Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and known by the call sign “Magyar,” is a former businessman and grain trader who volunteered for the front at the start of the war. He was among the first in the Ukrainian military to deploy drones for reconnaissance and strike operations, and was eventually appointed to lead the new branch of the armed forces. In a recent interview with the BBC, Magyar said that the territory of Russia up to 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers deep is no longer a safe rear. Here is what is known about Robert Brovdi.
Robert Brovdi is an ethnic Hungarian from Uzhhorod in western Ukraine whose call sign “Magyar” directly indicates his origins. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Brovdi was a businessman whose name, Ukrainian Forbes said, was well known in business circles. Since the 1990s he had worked across trade, real estate, and the state agricultural sector; companies linked to him ranked among Ukraine’s five largest grain exporters.
Brovdi headed Khleb Investstroy for a time, a company described as one of the most scandal-ridden firms of the Viktor Yanukovych presidency. He also served as a top manager of the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine during its active cooperation with China.
Under Brovdi, the corporation received $1.5 billion in Chinese credit backed by a state guarantee but failed to fulfill its grain delivery obligations in full. The corporation’s financial insolvency left the state responsible for repaying the loan, a burden the government assumed. The investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info reported that the grain was sold to Syria, Ethiopia, Iran, Singapore, and Hong Kong, in part through a Swiss company called GrainTradingGroup linked to an acquaintance of Brovdi’s.
Brovdi described his time at the corporation as a “short and interesting experience” that damaged his reputation. “I caught a bit of unwanted entanglement there,” he told Forbes. No formal charges were ever brought against him in connection with the matter.
Last year, blogger Volodymyr Boyko accused Brovdi of stealing the $1.5 billion in Chinese credit. Magyar responded by saying he had never touched “the Chinese money [from that loan],” dismissed the accusation as “absurdity,” and urged Ukrainians not to “consume Goebbels propaganda.”
Brovdi also developed several real estate projects in his native Uzhhorod; some of his initiatives in Zakarpattia were frozen when the full-scale war began. From 2010 to 2015 he served as a deputy in the Zakarpattia Regional Council and led the local branch of Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s centrist-liberal party Front Zmin.
Beyond business, Brovdi pursued philanthropy and cultural initiatives and collected works of art. His foundation, BrovdiArt, supported Ukrainian artists and organized exhibitions of their work abroad.
BBC journalists who spoke with Brovdi reported that he now works from a secret underground bunker equipped with state-of-the-art technology. The bunker’s walls are covered entirely with screens displaying live battlefield footage fed by drone pilots, whose feeds Brovdi’s subordinates use to verify and count enemy losses. The command post is also filled with rocket casings and captured Russian drones, alongside paintings and sculptures by Ukrainian artists, the BBC said.
Brovdi enlisted as a volunteer in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense a few weeks before the full-scale Russian invasion. “We all knew war was inevitable,” he told the BBC. In the earliest days of the war, his unit helped evacuate civilians from Irpin, Bucha, and Borodyanka.
Magyar said he first grasped drones’ potential after coming under Russian fire near Kherson. He organized aerial reconnaissance of the front and in May 2022 created his own aerial reconnaissance unit, which became known as Magyar’s Birds — “Ptakhy Madyara” — specializing in reconnaissance, fire adjustment, strike operations, and assault support.
Over the course of the war, Magyar’s Birds grew from a small group of servicemen into a separate battalion under Brovdi’s command, fighting on key sections of the front in the Kyiv, Kherson, Donetsk, and Kharkiv regions, including the battles for Soledar, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Staromaiorske, and Krynky.
In early 2024, the unit was formally established as the 414th Separate Battalion of Strike Unmanned Aviation Systems of the Marine Corps of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with Brovdi as its commander. In May 2025, Volodymyr Zelensky awarded Magyar the title of Hero of Ukraine; a month later he appointed him commander of the Drone Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Brovdi is considered one of the most media-prominent commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. His Telegram channel, where Magyar regularly posts videos of Russian soldiers being killed by Ukrainian drones and maintains a running count of enemy losses, has more than 530,000 subscribers.
The Drone Forces, Brovdi said, make up only 2 percent of the Ukrainian army but “destroy around a third of all targets.” He estimated his branch’s own losses at less than 1 percent per year.
In an interview with the BBC, he said Ukrainian drone operators have a direct order to kill more Russian servicemen than the Kremlin can recruit into its army — that is, more than 30,000 per month.
“The Drone Forces are supposed to ensure that about 30 percent of everything they hit is enemy personnel,” Brovdi said. “Today the unit is fulfilling that target at 34 percent — against the benchmark of 30 percent. In practice, 34 percent of all targets are targets associated with enemy personnel.” He said these targets had been met for the fourth month in a row.
Brovdi regularly reports on strikes by “the Ukrainian bird” — his term for drones — against targets inside Russia, including oil refineries and the infrastructure of the Druzhba pipeline. In late April, Ukrainian drones carried out a series of strikes on the Urals; Ukraine’s Security Service said it had organized drone strikes on oil infrastructure in Perm. Brovdi claimed his units were responsible for “reconnaissance in force” in Chelyabinsk and also wrote on his channel about Ukrainian strikes on Tuapse.
Against the backdrop of Ukrainian strikes on the Druzhba pipeline and the suspension of Russian oil supplies to Hungary, Budapest banned Magyar from entering the country. Brovdi responded by telling Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to “shove the sanctions up his ass.”
In Russia, Magyar was sentenced in absentia to life in prison. In March 2026, a court found him guilty of organizing a terrorist attack that killed Channel One correspondent Anna Prokofyeva. In total, Russian authorities have charged Brovdi with 46 counts of crimes, including “terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of civilians and significant property damage.”
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