Yury Kozarenko, the former CEO of Transport of the Future, who reported to Vladimir Putin in January 2025 about plans to produce up to 300,000 drones per year, has been arrested on charges of large-scale fraud.
According to Kommersant , the Sverdlovsky District Court of Belgorod previously remanded him in custody until June 28, and on May 8, the Belgorod Regional Court rejected his lawyer’s appeal. The investigation is being led by the Belgorod Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to Avia.pro , the criminal case involves the embezzlement of approximately 70 million rubles allocated for a state defense contract to produce drones. Investigators believe Kozarenko was involved in the misappropriation of funds: the money was used to pay for services provided by friendly organizations that did not actually perform the work.
Yury Kozarenko
Furthermore, Transport of the Future received a 4.5 billion ruble state subsidy for the serial production of 750 vertical takeoff and landing drones. However, the subcontractor completed 80% of the work only a year after the contract expired, which prompted the investigation, the publication notes.
Kozarenko, originally from a village near Belgorod, graduated from Belgorod State University with a degree in Finance. He worked at the EFKO Group since 2012, where he rose to the position of head of the innovation center. In 2022, he became head of Transport of the Future, which developed and manufactured unmanned systems. In 2023, the company launched the first phase of its plant in the Togliatti Special Economic Zone (investment of approximately 7 billion rubles), and by the end of 2024, it announced production of 100 drones per month, with plans to increase this to 250.
In January 2025, Kozarenko met Putin at the Samara plant, showed him the development and assembly areas and proudly announced the potential for producing up to 300,000 drones annually, including the Geranium. During the launch ceremony of a lithium-ion battery production facility with a capacity of 20 MWh per year (investment: 1.3 billion rubles), he also promised to supply batteries for “millions of educational drones and hundreds of thousands of heavy civilian UAVs.”
During the visit, Kozarenko personally showed Putin around the design, assembly, and testing sections of the plant. Regional officials at the time emphasized their ambition for the region to become Russia’s leading drone innovator by 2029, highlighting what they called “competition with China.”
In 2024, Belgorod regional authorities announced plans with the company to launch a 40 billion ruble investment project focused on both drone technology and energy systems.
However, pro-war Russian Telegram channels claim the company was passing off Chinese drones as their own creations. According to these sources, a Moscow-based company purchased drones sold as Russian-made from “Transport of the Future”-only to later resell them to the Russian National Guard, where it was discovered that the drones were originally from China.
Yuri Kozarenko became head of “Transport of the Future” in 2022 and is now 36 years old. In 2024, he graduated from the Presidential Administration’s “School of Governors” talent pool (sixth cohort).
Reports have also surfaced that Putin, fearful of potential assassination attempts, has been rarely leaving his bunker in recent times.
Nevertheless, Putin did make a brief appearance at the May 9 Victory Day parade, which lasted just 45 minutes, making it one of the shortest in recent memory.
Top Photo: Yury Kozarenko speaks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a visit to a drone production facility
Sources: The Moscow Times; UAWIRE;