(MOSCOW) – A Moscow court has ordered the arrest in absentia of the Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Robert Brovdi, for the second time, in what marks the latest attempt by Russian judicial authorities to prosecute Ukrainian military commanders for operations conducted during the full scale invasion.
The Basmanny Court of Moscow ruled on the arrest of Brovdi, known by the call sign “Magyar,” as part of a new criminal case. The court simultaneously ordered the arrest in absentia of Andriy Klymenko, known by the call sign “Klima,” who commands the “Magyar’s Birds” unmanned systems brigade.
Russian investigators accuse Brovdi of alleged involvement in a strike on a college in temporarily occupied Starobilsk, in the Luhansk region, on 22 May. The head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, had earlier reported that Brovdi had been placed on an international wanted list.
This is the second criminal case brought by Russian authorities against the Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces of the AFU. In March 2024, a Russian court sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment in a case concerning the alleged remote mining of roads in the border areas of the Kursk and Belgorod regions.
A separate Russian court ruling in March sentenced Brovdi in absentia to 18 years in a penal colony. The successive prosecutions reflect the Russian dictator’s regime targeting Ukrainian drone warfare commanders whose units have inflicted significant damage on Russian logistics and military infrastructure across occupied territories and inside Russia proper.
The legal actions carry no practical weight outside Russian jurisdiction and are widely viewed as symbolic gestures by a regime whose international arrest warrants are recognised only by a narrow circle of allied states such as North Korea, Iran and Belarus.