One of the main suppliers of inexpensive drones and long range cruise missiles to Ukraine is the Netherlands-based Destinus company, founded in 2021 by Mikhail Kokorich, a Russian physicist and entrepreneur. It is supplying the Ruta Block 3 mini-cruise missile, whose range of 1,242-mile is some 300 miles longer than the American Tomahawk cruise missile. In 2024, Kokorich renounced his Russian citizenship and now holds a passport from Grenada. Last April, Russia labeled Destinus a military target.
Destinus has been selling drones and mini-missiles to Ukraine and European countries since 2022. According to media reports, it has raised nearly $464 million and has a credit line of $58 million from Germany’s Commerzbank. It employs some 1,000 people, producing thousands of its long-range drones and Ruta Block 1 mini cruise missiles at production facilities in The Netherlands and in Germany, where it has a joint venture with Rheinmetall to produce the Ruta Block 3 cruise missile. It also has facilities in Spain as well as Ukraine.
Its board of directors includes Philipp Rösler, former German Federal minister of health from 2009 to 2011 and federal minister of economics and technology as well as vice-chancellor of Germany from 2011 to 2013. Since his party, the Free Democratic Party, failed to enter the Bundestag in the last election, Rösler heads a consultancy in Zug, Switzerland.
Other directors include former Spanish astronaut and former science minister of Spain, Pedro Duque, and former French air force general Michel Friedling.
Another director and one of the moneybags behind the company is German businessman Cornelius Borsch, who is founder of the investment companies Mountain Partners and Conny & Co.
The last director is former Ukrainian Finance minister Oleksandr Danylyuk who, as a former employee of the Wall Street management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, was the darling of the International Monetary Fund.
