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Despite sanctions and export bans, U.S. networking equipment maker Ubiquiti has effectively become a key supplier of communications equipment for the Russian army, Hunterbrook Media has concluded after an extensive investigation.
According to the publication, Ubiquiti radio bridge antennas form the backbone of Russian troops’ communications system on the front line in Ukraine and are also used for controlling drones. A Ukrainian communications officer with the call sign Django estimated that Ubiquiti equipment accounts for 80% of all Russian radio bridges spotted along the front line, noting that “Ubiquiti is made for regular people — basically plug-and-play. Tons of tutorials on YouTube.” He said the Russian army has virtually no alternative to the equipment.
Hunterbrook tested how easily export-banned Ubiquiti equipment reaches Russian troops. A journalist posing as a Russian army officer contacted Russian sellers and official Ubiquiti distributors worldwide, and nearly a dozen of them agreed to supply export-banned equipment. One Russian seller — Nina Kuznetsova, the owner of the ubiquiti.ru store — provided the journalist with letters of thanks from Russian military units for supplying wireless bridges “sent to the combat zone.”
Investigators highlighted the case of Multilink Solutions, an Ohio-based U.S. company and an official Ubiquiti distributor. A representative agreed to ship 450 devices despite knowing that the end recipient was in Russia and suggested using a Turkish address to bypass restrictions. The use of third countries for re-export is a common sanctions evasion scheme.
The investigators provided The Insider with an evidence file documenting the presence of Ubiquiti equipment on the Russian side of the front. The evidence includes a television segment aired by Kremlin-controlled Rossiya-1 on Oct. 20, 2025, showing a serviceman climbing a tower with an antenna bearing the Ubiquiti logo. Additionally, a July 3, 2025 segment that aired on Ministry of Defense-run television channel Zvezda showed footage of a Ubiquiti UISP Litebeam 5AC device, and a TASS report from October 2025 featured a serviceman logging into Ubiquiti’s airOS operating system. The Hunterbrook Media investigators also collected Telegram posts by Russian military and volunteer groups featuring photos and videos of Ubiquiti antennas, as well as photos of the unboxing of airMAX Litebeam devices (a model whose box and contents fully match the company’s original products).
Hunterbrook’s analysis of trade data shows that the total value of Ubiquiti shipments to Russia rose 66% after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, despite U.S. and EU sanctions. Exporters included around six of the company’s official distributors. Others rerouted supplies through intermediaries in Turkey, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong. At least 10 such intermediaries were later added to U.S. sanctions lists. The investigators noted that some of the models making their way to Russia were released after the ban was introduced.
Ubiquiti says it has no information about where its products end up after they are sold to distributors. Lawyers and sanctions experts reject that argument. Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former senior State Department official for sanctions policy, is quoted in the Hunterbrook report saying “ignorance is not really a practical excuse, or rather, a legal excuse.”
Speaking about the report, a sanctions compliance lawyer added:
“You, doing very little effort, were able to determine that it’s available for purchase by the Russian armed forces. … The company’s compliance team should be taking additional steps to prevent that.”
This is not the first such case involving Ubiquiti. In 2014, the company was fined $504,000 for supplying equipment to Iran in circumvention of sanctions between 2008 and 2011. At the time, CEO Robert Pera told Forbes that, “It can’t happen again. If it does, I’ll be in a lot of trouble.” However, Hunterbrook found that an official Ubiquiti distributor — Alfa Tech of the UAE — may still be operating in Iran. In May 2025, ads were found on an Iranian advertising platform listing contact details for the company’s offices in Tehran and Shiraz. Ubiquiti declined to comment on that information.