How A Former Ukrainian TV Producer Built A Drone Unit That Destroyed $12 Billion Of Russian Equipment

Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, Commander of Lasar’s Group and former TV show producer. Photo by Anton Zabielskyi, for Forbes Ukraine, 2025.

Anton Zabielskyi

The exclusive story of how Pavlo Yelizarov went from TV talk-show producer to the creator of Ukraine’s premier military drone unit.

This article was published in Forbes Ukraine magazine No. 4 [37] in August-September 2025.

By Marko Syrovoi and Borys Davydenko

In early July, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that Russian drones had destroyed $2 billion worth of Ukrainian equipment. A fitting response from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky might have been: “One Ukrainian National Guard unit has destroyed $12 billion worth of Russian military hardware.”

That would not be an exaggeration. For almost three years a special unit called Lasar’s Group has operated within the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU). So far, there have been no public reports about it. Yet its record includes the destruction of more than 2,000 tanks, 3,000 infantry fighting vehicles, thousands of artillery pieces, vehicles, engineering machines – more than 40,000 targets struck in total. The total value of destroyed equipment is $12 billion, according to unit reports reviewed by Forbes Ukraine. (All strikes have video confirmation.)

Lasar’s Group’s results are visible in the state system called “Army of Drones. Bonus” (unofficially, it’s called “Ye-baly”), which assigns points to units for destroyed equipment and personnel. In the June rankings of “Ye-baly”, Lasar’s Group outscored other units by anywhere from two to five times in categories such as tanks, armored vehicles and artillery.

Heavy equipment is Lasar’s Group’s primary focus. Since the invasion, the Russian army has lost, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, 11,100 tanks. Nearly one in every five is on Lasar’s Group’s record.

Like many of the war’s most effective structures, Lasar’s Group was built by former civilians. The unit was created by businessman Pavlo Yelizarov, 56, call sign Lazar — co-owner of Savik Shuster Studio and producer of the political talk show “Svoboda Slova” (Freedom of Speech).

The main contribution of Lasar’s Group is measured not only by the enormous number and value of equipment that’s been destroyed, but also by having essentially created a new type of weapon – heavy bombers, according to Andriy Biletsky, commander of the 3rd Corps, and Oleksandr Nastenko, commander of the Separate Assault Battalion CODE 9.2.

“I don’t know who contributed more to the war than Pasha’s [Yelizarov’s] unit. I didn’t make even one-hundredth of his input,” says Nastenko, who in 2024 received the Hero of Ukraine, the country’s highest official honor.

Forbes Ukraine tells the story of Lasar’s Group for the first time – a revolutionary unit that made the biggest contribution to removing Russian tanks from the battlefield.

A kindergarten on the outskirts of Kyiv for $400,000

Yelizarov met the war in his own home in Pechersk, in central Kyiv. Explosions rattled outside. “I didn’t believe the war would happen until the very last moment,” he admits. He recalls canceling the next night’s broadcast of the Svoboda Slova talk show and becoming “glued” to the TV news.

Unexpected visitors pulled him away from the screen: former MP Mykola Katerynchuk and ex-Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovskyi arrived, saying they had just been to the Pechersk Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC), where a kilometer-long line had formed. They urgently needed to source weapons somewhere.

Yelizarov took a shorter route. He called the then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. He says he did not expect the minister to answer during the invasion, but Reznikov picked up and sent the trio to the Darnytskyi TRC, in southeastern Kyiv. There they got AK-47 riffles, and that same day Yelizarov enlisted in the newly formed 126th territorial defense battalion, tasked with defending the Darnytsia district.

In territorial defense, the businessman did what he knew how to do best – mobilize resources and organize people. He recalls building checkpoints, sourcing equipment and building materials, and repairing the battalion headquarters in a dilapidated kindergarten building. “I left home with less than $10,000 only rarely; you constantly had to buy something. Fortunately I had $1.1 million in cash,” Yelizarov remembers.

A little more than a month of service in territorial defense cost him over $400,000. It could have been more, if not for his network from his television-producer life. “When I had questions, I called people from my past life and they helped,” he says, citing Igor Nikonov, owner of KAN Development, who provided most of the building materials.

A previous radical turn in Yelizarov’s life also wouldn’t have happened without Rudkovskyi as well. In 2009 Rudkovskyi persuaded Yelizarov to enter the television business and become a co-investor in Savik Shuster Studio.

Born in Chișinău (Moldova), Yelizarov served in the Soviet army, moved to Ukraine in the 1990s, built and sold an agribusiness company by 2008, and worked from 2007 to 2008 as a deputy minister of transport. He says he intended to be a passive investor in the TV studio but gradually got involved. He became the head of the studio and later the producer of the country’s most popular political talk show, hosted by Savik Shuster.

Where the $12 billion comes from. Lasar’s Group submits calculations on the value of destroyed equipment to the Center for Command and Analysis of Unmanned Systems Use of the NGU and to the Ministry of Digital Transformation. The data are verified and refined as needed. Only destroyed and damaged equipment with video confirmation is counted.

A damaged item (one not completely burnt out) is counted as 50% of its value. Value is determined based on data from the research group ORYX and prices from official contracts for procurement and modernization of Russian equipment.

Lasar’s Group counts only tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), self-propelled guns, multiple rocket launch systems, missile-air defense systems, and high-value radar systems. Cars, towed guns, mortars, engineering and fortification structures are not calculated.

From 2019 to 2021, the talk show aired on the Ukrainian TV channel, owned by Rinat Akhmetov, a billionaire Ukraine’s richest man. Shuster and Yelizarov had problems during Petro Poroshenko’s presidency from 2014 to 2019; for example, Shuster`s license to work in Ukraine was annulled. Relations with Volodymyr Zelensky’s team were even worse. Just months before the full-scale invasion by Russia, Zelensky’s Servant of the People party called for a boycott of Svoboda Slova and Akhmetov’s TV channels. Presidential spokesperson Mykhailo Podolyak accused the program of “staging emotional dramas to serve the oligarch’s interests,” while Zelensky alleged that Akhmetov was plotting a coup. In response, Shuster compared the Zelensky administration to former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych’s authoritarian regime.

The existential threat forced them to set aside enmity – at least temporarily. Yelizarov recounts the first month of the war with almost religious awe. An incredible number of very bright people joined the Defense Forces, he recalls, people who accepted the risk of dying in the next two weeks.

“You know the feeling of grace in old churches? I felt the same when I walked the halls of our headquarters in the kindergarten at night and saw the boys sleeping with rifles,” Yelizarov remembers.

Just add Starlink

The battle for Kyiv ended in early April. The main strike on the capital came from the north, and Yelizarov’s battalion, stationed in the southeast, did not engage directly in combat. The question arose: what next?

A new center was forming in the Special Operations Forces (SOF). Along with Yelizarov, 20– 25 people moved from territorial defense to the SOF. At combat positions near Zaporizhzhia there was a drone special unit of the SBU called the White Wolves. There, Yelizarov and his fighters first saw a drone used in combat.

“We were very envious and wanted badly to drop an anti-tank mine on the enemy’s head,” Yelizarov laughs. Even in civilian life Yelizarov was open to new ideas, could quickly calculate the effect of implementing them and how reasonable the risks were, says his long-time business partner Savik Shuster.

They began implementing the dream within days. The date of the first flight was May 6, 2022. Yelizarov bought an agricultural drone from smugglers for $10,000 – the kind smugglers used to ship cigarettes across the border. The team somehow strapped a mine to it. “We had a childish joy when we managed to drop that mine,” Yelizarov recalls.

Their first workshop for assembling drones was set up in a garage that belonged to the first pilot of the unit with the call sign Fish. With $680,000 of remaining cash, Yelizarov bought spare parts from China. They began assembling drones.

The key innovation for the bomber was conceived of by the studio’s technical director: Why not attach a Starlink terminal to the drone and maintain control via the internet? For an experiment, Yelizarov donated his own Starlink terminal; it was destroyed on one of the first test flights.

That could have been the end of the story. In the summer of 2022, Starlink terminals were scarce and not something you could simply buy. Once again, civilian acquaintances helped: Mustafa Nayyem, then deputy minister of infrastructure, provided four terminals. “I literally kissed him on the head,” Yelizarov recalls with joy.

Another decisive innovation was using a dozen-and-a-half battery packs per drone instead of the standard two. “I didn’t understand why a drone should operate for half an hour, at most an hour, per shift,” Yelizarov says. A battery pack then cost $1,300, so adding them meant an additional $20,000 per drone. Expensive, but the investment paid off.

“With such a drone, a pilot could strike 16 pieces of equipment overnight, not two,”, he explains. “The efficiency grew dramatically.”

In the summer of 2022 the still-informal unit had five pilots. They didn’t have combat orders and couldn’t be close to the front line. Bureaucratic hurdles produced a third innovation. To fly, Yelizarov’s pilots asked HUR (the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine) or SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) soldiers to bring their drones closer to the front, and then the pilots would operate them remotely.

“It turned out that for efficient pilot work, you only need fast internet. And they perform better in relative comfort than on the zero line,” says Yelizarov. Remote operation later saved many lives. Over three and a half years, only 16 warriors of Lasar`s Group were killed, he adds.

That summer Yelizarov met another acquaintance at the frontline: Andriy Biletsky, then commander of the SOF unit Azov. In peacetime Yelizarov and Biletsky used to debate politics after Svoboda Slova broadcasts. This time Yelizarov brought one of his first drones to Biletsky.

“It looked almost fantastic at that time. They were pioneers of heavy bombers and the first to pave the way to a new type of weapon,” Biletsky says. He immediately offered tactical comments to Lazar’s group: “A tool is nothing; you need to develop a tactic for it,” he remembers instructing Yelizarov’s team. “They mastered that very quickly.”

When the hypothesis that drones could destroy Russian heavy equipment received practical confirmation, Yelizarov began thinking about scaling. “I looked at how the White Wolves worked and saw a great family restaurant,” he says. “But you can’t win a war with a family restaurant – you need to build a McDonald’s.”

All summer he pitched the drone-McDonald’s idea to SOF generals, Ground Forces, and GUR. Conversations usually ended when they heard that Yelizarov had only a few months of military experience. By chance, Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin noticed his work and suggested Yelizarov build a unit within the National Guard. (Yenin died in a helicopter crash with senior Interior Ministry officials in Brovary on Jan. 18, 2023.)

The then-commander of the NGU, Anatoliy Lebid, Yelizarov says, didn’t fully understand the drone idea. But he was open to novelty and asked Yelizarov to draw the proposed unit’s staffing structure. Yelizarov presented something that looked strange to a career military man – a unit of 300 people.

It was too many for a company, too few for a battalion. Lebid approved the odd structure, and in September 2022 Lasar’s Group was formed.

Building a McDonald’s for drones

“I’m lazy. I don’t like to work,” Yelizarov says half-joking about his managerial style. Since his business days, he says his key task has been selecting the right team.

Lasar’s Group began in the NGU with only five drone crews. The person responsible for the first scaling to a platoon of 30 pilots was Yelizarov’s first pilot, call sign Fish. (We are not publishing his name for security reasons).

In civilian life Fish was a small entrepreneur who flew drones as a hobby. During the battle for Kyiv he helped special services with aerial reconnaissance; later he filmed the aftermath of occupation for the media.

Fish somehow learned Yelizarov was working with drones and in late spring 2022 arrived at a training ground with a “Kazhan” (Bat) drone in the trunk of an old Nissan Navara. Fish had a clear dream – to destroy a Russian tank. The Bat drone was not suitable for destroying tanks. But Fish’s dream came true: he is a legend among pilots; he’s credited with more than 500 destroyed pieces of equipment.

Fish quickly mastered scaling up. Recruiting other pilots was a breeze, thanks to the drone community’s bush telegraph. In autumn 2022, burning Russian tanks was the shared dream of many.

From the start Lasar’s Group was built outside military canons. The unit is 98% composed of former civilians. For example, Yelizarov appointed a young woman without any military background as his chief of staff. Nelya (her surname is withheld for security) headed an administrative service at a private company before the war. She served in the 126th territorial defense battalion and moved to the National Guard with Yelizarov.

A battalion chief of staff is usually a senior officer with significant military experience. “In movies the chief of staff draws arrows on maps and plans operations; in real life the position is more about organizational work,”: Yelizarov explains, adding that the key criteria for his appointments were functionality and efficiency.

Another atypical feature: an intelligence team manages the distribution of drones and ammunition in Lasar’s Group. “They best understand the general situation, have ideas and can plan needs for operations,” Yelizarov explains. That intelligence team is largely staffed by financial analysts, making the task simpler.

Yelizarov’s main managerial tools are freedom and challenge. “If he sees potential in a person, he gives carte blanche: take responsibility and solve the task as you see fit,” says Nelya. He continuously sets increasingly ambitious tasks, she adds. “We just expanded to 30 pilots, which I thought was hard, and he’s already giving orders to expand to 90,” the chief of staff says.

Setting seemingly unrealistic yet ambitious goals is classic Yelizarov, Shuster says. Lasar’s Group’s military mission sounded audacious, even boastful: to erase the Russian army’s armored advantage – especially its tanks, which, as late as fall 2022, were still bulldozing Ukrainian positions with impunity. This was no empty boast.

“Yelizarov showed us calculations and said ‘If we destroy this amount of equipment in a month, in two years there will be none left’,” Fish recalls. He is convinced that such an ambitious but measurable goal made Lasar’s Group successful.

From personal contacts to an Army of Drones

The unit’s first serious results took place in autumn 2022, when it had 10-15 of its own drones, Yelizarov says. There was no state funding, so money was raised among friends and acquaintances: “investors” were asked to put in $20,000 and in returned received a “named drone” and video of the equipment it destroyed. They attracted about 10 benefactors, including former MP Anton Herashchenko.

“Herashchenko named his drone after his daughter Polina,” Yelizarov recalls. “It was the most successful drone–an indestructible one. We joked that every drone should be called ‘Polina-1,’ ‘Polina-2,’ etc.”

Even then Lasar’s Group was a gamechanger on small areas along the frontline segments. That’s how CODE 9.2 commander Oleksandr Nastenko (call sign Flint) recalls meeting Yelizarov: “Herashchenko advised me to meet Pasha, it was September-October 2022.” Nastenko then led a standard infantry reconnaissance platoon of the 92nd brigade.

He had orders to assault a village called Novoselivske in the Luhansk region, and things were not going well. Flint came to the meeting skeptical because he’d had bad experiences with drones. “I saw an intelligent person in Pasha [Yelizarov], and we planned the assault together,” Flint says.

Lasar’s Group pilots destroyed eight Russian soldiers in a single strike, Nastenko recalls. CODE 9.2’s infantry took the village with minimal losses – only one wounded. The Russians weren’t going to give up: they gathered 14 IFVs, a tank, about 100 infantry and launched an assault. But three Lasar’s Group drones stopped them on the forward lines, shattering the infantry and some equipment.

“Pasha stopped their counterattack,” Flint says. “He smashed them to pieces and broke their morale.” Struck by the power of heavy drones, Flint later began flying bombers himself; CODE 9.2 became one of the country’s most effective drone units.

“Pasha introduced me to heavy bombers. I learned tactics, drone workflows and safety approaches from them,” Nastenko says. “From my side I explained how drones could better support infantry.”

At the beginning of 2023, Lasar’s Group made a symbolic cup from a thermos engraved with “150+” to commemorate the number of targets destroyed over the past year. That became a tradition: the 2024 cup read 4000+, the next year 11,000+. All strikes are documented, Yelizarov says, and he points to a giant Excel table showing who, when, where, which drone, with what munition and a link to video confirmation.

Dozens of destroyed tanks and vehicles in the unit’s first months helped with financing. At the end of 2022 international partners financed Lasar’s Group to make nearly 500 drones. “That instantly moved us to a new level,” Yelizarov says.

And in 2023 the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov – who was creating the Army of Drones project – took notice. Lasar’s Group’s drones were presented at the first test among roughly 70 competing companies.

“We saw innovativeness in how Lasar’s organized communications and built a model of remote drone operation,” Fedorov recalls. “From the ‘Army of Drones’ they received support to make thousands of drones.”

Another Legal Battle for a Drone Commander?

Now Lasar’s Group structurally resembles a Formula-1 team. Roles are clearly divided – pilots, navigators, reconnaissance, etc. Results are constantly analyzed. Pilots’ efficiency must grow; testing and training are routine.

Another similarity to Formula-1 is the equivalent of high-tech cars. A friendly civilian enterprise manufactures drones, explosives and munitions specifically for Lasar’s Group. First, this allows them to get drones tailored for combat tasks rather than repurposing off-the-shelf models near a frontline, Yelizarov says. Second, it raises the unit’s overall efficiency: if a drone is lost, they don’t have to wait for a replacement from Ministry of Defence.

Production is handled by three companies, the main one being Screentek LLC. Yelizarov has owned Screentek since COVID-19, when he and partners tried to profit from importing coronavirus tests. In 2023, when it came time to receive state funds for drone production, Yelizarov put forward that inactive LLC.

According to him, it was his first experience with state money in over 30 years in business. “I never wanted to take state money because I understood there would be screaming, media wars and corruption cases,” Yelizarov explains. He was right.

In 2023 the founder of Lasar’s Group faced a choice: remain a boutique unit or take state funding and build the McDonald’s of drones. “Without state money we couldn’t destroy equipment at an industrial scale,” he explains.

In 2023 Screentek received almost UAH 4 billion (U.S. $95 million) from the state; in 2024, UAH 6 billion (U.S. $140 million). This year funding was reduced. As of August 2025, contracts with the state were signed for less than UAH 4 billion. Direct U.S. financing, which purchased 2,000 drones, has helped, Yelizarov says. Production now employs over 1,000 people. Large-scale manufacturing was organized from scratch starting in 2023.

By the third year of the war, Yelizarov’s vertically integrated structure began to create problems for him. From a prosecutor’s point of view, it’s a ready criminal lawsuit: the Yelizarov-businessman’s enterprise makes drones and munitions with state money, provides them to the unit led by the Yelizarov-colonel, who is also their customer. In peacetime that would raise conflict-of-interest questions, Yelizarov acknowledges. He says law enforcement officers from every service except one have already visited him.

So far Yelizarov manages to convince investigators with several arguments:

• Clear functional separation. “The manufacturers are separate civilian companies engaged in financial-economic activity,” he says. The point of contact with the military unit is feedback on drone quality in combat conditions and the possibility of improvement.
• Thorough documentation. From day one, Lasar’s Group has tracked each drone by number, its performance results and attached videos. For every lost drone there is geolocation, time and circumstances.
• A separate group in Lasar’s Group writes off lost drones. These are former law enforcement officers familiar with bureaucratic traps, Yelizarov explains.

At present Screentek is not listed as a defendant in criminal cases in the court registry, despite such unsupported claims in some media outlets. On dubious websites and anonymous Telegram channels there are articles accusing Yelizarov of buying drones from himself.

Such attacks, Yelizarov says, are one reason he came out of his low-profile mode and is giving his first interview since the start of the war. “Screentek employees sometimes complain: ‘They are making us into pariahs-corruptionsters. Maybe we should quit?’ I need to somehow calm people down,” he says.

Peacetime anti-corruption laws are a potential problem not only for Lazar, says the founder of one of the most effective drone units, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Through close ties with the manufacturer you can come after us, after such famous drone units like Achilles, or accuse the Magyar guys that they make two drones from three.” He adds that in wartime the criteria should be unit effectiveness, not strict legal formalism.

Lasar’s Existential Crisis

As of August 2025 Lasar’s Group expected less than UAH 4 billion ($95 million) in funding from the state. That funding amount, he says, is insufficient. Production, Yelizarov says, is loaded at 30%, so only a third of crews are active each night.

Yelizarov says the unit could have folded by October if not for U.S. government financing that paid for 2,000 drones. Lasar’s Group grew during the war (numbers are not disclosed for security reasons), but now half of the unit’s authorized positions are filled. “There’s simply no money to equip the full complement with drones. Why keep people without work?” Yelizarov says.

Over the past year Lasar’s Group seems to have faced a crisis of meaning. The unit’s main purpose – to remove tanks and armored vehicles from the battlefield – was achieved. Research from many OSINT (open source intelligence) communities aligns: the Russian army lost the lion’s share of its armor in the war, including vehicles from storage depots. Authoritative OSINT communities Military Prophet and Resurgam forecast that in 2025 Russia will be able to produce and repair roughly 400 tanks, almost four times fewer than in 2022. Meanwhile, in the first seven months of this year, the Russian army lost more than 1,400 tanks, according to the General Staff, the main command unit of Ukraine’s army. The invader’s army began conserving armored equipment; since May this year, drone units like Lasar’s have found fewer targets.

“Previously our operations were like hunting in a zoo: we’d fly to a depth of 3 km and there would be a bunch of targets,” Yelizarov says. “Now there’s no ‘iron,’ armored vehicles are hard to find even at a depth of 20 km. Probably that’s our achievement, too.”

Between Ukraine and Russia In September 2022 the first big prisoner exchange occurred, including the Viktor Medvedchuk for a group of defenders of Azovstal. Under the exchange terms, Azov’s legendary commander Denis Prokopenko (Redis) and other soldiers were to remain in Turkey.

In spring 2023 Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko visited them and showed Prokopenko footage of Lasar’s Group in action. “It was a breakthrough in drone production and employment. There were no similar samples in any unit at that time,” Redis recalls of his impression. Today Redis commands the NGU Azov Corps. He says the corps recently trained jointly with Lasar’s Group and plans to implement their practices at the corps level.

The goal for 2025 is to silence enemy artillery that often fires beyond FPV drones’ range and inflicts losses on the Ukrainian infantry, Yelizarov says. According to the Ye-baly system data for June, Lasar’s Group is first in the Artillery category: the unit destroyed more artillery than the next four units combined.

Another development direction is special operations with a new quality of interaction between drones and other units, Yelizarov adds, without going into details due to security reasons.

Lasar’s Group will certainly not be left without work, Biletsky is sure. “Many units were relevant at a historic moment and became heroes but ossified over time,” Biletsky concludes. “Lasar’s Group remains relevant years into the war because they constantly search for new paths.”

He adds that the entire Ukrainian army learned from Lasar’s Group. “Now there is no brigade without a heavy bomber. The ‘Lazars’ started it all,” Biletsky explains. “For that we owe them much, because heavy bombers probably now exceed the artillery’s influence on the front.”

Yelizarov himself is currently a student at the University of Defense, usually attended by officers preparing for strategic leadership positions. What does he plan next?

During the interview Yelizarov’s reflections repeatedly went beyond Lasar’s Group activity. He often repeats that Ukraine has lost some of its trump cards in this war – volunteers and drones. A reason for the latter he sees, among other things, is the excessive publicity of drone units.

The only new potential advantage is the much greater efficiency of the Defense Forces and the civilian sector. For now, it’s only potential. “We need to implement something like DOGE by Elon Musk in the army: remove excess people – let them create GDP in the civil sector, optimize structure, shorten decision and implementation times.”

Chances to be heard and realize these ideas are slim for Yelizarov. Three sources told Forbes Ukraine that when the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) were being created in Ukraine in the spring of 2024, Yelizarov was one of the main advocates and thus a candidate to lead the new structure. But the Office of the President was against the figure of a formerly opposition producer. Yelizarov himself does not comment on political questions: “The military uniform and politics are incompatible,” he says.

He is reluctant to plan postwar activities. He says he’s considering creating a private military company that would, after the full-scale war in Ukraine ends, consult and train foreign armies in drone technologies.