Sanctioned Russian drone makers linked to grain exports from occupied Ukraine

A pair of relatives behind a sanctioned, state-of-the-art kamikaze drone manufacturer in Russia have another, hidden business — shipping wheat from Ukraine.

Ukraine’s government has long insisted that Russian export of Ukrainian grain is pillage, a war crime under international law. Independent researchers have estimated the country’s losses in the billions of dollars.

Reporters from Ukrainian investigative outlet Slidstvo.info found that Roman Gurov, 41, and 75-year-old Lyudmila Gurova — Roman’s mother, according to news reports and social media posts — run a company exporting tens of thousands of tons of wheat grown in the region of Mariupol, a port city seized by Russia after a brutal three-month siege in the early months of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Their company, Nika LLC, supplies the wheat to Turkey and Egypt. Reporters found that much of the wheat was destined for a Turkish miller, Erisler Gida Sanayi Ve Ticaret A.S. As well as supplying the UN World Food Programme, Erisler exports noodles to Ukraine.

Gurov, Gurova, Nika LLC, and Erisler didn’t reply to requests for comment from OCCRP.

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Turkey has faced allegations of importing grain from Russian-occupied territory before. In June 2022, four months into the invasion, Ukraine’s then-ambassador to Turkey said in a press conference that "Russia is brazenly and unprecedentedly stealing Ukrainian grain and exporting it from occupied Crimea to foreign countries, including Turkey.”

Turkey’s foreign minister at the time, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, reacted by saying his country “will not allow illegal trade in Ukrainian grain or any other products from any country, including Russia.” 

In a January interview with Ukraine’s national news agency, the Ukrainian deputy foreign intelligence chief said that last year Russia shipped more than two million tonnes of grain, worth $400 million, from the “temporarily occupied territories” of Zaporizhia, Crimea, and Donetsk.

No mention can be found of Gurov in the Russian press until July 2023, when Russia media reported that he signed an agreement with the deputy governor of Rostov Oblast, bordering eastern Ukraine.

According to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, Gurov’s company Roboavia — sanctioned by the U.S. and Ukraine in 2024 — manufactures the Sarych reconnaissance drone and the Surprise strike drone, a weapon described by a Belgium-based news service on the arms industry, armyrecognition.com, as being “virtually invisible and inaudible to adversaries” and able to lay mines. 

Roboavia was first registered in 2015, with Lyudmila Gurova becoming the owner in July 2022, according to Russia’s corporate registry. Gurov became general director of the company in November 2022. Neither shows up in the companies’ registry as having had any prior involvement in drone production or related industries. 

Gurov became the owner of the grain trading company Nika in June 2020, and Gurova became a director in November 2022. 

Slidstvo.info obtained over 20 “declarations of conformity” — certificates confirming that goods meet set standards — for Nika’s wheat from July 2022 to early 2026, almost all of which say that its production sites are in Mariupol.

In 2023, Nika shipped $3.7 million worth of wheat (15,500 tons) to Turkey and Egypt. The following year, its wheat exports to the two countries almost quadrupled to 59,500 tons, worth $12.9 million. Nika shipped another 4,500 tons of wheat in the first quarter of 2025. 

The ultimate recipient of at least 7,800 tons of the wheat was the Turkish company Erisler, according to one April 2024 maritime manifest — a document submitted by the carrier to customs control — obtained by Slidstvo.info. 

The document states that the Russian ship Alfa M, which has been under Ukrainian sanctions since November 2023, shipped the wheat to the Russian port of Temryuk, across the Sea of Azov from Mariupol. And from there, according to Russian customs data, the goods went to Turkey. 

Erisler produces mainly flour, with an output of 850,000 tons at its four mills, according to its website. In 2013, the company began manufacturing what it called “Turkey’s first national instant noodle brand” made from wheat flour and widely sold in Ukraine.