UAE-made armored vehicles seen again in Russia

Armored vehicles built by Emirati manufacturer Streit Group have been spotted again in Russian service, this time with Gyurza, the special rapid response unit (SOBR) of Rosgvardia’s Main Directorate for the Moscow region, which was photographed operating a Cobra-LAMV 4×4. The light armored vehicle is built on a Toyota Land Cruiser chassis and marketed by Streit to police and internal security forces. It continues to turn up with Russia’s National Guard even though Ukraine, the European Union, Switzerland and Canada have all sanctioned the company over its vehicles reaching Russia.

Cobra vehicles first appeared in Russia in October 2024, when a Russian military blogger published video of a shipment of more than 20 Streit-built Spartan, Cobra and Cougar armored vehicles bound for Russian forces, as we were first to report. In September 2025, Rosgvardia units were filmed training with Spartan SUT vehicles, including one fitted with an 82 mm (3.2-inch) mortar in the rear compartment, we reported at the time. Every one of these deliveries reached Russia well after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine was the first to respond, listing Streit Group in 2023, and the European Union and Switzerland followed in October 2025 before adding founder Guerman Goutorov personally to their sanctions lists in May 2026. Canada sanctioned the company in August 2026 for supplying vehicles to Rosgvardia, a move Russia’s ambassador in Ottawa dismissed as having no practical effect, and the new Moscow-region sighting shows that the vehicles keep reaching Russian units regardless.

The Canadian measures carry particular weight because Streit started out as a Canadian business founded in Ontario in 1992 by Goutorov, a Russian-born businessman who served five years in the Soviet police before emigrating to Canada in the early 1990s. He later moved the company’s headquarters to the Ras Al Khaimah free trade zone in the United Arab Emirates, where Streit grew into one of the world’s largest armored vehicle makers with production sites on several continents. Goutorov’s Canadian citizenship shields him personally from Ottawa’s sanctions, and he has appealed his listing in the European Union.

Streit’s links to Russia go well beyond finished vehicles, since the company opened an armored vehicle plant east of Moscow and another in Tatarstan in 2009 and kept trading with Russian suppliers after both the 2014 and 2022 invasions. Customs records show that between 2015 and 2022 it imported 41 shipments of parts from Russian truckmaker Kamaz and 38 shipments of VPK-Ural vehicle kits, including six from the sanctioned Arzamas plant in the two weeks before Russian troops crossed into Ukraine. The company also worked with Russia’s Military-Industrial Company on armored vehicles that were later used by Wagner Group fighters in several conflict zones.

Russia is far from the only controversial destination for Streit vehicles, which have repeatedly surfaced in conflict zones under arms embargoes or in the hands of armed groups. In Yemen, Houthi military media released footage of armored vehicles captured from Saudi-backed forces. In Iran, a Toophan MRAP displayed at the Eghtedar 40 military exhibition in Tehran in 2019 was photographed and described as the same design as Streit’s Typhoon, although Iranian sources present the vehicle as a domestic development.

UN expert panels have accused Streit of breaking arms embargoes on Libya and Sudan and criticized the sale of hundreds of its vehicles into South Sudan, as we reported in 2016. Its vehicles have since been delivered to Khalifa Haftar’s forces in eastern Libya and seen with riot police in Belarus and with Guinea’s military junta. In 2015, Streit’s U.S. subsidiary paid a $3.5 million fine and Goutorov personally paid $250,000 over unlicensed exports of armored vehicles to Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria and other countries.

Streit has denied wrongdoing every time its vehicles have surfaced in such places, insisting that it follows UAE export law, ships its vehicles without weapons and bears no responsibility for how buyers modify or use them after sale. The company has never explained how its armored vehicles continue to reach Rosgvardia units more than four years into Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.