While American billionaire Robert Pera, who owns the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, promotes “affordable connectivity” and profits from the tech sector, his company Ubiquiti Inc. has in practice emerged as a key communications supplier for the Russian military.
According to an investigation by Hunterbrook Media, up to 80% of the radio links used by Russian troops at the front are Ubiquiti equipment. They are used to control attack drones, transmit video feeds, adjust artillery, and coordinate assault operations.
Ukrainian communications officers confirm that Ubiquiti radio links gave the enemy a critical advantage. The equipment is cheap, reliable, and extremely easy to use — plug-and-play with open instructions. Unlike satellite systems, such networks cannot be remotely disabled. They operate locally and stably, creating a persistent communications infrastructure where the Russian army faces a chronic shortage of modern command-and-control tools.
Hunterbrook documented the use of Ubiquiti equipment by at least nine Russian units accused of war crimes, including the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which is implicated in mass killings of civilians in Bucha. One of the largest fundraisers for purchasing these radio links was organized by a convicted terrorist connected to the 2015 bombing of a government building in Ukraine.
After the start of the full-scale invasion, Ubiquiti product deliveries to Russia did not decrease but grew by approximately 66%. Sanctions were bypassed through a network of intermediaries in Turkey, Kazakhstan, and China. Hunterbrook journalists, posing as Russian buyers, were able to arrange the supply of restricted equipment without significant obstacles. American company Multilink Solutions agreed to send about 450 devices to Turkey, knowing the final destination of the shipment. Czech company Discomp had worked directly with Russian clients for years, and after sanctions simply changed its intermediary. Kazakhstan’s Simple Solutions, established immediately after the invasion, without a website or real operations, consistently received Ubiquiti products from suppliers in Latvia, Poland, and China for resale in Russia. According to the investigation, 18 Turkish exporters increased Ubiquiti equipment shipments to Russia by roughly 1,000%.
Ubiquiti’s claims that the company “does not know the end users” do not hold up. Each device has a serial number and MAC address and connects to the manufacturer’s servers when firmware is updated. In September 2025, Ubiquiti introduced an IP block on updates for Russia, confirming that the company is fully aware of where its devices are used. However, instead of cutting contracts with violating distributors, the corporation took only formal measures and closed discussions on its own forums.
Back in 2011, Robert Pera assured U.S. regulators that his equipment would no longer reach Iran. By 2026, the result of this “blindness” is a Ubiquiti capitalization of about $34 billion and widespread use of its equipment in occupied territories of Ukraine. The company’s actual stance amounts to a refusal to acknowledge the consequences of its own sales.
The cost of this business model is measured in human lives. In Kherson, Russian drones controlled via Ubiquiti radio links systematically attack civilian vehicles, pedestrians, and rescuers. According to Ukrainian authorities, over 5,300 civilians have been affected by drone attacks. American equipment has become part of the infrastructure of terror — from Kherson and Bakhmut to the left bank of the Dnipro.
