A New York networking company sold radios that let signals travel 100 kilometers. Ukrainian civilians say Russian drone crews used them to hunt people in Kherson, and they are asking a Manhattan jury to hold the company responsible.
Ukrainian civilians and relatives of people killed by Russian drones sued Ubiquiti Inc. in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 11 August, alleging the company's wireless equipment became the backbone of the command network behind Russia's "human safari" against civilians.
The case rests on a comparison that the plaintiffs draw themselves. In February 2026, Starlink terminals that Russian forces had mounted on reconnaissance and strike drones were shut off after Ukraine and SpaceX built a whitelist of authorized terminals. Ubiquiti, the complaint alleges, had the same technical and contractual power over its own devices and did not use it.
That precedent cuts both ways. SpaceX had denied for years that Russian forces were using Starlink systematically, and the whitelist came together only after Ukraine's newly appointed defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, approached the company directly. The fix was technically possible—and it took a government to force it.
What the lawsuit claims
The law firm DiCello Levitt LLP filed the case, Kovalenko et al. v. Ubiquiti, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-06838. The plaintiffs are Ukrainian civilians who were maimed, displaced, or forced to live under drone surveillance, along with family members of civilians killed in drone attacks. They are seeking a jury trial.
Ubiquiti, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as UI, makes long-range wireless "bridges" widely used for internet access in areas without cable. Its radio bridge antennas and airMAX technology are subject to US export restrictions on Russia. The complaint alleges the devices kept reaching Russian forces through intermediary supply chains, and that they now link reconnaissance units, drone operators, attack units, and commanders across roughly 100 kilometers of encrypted battlefield network.
"Battlefield communications are the central nervous system of the Russian occupation forces: without them, they could not coordinate the human safari or maintain the occupation," Scott Gilmore, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs and a partner at DiCello Levitt, said in an interview with Euromaidan Press.
The complaint cites US export-control restrictions, Russian import data, public reporting, Russian military statements, battlefield images and video, and Ubiquiti's own device telemetry. It alleges the company held location data showing where its devices were operating, including inside Russia and occupied Ukrainian territory, and that it was repeatedly warned its products were being smuggled across the border.
It further alleges Ubiquiti continued issuing firmware updates and technical support that kept those devices running, and that it could have cut the pipeline off—by geofencing, by terminating distributors tied to sanctions-evasion routes, or by building a remote-disable feature into its firmware.
This case is not about standard warfare: it's about murdering civilians.
Scott Gilmore, lead attorney for the plaintiffs
"Companies cannot willfully blind themselves when sanctions and export controls are being breached, and their devices are being foreseeably used in dangerous ways," Gilmore said. "US law is clear that companies bear legal responsibility when they entrust dangerous devices to end users who they know or should know are hurting people. This case is not about standard warfare: it's about murdering civilians."
The plaintiffs bring eight causes of action, including negligent entrustment, public nuisance, strict products liability for design defect, negligent product design, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and aiding and abetting assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
How the radios got to the front
The lawsuit follows an investigation published in January 2026 by Hunterbrook Media, which documented widespread use of Ubiquiti products by Russian forces. One Ukrainian communications officer told the outlet that an estimated 80% of the Russian bridges he had observed near the front line were Ubiquiti devices.
Analysis of trade records found the value of Ubiquiti shipments crossing into Russia rose by 66% after the full-scale invasion, despite US and EU export controls, and that the shipments included models released after the bans took effect. The goods moved mainly through distributors in third countries such as Kazakhstan and Türkiye. Russian units often received the bridges from volunteers who bought them with crowdfunded money.
Ubiquiti has been here before. In 2014, the company paid a $504,225 settlement to the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control after its products were delivered to Iran in violation of US sanctions between 2008 and 2011.
The campaign at the center of the case
Russia's "human safari" is a campaign in which small drones hunt and attack civilians, concentrated in Kherson and other front-line areas. Operators use drone cameras to track people, vehicles, and rescuers, and sometimes strike the same target twice.
UN investigators concluded in September 2025 that Russian short-range drone attacks on civilians along the west bank of the Dnipro River amount to the crimes against humanity of murder and forcible transfer of population. The finding covers more than 300 kilometers across Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts. The complaint cites it as evidence.
Ukraine's Security Service has since charged 10 operators from Russia's 404th Motorized Rifle Regiment with war crimes in absentia, in a case that included explosives dropped on ambulances at a city hospital and a double strike on rescuers.
The incidents in the complaint include a married couple attacked in their car, a firefighter hunted and wounded by a drone while responding to a colleague, and an energy worker killed in a double-tap strike as colleagues tried to reach him.
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"The human safari is one of the most horrific crimes against humanity of the 21st Century," Gilmore said. "We intend to present evidence of the widespread and systematic nature of this campaign in court, including international documentation. These coordinated attacks do not happen randomly: they require communications systems and a chain of command. That is precisely why the United States banned the export of Ubiquiti's radio bridge antennas to Russia—because they are necessary for Russia's war machine."
The human safari is one of the most horrific crimes against humanity of the 21st Century.
Scott Gilmore, lead attorney for the plaintiffs
Russian state media has shown the equipment in use.
Zvezda, the television channel run by Russia's Defense Ministry, aired footage on 3 July 2025 of a Ubiquiti UISP Litebeam 5AC device; a TASS report in October 2025 showed a serviceman logging into Ubiquiti's airOS operating system, and a Rossiya-1 segment that month showed one climbing a tower to mount an antenna carrying the company's logo.
A Russian seller supplied Hunterbrook with letters she said came from Russian military units, thanking her for wireless bridges they described as necessary for connections over long distances.
Ubiquiti has said nothing
Ubiquiti did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Neither the company nor its chief executive, Robert Pera, has publicly commented on the January investigation, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. No US or EU authority has announced an enforcement action against Ubiquiti over Russia, and the company has not been formally accused of sanctions violations tied to Ukraine. The allegations in the complaint are untested, and Ubiquiti has not yet filed a response.
Inside Human Safari: the film that captures Russia’s drones hunting Ukrainians like prey
What the case would establish
If it survives, the suit would test whether ordinary US product-liability law reaches a manufacturer whose equipment ends up in a documented atrocity—a theory that does not require proving the company intended any of it, only that it knew or should have known and failed to act.
"The question is this: what would a reasonable company do if it learned its devices were being used to coordinate murder?" Gilmore said. "If it fails to follow reasonable safety measures, shouldn't it be held liable to the civilians who get hurt? Those are the questions we intend to put before a New York jury."
Gilmore, who has investigated war crimes for two decades, said the legal framework needed already exists at national and international levels, and that in mass-atrocity cases from Syria to Sudan, investigations, jurisdiction, and remedies take years. He said he expects accountability for Ukrainian victims to come through criminal prosecutions, civil litigation, and regulatory enforcement together.
"Our clients want to shine a light on the atrocities being committed against civilians in Ukraine and to remind companies that compliance with sanctions and export controls is not a mere technicality: it's a matter of life or death," he said.
"We are at the tip of the spear."
Editor's note: Euromaidan Press correspondent Zarina Zabrisky, who conducted this interview and reports from Kherson, co-developed draft US legislation on the drone campaign—the Liability for Operators and Responsible Authorities (LORA) Act—which would impose targeted sanctions on identified drone operators, restrict exports of drone components, and require public attribution of perpetrators. She has no connection to this lawsuit or to the firm that filed it. Her documentary Kherson: Human Safari is available free at khersonhumansafari.com.
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