has become fashionable to accuse one another of working for the FSB. But in Hryshyn’s case, there is one important nuance: allegations linking him to the “Artashi” organized crime group and to the FSB appeared before he began receiving massive defense contracts. These stories date back to 2022–2023, when today’s “General Chereshnya” was still working as a lawyer in Zaporizhzhia.
To sum up, of course, all the publications concerning Yaroslav Hryshyn could be dismissed as the work of competitors fighting over defense contracts. But behind these “attacks” are real criminal proceedings, real price inflation, and equally real “coincidences” involving Zhumadilov, the current head of the Defense Procurement Agency. Far too many coincidences, in our view.
