Russian businessmen assemble drones from chinese parts and sell them to the russian army for 10 times more - investigation
Corruption allows Russians to profit from the war and plays into the hands of the Ukrainian military
Businessmen close to the Russian government are assembling military equipment from parts bought on AliExpress and selling them to the Russian army for several times more, according to military commanders and Z-channels.
Source. This was reported by The Moscow Times.
Roman Saponkov, a military commander, spoke about one of these schemes. According to him, the Sibiryachok-1 drone costs 2.5 million rubles and is manufactured by GaskarGroup, a company associated with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. The company sells the device using parts from AliExpress for 2.5 million rubles, which is 10 times more expensive than their cost on this marketplace. According to Saponkov, the drone is of terrible quality and is hardly used in the army, and once it simply fell down.
The head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, was in charge of Avtovaz and earned money with his wife on parts for the company. Now, the Almaz-Antey holding, which is part of his company, supplies Chinese drones under the guise of its own production. The "Dobrynya" drone became a meme and turned out to be a Chinese model of the $600 iFlight Nazgul5 Evoque F5 F5X racing drone with a $70 Hoshi Radiomaster remote control. The Russian Defense Ministry wanted to sell it for $2000.
The situation is similar with another drone that was praised by the governor of Primorsk, Oleg Kozhemyak. It can be bought on AliExpress for between $8,849 and $21,699. The device was developed by the Chinese company CUAV Tech.
The Patriot K40TL drone presented at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF) also turned out to be a Chinese EVO II Pro V3, which can be bought on AliExpress for $1400.
Background. As Bloomberg wrote, this year's St. Petersburg Economic Forum will only demonstrate Russia's isolation.
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