How Ukraine Is Bringing the War to Russia

By Joseph Roche

Wednesday, July 01, 2026

 

KYIV REGION—In the basement of a business center, the silver doors of a lift open to reveal a bustling industrial hive, like something out of a James Bond film. Surrounded by enormous 3D printers, dozens of masked and gloved men work on the skeleton of an FP-1 drone. With its long gray wings, narrow fuselage, and a wooden propeller fixed to the rear, the machine could almost pass for a small pleasure aircraft. Ihor, one of the foremen, announces the pace without looking up: “We produce 200 a day.”

 

Welcome to Fire Point, a private company that has become one of the jewels of Ukraine's defense industry. These drones, about 12 feet long with a wingspan of 18 feet, are single-use, intended to strike targets in Russia. Their architecture is designed to be simple, effective, and inexpensive: plywood frame wrapped in carbon fiber, plastic fuel tank, cheap engine. As for the explosives, the Ukrainian army installs them after delivery.

 

Denis Shtilman, 52, an Odessa-born chief engineer and co-founder of Fire Point, makes no effort to conceal his pride. A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, he explains that everything began with a straightforward observation: Ukraine’s first long-range drones were far too expensive. “That led us to create the FP-1, a far more capable and far cheaper drone, able to carry 60 kilograms of explosives over long distances for under 50,000 euros.”

 

Today, FP-1s capable of striking targets more than 1,000 miles away are among the instruments behind Ukraine’s recent successes. Initially confined to symbolic strikes on Russian territory, these attacks are now part of a broader campaign targeting the country’s strategic military and industrial infrastructure, sometimes more than 600 miles from the Ukrainian border.

 

Ukraine has sharply escalated its long-range strike campaign in recent weeks, breaching Moscow’s air defenses and hitting key infrastructure. A coordinated attack on June 25 and 26 marked a major escalation, targeting Russian logistics, air defenses, naval assets, and heavy industry as part of a 40-day strike initiative authorized by President Volodymyr Zelensky. Another attack on Tuesday reportedly hit a key satellite communications center near Moscow.

 

Firepoint factory worker prepares the tail fins of an FP1 drone, produced at a rate of more than 200 units a day. (Photo by Louis Lemaire-Sicre)

President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in late June that Russia was facing fuel shortages after a wave of Ukrainian attacks deep inside the country—a rare public admission of the toll Kyiv’s campaign was taking on Russia’s energy sector.

 

“These attacks on our infrastructure facilities do create problems, that is obvious,” Putin said in an interview with a state TV reporter.

 

The strikes have disrupted daily life in the capital, triggered fuel shortages across Russia, and forced the Kremlin to redeploy air defense systems from frontline positions to protect Moscow. Kyiv’s goal is twofold: impose a strategic logistical lockdown capable of strangling Russia’s war economy from within, while bringing the war directly to Moscow itself.

 

Betting everything on independence.

 

In his office, Shtilman settles in front of a diagram of the European arms market. His assessment is blunt: Europe must forget America and assert its independence. This realization, he explains, did not arise solely from Donald Trump’s return to the White House. It goes back to the Obama years, when the United States began its strategic pivot away from Europe and toward China.

 

“Only France, particularly under Charles de Gaulle, understood that a sovereign country must have a sovereign defense,” he said.

 

Eyes fixed on his diagram, Shtilman delivers his verdict with something close to dismay: “Every European country, to one degree or another, is completely dependent on the American military-industrial complex.” The engineer pauses solemnly before continuing: “And that dependence is even more glaring when it comes to air defense systems.”

 

Fire Point is therefore working on more than drones. Shtilman is eager to discuss Project Freya, a proposed partnership with European partners built around the FP-7, a missile developed by Fire Point and described by him as the first ballistic missile created by a private company in Ukraine. Although the FP-7 is an offensive system, Shtilman says its design philosophy draws inspiration from Russia’s S-400: a modern long-range mobile air-defense system, rooted in late Soviet concepts, whose strength lies in its layered architecture and ability to engage aircraft, cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, and drones at different ranges.

 

The company claims to develop its project using open-source software, so that clients can verify the absence of a kill switch, which gives the FP-7 an advantage over American military equipment. Many of the weapons sold to U.S. allies are fitted with kill switches that allow a system to be remotely disabled or limited, a fact that worries Ukrainians given the mercurial nature of the Trump administration.

 

Co-owner of Fire Point Denis Shtilerman, Chief Technology Officer Iryna Terekh, and co-owner Yehor Skalyha are present at a press conference on November 21, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Dan Bashakov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

“All our components are Ukrainian, except one, which comes from France. It is the Safran navigation system. A very good navigation system,” the engineer concedes.

 

Fire Point also proposes using the FP-7 as a low-cost target missile to help train European radars to detect and track modern ballistic threats. Shtilman says the missile is already flying, though it remains in development and still needs to be integrated with radar and guidance systems. A first demonstration guided by a European radar is scheduled for July, he says.

 

Shtilman sets out ambitious targets: a price point of around 500,000 euros per unit, compared with $3 million to $5 million for its American equivalent; a production capacity of 200 FP-7s per month, against roughly 700 Patriot missiles per year in the United States; and the ability to intercept Russian Iskander and Kinzhal missiles by the end of 2027. The company’s director attributes the lower costs to the absence of bureaucratic dead weight. “Here, we have only engineers,” he says flatly.

 

The opacity of power.

 

The drones and the FP-7 represent the ingenuity and doggedness that have enabled Ukraine to keep fighting a much bigger opponent for more than four years. But Fire Point may also embody a less flattering side of Ukraine’s wartime system: the persistence of corruption allegations, opaque ownership structures, and political proximity in a country still struggling to break with the habits of its post-Soviet past.

 

That tension has now become central to the company’s story. In late April, Fire Point’s name surfaced in a major corruption case implicating figures close to President Volodymyr Zelensky, including Rustem Umerov, the current secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Ukrainska Pravda revealed details of an ongoing investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), according to which Timur Mindich, a businessman long associated with Zelensky, may hold a stake in Fire Point through shell companies.

 

Mindich, who’s now living in Israel, is being investigated in his home country on suspicion of having been at the center of a bribery scheme in the energy sector. The Public Anti-Corruption Council attached to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense accordingly called for Rustem Umerov’s suspension and a partial nationalization of Fire Point back in April.

 

Fire Point has issued a formal denial. The company states that “Timur Mindich is not and has never been an owner or ultimate beneficial owner” of the company.

 

Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, urges against drawing conclusions too quickly. He notes that the case rests, for now, only on leaks, and that the courts have yet to rule. One question, however, remains: How did such a young company manage to secure financing, public contracts, and rapid growth so quickly?

 

Fire Point’s trajectory encapsulates the Ukrainian system as a whole. On one side, the company embodies one of the most visible successes of Ukraine’s new defense industry: a firm that has become solid, innovative, and attractive enough to draw foreign partners. On the other, it appears in the gray zones of a state apparatus where public contracts, networks of influence, and suspicions of favoritism intermingle. For Ukraine, fighting the Russians and fighting corruption at the same time is no simple matter.