New details have emerged about the company Fire Point, a well-known manufacturer of long-range attack drones and missiles, in a new investigation by “Ukrainska Pravda” (UP).
Journalists gained access to the so-called “Mindych tapes” (recordings of conversations in the summer of 2025), which completely shatter the official version of the company’s management and expose the manual control of defense contracts.
For a long time, numerous journalistic investigations pointed out that the real beneficiary of Fire Point is businessman Tymur Mindych. However, he publicly and categorically disavowed this asset. During an interview with a UP journalist, Mindych tried to convince them that the company is managed by a completely different person: “I am not in Fire Point, period”
When the journalist noted that Stihlerman might be a “front person” typical of Ukrainian realities, Mindych continued to insist that he is neither the owner, nor a shareholder, nor a beneficiary of Fire Point, and called all the investigators’ data rumors.
The published conversation recordings completely refute Mindych’s words, as in them he acts as the factual and unquestionable head of the company, who directly instructs the current Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov.
It is worth recalling that Fire Point receives the largest contracts from the Ministry of Defense, but on the tapes, Mindych complains to Umerov about the underfunding of drone production and demands current payments.
The businessman argues this with the necessity of maintaining a large staff and purchasing components: “We need current funding to produce everything… they owe us seven today… 2000 people work there today, we need to buy these engines”. Mindych asserts that all the company’s profit is invested in new drone models.
Moreover, Mindych’s influence extends beyond drones. He uses his connections with Umerov to push through the “acceptance” of other products, specifically body armor, which the state had refused to accept from warehouses for three months. Mindych directly tells the Minister: “just let them sign the acceptance and that’s it, well, that’s one call for you” .
The most cynical part of the published conversations is the discussion of selling a share of Fire Point to foreign investors. Mindych tells Umerov that foreigners valued 33% of the parent company’s shares at $600 million and plan to buy them out.
However, this money will not go entirely towards expanding military production. According to Mindych, out of the $600 million, only half ($300 million) is supposed to go directly into the company, and the other $300 million is planned as a “cashout”—that is, a direct withdrawal of cash into the shareholders’ pockets.
Despite the published evidence, direct influence on the Ministry of Defense, and the preparation of a million-dollar “cashout,” Tymur Mindych himself, in a comment to journalists, stated that he would not answer questions until his interrogation at NABU, and called all publications surrounding Fire Point “an attempt to discredit the best company in Ukraine”.