Despite the full-scale war and sanctions, Ukrainian enterprises continue to supply the Russian aviation industry with spare parts for military equipment. Thus, since the beginning of the invasion, the Russian company “Avia FED Service” has supplied the Russians with at least $7.3 million worth of spare parts — and most of the spare parts, which cost $4.1 million, came from Ukraine.
This is stated in the investigation of the Russian publication “Vazhnye Istorii” ["Important Histories"].
From February 2022 to July 2023, according to customs declarations, the company "Avia Fed Service" imported:
- parts for the repair of An-124 aircraft produced by the Kharkiv FED Machine-Building Plant for almost $1.3 million;
- spare parts for location stations of Ka-32 helicopters from Kyiv plant "Radar" for over $754 000;
- parts for the repair of An-24 and An-12 engines manufactured by Motor Sich, products of the Kyiv Artem plant and other Ukrainian enterprises for almost $2 million.
In addition to Ukrainian parts, "Avia FED Service" imported spare parts from France, the USA and Great Britain.
What is known about the company "Avia Fed Service"
The Russian company "Avia FED Service" was founded in 1993 as a representative office of the Kharkiv Machine-Building Plant (KMZ) of the FED. Its current manager is Oleksandr Reshetnyk, a native of Luhansk. According to State Procurement, the clients of "Avia Fed Service" are the Ministry of Defense of Russia, the enterprises of the state corporation "Rostec" and the presidential special flying unit "Russia".
Before the start of the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Kharkiv Machine-Building Plant was the main supplier of "Avia FED Service" — Russia accounted for 70% of sales. With the beginning of the war in Donbas, the plant officially stopped deliveries to Russia, and in 2018, "Avia FED Service" came under Ukrainian sanctions.
This did not prevent delivery to Russia — for this, they used the Linker company registered in the United Arab Emirates. The company has a website in several languages, in particular in Russian: it says that it specializes in the supply of aircraft parts for Mi-8, Mi-17, Ka-32 helicopters "anywhere in the world."
Linker received Ukrainian products, in particular from “Motor Sich”, whose director Vyacheslav Bohuslaev was detained last October on suspicion of treason for "illegal supplies of military goods for Russian attack aircraft."
On the website of Amis, a company related to Linker, it is stated that the company is the official representative of “Motor Sich” in the UAE and "has all the necessary permits and licenses."
The last delivery of Linker was made in January of this year. After that, deliveries continued already through the company "Bakaitorg1" from Kyrgyzstan, which was registered in April 2023. During this time, she managed to sell $450,000 worth of Ukrainian KhMZ products to Russia.
Linkerʼs owner on “LinkedIn” is Oleksiy Palchyk. Journalists note that this person may be a native of Poltava, a graduate of the Irkutsk Higher Military Aviation School Oleksiy Palchyk. In a comment to journalists, he stated that "the Linker company has never supplied anything from Ukraine to Russia and is not supplying it." To a clarifying question, whether Linker supplied goods for the company "Avia FED service", Palchyk said that he was "not ready" to answer.
Oleksandr Reshetnyk, head of Avia Fed Service, told reporters that the Ukrainian products that came to the company in 2022-2023 were purchased earlier and were simply "lying abroad." However, he could not answer the question of how this is possible in the case of deliveries through the Bakaytorg1 company, which was registered only a few months ago.