Fire Point chief describes Ukraine drone firm's rapid wartime rise

Iryna Terekh, a 34-year-old architect by training, heads Fire Point, a company described in the source as one of the driving forces behind Ukraine's long-range strike capabilities in the war with Russia.

Terekh tours international defence shows, negotiates with arms manufacturers and joins discussions on European rearmament. She spoke to AFP away from the exhibition halls at the Farnborough International Airshow in Britain, in an interview in central London.

Fire Point attracted attention at the Eurosatory defence exhibition in France by repeatedly showing footage of an oil refinery near Moscow in flames after being hit by one of its drones. The company did not exhibit at Farnborough. Terekh said its next public appearance needed to make a strong impact.

Terekh has been defending Fire Point against corruption allegations and claims that accompanied its rapid rise. The company has faced claims that it received preferential treatment from the state and has been drawn into controversy over public contracts. Terekh said Ukrainian authorities were urgently looking from 2022 to 2024 for manufacturers able to supply weapons, and said the company welcomes audits, oversight and transparency.

Terekh grew up in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. She said she has long lived in Kyiv and has children, but declined to give more details for security reasons. Although trained as an architect, she said she did not practise and instead ran several construction companies.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Terekh said her friend Denys Shtilerman, Fire Point's founder, asked her to help build the company. She said the first ideas for what became the FP-1 drone were sketched on a napkin in late 2022, and that a prototype was assembled in a garage in early 2023. Seven aircraft were then built in three weeks, she said.

Terekh said she is proud of the company's roots, despite critics who call the work amateur or garage engineering. She said Ukraine's army relies heavily on volunteers and that weapons therefore need to be simple, clear and easy to reproduce.

Western defence experts and industry figures have described Fire Point as one of the key contributors to Ukraine's long-range strikes against Russia, according to the source. Terekh declined to disclose the company's revenue, but said production now amounts to thousands of drones each month. She said previously reported figures of 3,000 drones and 30 Flamingo missiles a month had since increased.

Terekh said criticism of Fire Point delayed some projects with foreign partners for several months because of additional compliance checks. She said those reviews have now been completed.

She said her ambition is to help create a broad ballistic missile defence coalition in which Fire Point hopes to play a central role.