We spent around an hour and a half at Fire Point's drone and missile production facilities, not counting the time spent travelling between locations while our eyes were covered. Iryna Terekh, the company's technical director, said we saw only a small fraction of the production premises.
Visually, the FP-1 drone factory looks very different from what was shown in a recent promotional video. While the footage makes the UAV production facility look relatively spacious and large-scale, it is actually quite cramped. The workshops are labyrinths of stacked, numbered airframes, piled in large heaps even along the corridors. Many people fill the rooms, seated close together, almost like a family.
The components stacked everywhere will become flying machines in just a few hours. The aircraft are assembled, tested, dismantled and shipped out immediately. Within a couple of days, they reach the front lines.
The cramped conditions at the plant are likely the result of production outpacing the ability to build new facilities. Ukraine's General Staff said the FP-1 drone is currently the country's main long-range strike asset. Production of these aircraft is now approaching hundreds of units per day.
Even to the touch, it is clear that the drones are made from simple, inexpensive materials found in everyday civilian life. That is precisely Fire Point's approach: to produce cheaply and at scale, without relying heavily on highly skilled labour.
In its three years of operation, the company has not only established drone assembly but also set up production of machine tools, engines, CRPA antennas to protect navigational systems from electronic warfare, rocket fuel and boosters. It has also started work on more sophisticated strike systems, especially large missiles and their engines.
The company is also notable for being developed largely with funding from Western partners. Contracts for producing FP-1 drones for the Ukrainian defence forces are financed by other states under what is known as the Danish model, a scheme that enables Ukraine to produce arms with foreign backing. Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities actively promote the company during international negotiations to facilitate such agreements with foreign partners.
Fire Point was long one of Ukraine's most secretive large private defence companies. Yet in just a few months, it has become highly visible. The shift followed a corruption scandal in the energy sector, as the information space was filled by allegations of links between the defence company and businessman Tymur Mindich, the central figure in investigations by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).
The company's management has mounted a defence in the media, holding three-hour press conferences, answering all questions and expending considerable effort to distance itself from these allegations and minimise damage to the company's reputation.
The situation has escalated into direct clashes with journalists. The company demanded that The Kyiv Independent retract their report on the NABU investigation and alleged links to Mindich, which Fire Point described as untrue.
Ukrainska Pravda (UP) spoke with a number of officials, engineers and businesspeople and visited Fire Point itself. This is the story of one of Ukraine's most enigmatic weapons manufacturers, a company that has recently sparked many questions.
YouTube, in-house component manufacturing and a host of contractors
Iryna Terekh shows us a rocket booster, a crucial component that gives a drone its initial lift-off impulse. Fire Point tested boosters from various manufacturers before deciding to develop and produce them in-house.
"We found the technology on YouTube," she said. "Not entirely, of course – we had to run experiments, and we have in-house chemists. The formula itself is widely known: ammonium perchlorate, butadiene rubber, spherical aluminium and several other components. It's not much more complicated than mixing concrete, but considerably more hazardous."
During the conversation, Iryna mentioned YouTube and Google several more times as sources for production and technological solutions. This characterises the company's general approach: using simple, cheap and versatile tools and materials, while moving away from strict design and industrial standards.
The emergence of companies with this philosophy in Ukraine was inevitable. On the one hand, it is driven by a shortage of resources, the loss of technologies over the years of independence and the emigration of highly specialised professionals. On the other hand, it is dictated by the scale of the war, which forces the search for cheap, mass-produced weapons.
Today, Fire Point is one of Ukraine's main manufacturers of deep-strike drones – the very systems that strike deep inside Russia. The company applies the same principle to large missiles, relying on simple technology and streamlined production processes. Debates surround the missiles themselves, but more on that later.
The company's top management comprises three people: Yehor Skalyha, in charge of military liaison, technical director Iryna Terekh and Denys Shtilerman, the owner and chief designer.
Before the full-scale invasion, all three were civilian professionals. Skalyha was a film producer, Shtilerman was an IT entrepreneur and Terekh owned an architectural business.
After the outbreak of the full-scale war, many people moved into the defence industry from civilian businesses. Some view this as amateurism, while others see it as a "fresh perspective". Terekh, at least, points to her experience managing an architects' office as useful when setting up drone production.
The company began developing its flagship product, the FP-1 drone, in November 2022. At the time, around a dozen people were involved, including the founders themselves. Design work took more than six months. The drone was formally approved for service in May 2023 and carried out its first combat mission in September.
Terekh said the development and testing programme cost around US$2 million, funded personally by Shtilerman. Once the FP-1 proved itself as a viable system, a number of units were contracted by the State Service of Special Communications, followed later by the Ministry of Defence.
The company moved very quickly from producing hundreds of units to tens of thousands. The main driver of Fire Point's further rapid growth was the receipt of a huge government order at the end of 2024, with a total value measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. By law, the company is entitled to build into the price of its product a profit of up to 25% of the cost price, which it may reinvest in development. This became the main investment resource for building the business.
The company now employs around 3,700 people, reaching this scale in just two years. Recruitment was initially difficult, Terekh said, as security concerns ruled out many applicants.
Over time, the team grew steadily, aided by active recruitment in various cities and word of mouth, as employees brought acquaintances to work alongside them. Many new staff members came from industrial companies that were encountering difficulties during the full-scale war.
Although Fire Point employs a large workforce, it cannot handle the full volume of orders on their own. That is why dozens of Ukrainian state-owned and private contractor companies have emerged alongside it, manufacturing various components and growing thanks to this cooperation.
Terekh says Fire Point contracts "kick-started" several Ukrainian companies. One metalworking plant quickly scaled up after taking on the production of complex missile components. Another business emerged from decades of technological dormancy, dating back to the Soviet era, and was on the brink of handing over part of its land to property developers.
Initially, Fire Point assembled its drones from imported components, but it has since mastered how to produce some critical units in-house. Its UAV engines, for example, are now in mass production, outpacing output from a leading German contractor and set to be installed on all FP-1 units. The company also independently produces CRPA antennas, which protect the drones' navigation systems from electronic warfare.
A similar import-substitution process is also underway for missiles, although achieving results there will take more time.
The company, together with its contractors, also produces industrial machine tools. This endeavour is supported by specialised personnel who previously worked at one of Ukraine's machine-tool manufacturers.
In the near future, Fire Point plans to expand its international cooperation, notably by building a missile fuel production plant in Denmark. Terekh notes that operating such a large facility in Ukraine would simply be unsafe. To advance the project, the company pitched the idea to Danish authorities and secured support from the Ukrainian government at the highest level.
Fire Point intends to continue its expansion into Europe while keeping the core of its capabilities in Ukraine. Terekh said the management has commissioned major audits by the international Big Four accounting firms – Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG.
A high-profile consultant has joined the company's supervisory board: former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after lengthy negotiations. Interestingly, the American official also holds a position at Kyivstar, a Ukrainian telecommunications operator.
How the FP-1 became Ukraine's most widely used deep-strike asset
Fire Point received its first truly large contracts at the end of 2024. At that time, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that over the following year, Ukraine planned to produce at least 30,000 long-range drones.
Deep-strike drones are Ukraine's asymmetric response to Russian missile attacks. Only a small proportion of Ukrainian-launched aerial assets reach their targets, and their relatively small warheads rarely cause decisive damage. Nevertheless, sustained daily strikes are enough to create tangible problems for Russia's energy infrastructure, hit military depots and airfields and force the diversion of resources for their protection.
Vadym Hlushko, the founder of the Cyber Boroshno OSINT community, noted in articles for UP that Ukraine is ramping up strikes on Russian energy facilities and occasionally delivers pinpoint hits on critical oil and gas infrastructure, causing tangible problems for Russia. Yet the warheads are not enough to destroy defence factories.
Accurately gauging the impact of billions spent on deep strike assets is a challenge. Not every strike is captured by a frightened Russian resident nervously filming nearby. As a result, operators may know little about the effects of individual major strikes that cost millions of dollars. Moreover, the Kremlin does everything it can to conceal these consequences, brings reserve oil-refining capacities online and rapidly repairs and protects its facilities, which further confuses analysts.
Nevertheless, there is still an effect, and the Ukrainian military command sees the rationale for further investment in the development of long-range drones. Especially since, as of 2024, Russian air defence had not yet fully adapted to large-scale attacks, while Russian and Ukrainian kamikaze drone technology was continuing to evolve towards better recording of strike results.
A public report from Ukraine's General Staff provides enough detail to infer that Fire Point won the largest share of orders for deep-strike assets. But who made the decision to direct most of the funding its way?
This is arguably the story's most opaque element. Typically, demand for specific volumes and models of drones is shaped within the General Staff, based on cost, effectiveness and real need, and only then is this request passed on to the Ministry of Defence for procurement planning.
However, given the strategic nature of this weaponry, the cost and scale of the programme, it is likely that the decision to procure such a number of long-range UAVs was taken at the highest level, with a full understanding of who could become the key contractor.
Fire Point's management clearly enjoyed at least a high level of trust from the authorities, as the company was effectively entrusted with the largest part of a strategic project for which Zelenskyy himself is publicly responsible, and was allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for its implementation.
Meanwhile, the FP-1 drone is a perfectly logical model to procure in large quantities, at least within the chosen strategy. Its advantages lie in technological simplicity, mass-production potential, relatively low cost and a missile-type launch system that allows operators to stay safer during deployment. This last point matters: Russian forces actively hunt Ukrainian drone teams.
"Some of Fire Point's technical solutions and approaches are debatable. But credit must be given – these drones work effectively and are produced in large numbers," one long-range drone manufacturer told Ukrainska Pravda on condition of anonymity.
"In car terms, the FP-1 is like a 'pyrizhok' (the ZAZ Tavriia hatchback, meaning simple, reliable, widely produced and gets the job done)," another leading UAV manufacturer told UP on condition of anonymity. "A very pragmatic design. If the brief demanded top speed and extreme range, it would have to be something else. But according to feedback from the field, it delivers on its mission. The Kalashnikov rifle isn't exceptional, nor is its accuracy outstanding, yet it became ubiquitous."
Open-source data already indicates that the procurement price of the UAV stands at US$55,000. An upgraded version, offering additional functions, is expected to go on sale next year at a higher price point.
The question of whether the drone's price is adequate is complex and speculative. Opinions within the industry vary: some suggest it is inflated, based on limited information and rough estimates. Others argue it is low, although they incorrectly compare it with drones from a different class.
It is clear, however, that the FP-1's price in its basic configuration does not markedly diverge from prevailing Ukrainian market rates for deep-strike UAV systems.
Zelenskyy's goal of 30,000 deep-strike drones comes with a hefty price tag, potentially running into billions of dollars. Ukraine's budget cannot cover such a number, so funding has had to be sought from abroad.
This effort was supported by the Danish model mentioned above. During 2025, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands were among the countries to publicly confirm funding for the production of Ukraine's long-range drones.
Securing this funding became possible with active support from the authorities. The Ukrainian government ran a major diplomatic push to attract Western money into the defence industry, involving all key state bodies, ambassadors and even the president. Senior Western officials were introduced to specific Ukrainian defence companies, taken on tours of plants and offered different models of cooperation.
Fire Point had a prominent place in this campaign – its products were actively pitched to Europeans, alongside requests that they buy these drones for the Ukrainian forces.
A range of Ukrainian defence companies received funding from Western partners, so this is far from being only about FP-1 drones. For example, a significant amount of money from these programmes also went to the Kramatorsk Heavy Machine Tool Plant (KHMTP), the manufacturer of the Bohdana self-propelled artillery system. European allies have not disclosed the total value of Ukrainian-made weapons that they purchased, but it almost certainly already runs into billions of euros.
In comments to UP, several sources connected to Fire Point's case assess the contribution of Western countries to its financing as "significant". The specific figures are classified.
Contract funding is not handed over on trust alone. European partners carry out their own due diligence on Ukrainian companies and scrutinise the paperwork. However, one senior source in the arms industry told UP that they doubt Europeans are able, on their own, to uncover sophisticated schemes involving inflated contract prices.
Speaking with UP, Maryna Bezrukova, the former head of the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), described Fire Point as a dependable supplier with no known issues in terms of meeting delivery deadlines, supported by substantial real-world production capacity and a network of subcontractors. She said that no official complaints have been received about the quality of its products.
UP contacted the current DPA management for an assessment of Fire Point as a supplier but received no official reply.
Fire Point has announced that the FP-1 will be open to scaled-up production by other companies and, in Terekh's words, a "people's drone". The idea is that other manufacturers, under certain conditions, could also produce it for frontline use. This would mainly apply to companies whose own designs have lost out in competition but still possess the necessary production capacity.
Meanwhile, the company is ramping up production of its FP-2 mid-range strike drone, a platform previously covered by UP in a separate article. Designed for attacks at ranges of up to 200 km, it differs from the base FP-1 mainly in its camera and communications systems, and carries a larger warhead weighing approximately 100 kg.
Thanks to a string of successful deployments and repeated mentions of the model in official statements by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the Special Operations Forces (SOF), the FP-2 has become one of Ukraine's best-known mid-range strike drones.
Flamingo missile falls short of lofty expectations
Ukraine has never had a truly large cruise missile capable of striking targets thousands of kilometres away. Its heavy-strike systems for long-range attacks are tied to Western partners, their artificial political restrictions and limited supply capabilities.
The development of high-precision cruise and ballistic missiles sits at the pinnacle of weapons manufacturing. In a field dominated by state-run companies with established scientific and industrial bases, the unveiling of this missile by Fire Point, a previously little-known young private company, was met with a mixed response from experts, but at the very least, it caused considerable surprise.
The FP-5 Flamingo missile concept mirrors the FP-1 philosophy: a low-cost weapon designed for mass production. It was intended to draw on the airframe of the Soviet Tu-141 Strizh (Swift) drone. Modified Strizh drones were among Ukraine's earliest long-range strike systems, having reached a military airfield in Engels.
Terekh said that the company only had partial design documentation for the original Strizh. Engineers concluded it could not be replicated at scale, so they opted to simplify the design.
The missile's warhead was designed to be exceptionally large, at 1,150 kg. By comparison, Russian Kalibr missiles carry warheads of up to 450 kg. But size alone does not guarantee that the Flamingo would hit harder than a Kalibr – what matters is the warhead's configuration, the missile's accuracy and whether it can actually reach its target.
One of the toughest hurdles in building large missiles is sourcing a suitable engine. The company opted for second-hand Soviet AI-25TL units, typically used on training aircraft and available in their hundreds on the global market. The rationale is straightforward: the engines do not need to be pristine if they only have to run for a few hours on a one-way flight.
Terekh said the engines arrive in Ukraine in varying conditions, so they undergo inspection and testing after delivery, both internally and with contractors. Fire Point does not plan to depend on them in the long term and is already developing a similarly priced replacement. However, for now, the second-hand units are expected to suffice.
A significant portion of these engines is held in neutral countries, leaving purchases vulnerable to Russian diplomatic pressure. That pressure has occasionally been effective: on one occasion, talks on supplying aircraft to Ukraine were reportedly derailed.
Fire Point is said to have opted for a kind of "special operation", unveiling its missile at an exhibition via the UAE-based Milanion Group. The company's managers aimed to create the impression that engines were being bought up worldwide for reasons unrelated to Ukraine.
It is, however, unclear why the missile was then unveiled under the FP-5 name, which is plainly associated with the Ukrainian company. The name Fire Point has never been a secret, and Zelenskyy even mentioned it publicly in his New Year address on 31 December 2024.
During development, missiles are often painted in bright colours so they can be spotted more easily on a test range. Flamingo took its name from its distinctive pink paintwork during trials, a nickname that stuck and later became part of the brand's identity. Another Ukrainian missile, Peklo (Hell), was also named for its distinctive bright colour during testing.
Flamingo lifts off from the ground using a booster developed by Fire Point. According to its published specifications, the system uses inertial guidance and GPS, while resistance to electronic warfare is provided by a CRPA antenna. This is the baseline equipment that should be on a modern long-range strike weapon.
The public first learned about the Flamingo missile in August 2025, when Yefrem Lukatskyi, an AP journalist, released a photograph of it.
The company says the appearance of information about the missile in the public domain was meant to bolster President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's hand in negotiations with Donald Trump, who had repeatedly claimed that "Zelenskyy has no cards". The "ace of spades" has since become a symbolic element on the company's shoulder patches.
However, there was another dimension to the media campaign: around the same time, NABU was preparing to release the "Mindich tapes", and no one knew exactly who the investigation would affect or who would need to respond, and how. ["Mindich tapes" refer to audio recordings from Operation Midas, an investigation into a large-scale corruption scheme in the Ukrainian energy sector – ed.]
From that moment on, the Flamingo missile became a hostage to inflated expectations, portrayed in the media as a Ukrainian "game-changer", supposedly rolling off production lines in dozens every month and about to save Ukraine.
The apogee came with headlines such as "Ukraine's Flamingo missile is twice as good as the American Tomahawk", which is absolutely not true.
All of this contrasted sharply with reality, as domestic OSINT analysts reported no instances of effective use. The discrepancy clearly frustrated the public.
The situation became clearer during a major press conference held by Fire Point, at which Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesperson for Ukraine's General Staff, stated outright that the missile is experimental and still has to go through a process of refinement before it can become truly mass-produced. In simple terms, the Flamingo missile is "raw".
As a rule, developing a high-quality cruise missile takes years. The American Tomahawk programme, for example, ran for more than a decade. Obviously, under conditions of constant real combat use and minimal bureaucratic barriers, the refinement of technology and tactics should proceed faster, but even two years is objectively too little time to build a decent, large missile from scratch.
Flamingo also has some conceptual problems. "It's a very easy target for Russian air defence, as such a large missile is highly visible on radar," a source involved in its development told UP off the record.
The missile would be less visible to air defences if it flew at ultra-low altitudes, which in turn depends on the availability and quality of certain components. This is precisely what will become the main challenge for the engineers.
Iryna Terekh says that even in its current "raw" state, the FP-5 Flamingo has already seen successful use. UP could neither verify nor disprove the claim, and it is unlikely that this is even possible for security reasons.
The company has revealed that it is developing the FP-7 ballistic missile, with a range of up to 200 km, and the FP-9, which can reach up to 850 km. The concept is the same: accessible technologies and maximum simplicity in production. The FP-7 was expected to be formally approved for service by the end of 2025.
In an interview with BBC News Ukrainian, Shtilerman said the company plans to produce key ballistic components in-house. Given the greater technological complexity of ballistic missile development and the fact that these systems are still in the testing phase, it is obvious that it is far too early to expect them to operate in Russian airspace on a large scale.
The Mindich myth
Two factors have fuelled speculation about the company's "real" owner.
Firstly, Fire Point has indeed been developing rapidly, benefiting from support and assistance from the authorities, military command and senior officials. Secondly, the company remained highly private until recently, and for a long time, its legal entity was registered under one of its managers, Yehor Skalyha, which looked unrealistic.
Yehor Skalyha transferred almost 100% of the shares to Denys Shtilerman in November 2025, according to YouControl, a Ukrainian online company verification service. The company insists that the ownership structure now reflects reality. Terekh explains that Shtilerman had been concealed as the main beneficiary for a long time because he held Russian citizenship, and his family continued to live in Russia for some time after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Rumours about the so-called "Mindich factor" in the company's affairs had been circulating in the market even before Fire Point began attracting media attention and before NABU released the first part of the "Mindich tapes".
Later, these rumours were amplified in the public domain by the fact that Ihor Fursenko, a figure featured in the NABU tapes, had worked as an administrator at Fire Point. At a press conference, Shtilerman said Fursenko's role was limited to his personal security and that he had assisted his family to leave Russia. He added that he was unaware of any dealings his administrator had at the state-owned nuclear energy company Energoatom.
Shtilerman also said that he communicates with the brother of another NABU case figure, Oleksii Tsukerman, because he is his personal banker. Mindich himself did indeed want to buy part of the company at one point, but in the end, they were unable to reach an agreement.
It is fair to note that there is simply no direct evidence indicating a corrupt link between Mindich and Fire Point. In the public domain, everything remains at the level of conjecture and speculation.
However, this interweaving of facts and rumours has already led to reputational losses for the company. Management fears that such public scandals could affect cooperation with Western countries, which continue to purchase its drones. Denmark expressed concern over this incident and requested explanations from Ukraine's Ministry of Defence.
UP asked Terekh whether she was ready to say that Mindich or his associates had not facilitated the company's activities or promoted its interests in government offices.
"I wouldn't say that," Terekh replied. "Many people helped make this work, and Mindich may have been among them. It didn't happen right away, but after everyone saw our product, the impact it has and how quickly we are developing, many people put in a good word for us in the corridors of power."
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Fire Point is, first and foremost, a group of Ukrainian engineers producing critically important weapons for the defence forces as part of the strategy chosen by President Zelenskyy, the supreme commander-in-chief. Public oversight of the company's activities and connections, or any possible procedural actions by law enforcement agencies, should be carried out with due regard for security considerations and the company's importance to the state defence procurement system.
Assessing the effectiveness of the missile programme is essential, but it should not be emotional. Such an assessment must be conducted by experts who have full access to all the information on experimental use, taking into account the project's development dynamics, its prospects, the real capabilities of the designers and potential contractors. Only on this basis should conclusions be drawn about the advisability of further investment.
Ukraine must do everything possible to ensure that taxpayers' money and funds from Western partners deliver the greatest possible return on the battlefield, by separating weapons production as much as possible from media, corruption and political scandals, while ensuring compliance with the law.
The path of major defence companies rarely resembles the standard success stories found in business magazines. This is a closed sector, closely intertwined with the state, in which various individuals linked to the ruling elite will inevitably appear on the radar in one way or another.
The key is to clearly understand to what extent particular connections deviate from the "norm" and whether they help or harm our defence capability. Making sense of this is the main challenge for Ukrainian society and for institutions that remain democratic despite four years of martial law.
Author: Bohdan Miroshnychenko
Translation: Myroslava Zavadska, Yelyzaveta Khodatska, Ganna Bryedova and Anna Kybukevych
Editing: Artem Yakymyshyn and Susan McDonald