Aurus Arsenal History

The Arsenal grew out of the Unified Modular Platform programme that NAMI began in 2013 for vehicles used to transport and accompany protected state officials. NAMI says the platform underpins the Aurus vehicle family and that the first platform vehicle appeared at Russia's presidential inauguration on May 7, 2018. The Arsenal minivan was photographed in Moscow later in 2018 and joined the Senat limousine and, subsequently, the Komendant SUV as the family’s high-roof support vehicle.

Aurus now describes the Arsenal as a luxury, high-technology mobile office. At the 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the manufacturer displayed a VIP-cabinet version with two primary passenger seats and two additional deployable seats arranged face-to-face. Aurus specified a 598 hp V8 internal-combustion engine and all-wheel drive for that vehicle. The company did not publish a complete specification sheet for that display vehicle; the dimensions and weights below come instead from the 2021 type approval and are explicitly scoped to its armored EMP-4125 version.

This is not a conventional showroom minivan. In an official interview, Aurus management said the company had no plan at that time to sell the Arsenal to commercial customers, even while acknowledging interest from the Middle East. The later public display of the VIP-cabinet version shows that development continued, but it does not by itself establish unrestricted retail availability. The most accurate description is therefore a low-volume special-purpose Aurus used for official-fleet and VIP transport roles, rather than a mass-produced civilian model.