KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine needs every advantage it can get to repel Russia from its territory. One emerging bright spot is the small but rapidly growing defense industry, which the government is pumping money into in the hopes that the proliferation of homegrown weapons and ammunition will help turn the tide. is injected in large quantities.
The effort has ramped up sharply over the past year as the United States and Europe strain to provide weapons and other aid to Ukraine, which has become a much larger country backed by a thriving domestic defense industry. facing the military.
The Ukrainian government budgeted nearly $1.4 billion for the purchase and development of its own weapons in 2024, 20 times more than before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
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Another major change is that most weapons are now purchased from privately owned factories. They are sprouting up across the country and rapidly taking over industries that were once dominated by state-owned companies.
A civilian mortar factory launched last year in western Ukraine produces about 20,000 shells a month. “We feel that we are bringing the country closer to victory,” said factory owner Anatoli Kuzmin, 64. He used to manufacture agricultural equipment but was evacuated from his home in southern Ukraine after Russia invaded in 2022.
But like many aspects of Ukraine’s war machine, Ukraine’s defense sector is constrained by a lack of funding and personnel, and what executives and generals say is too much government red tape. A stronger private sector could eradicate inefficiencies and allow factories to churn out weapons and ammunition more quickly.
The stakes are no more.
Russia controls nearly a quarter of Ukraine and is gaining momentum along a 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front, threatening to deploy large numbers of troops for even the slightest advance. The Ukrainian military is regularly outnumbered and outgunned, contributing to low morale.
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“We don’t need mortars in three years, we need them now. If possible, we need them yesterday,” said Kam, who has raised more than $260 million in the past decade to equip the Ukrainian army with the machines. – Taras Chumut, director of the Back Alive Foundation, said: guns, armored vehicles, etc.
Kuzmin, a mortar factory owner, fled the southern city of Melitopol in 2022 after Russia invaded and took over his factory, which mainly made spare parts for agricultural equipment. He began developing a prototype mortar shell shortly after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine in 2014.
Kuzmin took over a vast warehouse in western Ukraine last winter. His long-term goals include increasing production of artillery shells to 100,000 rounds per month and developing engines and explosives for drones.
He is just one of many entrepreneurs who transformed Ukraine’s arms industry, which had been dominated by state-owned companies since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Currently, about 80 percent of the defense industry is in private hands, a mirror image of the situation a year ago and a stark contrast to Russia’s state-run defense industry.
Each newly made projectile is wrapped in kraft paper, carefully packed into wooden boxes and transported to Romania or Bulgaria, where it is loaded with explosives. After a few weeks, they are sent back and sent to the front.
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“Our dream is to set up an explosives factory,” said Kuzmin, who is looking for partners to make it a reality.
Ukraine’s surge in military spending comes as $60 billion in U.S. aid is withheld by Congress and European countries struggle to supply enough ammunition.
Trevor Taylor, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, said the transformation of Ukraine’s defense sector is remarkable, but without significant support from the West, the country has no chance of defeating Russia. He said no.
“Ukraine does not have the capacity to produce all the munitions needed for this fight,” Taylor said. “The $60 billion backlog in American aid is proving to be a real and significant obstacle.”
Russia is also pumping more money into its defense industry, whose growth is helping cushion the economy from the full blow of Western sanctions. The country’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently boasted that production of tanks, drones and ammunition has increased significantly.
“The whole country is standing up and working towards our victory.”
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Ukraine’s Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin said that compared to last year, Ukraine’s production of mortar shells has increased about 40 times, and production of artillery ammunition almost tripled. Drone startups are also booming, with the government pouring about $1 billion into the technology on top of its defense budget.
“What used to take a year to produce, we now produce in a month,” said Vladislav Verbas, head of the Ukrainian Armor company, which manufactures various military vehicles.
For the Ukrainian Army’s 28th Brigade, which is fighting near Bakhmut, delays in foreign arms supplies have not yet caused problems for the troops, but “we can cover what we need with domestic production,” Artem said. Major Horodokevich said.
Still, domestic weapons factories face challenges ranging from meeting the changing needs of battlefield commanders to their own vulnerability to long-range Russian missile attacks.
But perhaps the biggest immediate hurdle is the lack of labor.
Yaroslav Zhela, who manages one of Ukraine Armor’s factories, said the company is having trouble recruiting and retaining qualified workers, especially since many of them have been mobilized for fighting.
Arms companies say another obstacle to growth is bureaucracy.
Since the war began, the government has sought to improve efficiency, including making the process of awarding contracts more transparent. But officials say the country has a long way to go.
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Shortly before he was replaced by President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief Valery Zarzhiny highlighted the issue in an essay he wrote for CNN, stating that Ukraine’s defense sector remains “hobbled down by too much regulation and a lack of competition.” ”.
Despite the challenges, one success story is Ukraine’s drone industry. Ukrainian-made maritime drones have proven to be an effective weapon against the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
There are currently about 200 companies in Ukraine focused on drones, and production is rapidly increasing, with deliveries in December rising 50 times compared to a year ago, according to Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s minister for digital transformation. It is said that it has been reached.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is not a conflict over who has better drones or missiles, said Serhiy Pashinsky, head of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industry Associations.
“The war with Russia is being waged with only two resources: manpower and money,” he said. “And if he learns how to use these two basic resources, we can win. If he doesn’t, we’re going to have big problems.”
