Uraldronzavod
Uraldronzavod is the Yekaterinburg private manufacturer behind Russia's 3D-printed Upyr FPV strike drone; its chief executive was critically wounded by a car bomb in August 2026.
Background
Uraldronzavod — UralDronZavod, literally Ural Drone Factory — is a limited liability company registered in Yekaterinburg on 19 September 2023, with a declared activity of manufacturing other aircraft and a charter capital of 500,000 roubles.
Its general director and co-owner is Vladimir Ilyich Tkachuk, 35; the second founder is Olga Mersh. Production sits on the Polevskoy tract on the city's edge.
The company was founded by the team behind Upyr — Ghoul — a low-cost first-person-view kamikaze drone manufactured using 3D printing. Tkachuk, described in reporting as a small-scale entrepreneur rather than a defence-industry figure, began developing a military drone in 2020 and assembled the engineering team that produced Upyr.
The drone was first presented in Russia in 2023 and serial production followed, with deliveries to the Central Military District and use reported across the front.
Yekaterinburg is Russia's fourth-largest city and a Urals industrial hub roughly 1,400 kilometres east of Moscow. The company is included here as adversary watch, not as a tracked vendor.
Financial footing
- LLC registered 19 Sep 2023
- Serial Upyr deliveries to the Central Military District
- Listed in the EU's 15th sanctions package (Dec 2024)
- CEO critically injured by a car bomb near Yekaterinburg in early Aug 2026, his driver killed
- Backers: Founders Vladimir Tkachuk and Olga Mersh (charter capital RUB 500,000)
No revenue, funding or valuation figures are available; Uraldronzavod is a privately held Russian LLC with a nominal charter capital of 500,000 roubles and no obligation to disclose.
Its business is state demand: Upyr is supplied serially to Russian forces, and Russian military procurement terms are not public.
The European Union added Uraldronzavod to its 15th sanctions package against Russia in December 2024, which cuts formal access to European components and financing.
Whether that materially constrains a 3D-printing-based FPV production line — whose inputs are commodity electronics, motors and filament routed through third countries — is doubtful; separate reporting documents an active Russian effort to localise drone motor production and to import manufacturing equipment through intermediary firms.
Major customers & contracts
The Russian Ministry of Defence, through the Central Military District, is the operational customer for serial Upyr deliveries. No contract values are public.
Tkachuk is also linked in reporting to a large pro-war Telegram channel, which places the company inside the informal volunteer-financed segment of Russian drone production rather than the Rostec-centred state industry — an ecosystem in which crowd-funded and privately founded workshops supply units directly alongside formal procurement.
Leadership & contact surface
Leadership: Vladimir Tkachuk
Competitive position
Uraldronzavod belongs to the private tier of Russian drone manufacturing, alongside firms such as the Russian Air Transport Laboratory, which builds the Ovod FPV line.
That tier sits beneath the state conglomerates — Rostec, Almaz-Antey and the Alabuga complex assembling Geran-type strike drones at a reported 3,000 jet-powered units a month — and is faster-moving, more numerous and harder to sanction.
Measured against its Ukrainian counterparts, Uraldronzavod is doing the same thing as Wild Hornets or Vyriy Drone: cheap airframes, additive manufacturing, direct unit feedback, rapid iteration.
The symmetry is the point. Russia's private FPV segment matured roughly a year behind Ukraine's and has been closing, and its emergence is why Ukrainian FPV superiority at the tactical edge has narrowed since 2024.
Battlefield relevance
Extensively used. The Upyr FPV drone is designed to strike equipment and personnel and, according to Russian state reporting, is employed across all axes of the war in Ukraine following serial deliveries to the Central Military District.
The company itself became a target. In early August 2026 — 4 August in Russian reporting, 5 August in Western wire accounts — a bomb detonated under Tkachuk's Mercedes in the settlement of Bolshoy Istok, about 25 kilometres from Yekaterinburg.
His driver, described in some reports as a bodyguard, was killed at the scene; Tkachuk was hospitalised in critical condition. Russian authorities opened a case for attempted murder by a means dangerous to the public. No party claimed responsibility.
Sources & verification
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/05/head-drone-manufacturer-critically-injured-car-bomb-russia-ukraine
- https://apnews.com/article/russia-moscow-explosion-urals-drone-tkachuk-uraldrinzavod-444a6f07da96a888a5f036e45e8c7e42
- https://theins.press/en/news/295743
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-drone-factory-director-car-explosion/
- https://militarnyi.com/en/news/upyr-drone-manufacturer-targeted-in-explosion-in-russia/
- https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7381520
- https://tass.ru/ekonomika/21675329
- https://www.rusprofile.ru/id/1236600057011
- https://amp.rbc.ru/rbcnews/base/20/08/2026/6a82e7779a7947ca64b5ad86
- https://eagleintelreports.com/russia-new-command-for-unmanned-systems/
- https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/08/12/russia-geran-drones-production/
- https://theins.press/en/inv/295510