Vyriy by Oleksiy Babenko: how much did the former fire show seller steal on drone supplies for the army?

When it became clear that drones are one of the main components of the current war, the question of their domestic production arose, as a result of which their market turned into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

One of the key players in this industry became Oleksiy Babenko, whose startup Vyriy Industries began receiving significant orders from the state, and its founder became a hero of tabloids and TV screens. The company grew quickly, gained access to large funds, and began acquiring defense startups. But along with growth came questions—both about Babenko himself and his business ecosystem.

All this did not arise out of nowhere—the trigger was a scandalous tender for the supply of FPV drones to the army, which LLC "Vyriy Industries" won thanks to blatantly dumping prices, and then simply failed to fulfill. Recall, this is about a tender for the supply to the Ministry of Defence of about a hundred thousand drones, which "Vyriy" won. The purchase amount was over two billion hryvnia.

Although the procedure itself, as a result of which "Vyriy Industries" became the winner, caused a scandal, a real storm erupted a few days later—Oleksiy Babenko refused to sign part of the contracts, explaining this by overload of production capacities.

As a result, this led to the failure to supply approximately 100,000 drones that were supposed to arrive at the front. Babenko’s winning of the tender followed by refusal to fulfill it was explained simply: his company thus simply blocks competitors, while creating a drone shortage at the front. Which ultimately opens up the defense procurement market for Babenko’s companies. However, despite the scandal and failure of the defense order, there were no consequences—no criminal cases, no ban for Oleksiy Babenko’s companies from participating in tenders for the defense industry.

After all this, the question arose again—who is Oleksiy Babenko, who was hyped as a young genius who, on his own, without any support, created a huge structure that produces high-tech products.

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These claims are confirmed by official statistics—according to Opendatabot data, Oleksiy Babenko holds a fairly high place in the ranking of Ukrainian businessmen and is the owner or co-owner of five companies. The main one is LLC "Vyriy Industries", with revenue of almost a billion hryvnia.

One could believe this whole fairy tale if not for the fact that before the full-scale war, Oleksiy Babenko was engaged in organizing fire shows, in 2022 he sold body armor piece by piece, and then suddenly burst into the TOPs of firms serving Ukraine’s defense industry.

At the same time, in 2026, he bought the publication "Babel", which also caused quite obvious suspicions—some critics suggested that Babenko might be forming media influence during a period of large defense contracts. Actually, this is open information, much has been written about it after an unknown small entrepreneur suddenly turned into a semi-oligarch. But in this context, it is important because Babenko’s entire subsequent path as a drone supplier to the army raises more and more questions.

Due to the closed nature of the data, it is impossible to obtain complete information about the number and cost of contracts that Oleksiy Babenko’s company LLC "Vyriy Industries" received from the Ministry of Defense and other structures conducting procurement for the army. The latest open data is dated 2024; the revenues of the former fire show seller one year after the company’s founding are mind-blowing—net profit amounted to 144,828,000 hryvnia, and revenue was almost a billion.

There are no clear data further, but according to information from industry media, already a year after founding, the company reached turnovers of over a billion hryvnia per year, and drone production was measured in thousands of units per month. It is important to understand that the Ministry of Defense was not always the customer; often drones from Babenko’s company were purchased directly by military units, sometimes local self-government bodies acted as customers. But in any case, it involves state money, and the total amount is counted in tens of billions of hryvnia.

An analysis of open data from the Prozorro system shows that Vyriy family drone procurements and supplies to "Vyriy Industries" are present in state procurements, but their publicly disclosed volume is relatively small. Among the confirmed contracts is the purchase of the Vyriy PRO 10 unmanned complex by the executive committee of the Kremenchuk City Council for 562 thousand hryvnia (contract signed on February 25, 2025). One of the largest found contracts was concluded by military unit A0297, which in June-July 2025 conducted a procurement of "Vyriy 10" unmanned vehicles for 1.9 billion hryvnia.

In addition, there are small procurements by local authorities and security structures: for example, the executive committee of the Hlukhiv City Council purchased Vyriy PRO 10 drones for about 195 thousand hryvnia, and the Main Department of the National Police in Sumy region announced a tender for similar vehicles with an expected value of up to 500 thousand hryvnia. Also, the system records separate procurements of other models—for example, Vyriy PRO 15 or Vyriy MAX13, which are bought by municipalities or small customers for amounts from tens of thousands to over a million hryvnia.

However, the overall indicator is obviously significantly underestimated: a significant part of UAV defense procurements in Ukraine is carried out through closed procedures or special defense procurement modules, where data is not published in full. Therefore, open tenders reflect only a small part of the actual supplies of Vyriy drones to the army and security structures. This is confirmed at least by the fact that the revenue of LLC "Vyriy Industries" for 2024 alone was almost a billion hryvnia, as mentioned above.

From the same open sources, it is known that in the spring of 2025, a batch of 1000 Vyriy FPV drones was manufactured for the military on order from the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection as part of the "Army of Drones" program. This was the company’s first serial batch of drones, declared as assembled from Ukrainian components. And it was right after this that the contract failure occurred for the supply of a hundred thousand drones, which "Vyriy" won. In this context, the version about eliminating competitors in this way makes sense—by that time, Oleksiy Babenko had concentrated the entire technological chain of drone assembly in his hands, which, if he manages to capture a monopoly position in the army supply market, allows purchasing components from himself without any competitive procedures.

And there is something to fight for here—according to analysts’ estimates, in 2025, the Ministry of Defence alone planned to purchase 4.5 million FPV drones, while in 2024, 1.5 million such were purchased, and a year earlier, in 2023, procurements were generally measured in thousands.

In money terms, such a sharp jump in drone procurement means that in 2025, over 110 billion hryvnia was allocated for these purposes, including 102 billion through the Defense Procurement Agency.

Of course, not only Oleksiy Babenko’s "Vyriy" operates in the industry. But here we return to the questions that no one has clarified—how did an unknown twenty-something organizer of small fire shows, who at the beginning of the full-scale war traded body armor piece by piece, suddenly burst into a sphere involving hundreds of billions of hryvnia and requiring huge volumes of high-tech production? Where did the starting capital come from? How was production established if even "Rheinmetall", about joint weapons production with which the president loudly spoke, has not been able to obtain permission for a land plot for almost three years?

There are a lot of questions, but the main one is—who gives Oleksiy Babenko the opportunity to receive multi-billion contracts, although the unclear history of his emergence in this market is complicated by the outright failure to supply hundreds of thousands of drones to the army? Questions to which there are no answers. Instead—beautiful fairy tales from media associated with Bankova about the "young talented startup founder" who, without money, connections, or education, emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes a successful businessman in a high-tech industry with billion-turnover.

All this inevitably breeds confidence that Oleksiy Babenko and his companies are just a link in the chain of stealing money on army supplies. What role he plays in this process, and who really stands behind him—is still unclear. But one can be sure that sooner or later this will become public knowledge, as well as the amounts earned on the blood of our soldiers.