Aeromax Replaces CEO After a Year: Dmitry Stulba Takes Over From Bessonov

Aeromax, a Russian maker of unmanned helicopters, has changed its CEO. Dmitry Stulba has led the company since 2 October 2026. He replaced Sergey Bessonov, who had run it since September 2025, about thirteen months. TAdviser published the news, citing open sources. The reasons for the rotation were not given.

What we know about the reshuffle

The report is sparse on facts, so it is worth listing them plainly:

• Company: Aeromax, a Russian maker of unmanned helicopters.
• Date of appointment: 2 October 2026.
• New CEO: Dmitry Stulba.
• Predecessor: Sergey Bessonov, who led the company from September 2025.
• Bessonov's tenure: about a year.
• Stulba's additional post: since 9 July 2026 he has been listed as CEO of JSC Ikar-Tech, whose main business is declared as the manufacture of other aircraft.

The available excerpt says nothing about Ikar-Tech's founders; the text cuts off at that point. No conclusions about its ownership structure can be drawn from it.

Holding two posts

The most interesting element here is not the rotation itself but the timeline. Stulba took over Ikar-Tech in July and received Aeromax in early October, about three months later. It looks like a gradual expansion of his responsibilities rather than a one-off move. One person now runs two companies in adjacent segments: unmanned helicopters and "other aircraft."

This arrangement is fairly common in small-scale aviation manufacturing. There are few producers, even fewer qualified executives, and production and engineering expertise often overlaps. But there is a risk. When a top manager splits attention between two companies, how fast decisions get made on contracts, certification and component purchasing depends on how the operations team beneath him is organized.

The thirteen-month tenure of the predecessor is also telling. For a company building a complex hardware product with a long development and testing cycle, that is a short stretch. A helicopter does not go from idea to serial production in a year. A change of leader on that horizon usually means a reordering of priorities, ranging from completing testing to a change in the funding structure or the customer. The publication does not indicate which of these applies to Aeromax.

What to watch next

For now this is a personnel story, but it has a practical side for anyone working in the unmanned systems market or planning to work with Aeromax.

First: check for updates in the EGRUL (Unified State Register of Legal Entities) and in company profiles. Changes to founders, share capital and related legal entities, including Ikar-Tech, usually show up there before they appear in the news.

Second: follow the company's public activity over the coming quarters. Announcements of tests, contracts and demonstrations will show whether strategy is shifting under the new leadership. If no notable events follow the CEO change, that is a signal too.

Third: suppliers and partners would do well to confirm whether existing agreements and points of contact still stand. After a CEO change, project owners inside a company often change.

Fourth: watch whether Aeromax and Ikar-Tech start joint projects or joint purchasing. That will quickly show whether Stulba's pairing works as a single production loop rather than a formal combination of titles.