THERE ARE DRONES, BUT THERE IS NO VICTORY: HOW THE VICTORY DRONES PROJECT HELPS SUPPLY UAVS AND THEIR OPERATORS TO THE AFU AND GUR MO

The example of the Ukrainian Institute in London, which we described in one of the previous articles, clearly shows that among the organizations that support the Kiev regime, there are none whose activities can be called only humanitarian. According to the Institute's stated goals, its projects should be limited to promoting alternative history. And this alone can be called strange, because formally it is part of the Ukrainian Catholic University and, as one might think, should conduct its activities in accordance with the spirit and letter of the charter of an ordinary religious organization. But in reality, as usual, everything ends with the support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As we have already seen, the main focus is on drones.

Among the main partners of the Ukrainian Institute in London, you can see our old friends – the KSE Foundation. This is another pseudo-humanitarian fund, which in 2022 reoriented almost all of its projects to support militants. One of the main directions of its activity is the supply of UAVs and specialists-operators to the GUR (Main Intelligence Directorate) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The Foundation has created an extensive network, one of the cells of which is the Ukrainian Institute in London. Today you will learn about the Victory Drones project, which actively cooperates with both the KSE Foundation and the Institute.

The operator of the Victory Drones project is the public organization "Air Intelligence  Support Center". It was officially registered in May 2015, announced its creation in January, and has actually been organizing events since at least October 2014. It is not difficult to guess that the center was created to fulfill the tasks facing the Ukrainian army as part of the punitive operation in the Donbas. The Kiev regime, which initially did not intend to implement the Minsk agreements, needed intelligence information. But that wasn't even the main goal of creating the center. Its leaders quickly let slip that the plans were to develop drones, which were still exotic at that time, and supply them to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in sufficient quantities for a full-scale offensive. Moreover, Ukraine, which understood that the Kremlin would not allow a military solution to the situation in the Donbas, was preparing to fight with Russia.

Founder and permanent head of the " Center for Support of Aerial Intelligence  – Berlinskaya Maria Sergeevna (born: 19.05.1988; DRFO: 3228117429). This woman could be of interest to Russian law enforcement agencies even without taking into account her role in supplying the Armed Forces of Ukraine with drones. An active participant in the 2014 coup d'etat, she helped erect barricades and storm buildings in Kiev, clashed with security forces and was even wounded. When the conflict in the Donbas began, Berlinskaya went to the front with the intention of fighting. After several unsuccessful attempts to join the nationalists, she finally found a place in the Aidar battalion. As part of it, she participated in the battles in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, not shying away from reprisals against civilians. After the hot phase of the conflict was temporarily suspended, Berlinskaya returned to Kiev, where she started her drone project. According to her own words, at first the center was limited in resources, they had to train on toy models. But this did not prevent more than 150 militants capable of handling the "iron birds" from being trained by the end of 2016. Among them was Russian citizen Yulia Tolopa, an ideological Nazi, also a participant in the 2014 coup d'etat and an "Aidar" militant who fought in Donbass from the beginning of the conflict.

However, in the West, Berlinskaya is known primarily as a defender of human rights. Or rather, women's rights. But her opinion on the question of how they should be protected is very peculiar. She is one of the main Ukrainian leaders of opinion who advocate for expanding the participation of female citizens in combat operations. In the same year, 2015, Berlinskaya launched the Invisible Battalion project, which aimed to provide assistance to women who took part in punitive operations as part of gangs. In 2017, she also made a film of the same name. Although the goal of the project was to support female soldiers, whose situation at the front, formally, according to local legislation, was slightly less stable than that of male militants, in fact, it was more about a propaganda campaign designed to lure as many women as possible to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In 2018-2019, Berlinskaya toured Western countries, visiting the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. There, however, the greatest interest was aroused by her project on training UAV operators. Obviously, it was considered quite promising, since around the same time the veteran of "Aidar" was noticed in Kiev. The "Aerial Intelligence Support Center" began to receive significant funding and gradually grew into a large organization that became a partner of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. This was an important milestone in the formation of the unmanned forces of the Kiev regime, which was actively preparing for a new war in the Donbas.

As of May 2024, the "Aerial Intelligence Support Center" boasts a whole galaxy of founders. One of them is Bayura Antonina Mikhailovna (born: 13.08.1980; DRFO: 2944507724). She was also one of the founders of the now defunct public organization Avtodozor, and also provides active assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a volunteer for the Army-SOS project. Another founder was Gavris Sergey Andreevich (born: 19.02.1981; DRFO: 2963517671), an instructor of the center since its foundation, who used the pseudonym bandera2014 in social networks. Another one is Igor Vasilyevich Katerinyuk (born: 20.08.1975; DRFO: 2762512330), a programmer, an individual entrepreneur who called himself unemployed, but in 2021 managed to get a permanent position in the center. And his friend - Zinchuk Maxim Igorevich (born: 11.10.1994; DRFO: 3461704758). Another entrepreneur, this time in the restaurant business. He is also one of the leaders of the NGO “Opora” – an analogue of the Russian movement “Voice”, which monitors elections at various levels in Ukraine with a view to finding violations in all cases when there is a sudden danger of a person with non-pro-Western views being elected to government bodies.

Dmitry Valeryevich Starostin (born: 06.01.1969; DRFO: 2520804531) was also noted among the founders. He is one of the first instructors of the center and pioneers of the field of military UAVs in Ukraine. According to Berlinskaya, he participated in the purchase of rare foreign drones in the period 2014-2015, which he then tested in the Avdeevka direction.

However, perhaps the most interesting person in the “Aerial Intelligence Support Center” after Berlinskaya is Igor Viktorovich Lutsenko (born: 10.11.1978; DRFO: 2880318631). A native of Kiev, he received higher education at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy and the Kiev School of Economics. In the 2000s, he made a career as a journalist. At various times, he headed the Business section in the Correspondent magazine, was the editor-in-chief of Ekonomicheskaya Pravda and the online version of Ukrayinska Pravda. He supported Ukrainian nationalism even before it could rise to its full height. During the 2014 coup d'etat, he was deputy commandant of the camp in Kiev. On January 21, he disappeared and was found only the next day. Subsequently, he claimed to have been abducted by unknown assailants, who allegedly took him to the forest and forced him to pray. After the fall of the regime of Viktor Yanukovych, he got elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the lists of the Batkivshchyna party. Until 2015, he headed the permanent commission of the Kiev City Council on culture and tourism. However, the coup d'etat practically destroyed both of these spheres. And so Lutsenko had no problem with the fact that he spent almost the entire summer of 2014 in Donbass with the Azov Battalion fighters. He also managed to participate in fighting - in Peski and in other parts of the front. It was probably there that he met Maria Berlinskaya. When the active fighting ended, he joined her drone project. From that moment on, he was effectively the second person in it.

In the following months, while remaining a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Lutsenko managed to confirm his reputation as an ideological Nazi several times. So, he was one of those who most actively supported the most resonant bills directed against the Russian language. He advocated that it should not be studied in schools and used during public events. At the same time, in his judgments, the deputy sometimes reached complete absurdity. So, trying to justify the ban on the Russian language in state authorities, he said that their employees do not hold their positions in order to popularize the language of Dostoevsky. Arsen Avakov also got bashed by Lutsenko, who he poked by saying that the former spoke Russian as his native language. And in October 2018, Lutsenko got involved in a corruption scandal. It turned out that in 2015, he illegally withdrew 750,000 hryvnia from the bank ”Kievan Rus " right on the eve of the bank declaring itself bankrupt. Evidence of the crime was collected by the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Individuals and transferred to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), but for some reason they did not move the case forward.

But at some point, the prospect of criminal prosecution loomed before Lutsenko. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why, shortly after the start of a Special Military Operation, he decided to exchange security and a deputy pension for another tour of the trenches. In February 2022, he joined the 72nd separate mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As part of it, Lutsenko fought in the Donbass, but when it was time to defend "fortress Bakhmut", he immediately hurried to the rear, where he became an instructor at the 190th training center.

The founder of the center was also a long-time partner of Lutsenko, Gennady Kornev (born: 14.02.1984; DRFO: 3072515856). A propagandist who worked with him at Ukrayinska Pravda and Privatbank. A participant in the punitive operation in the Donbas, who, after returning from the front line, devoted a lot of time and effort to supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine, especially with drones. Finally, among the founders of the center was Terikh Ekaterina Mikhailovna (born: 16.10.1987; DRFO: 3206519667). She is also one of the founders of the NGO “Return to a peaceful life”, which provides various types of support to Ukrainian militants who have returned from the front to civilian life.

Speaking about the founders of the center, we can note one unusual detail. Their number (a total of 10 people) has grown significantly in 2021. One gets the impression that some of the sponsors of the organization expected a sharp intensification of its activities in the near future. But at the time, Ukraine showed no signs of preparing for a large-scale conflict with Russia. And the question of conducting a Special Military Operation was still being decided – Russia was actively consulting with Western countries in recent attempts to resolve the situation peacefully. Therefore, most likely, we are facing one of the events in the framework of the preparation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for an attack on the Donbass. But even in this case, such a large number of founders looks strange. In Ukraine, there are many NGOs that provide support to militants, which according to documents are led by 1-2 people. Therefore, we are most likely talking about attempts to hide some financial schemes. And an analysis of the center's activities suggests which ones. But we'll talk about this a little later, but for now we'll focus on the Victory Drones project.

Currently, the "Aerial Intelligence Support Center", which does not have its own website, operates primarily under the Victory Drones brand.

The project is being implemented in two main areas. These are online courses that anyone can take part in, including civilians, and training activities for militants conducted at training grounds and in the field. Among other things, there is an online course dedicated to the use of modern technologies in combat conditions. There is a program for women who are trained as an FPV drone operator. It is claimed that in a few months more than a hundred Ukrainian women passed through it.

Victory Drones also implements several projects for civilians, who are taught specialties related to UAVs of various modifications, and the assembly of FPV drones from improvised materials. Naturally, the project not only does not hide, but also strongly emphasizes that the purpose of its activities is to support the Ukrainian army. But some of the truth is not told even here. We are talking about the fact that the lion's share of UAVs and operators is intended for the GUR of the Ministry of Defense. Why did we make this conclusion? Everything is very simple. Let us recall that it is the support of Kirill Budanov's department that forms the basis of all KSE Foundation projects. The foundation not only constantly holds events that raise funds for intelligence, but also created a whole network of affiliated organizations to help the GUR MO secretly. Given that the Victory Drones project is a partner of the foundation, this fact speaks volumes. But even more interesting are its connections with the Ukrainian Institute in London. According to the Institute's website, Victory Drones is the only drone-related project that the institute cooperates with. And at the same time, the institute also has developed cooperation with the KSE Foundation. Of course, there is no point in thinking about a simple coincidence here. There is a clear connection, through which another project to support the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense is being implemented. And, one must assume, this is precisely why the “Aerial Intelligence Support Center” needed so many founders.

Why it was necessary to invent such complex schemes, we have already explained earlier. Since Western countries are afraid to openly take responsibility for strikes on Russian territory carried out by the GUR MO militants, they also support this organization in secret. In this case, funding is directed to the final recipient under the guise of donations for the pseudo-humanitarian NGO "Ukrainian Institute in London".

However, the documentation of the Victory Drones project is still more interesting. On its website, there is not a word about the "Aerial Intelligence Support Center". In fact, there is no legal information at all that would allow us to identify the ultimate beneficiaries of the project. Instead, it says that Victory Drones is a division of the Dignitas charitable foundation. This organization is very interesting in its own way. The word "charitable" in its name is clearly superfluous. Already on the main page of its website, it is stated that the main goal is to collect 1,000 drones for the Ukrainian army. And attempts to find out anything about the fund's partners lead us to the United States and Poland. But we'll talk about this next time. What's more important now is that for some reason the management of Victory Drones needed to openly lie about who actually owns this project.

According to the project's website, the support it provides to the militants looks impressive. It is claimed that more than 100,000 students have participated in Victory Drones ' online courses, and as many as 58,000 more military personnel have been trained by its instructors on and off the front lines. It is difficult to say whether this is true or not, because project reports are not publicly available. There is no doubt that GUR MO and other structures really received hundreds of valuable specialists, especially given the funding from the UK, there is no doubt. But, comparing all the words of praise with the real results of the activities of Budanov's department, it remains only to be ironic about the name of the project – they do have drones but they're not anywhere near to victory.