On March 30, in a federal court in Brooklyn, Italian citizen Manfred Gruber pleaded guilty to the illegal export of ammunition worth more than $540,000. Companies controlled by Gruber bought cartridges in the United States, shipped them through Italy to Kyrgyzstan, and from there sent them on to Russia.
The Insider has repeatedly documented Russian snipers’ use of rifles and ammunition made in Western countries. We have also reported on large-scale supplies of firearms and cartridges from the United States and the European Union to Russia through countries in the Eurasian Customs Union, Kyrgyzstan among them.
An Italian in a Brooklyn court and American ammunition for Russian snipers
Manfred Gruber admitted to conspiring to violate U.S. export control laws. According to the prosecutor, Gruber used Italian companies under his control to conceal the Russian end users of the cartridges he was exporting. The involvement of Italian firms made it possible to obtain U.S. export permits; however, in violation of licenses issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the cartridges were then sent not to Italian gun stores, but to Russia via Kyrgyzstan.
The court’s press release said Gruber’s accomplice in the scheme was Kyrgyz citizen Sergei Zharnovnikov, who was arrested in Las Vegas in early 2025 and is currently serving a 39-month sentence for weapons smuggling.
The court’s press release did not name the companies involved, but with a high degree of certainty it refers to arms distributor Bignami S.p.A., where Gruber serves as commercial director. (This was also reported by the Washington Tariff & Trade Letter.)
According to court documents, Gruber used a front company in Italy, identified as Italian Company No. 2, to buy ammunition from a manufacturer in Nebraska. The most prominent ammunition maker in Nebraska is Hornady Manufacturing, whose Italian distributor is Bignami.
U.S. investigators found information about the Russian recipient of the ammunition on the phone of Zharnovnikov, who had saved a contract with a Russian company on his device.
Politico Europe reported in 2023 that Hornady ammunition was being smuggled into Russia. In 2024, The Insider, together with investigators from Italy’s IRPI Media, Czechia’s Investigace, and Kazakhstan’s Vlast.kz, identified several additional Russian recipients of the same cartridges. From 2022 to 2024, Hornady ammunition was received by the Russian companies including Arsenal, Artemida, Ve-Kasa, Promtekhnologiya, and Tetis.
On the battlefield, the ammunition was used by snipers from Russia’s Wagner Group, the Espanola brigade, and the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade. The use of American ammunition by Russian troops was shown on Channel One, Russia’s leading state propaganda network: on Dec. 9, 2024, the documentary Snipers. Between Heartbeats featured servicemen from the 155th Brigade using American Desert Tech rifles and Hornady ammunition, recognizable by its distinctive black-and-red branded packaging.
The U.S. court’s press release describes another episode in which a different Italian company controlled by Gruber purchased a batch of ammunition from a U.S. manufacturer headquartered in Tennessee, then sent it to Kyrgyzstan. This likely refers to Barrett Firearms Manufacturing of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as ammunition produced by the company was received by the Moscow-based weapons importer Varyag.
In 2016, users on the GunsRu forum recommended the Italian company Bignami as a distributor through which a German Merkel carbine could be ordered for delivery to Russia. Before the full-scale invasion began, Bignami directly exported products to Kolchuga (lit. “Chain Mail”), a company owned by Russian arms baron Mikhail Khubutia.
The intermediary in Kyrgyzstan
American law enforcement was able to trace Gruber thanks at least in part to the arrest of his Kyrgyz accomplice, Zharnovnikov, who traveled to the U.S. industry trade event Shot Show in early 2025. On Zharnovnikov’s phone, investigators found correspondence with Gruber in which the latter discussed means of avoiding the attention of regulators while smuggling American ammunition to Russia. For example, a batch of 100,000 cartridges was to be split into smaller orders that an Italian company would send to a client in Armenia.
Zharnovnikov himself was sentenced in January 2026 to 39 months in prison. Among the proven violations of export control law was the smuggling of semi-automatic carbines made by an American company in Chesapeake, Virginia, worth $900,000. Analysis by The Insider showed that these were American-made Kriss Vector carbines. Their customs clearance in Kyrgyzstan was handled by Azhy Mamat Company LLC, which is owned by Zharnovnikov. The weapons were received in Russia by Orel LLC, part of Mikhail Khubutia’s group of companies. Later, Orel employees even posted promotional photos of the American carbines on social media.
Until 2022, Khubutia’s largest official foreign partner was the Beretta holding group. Unofficially, Beretta remains Khubutia’s partner via the firm Russkiy Orel LLC (lit. “Russian Eagle”), as the Italian company Beretta Industrie S.P.A. still owns a 57.95% stake in that arms importer.
In June 2024, after the investigation by The Insider and its partners was published, Washington imposed sanctions on Beretta’s Russian subsidiary, and the Italian intermediary who worked with Khubutia’s companies is now behind bars in the United States. However, despite the actions of U.S. authorities, their Italian and European counterparts have not publicly announced an investigation into the matter.
