A year ago, we wrote about the occupiers’ claims of “actively developing their own artificial intelligence in Sevastopol.” At the time, it was stated that “a drone control platform is being created based on open-source neural networks,” which “can coordinate drones even without a GPS signal.”
These occupiers’ statements referred to the company “Inergy,” registered in 2024 in St. Petersburg, with its “founders” being the “IT Garage” structure and Vladimir Molodyk, a resident of Sevastopol, who is also listed as the CEO of “Inergy.”
However, the Sevastopol “firm” IT Garage, associated with this project since late 2022, had its “founders” hidden. Maria Tretyakova “managed” this structure, which “provides other financial services.”
We wrote that IT Garage is a financial shell for artificial intelligence activities, and in addition to Aenergy, it is also listed as a “founder” in the St. Petersburg structures “Vistek Rus”, “Gamma Tech”, and “Itpay”, as well as in the Sevastopol “firms” “Riski”, “Willis”, and “Robocorp”.
The “co-founders” of the aforementioned “Robocorp” were listed in the occupiers’ “registers” as Alexey Kabanov, Alexey Chuklin, and Sergey Dudnikov. From February 2025, the aforementioned Chuklin was listed as the “director” of this structure.
In December 2024, Ukraine imposed sanctions against Alexey Chuklin, the so-called “director” of the “Interregional Scientific and Educational Center of World Class MoreAgroBioTech,” operating at the sanctioned Sevastopol State University and participating in the development of the Sargan surface drone.
Previously, Chuklin was a co-founder of the Moscow-based “Russian Technological Society,” an organization dedicated to the “development of the digital economy.”
And now, in occupied Sevastopol, in addition to the aforementioned organizations, he “heads” the recently created “united design bureau” “Sfera.”
We have written that the activities of these individuals, both in the development of maritime drones and in the field of artificial intelligence in the drone sector, are by no means some kind of “private initiative,” but a direct implementation of the objectives of the aggressor’s government.
This was also proven by the biography of Maria Tretyakova, the “director” of IT Garage, previously known as the “head” of the “Crimean State Fund for Support of Entrepreneurship in Crimea,” whose “founders” have been hidden since 2014.
Now, the aggressor’s propaganda has claimed that “remotely operated underwater vehicles” allegedly developed at “Sevastopol State University”, “have been brought to market”, and that “the rights to the development were previously purchased by “Robocorp”, a company allegedly “part of the ITG corporation,” naming the same Alexey Chuklin as the “CEO” of “Robocorp”.
Furthermore, it has been stated that the underwater drones have allegedly been “updated with sought-after equipment, a side-scan sonar and a hydroacoustic navigation system,” and that “software refinements are underway to expand the apparatus’s intellectual capabilities.”
It should be noted that “ITG Corporation” is a Chelyabinsk-based company, “ITG Holding,” registered to Evgeny Klepikov and Andrey Zhukov. It has not previously been implicated in the scams described above, nor is it included on any sanctions lists.
