PROFILE: Viacheslav Klymov, the Nova Poshta boss who says his firm downs Russian drones

A post office that fires back

A post office.

Parcels everywhere.

Yellow trucks.

They have rolled along Ukrainian roads for years, between cities, villages and front lines.

They still roll.

And now, an air defense.

The Ukrainian company Nova Poshta, the country’s largest private delivery firm, shoots down Russian drones.

Shahed drones.

Over its own warehouses.

Viacheslav Klymov, its co-owner, said it plainly before a crowd of business leaders in Kyiv.

“We have Shahed shootdowns.”

A short sentence.

The kind of sentence nobody imagined hearing from a postman five years ago.

Times change.

A civilian company talking about interceptions in public says a lot about the state of Ukraine’s sky.

It sums up a war where even a parcel has to be protected from the sky.

The man behind the sentence

Klymov wears no uniform.

He carries a company.

With Volodymyr Poperechnyuk, he owns Nova Poshta, a giant founded long before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

A businessman.

Not a general.

He has never commanded a battery, but today he runs a company that houses some.

The paradox is complete.

He talks about firing.

About interceptions.

About territory.

The vocabulary has changed.

The man too, no doubt.

A room in Kyiv

October 2026, in Kyiv.

The 12th International Economic Forum.

Its title asks what comes next for people, business and the economy.

Business leaders.

Ministers and bankers.

That is where Klymov drops his line about the Shaheds, before a room that knows the strikes by heart.

Nobody laughs.

He adds that Nova Poshta is “one of the few companies that has implemented this project.”

One of the few.

Not the only one.

The ministry counts other groups involved, under the same legal framework.

An economy that defends itself

The forum talks future.

Klymov talks about the present.

The two meet on one point: no economy holds without protection from the sky.

The room knows it.

It lives with it.

Every business leader present has already counted the damage of a strike on a site, a warehouse or an office.

Each of them.

All of them, really.

The forum then becomes a meeting of survivors talking revenue between two alerts.

That is Ukraine.

It does business at war.

And it refuses to let the Kremlin decide its opening hours.

This profile follows a Ukrainian boss who had to learn war while delivering packages.

A boss who delivers.

A boss who fires.

Figures the size of a country

Nova Poshta is a matter of size.

More than 15,817 branches and more than 34,000 employees, according to Jimmy Rushton in The Kyiv Independent.

Thirty-four thousand people.

A small town.

UA.NEWS gives other figures, as of July 13, 2026: 54,700 service points, including 16,800 branches and 37,900 parcel lockers.

Two counts.

One reality.

The gap between the two counts probably comes down to dates and categories, and neither changes the order of magnitude.

Everywhere, a yellow box.

It has become a landmark.

Like a city hall.

When a city is struck, the yellow box is sometimes the only service still open in the neighborhood.

A company that wins

It is not just surviving.

It is growing.

In the first half of 2026, its net profit rose 24.3%, to 2.195 billion hryvnias.

Its revenue jumped 31.8%, to 39.127 billion hryvnias, UA.NEWS reports.

In full war.

Under the strikes.

Nova Poshta even exports its model under the name Nova Post, beyond Ukraine’s borders.

A success.

A target too.

A company that thrives under bombs proves the Ukrainian economy holds, and that message bothers Moscow.

The Kremlin hits what works in Ukraine, and this company works too well in its eyes.

June 15

June 15, 2026.

A missile.

The Kyiv Innovation Terminal is destroyed, Olena Hrazhdan writes in the Kyiv Post.

The biggest one.

About 30 million euros of investment, with machines from the Dutch equipment maker Vanderlande, according to the Kyiv Post.

24,000 square meters.

Up to 50,000 parcels an hour.

Three parcels scanned per second.

850 vehicles a day.

It was the company’s most advanced site, the first of its kind in Ukraine.

It beat fast.

Wiped out, at once.

Years of construction and training vanish in a few seconds, under a single Russian missile.

The boss’s words

Yevhen Tafiichuk runs the company.

He spoke that day.

“This terminal represented far more than a financial investment.”

Far more.

“Today, the enemy destroyed the terminal.”

No pathos.

A plain fact.

The terminal carried the promise of a modern, fast, connected Ukraine, able to deliver like any European country.

Moscow aimed at that promise.

Not just at walls.

It aimed at the idea that a country at war could still work like a normal country.

Moscow aims less at parcels than at a Ukraine that works.

A series of strikes

Kyiv was not the only one.

Kharkiv, January 13.

Four dead.

Two employees.

Two partner drivers.

On July 31, a post office is hit in Poltava, LB.ua recalls.

On August 5, a Kyiv sorting center is struck in turn, and three people die there.

A sorting center.

A civilian site.

Sumy, August 28

Late August, again.

In Sumy, four guided aerial bombs fall on a sorting terminal, LB.ua writes the same day.

Three trucks damaged.

In Sviatopetrivske, near Kyiv, a depot.

A drone, this time.

Parcels damaged.

The parcels will be reimbursed.

At their declared value.

The company loses buildings, machines and sometimes human lives, which nothing reimburses.

The list grows.

Every month brings its site hit, and every site hit forces rebuilding somewhere else, faster.

Again and again.

Four hundred million hryvnias

First, the shelters.

Since 2022, Nova Poshta has spent about 400 million hryvnias on security, according to the Kyiv Post.

About 580 shelters.

Five hundred eighty.

For employees.

All over the country.

Here, it is the norm.

A company that builds hundreds of shelters ends up looking like a local government.

It protects.

It shelters.

It almost heals.

Nova Poshta’s 580 shelters form a civil protection network nobody had planned before 2022.

The private firefighter

The role spills over again.

Employees put out fires before State Emergency Service firefighters arrive, Klymov says.

Before the firefighters.

When emergency crews are overwhelmed by a night of strikes, every minute gained saves a warehouse.

Or a life.

With their own means.

“Now big businesses are looking for fire engines in Europe in order to create their own services,” he explains.

Fire engines.

In Europe.

A war economy.

Nobody wanted it.

Everyone adapts to it.

The owner’s sentence

Klymov has a line.

It cracks like a whip.

“This is our property,” he says. “Who can forbid me from putting out a fire on my own territory?”

My territory.

My fire.

That sentence sounds like a claim to freedom, very Ukrainian, facing a state that cannot cover everything.

The logic is an owner’s logic, and it also applies to the sky above his warehouses.

If you can put out a fire at home, why not stop the drone that starts it?

The question is simple.

The answer less so.

The sky belongs to the state, and a warehouse cannot become a military base without rules.

The rules exist.

What the state allowed

The state answered.

With a resolution.

Cabinet of Ministers Resolution 1506, adopted on November 19, 2025, frames these private defenses, Interfax-Ukraine recalls.

A legal framework.

Under command.

Private groups operate under the authority of the Air Force, Euromaidan Press specifies.

They do not fire alone.

They fire in coordination.

That coordination avoids friendly fire and keeps every interception inside the national defense plan.

Klymov does not replace the army; he extends its arm over a warehouse the army cannot cover.

The ministry’s figure

An official figure exists.

More than 60 aerial targets destroyed by these private groups, Interfax-Ukraine reports on October 14.

Sixty, at least.

Nearly 100 companies involved.

About 50 groups.

“Groups from six companies are carrying out combat missions.”

Six companies.

The other groups are forming, training or waiting for their equipment, according to the same ministry count.

Nova Poshta says it already downs Shaheds.

The system is still young, since the resolution that authorizes it is less than a year old.

It grows fast.

These figures stay modest next to the hundreds of drones launched every night, but every target shot down protects someone.

The postman’s weapons

The tools are known.

Interceptor drones.

Heavy machine guns.

On automated turrets.

Companies buy them themselves, or the Air Force lends them, Interfax-Ukraine explains.

Purchase or loan.

That cost sharing lets the state extend its coverage without paying for every turret itself.

The state supplies.

The private sector operates.

A turret on a parcel warehouse. That is Ukraine in 2026.

No numbers

One thing is missing.

The numbers.

Klymov says Nova Poshta has shot down Shaheds, but he does not say how many, The Kyiv Independent notes.

No tally.

No details.

A single sentence, spoken at a forum, stands in for a tally for now.

The silence can be explained: publishing a number means informing the enemy about your capabilities.

It can also irritate.

A company that claims a victory without a number asks the public to take its word for it.

We half believe it.

The other half waits for a verifiable number, which only the Air Force could confirm publicly.

Mixing genres

Another caution.

Euromaidan Press publishes under “Industry Focus.”

Promotional content.

We read it as such.

Some of its facts match the other sources, but the tone remains that of a showcase.

A showcase.

The facts we take from it are attributed to Euromaidan Press, which cites Interfax and NV.

Not an investigation.

An honest profile has to say when a company talks about itself in a space it has chosen.

That is the case here.

The reader decides.

The essential facts also come from the ministry, the Interfax agency and the independent press.

They hold.

Another business voice

Not all of them follow.

Kateryna Zahorii, Darnytsia.

A pharmaceutical group.

On October 26, the board chair explains that her company studied private defense, then turned it down.

Turned down, clearly.

After study.

The refusal of a large pharmaceutical company carries weight, because it has as much to lose as Nova Poshta.

The threat moves too much.

Darnytsia prefers to bet on surveillance, shelters and procedures, Euromaidan Press reports.

No turret.

Shelters instead.

She fears an investment needing constant upgrades as the threat changes.

A defensible choice.

A refusal under fire

An uncomfortable refusal.

Struck in September.

Three times.

One month.

It would have every reason to want to fire back, and yet it chooses to protect itself another way.

Two strategies.

Two bosses.

The same sky.

The comparison says what matters: facing the same danger, serious companies reach opposite conclusions.

Neither is wrong.

Each protects its own.

What Moscow aims at

Late summer, a new threat.

Jet-powered drones.

Much faster.

Harder to stop.

Turrets and interceptor drones designed against slow Shaheds struggle more against these faster machines.

They target supermarkets, schools, shopping centers, telecoms and data centers, The Kyiv Independent lists.

Gas stations too.

Medical facilities.

Not bases.

An economy.

A society.

The Kremlin has widened its targets to everything that keeps a city running, from the supermarket to the server.

The business front

The list tells the strategy.

Moscow targets daily life.

Commerce, communications, health, fuel, everything that lets a country stay standing.

The front? The warehouses.

Through the checkout lines.

Through the servers.

Every data center hit cuts services that hospitals, banks and administrations depend on.

That is why bosses like Klymov try to defend their own patch of sky.

Not soldiers, bosses.

They defend jobs.

Thirty-four thousand, in his case.

An unprecedented delegation

Klymov looks further.

Companies can take on functions once reserved for the state, he says, quoted by UA.NEWS.

Once, yes.

The word signals a break.

The monopoly on force, a pillar of every modern state, is now shared under control, out of necessity.

A post office that fires, a drugmaker that digs shelters, a supermarket that watches the sky: the state shares.

It shares the sky.

It shares the risk.

This delegation has nothing ideological about it; it answers a shortage of interceptors the West is slow to fill.

The shortage is real.

Resolution 1506 sets the rules, but no law can set the fatigue of those who keep watch.

The question that stays open

One question remains.

How far, exactly?

A regulated private defense helps today, but it raises a lasting question about the monopoly on force.

Kyiv accepts it to survive.

The postwar period will have to decide.

Nobody in Kyiv wants armed companies without oversight once peace returns.

For now, the priority lies elsewhere: stopping the next Shahed before it hits a warehouse.

Or a school.

Or a shelter.

Klymov has chosen.

He chose to fire, under control, rather than wait for help that is slow to come.

Others will follow.

What this profile tells

A postman who fires.

A country that holds.

An enemy that targets everything.

Klymov is neither a movie hero nor a warlord; he is a boss who refuses to watch his warehouses burn.

He puts out fires.

He protects.

He fires.

He does it under command, within a framework set by the state, and that is what sets him apart from a militia.

Moscow wanted to paralyze the Ukrainian economy, and it is discovering an economy that arms itself to keep delivering.

The parcel arrives.

The next Shahed

Tonight, a drone takes off.

Maybe toward a warehouse.

Maybe toward a school.

Somewhere, a Nova Poshta turret will wait, under Air Force command.

It will fire.

Or not.

The parcel will leave tomorrow.

Thousands of employees will start their rounds again, as every morning since February 2022.

As always.

The parcel leaves tomorrow. The sky defends itself tonight.

Viacheslav Klymov, the Nova Poshta boss who says his firm downs Russian drones.

How many more companies will have to learn to fire before the West delivers enough interceptors to Ukraine?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

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I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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