Switzerland just let a sanctioned company keep Russia's Kalashnikov factory running

Switzerland just let its own arms embargo fail.

A Swiss company sold precision machine tools to Russia's Kalashnikov factory. Then it kept those machines running all through the war. It used false paperwork to get around sanctions put on Russia after Crimea was annexed in 2014.

That's the finding of a Kyiv Independent investigation, published a week ago. It's built on leaked internal documents from a company called Galika-Service.

So who is Galika-Service? It's the Russian arm of a Swiss firm, Galika AG.

And Switzerland's own Office of the Attorney General has already found that Galika AG broke Swiss export law. Back in 2025, it ruled the company lied about what its machines would be used for. That was in applications made in 2020 and 2021, to get permission to sell to Russia. Switzerland handed the company's Russian-born export manager a fine of 1,500 francs, over illegal shipments of high-precision machine tools into Russia's defence and arms industry. That criminal order also named machines made by two other companies, Fritz Studer and GF Machining Solutions.

Here's the new part.

An internal document seen by the Kyiv Independent details contracts worth nearly 3 million dollars. Signed between Galika-Service and 87 Russian companies. Active from 2024 right through to late 2025. That's the third and fourth years of the full invasion.

51 of those 87 clients belong to Russia's defence sector.

So this wasn't a one-off sale. This was years of ongoing servicing work, sold straight into Russia's weapons industry, while the war was already happening.

The single biggest client was the Kalashnikov Concern. That's the maker of Russia's standard-issue rifles, sniper rifles, attack and reconnaissance drones, guided missiles and ammunition. Weapons Russia has used throughout this war. Its contracts with Galika-Service were worth nearly 800,000 dollars. Second-biggest client was the Imperial Tula Arms Factory, with orders worth 500,000 dollars.

One machine named in the investigation is the Walter Helicheck Basic. It's a CNC measuring and inspection machine, built by Germany's Walter Maschinenbau GmbH. And it's used by the Kalashnikov Concern. Leaked documents show more than 50 Russian defence companies running Western high-precision machinery, made in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, to build weapons used against Ukraine.

So here's the gap in the whole sanctions system. Export bans stop the sale of new machines. They don't automatically stop someone flying out to fix or service a machine that was sold years before the war even started.

Allen Maggard, a senior analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, says quote "those machine tools are in Russia now". He told the Kyiv Independent that Russia imported a considerable amount of European machine tools between 2014 and 2022.

That's an analyst saying the West's own export controls came too late. And that keeping the machines running is where the real gap is now.

Now, the man behind all this. Lino Derungs, a Swiss national born in 1945, is the central figure behind Galika AG. And his time in Russia hasn't gone smoothly. He spent more than seven months in a Russian jail between 2022 and 2023, during a tax evasion investigation. He was detained again in December 2024, on fraud and money-laundering charges. A Swiss report from last year said he was under house arrest in Russia. There's been no clear update since.

The company itself is unwinding. Galika AG in Switzerland is being liquidated. Every Russian firm carrying the Galika name has started bankruptcy proceedings.

The Western manufacturers whose machines turned up in Russian arms factories say they're not to blame. Of the companies contacted by the Kyiv Independent, only Sweden's Hexagon AB responded. It said it hasn't sold, exported or helped sell its hardware or software to Russia since 2022. And it said the Hexagon-brand machines named in the investigation were sold between 2004 and 2012, long before today's sanctions existed.

Galika AG didn't respond to the Kyiv Independent's questions. Neither did the other Western manufacturers named.

America sanctioned four companies linked to Galika back in 2024. Switzerland has already fined one export manager and found Galika AG broke the law.

So what's still not known? Whether Galika AG itself will face criminal prosecution. Whether Swiss authorities will move against the rest of the network these leaked documents describe. And what Lino Derungs' legal situation in Russia actually is today.

Here's what is known. For years after Switzerland first restricted these exports, a Swiss-linked company kept Russia's biggest weapons makers supplied, and running.