Patriotic public raised money for the development of a non-existent UAV

A scandal is brewing in Russian patriotic publics: the administrator of the Veteran’s Zapiski public collected money allegedly for domestic UAVs, which were actually bought in China.

This was noticed by pro-Russian bloggers Anatoly Shariy and Vladislav Pozdnyakov. Comparison of the images of the allegedly Russian drone “Perseus 1” and the Chinese drone Wingspan dark star turned out to be identical, which led to the conclusion that the administrator of the Veteran’s Notes channel was deceiving users by passing off the Chinese drone bought on Aliexpress as his own development.

As a result, the swindler managed to collect several million rubles from patriotic Russian citizens.

In justification of the character leading the public Veteran’s Notes, it is worth noting that the idea of copying and borrowing in itself is not so bad for the situation that has developed in Russia. However, it would be worth saying this to users who sent donations for development.

Russian industry cannot produce drone motors, batteries, or electronics. The maximum possibility is to purchase components in China, and in Russia to organize the assembly of drones from these components.

In 2021, cadets of the Voronezh Air Force Academy presented a reconnaissance robot that turned out to be a Chinese toy, and the Kronstadt company from St. Petersburg passed off the toy with Aliexpress as their own development. At the Army 2022 exhibition, Intellect Machine JSC presented a robot dog equipped with a grenade launcher. As it turned out, the robot dog, supposedly domestically developed, is actually a Chinese G1 robot.

At the same time, the end consumer receives an allegedly domestic product at a price 2-3 times higher than the purchase price of exactly the same equipment purchased in China.

There is no doubt that scams with high-tech devices will be repeated.