The “Fire Point” owner Denys Shtilerman is accused of creating a monopolist with the support of Minister Rustem Umerov, in order to then sell it profitably. Hereʼs his response

The main complaint against “Fire Point” is that the state helped it become an artificial monopoly.

According to the companyʼs critics, this was done in two ways. The first is codification, the second is secret agreements.

Firstly, Yulia Yatsyk from “Servant of the People” says that the Ministry of Defense artificially slows down potential competitors. According to her, the ministry creates problems for “Fire Point” competitors during the so-called codification. It is the stage when military equipment undergoes field tests, where the manufacturer confirms that its products meet the declared performance characteristics. Also, a significant part of codification is paperwork, document processing. The ministry allegedly complicates this process for other manufacturers.

Secondly, says the executive director of the NGO "ACC" Darya Kalenyuk, the company has a preference from the state. It is thanks to its connections with (former) minister Rustem Umerov that the company receives most of the state contracts, and that is why it can scale production and increase capitalization. The ultimate goal of the companyʼs owners is supposedly to cash out, that is, to get money into their own accounts.

The second claim against “Fire Point” is that its ultimate beneficiary (true owner or one of the true owners) is allegedly businessman Tymur Mindich. That is, a sanctioned person.

As evidence of the companyʼs criticism, they cite that part of the "Mindich recordings" where Tymur Mindich talks to the then Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov as if he were the owner or represented the owner.

In the recordings, Tymur Mindich and Rustem Umerov discuss an increase in Ukraineʼs defense budget, part of which is to go towards the purchase of “Fire Point” deep-strike drones. Tymur Mindich also details the deal with the Middle Eastern country and the amount for which shareholders will be able to cash out.

“Fire Point” deep strike drones are not the only ones on the market, there are analogues. Yulia Yatsyk from “Servant of the People” named among such analogues the An-196 "Fever" (produced by JSC "Antonov"), UJ-26 "Bober" (by the company "UkrJet"), E-300 “Enterprise” (by the company “AeroDrone”) and "Dovbush T10" (by the company of businessman Volodymyr Yatsenko).

If they were given more state money, they would be able to show better results — such is the logic of “Fire Point” critics.

If we retell Denys Shtilermanʼs answer as concisely as possible, it would be as follows: the companyʼs critics do not understand the workings of the defense market and confuse causes with consequences (the company designs effective drones, and therefore money is poured into it, not vice versa).

As Denys Shtilerman says, for two years in a row the state has been buying up all the deep strike drones produced by Ukrainian companies. Including those that are less effective and more expensive than “Fire Point” products.

In such a market, the decisive factor is not the amount of money, but the abilities of the companiesʼ managers and engineers. No company needs connections with Minister Rustem Umerov, because the state buys up all the products. At the same time, for example, the FP-1 deep strike drone is three times cheaper than the similar An-196 "Feb" drone, which is produced by the state aviation enterprise Antonov.

As for codification, according to Denys Shtilerman, Ukraine currently has the lowest bureaucratic requirements for UAV manufacturers in the world. If a company is unable to prepare a relatively small amount of documents for codification, then this is the companyʼs problem.

Denys Shtilerman suggests that anyone who cannot pass codification should contact the “Fire Point” back office for help.

“Fire Point” has come out on top in the international market because in March 2024, its deep strike drone proved to be the best during international tests. The test was organized by the US Embassy, and all manufacturers of such drones, including global ones, were invited to it. The drone had to go to the target above the electronic warfare equipment and hit it. The only ones who succeeded in doing this were “Fire Point”.

According to Denys Shtilerman, after that, a queue of "Kyiv beau monde" came to him, offering him money for a share in the company. One of these investment suitors was Tymur Mindich (he was brought by manager Ihor Khmelov, who was involved in international cooperation projects). Tymur Mindich offered $100 million for half of the company.

Denys Shtilerman says that he negotiated with Tymur Mindich until August 2025 (in the same apartment that NABU wiretapped). In the end, Tymur Mindich offered a little less than $1 billion for half of the company and a person who would “front” him.

Shtilerman was not satisfied with these conditions, because at that time the Arab defense holding EDGE Group, owned by the sovereign fund of the UAE, had already offered him to buy thirty percent of the company for $758 million.

In the conversations on the tapes, Tymur Mindich confuses all the details of this deal — both the amount and the conditions. The cash-out he tells Rustem Umerov about is not money that the shareholder could take to his own accounts. Fire Point shareholders were then supposed to reinvest it in joint defense projects with the UAE.

One of these projects was supposed to be a spaceport for space launches. While the negotiations were going on, Tymur Mindich tried to help the company in some way, but nothing worked out, "and thank God, because the company could have owed him something, but it didnʼt owe him anything".

Denys Shtilerman says that the media and anti-corruption activists have significantly harmed the company in its international work. During the “leaking” of the "recordings" and the release of investigations, problems arose in several areas at once, including in attracting investment and producing solid rocket fuel in Denmark. But the main problem was that the torrent of talk slowed down the pan-European “Freya” project for at least seven months.

The basis of the “Freya” project is the FP-7.x missile, which is a clone of the Russian S-400 and is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles at an altitude of up to 20 kilometers. Ukraine has proposed that European countries integrate their command centers and radars into a single anti-missile network.

According to Denis Shtilerman, Norway was supposed to join the project in June 2025, but it joined only in February 2026, after the Prime Ministerʼs visit. At the end of March 2026, Rustem Umerov was supposed to be presented as the head of the Freya project from Ukraine. However, this did not happen, because at midnight another torrent of "Mindich recordings" was released.

Finally, Denys Shtilerman accuses the NGO "ACC" of "distributing our design documentation to embassies". He does not disclose the circumstances of this event, but as far as Babel understood Denys Shtilermanʼs words, his name became known to the Ukrainian media precisely because this documentation had his signature on it. The executive director of the NGO "ACC" Darya Kaleniuk denied the claim that her organization did anything like this.