Journalists of the publication “Vazhnie istorii”, known in Russia as a “foreign agent”, learned that Makhnev lived in Luhansk until at least 2014. After the occupation of the regional center, the family moved to Kiev.

What is known about Makhnev’s path

The publication revealed that Oleksandr Makhnev is the son of a scientist working in the field of nuclear instrumentation. Makhnev Jr. was engaged in science while still at school and even got into the book “Inventors of Ukraine – the State Elite.”

The future nuclear physicist graduated from the prestigious Lyceum of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute (KPI) named after Sikorsky in Kiev.

In 2015, he became a student at KPI, where he studied in the program “radio-electronic devices”, but entered the Russian Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) for a master’s degree.

Since then, the Luhansk native worked under the leadership of Fyodor Huber, an employee of the Nuclear Research Institute in Troitsk. Further:

• In 2022, the first paper was published in The European Physical Journal, of which Makhnev was one of the co-authors. He was part of the Russian team in the CERN Geneva experiment;
• There were also articles about the results of experiments conducted at CERN facilities, in which Makhnev was also a co-author.

How did Makhnev start making drones for the invaders?

Journalists learned that Makhnev joined the Stratim design bureau, which produces drones for the invaders, in the summer of 2022.

In August 2023, Stratim presented the first samples of its own production at the Dronnytsia-2023 exhibition: drones Shchegol, Krasava, Rusak and others. Oleksandr Makhnev appears in one of the videos – he organizes the company’s stand,
– he told reporters.

Moreover, it was learned that the founder of Stratim is Ivan Bezhanov. “The person who served as the chief designer at Stratim was one of the scientists who worked on the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN before the SVO (actually Russia’s war with Ukraine – 24 Channel).

According to the publication, Makhnev currently serves as an associate researcher at the Department of Experimental Physics in Troitsk.

When asked by journalists to describe the development of drones and work at CERN, he declined. Makhnev said it would “connect various aspects of life in a public way”, which he “tried to spread”.