Investigation: How a Swiss-linked company helped Russian arms factories like Kalashnikov stay afloat

Key findings:

• Leaked documents reveal over 50 Russian defense companies operating Western industrial high-precision machinery — produced by Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden — to manufacture weapons used against Ukraine.
• Their machinery serving arms production was maintained by the Russian firm Galika-Service over the years of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• Russia-based Galika-Service is part of the larger Galika group, built around the Swiss company Galika AG. The group’s central figure is Lino Derungs.
• Internal Galika-Service documents identify Russian employees responsible for sourcing spare parts for Western machinery across the globe, while customs data reveals the schemes used to import these parts in defiance of sanctions.

What do various Russian defense companies — manufacturers of missiles and missile launchers, ammunition, combat vehicles, military aircraft, assault rifles, and artillery shells — have in common?

They operate a fleet of Western-made high-precision machinery to produce their lethal products.

That machinery, a significant portion of which was imported to Russia before its full-scale war against Ukraine, requires maintenance and replacement parts. For that, many of them rely on a single Russia-based supplier: Galika-Service.

Throughout the war, this company has helped to prevent a fleet of Western machine tools at Russian arms factories from breaking down, according to documents leaked to the Kyiv Independent.

Galika-Service is not a purely Russian company — it is the Russian arm of the Swiss firm Galika AG, which for years exported Swiss, German, and Swedish industrial machinery to Russia.

Its leader, Lino Derungs, a Swiss national, has spent extended periods in Russia and might still be there. His career there has been marked by both commercial success and financial and legal troubles. Derungs was even detained in Russia multiple times during the full-scale invasion on charges related to his business practices.

Yet despite his legal troubles, the machinery his company brought into Russia is at the center of the country's ability to produce the weapons it's using to kill Ukrainians.

"Russia imported a considerable amount of European machine tools between 2014 and 2022," Allen Maggard, a senior analyst with the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), told the Kyiv Independent.

"Those machine tools are in Russia now; Brussels needs to really go after the consumables that keep those already-imported machine tools running," Maggard concluded.

Over 50 Russian defense clients

An internal company document obtained by the Kyiv Independent details contracts worth nearly $3 million signed between Galika-Service and 87 Russian companies and active from 2024 to late 2025.

Fifty-one of the company's 87 clients belong to Russia's defense sector, including manufacturers of a vast range of weapons and military aircraft.

Galika-Service's largest client — with contracts worth nearly $800,000 — was the Kalashnikov Concern, a manufacturer of automatic firearms and sniper rifles, attack and reconnaissance drones, guided missiles, and ammunition. Russia widely uses these weapons in its war against Ukraine.

The Imperial Tula Arms Factory, a Russian manufacturer of anti-tank missile systems, assault rifles, and artillery rounds used against Ukraine, also turned to Galika-Service for repairs to its Western-made machine tools. It was Galika-Service's second-largest client, with orders worth $500,000.

The document also identifies specific Western machine tools serving the Russian arms industry.

The majority of the machines listed come from three countries: Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden.

Moscow sourced precision machinery from countries like Switzerland and Germany because they are the leaders of this market, according to Roman Steblivskyi, director of Policy and Advocacy at the Economic Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU), a think tank.

"Russia is not able to produce advanced machine tools of sufficiently high quality and in sufficient quantities," he said.

Russia's dependence on Western machine tools also "boils down to structural factors inherited from the late Soviet military industry, which actively sought out Western CNC technology," according to Maggard.

A significant portion of the machines on the list analyzed by the Kyiv Independent come from United Machining Solutions, one of the world's largest machine tool builders, which currently houses 15 leading industrial brands from Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden.

The document lists a number of AgieCharmilles computer numeric control (CNC) machines, used for high-precision metal cutting. These machines are built by GF Machining Solutions — a Swiss manufacturer that recently became a part of  United Machining Solutions.

These machines are operated by SKB, a Russian artillery plant that produces vehicles for the Grad and Smerch multiple launch rocket systems, as well as by the United Aircraft Corporation, a manufacturer of Russian strategic bombers and fighters.

Walter Helicheck Basic, a CNC measuring and inspection machine built by Walter Maschinenbau GmbH — a German manufacturer under United Machining Solutions' umbrella — is used by the Kalashnikov Concern.

Krasnyi Oktiabr, a Russian manufacturer of military aviation components, operates a machine tool bearing the German brand Schaudt (United Machining Solutions).

Seven more Russian defense companies, including the Imperial Tula Arms Factory, use machine tools from the Swedish company Hexagon AB and from the Index Group, a German machine tool manufacturer whose brands include Traub and Index.

For more Western-made machine tools owned by Russian defense companies and exposed by Galika-Service's leaked records, see the chart below.

In many cases, the machinery listed in the document is identified not only by model but also by serial number, making it possible for a manufacturer to trace individual machines.

The Kyiv Independent contacted the Western manufacturers of machinery listed in connection with Russian defense companies, asking — among other questions — whether they were able to stop software updates or otherwise disable these machines remotely.

Of all the manufacturers mentioned, only Hexagon AB, a Swedish company, responded.

"Since 2022, we have not sold, exported, or facilitated the sale of hardware or software to Russia, either directly or indirectly," said Felix von Stedingk, Hexagon's corporate communications manager.

The company also said that the Hexagon-brand machines the Kyiv Independent listed were sold between 2004 and 2012.

"No service, maintenance, or software updates have been provided since 2022," Stedingk noted.

"We take this topic very seriously, and as part of our commitment to compliance, we have taken all necessary measures to prevent the diversion of our technology to Russia," he said.

Russian defense companies, as well as Galika-Service — which provided them with maintenance services for European machine tools — did not respond to questions regarding the software they currently use.

Swiss-linked network serving Russian arms industry

Galika-Service is the Russian service division of the broader Galika group, headquartered in Switzerland.

Galika AG, founded in 1986 in Switzerland's canton of Zürich, once had branches in Germany, France, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus, and Russia — with Russia as its major export market.

The leadership of the Swiss company previously included many Russians, as well as Swiss citizen Lino Derungs and Austrian Karl Lenzi. In Russian media, Derungs is referred to as Galika's president, while some Swiss media also call him its founder.

Derungs is known to have lived in Russia, used to be married to a Russian woman, and supplied Russia with machine tools starting in the Soviet era.

In 2011, Galika celebrated the 25th anniversary of its operations in Russia. Derungs was a central figure of the celebration.

An article in the Russian media dedicated to the anniversary begins with the words: "The Swiss company Galika has long been an indispensable supplier of equipment and technologies for the aviation, automotive, defense, aerospace, and other sectors of Russian industry."

At that time, Galika openly listed its clients in Russia's military-industrial complex.

Among others, the 2011 article mentioned the Tula Arms Plant and Rosvertol. According to leaked documents obtained by the Kyiv Independent, the Russian arm of the Galika group continued to serve the companies even after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Swiss-based Galika AG had several sister companies registered in Russia over the years.

According to Russian customs data obtained by the Kyiv Independent, Galika AG was directly supplying Western machine tools and spare parts to its Russian network of dealers — the companies Galika-Service, Galika-Met, Galika-SKD, and Galika-TsTS — until the spring of 2022, when they had to change how they get supplies into Russia.

Leaked Galika-Service documents show that the company used the logo and the website of a sister company, GLK, launched in 2023 — suggesting that the Russian-based Galika network used different legal entities interchangeably.

The now-defunct Galika website in Russia used to offer a wide range of machine tools from all the Swiss, German, and Swedish manufacturers listed above — GF Machining Solutions, Walter Maschinenbau, Index-Traub, Hexagon AB — and more.

The Kyiv Independent found this list using archived versions of the website's pages.

Swiss authorities have recently uncovered even more damning findings.

They have proven that, in order to supply machine tools to the Russian defense industry, the Swiss company Galika AG violated Swiss export restrictions — imposed on Russia following the 2014 annexation of Crimea — even before its full-scale war on Ukraine.

Under Swiss law at the time, machine tools could be sold to Russia for civilian use only, provided the seller obtained an export license from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and specified who would operate the equipment.

In 2025, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) found that the company had submitted false information about the machines' intended use in 2020 and 2021 in order to obtain permission to sell them. Galika AG had assured regulators its machines would never enter military production in Russia. They did anyway.

Swiss authorities have now fined the company's Russian-born export manager 1,500 Swiss francs for illegal deliveries of high-precision machine tools to the Russian defense and arms industry in violation of Swiss export control law.

Galika's response to sweeping sanctions

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU and Switzerland completely banned the export of advanced machine tools to Russia, along with a significant portion of the spare parts and components for their maintenance and repair.

How did Galika respond?

Swiss Galika AG stopped shipping supplies to Russia.

However, the Russian wing of the group did not stop its activities — it simply changed its routes.

Over the years of Russia's full-scale invasion, Galika-Service and its sister company Maunder imported thousands of European-made machine tool components and instruments into Russia, purchasing them mainly from Chinese firms and, less commonly, from Turkish companies.

The parts themselves were manufactured either at the European producers' factories in China or directly in Europe.

The Kyiv Independent found that some of these shipments involved goods already subject, at the time of delivery, to EU and Swiss prohibitions on both direct and indirect exports to Russia.

These included European-made printed circuit boards, electrical components, and other machinery parts.

In other words, the Galika group's Russian firms appear to have imported Western technology throughout the full-scale war, bypassing European export restrictions.

None of the Chinese or Turkish suppliers involved responded to the Kyiv Independent's requests for comment.

Among the leaked Galika-Service documents, the Kyiv Independent identified the Russian staff members tasked with sourcing components for European-made machine tools from around the world.

As the chart below illustrates, individual employees were assigned responsibility for specific Western brands.

A Swiss man in a Russian jail

Despite spending years helping to develop Russia's defense industry by importing Swiss, German, and Swedish machine tools, Derungs — a Swiss national born in 1945 — still found himself at odds with Russian law enforcement at one point.

In March 2025, a Russian appellate court upheld a 2024 first-instance ruling that fined him and two of his Moscow-based associates for tax evasion committed between 2016 and 2019. Derungs even spent over seven months in a Russian jail between 2022 and 2023 while the criminal investigation was ongoing.

Russian investigators identified Derungs as the ultimate beneficiary of the company Galika-TsTS — which was at the center of the investigation — even though the company was formally owned by a Russian national. Russian law enforcement authorities also froze the bank accounts of the company Galika-Service in connection with the case, deeming the firms to be linked.

Derungs was also detained in Russia in December 2024 on different charges — fraud, money laundering, and transferring funds abroad using forged documents. According to the ruling on his detention, he was still in custody as of January 2025. The Kyiv Independent could not locate any further decisions in the case.

These are not the only legal troubles Derungs recently faced in Russia. There was another criminal case — bribery — in which house arrest was imposed on him in 2024. The outcome of this investigation is also unknown.

The Kyiv Independent reached out to Derungs for comment via email but received no response.

Derungs' business — both in Russia and Switzerland — has declined amid debts, criminal proceedings, and U.S. sanctions imposed on four Galika-linked Russian companies in 2024.

Galika AG in Switzerland is undergoing liquidation, while all firms bearing the Galika name in Russia have initiated bankruptcy proceedings.

However, another firm — Maunder, founded by a former executive from the Galika network — continues to operate in Russia. It is not going bankrupt, and it is subject to no sanctions other than those imposed by Ukraine. Publicly, it offers only machine tools built by Taiwan, South Korea, China, and Turkey.

Note from the author:

Hi, I'm Alisa, the author of this piece. This isn't my first investigation into the role Europeans play in sustaining Russia's war machine. If you'd like to support work like this, consider becoming a member of the Kyiv Independent. Together, we can do more.