Ajax Systems

Ajax Systems was founded in Kyiv by Aleksandr Konotopsky and grew through the second half of the 2010s into one of Europe’s larger wireless security manufacturers. The company designs and sells a connected alarm ecosystem aimed primarily at homes and small commercial sites, with Konotopsky still running the business from the Ukrainian capital.

The product line is built around a central Hub controller that communicates with battery-powered peripherals over the company’s proprietary Jeweller radio protocol. The catalogue includes motion detectors (MotionProtect), door and window contacts (DoorProtect), glass-break sensors, outdoor PIR units, smoke and gas detectors (FireProtect), water-leak sensors, sirens, key fobs, and a range of indoor and outdoor cameras. Installers and end users manage the hardware through a phone application, and monitoring stations integrate the platform alongside legacy panels from Honeywell, Bosch, and DSC.

Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 turned Ajax into a wartime supplier almost overnight. The same motion and tamper sensors that secure shops and apartments were repurposed by Ukrainian units for battlefield perimeter detection — flagging movement at observation posts, around equipment depots, and along the approaches to forward positions. Reporting from inside Ukraine has described Ajax kits installed in trenches and on the boundaries of dispersal sites, feeding alerts to soldiers’ phones in much the same way they would notify a homeowner of a back-door breach. The company has also donated hardware to territorial defence units and helped relocate civilian customers’ systems away from contested areas.

By the time of the invasion, Ajax was already one of Ukraine’s most visible product companies, with distribution across most of Europe and growing presence in the Middle East, Latin America, and parts of Asia. The firm runs offices and warehouses in several European hubs alongside its Kyiv engineering core. To insulate manufacturing from Russian missile strikes, Ajax moved part of its production capacity out of Ukraine after 2022, most notably to Turkey, while keeping its design and R&D base in Kyiv.

Konotopsky has been an unusually public chief executive for the sector, giving interviews on the war, on the Ukrainian technology industry’s resilience, and on the company’s product roadmap. Ajax has avoided positioning itself as a defence contractor — its consumer and commercial security business remains the main revenue stream — but its presence on the front line has placed the brand in a category it did not originally design for: an off-the-shelf, low-cost sensor network that volunteer engineers and regular units can deploy without the procurement timelines of a traditional military system. That dual life, between European retail catalogues and Ukrainian trench lines, is now part of the company’s identity.