The government has been urged to re-examine a British company’s contract to export hi-tech machinery to Armenia, after the Guardian uncovered links to the supply chain for Russia’s war machine.
Sanctions experts and the chair of the House of Commons business committee questioned the government’s decision to award an export licence to Cygnet Texkimp.
The engineering company makes machines that produce carbon fibre “prepreg”, a lightweight and durable material that can be used in a wide range of civil and military applications.
The machines are understood to be undergoing final assembly at the company’s warehouse in Northwich, Cheshire, and could be just weeks away from being exported to a newly formed company in Armenia called Rydena LLC.
Rydena was established two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by former executives of a company that has emerged as one of the Kremlin’s important military suppliers.
Cygnet said it “undertook detailed end-user checks required by export controls and received full export approval” from the government, while Rydena insisted it does no business with Russian clients.
Experts said the contract raises concerns about the robustness of UK export controls designed to prevent British companies unwittingly taking part in the destruction of Ukraine.
‘Indispensable’ for weaponry
In February 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the US Treasury imposed “one of its most significant sanctions actions to date”, targeting 83 entities and 22 individuals.
Among them was Umatex, a low-profile but vital division of Russia’s vast state-owned nuclear energy company, Rosatom. The UK would go on to impose sanctions on Umatex in May of the same year.
Umatex was singled out because it was by far Russia’s largest producer of carbon fibre, material described by the US Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as “critical” for the Kremlin war machine.
Carbon fibre, OFAC said, was “used in almost all defence-related platforms including aircraft, ground combat vehicles, ballistic missiles, and military personal protection gear, as well as other weapons systems”.
Olena Yurchenko, the director for analysis, investigations and research at the Economic Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU), confirmed the importance of Umatex’s output to the Russian war effort.
The material, she said, was “indispensable” in reducing the weight and increasing the heat resistance of weaponry, including the drones that have become a pivotal technological battleground in the war.
“Umatex serves as the material base for a significant portion of Russian military programmes,” she said.
Being a big player in the Kremlin war machine can be hazardous. The chief executive of Umatex, Alexander Tyunin, was found dead last year, continuing a spate of unexpected deaths affecting the Russian business community since the outbreak of war. Russian authorities said the death appeared to be a suicide.
For most of Tyunin’s tenure at Umatex, which began in 2016, he had enjoyed the support of a second-in-command, Dmitry Kogan.
Kogan remained by Tyunin’s side for the first year of Russia’s incursion into Ukrainian territory, according to his LinkedIn profile, leaving in January 2023. A year later, he set up a new business in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city. That company was Rydena.
Sandwiched between Turkey, Iran and Russia, Armenia is among several nations named in a government report as a hub used by Moscow to procure “critical” military equipment indirectly, in defiance of western sanctions.
Kogan isn’t the only senior ex-Umatex executive involved in the Armenian company.
The company’s former director of business development, Alexander Shleynikov, took the role of chief finance officer.
They were joined, in May of the following year, by Aleksandr Ilichev, an award-winning aerospace composites scientist who had been head of the testing laboratory at Umatex.
Rydena’s website focuses on sectors including aerospace, unmanned aerial vehicles and the automotive sector, even hinting at ventures beyond Earth.
“If you want to go to Mars, we know how to make your spaceship lighter,” the company says on its website.
Rydena said the machinery was intended for “civilian industrial production”, adding that it did not make equipment for military purposes and did not do business with companies in Russia or any other jurisdiction under sanctions.
Corporate filings indicate that its leaders maintain ongoing ties with Russia.
Kogan and Shleynikov are also directors of a company based in Cyprus, Rydena Holding Ltd. Both men gave Moscow addresses when filing documents with the Cypriot corporate register in August this year.
Yurchenko said the duo’s past work for Umatex raised serious concerns. “Anyone who worked there, particularly in a senior role, was a player in the Russian war machine,” she said.
“Sanctions restrictions and isolation from western technologies only reinforce Umatex’s need for complex equipment import schemes – both to maintain existing capacities and to expand production to meet the growing needs of the military-industrial complex,” she said.
“Anyone exporting machinery to their new company, or approving that export licence, should be 100% sure that there is no connection any more.”
‘Clear diversion risk’
Information about Rydena’s leadership team and their past work for Umatex was in the public domain at the time Cygnet accepted the contract, understood to be worth more than £4m, in February 2025. It received a licence to export its machinery later that year.
But Cygnet and the UK government refused to answer questions from the Guardian about whether they knew of the Umatex link.
Cygnet said it was notified by the government that officials had “no specific concerns” about the contract, adding that it “undertook detailed end-user checks required by export controls and received full export approval”.
Its lawyers said: “Rydena signed a certificate of undertaking that the goods … would not be used for any purpose connected with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, or missiles capable of delivering such weapons.”
Sanctions expert Anna Bradshaw warned that an end-user undertaking such as this may be of little practical value in ensuring that the machines, or technical information about them, are not diverted to Russia.
“There is a clear diversion risk and if the response is that this is mitigated by an end-user statement then that’s very worrying.
“Everyone knows that an end-user undertaking is a limited remedy. If it’s breached, the ship has sailed.”
Cygnet is understood to have sent technical drawings to Rydena already, as part of the design and assembly process. It has also agreed to provide manuals translated into Russian, although this is understood to be a commonly used language in Armenian industry.
Export is expected by April or early May.
‘A bunch of red flags’
While out cycling in 2016, Cygnet’s owner, Matthew Kimpton-Smith, suffered a cardiac arrest.
According to a section of the company’s website, the devout Christian was “100% convinced that the Lord saved him for a reason”.
The following year, he gave £2,500 to the Conservative party via the office of his local MP, Esther McVey, Electoral Commission records show.
And, while not personally involved in the running of the business, Kimpton-Smith has presided over a period of success for Cygnet, founded by his parents in 1974.
The group racked up sales of £18.7m last year, according to filings at Companies House, working with high-profile clients including the sports car company McLaren. Unusually for a company of its size, Cygnet was mentioned in the advanced manufacturing component of the government’s industrial strategy, published last year.
Cygnet Texkimp, which accounts for the vast majority of group revenue, describes itself as an “export-led” business, supplying sectors including aerospace, industrial and defence.
There is no suggestion that Cygnet has not followed the UK’s export licensing rules. But the Umatex link raises questions about the challenges around policing the flow of goods and components into Russia and countries, such as Armenia, that might act as a staging post.
The application process for an export licence involves input from multiple government departments, including the security services.
However, a government spokesperson declined to comment on whether officials had investigated Rydena’s connection to Umatex.
Cygnet also declined to comment on whether it was aware of this.
“There are a bunch of red flags here and the government has to explain what it did to assure itself that this was all fine,” said Liam Byrne MP, who chairs the select committee that scrutinises the business department.
“We’re deeply concerned that the government’s enforcement posture is not in the right place.”
Byrne is expected to write to the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) to ask what it knew about Rydena’s connections to Umatex.
In a statement, Cygnet said it “engages proactively with the UK government on all matters of export control. In recent years we have met several times to discuss this subject with senior cabinet and shadow ministers, including those representing the DBT.”
The company said it “take[s] great care to adhere at all times with the UK government’s export rules.
“In the case of our contract with Rydena, as in all other cases, we undertook detailed end-user checks required by export controls and received full export approval. Rydena has provided an end user undertaking and certified its end use of our technology, which the UK government has approved.
“This confirms Rydena’s intended use of our technology in the automotive, marine, sports, civil aerospace and tooling sectors within the European market.
“Our considerable heritage is built on integrity in everything we do, and this includes our work with customers, partners, colleagues and governments.”
Rydena said the machines were “intended for use in civilian industrial production” and that it did not participate, directly or indirectly, in defence-related projects.
It said the company had no business links with Russian companies or government entities and that its executives have no ties to companies under sanctions and have not worked for organisations that were under sanctions at the time.
It added that the export of controlled products from Armenia, such as dual-use goods such as carbon fibre prepregs, requires a permit and end-use verification.
A spokesperson for the DBT said: “The UK operates one of the most robust export control regimes anywhere in the world, and all export licensing decisions are made in line with our strict criteria.
“We have also banned the export of thousands of products to Russia and together with our international partners have implemented the most severe package of sanctions ever imposed on a major economy.”
