A Top Manager Who Promised Putin To Produce Hundreds Of Thousands Of Drones A Year Has Been Arrested
- 11.05.2026, 19:12
He's being charged with fraud.
Former CEO of Transport of the Future Yuri Kozarenko, who reported to Putin in January 2025 about plans to produce up to 300,000 drones a year, has been arrested on charges of large-scale fraud, writes The Moscow Times.
Kommersant reports that earlier the Sverdlovsky District Court of Belgorod remanded him in custody until June 28, and on May 8 the Belgorod Regional Court rejected the lawyer's appeal. The investigation is being conducted by the Belgorod Region Department of the Interior Ministry.
According to Avia.pro, the criminal case is related to the embezzlement of about 70 million rubles allocated for the execution of the state defense order for the production of drones. The investigation believes that Kozarenko is involved in misuse of funds: the money was used to pay for the services of friendly organizations that did not actually perform the work.
In addition, Transport of the Future had a state subsidy of 4.5 billion rubles for the serial production of 750 vertical takeoff and landing drones, but 80% of the work was performed by the subcontractor only a year after the end of the contract, which was the reason for the audit, the publication notes.
Kozarenko is a native of Belgorod village, graduated from Belgorod State University with a degree in finance, since 2012 worked in the group "Efko", where he rose to the head of the innovation center. In 2022, he headed Transport of the Future, which was engaged in the development and production of unmanned systems. In 2023, the company launched the first phase of the plant in the SEZ "Togliatti" (investment of about 7 billion rubles), and by the end of 2024 stated the production of 100 drones per month with plans to increase to 250.
In January 2025, Kozarenko met Putin at the Samara enterprise, showed him the development and assembly areas and proudly reported on the ability to produce up to 300 thousand drones annually, including "Geranium". At the same time, he participated in the launch of a workshop for the production of lithium-ion batteries with a capacity of 20 MWh per year (investments - 1.3 billion rubles), promising to provide batteries for "millions of educational drones and hundreds of thousands of heavy civilian UAVs".