LUkraine enters the third year of the conflict with a widening industrial disadvantage compared to Russia. Ammunition and cannons are lacking on the front, and dependence on Western military aid is only increasing. While the Russian invader announces an increase in its military spending by 70% and has already made its transition to a war economy, kyiv must produce a considerable quantitative and qualitative industrial effort to hope to withstand the shock.
The causes of the delay in the Ukrainian defense industry are multiple. For decades, the sector – massive in the Soviet era – was plagued by corruption and neglect, a mixture which created deep mistrust between industrialists, the army, the state and civil society. The brutal awakening of 2014, caused by the first phase of Russian aggression, with the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbass, did not provoke a profound reform of the sector. We had to wait for the massive invasion of February 2022 to truly wake up a military-industrial complex (MIC) that had shrunk to nothing.
A significant part of Ukrainian industry nevertheless survived the deluges of Russian missiles hitting the country in the first months of the conflict. Production tools moved to secret locations, sometimes underground, often far from the front line or under the protection of anti-aircraft defense. Everything that could be produced or assembled by light industry (drones, ammunition, bulletproof vests, etc.) was scattered in thousands of workshops across the vast territory one and a half times the size of France. When it became clear that military factories were able to operate despite the bombings, the attitude towards the defense industry changed: the Ukrainian state gradually considered placing large orders with the company public Ukroboronprom (UOP).
Insufficient cadences
In 2023, the state purchased Ukrainian weapons for around $1 billion (920 million euros), and the number of defense sector companies quadrupled, from 50 to 200. This year, the ministry Defense plans to spend a total of 265 billion hryvnias (6.36 billion euros) on the acquisition of weapons, which is 25% less than in 2023, and the majority of these funds will be used to purchase imported equipment.
The main beneficiary of state orders, UOP said it had increased its arms production by 92% over the past year, without giving further details. Among the flagship weapons produced by UOP are the Stugna anti-tank guided missile, the Neptune anti-ship missile system, the Vilkha multiple rocket launcher, the BTR-4 armored vehicle, and the T-64BV and T-84 “oplot” tanks.
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