The international activity has vibrated around Ukraine. Numerous international events are taking place, much attention is being paid to contacts between American and Ukrainian delegations, as well between American and Russian delegations, the “coalition of the willing” summit was held in Paris, but the main events are still unfolding on the Ukrainian battlefields. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is hard to persuade into ceasing fire, despite Trump’s statements and efforts. We knew and know that Moscow cannot be trusted, provocations have been taking place and will continue. We were prepared for this and we are seeing that not only provocations and violations of even very weak agreements that were allegedly reached in Saudi Arabia, but also false, deliberately distorted accusations against Ukraine are constantly coming out from the Kremlin.
What to do next? Obviously, we have no reason to hope that the enemy would finally stop bombarding us, would stop its advances on the Ukrainian territory. We all realize that our only hope is on the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And we need well-trained troops and weapons to be able to defend Ukraine and to attack. So this talk is about how to fight and with what to fight with. In order to understand where we are this year and what to expect, we invited Roman Kostenko, Verkhovna Rada member and secretary of the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Security Service of Ukraine Colonel.
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– One of the key agreements reached at the “coalition of the willing” Paris summit concerned the next re4gular meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (also known as the Ramstein Group) due on April 11. Ramstein is an alliance of 57 countries (all 32 member states of NATO and 25 other countries) and the European Union supporting the defense of Ukraine by sending military equipment in response to the 2022 Russian invasion. So, the first conclusion is that Ramstein is existing and working. Second, the United Kingdom will chair the meeting in April. What do we expect from Ramstein? Last year, Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov announced Ramstein 2.0 – an updated, improved version of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. What does this mean for you?
— This should indicate that the world is changing, and we know what Ramstein was like previously. Above all else, it was organized by the United States of America, our foremost ally at the time. Now it is difficult to call the United States the foremost ally, but it still continues to be our ally. And it is encouraging that even despite the fact that we have disagreements with the new administration, cooperation within the Ramstein format is being picked up by other countries who understand that we did everything right. After all, it is clear that none of the NATO countries alone would have been able to defeat Russia. As for the United States, that country has never faced such threats, has never fought on its own territory. Therefore, my hope is that, at Ramstein, decisions will be made on further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, which continue coming in from our partners.
I also believe that it would be appropriate to make a decision to provide us with funding to pay for these weapons procurements. And, of course, it is important to communicate with the United States, and even if they refuse to provide us with further defense equipment aid packages, it’s vital that they at least do not prohibit selling us the weapons and military equipment that are crucial for our fight against Russia. We have already talked about this many times, because we can replace everything else, but the United States has wide ranging, large stockpiles of weapons which are easier for them to transfer to us than for European countries. It would therefore be important to agree on supplies of air defense missiles, above all else the Patriots, particularly in modifications tailored against ballistic missiles.
I am pleased that it is Great Britain who will preside over the meeting, because it has always been the closest to the United States of America ideologically, and as an ally too. That being said, I am hopeful that the United States can make the decisions we need, given this unity. And it is important to show for Putin to see that, after all the pressure that was put on us by the United States, the coalition, contrary to Russia’s expectations, has not fallen apart. We remember the statements that Putin made, addressing the USA: no more aid to Ukraine. But I hope that the aid will continue coming in, and there will be a signal sent to Russia, a message that everyone has no intention of giving up. Therefore, this is a serious gathering, and it must be prepared seriously. So my hope is that our Ministry of Defense and the ministries of defense of major partner countries – the United Kingdom, France, Germany and other allies — will approach this with an understanding that the outcomes of this Ramstein Group meeting will be crucial for the success of our further fight against the Russian aggressor.
– Ramstein will mark its third anniversary in April. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group met for the first time in 2022. This was a milestone event, the very emergence of such a format came as a confirmation that our partners, United States of America in the first place, understood that not just Ukraine is able to repel the enemy, but also to prevail, and to achieve this we need weapons. In anticipation of Trump’s election as president, certain preparatory measures were taken to ensure the Ramstein Group remains in place and continues working. In particular, NATO was ready to take over this baton. But I do believe that the Ramstein Group will be working more effectively under the joint chairmanship of the United Kingdom and Germany, who have taken over this role from the United States.
However, the meeting is only a visible part of the work being done, because the major part of the work is done in preparation for the meeting, on the sidelines, in direct contacts between militaries, between the general staffs and the ministries of defense. And here it is critically important that the weapons of the types and classes you’ve mentioned, first of all air defense weapons, continue flowing in. That being said, however, no one can guarantee the deliveries would be continued in sufficient amounts, since Washington is moving somewhat chaotically, we have already seen even the suspension of military aid. That said, we need to plan more meticulously and invest much more effort in ensuring we get what we need. How do you see this work being done by the Ministry of Defense and the relevant parliamentary committee?
– First of all, we must understand, and the people, citizens must understand, all the countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world must understand that we all must arm ourselves. Not just must we arm ourselves and purchase weapons, but we must have in place domestic defense industrial capacities. And this is the only thing that will deter a potential aggressor from encroaching on your territory. We see that agreements, memoranda, alliances do not work. Major defense alliances have been created, but whether they will work or not is anyone’s guess, particularly given that NATO has never activated Article 5 precisely for a situation where a member comes under attack. We can look at the Russia-led “defense alliance” Collective Security Treaty Organization (ODKB), which does not work either. No one has volunteered to support Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine. Except for the Koreans – a country that was not a member of any of the alliances, but was engaged by Russia to circumvent in some way the pressure of sanctions.
Therefore, under these circumstances where alliances do not work, as we can see, your only security guardian is your domestic defense industry, your army – well trained and weaponized, and your ideologically united people — ready and prepared to contain the adversary. Basically, people’s readiness to resist is a deterrent factor in itself. Russia attacked because they hoped, someone misinformed them, that they would be met with flowers in Ukraine, that a small invading force would suffice. They did not have enough troops to invade. They had enough troops just to capture what they have captured, they underestimated us. But we have grown since the time we regained independence. A new generation has grown up, has been educated. And what we all need to understand against this background is that it is only our own defense industry and specific agreements with partners, updated to modern realities, clearly specifying what each of the parties should do, that can deter the enemy from further aggression.
– These are the lessons that are written in blood. And in 2014, we, unfortunately, missed this lesson because we did not respond in a way we should have responded. But since 2022, a big war has been raging on for the fourth year now. We all remember how it began, how in the first days of the invasion we, through our embassies in foreign countries, were searching for everything stored in warehouses. And indeed, everything made in the USSR that could be found across the world was sent to the frontline, to the battlefield. But this ran out quickly. If we compare the Ukrainian defense industry three years ago and as it is now, plus the development prospects, how do you see these changes? Have they already become irreversible? How much have we developed in our ability to provide our Armed Forces by ourselves? And what is awaiting us?
– I can tell a lot, but I’ll start with the numbers that I have in my head, they are approximate. In 2022, our defense-industrial sector executed UAH 70–80 billion worth of government defense procurement contracts, this was its capacity back then. This grew to UAH 200+ billion in 2023 and to approximately UAH 400 billion in 2024. Our defense industry has the capacity enough to execute UAH 1.5 trillion worth of defense procurement contracts a year. This is not because prices have hiked, but due to increased capacity of our defense industries. These include not only government-owned companies, but also a multiplicity of private sector industries that came to be during the war. Those UAH 70 billion worth of contracts were largely accounted for by government-run enterprises specializing in particular weapons products. Some were in demand, but others proved less useful on the battlefield. But these UAH 1.5 trillion is what our defense industry is capable of, these are our capabilities, even though some are outdated but still needed. We need to repair tanks, repair plants are also engaged, but there are also companies manufacturing missile weapons, there is a drone industry, which has made a huge leap forward in its development in our country recently.
But is this the industry that we should be proud of and consider flawless? Absolutely not. I am very grateful to those who are building it up. And, of course, when we were building it, we had to rely on assembly production. That is, we purchase primary commodities, purchase parts and assemblies somewhere, we assemble this all and can send it to the front quite quickly. But if we are talking about what kind of defense-industrial sector we need in order to deter and contain the enemy and be independent, we must understand that, even if we have the capacity to manufacture 100,000 rounds of ammunition a day, we do not have the capacity to produce explosives. And if they do not sell us explosives, we will not be able to produce anything. But the explosives will be provided by the same partners who tell us that they will not provide us with shells. Therefore, we have to manufacture explosives domestically. I just say this as an example to explain that the defense-industrial sector is comprised of several different subsectors. And the key subsector is special chemical products: explosives, gunpowder, which we are just starting to make. For this, I am very grateful to [current] Minister [of strategic industries Herman] Smetanin and to [his predecessor in this position Oleksandr] Kamyshyn. The industry has not reached self-sufficiency yet, but it is on fast track to autonomy. We used to have own explosives industry once, but have lost it. We had a major gunpowder factory located in Shostka, which had been operating since Cossack times, producing gunpowder for the Russian Empire at the time Ukraine was under occupation. Afterwards, when Ukraine regained freedom and independence, it turned out that we don’t know how to produce gunpowder in modern conditions. But the Cossacks did know.
We have to produce special chemical products by ourselves, because this is the foundation. We can make millions of drones, artillery systems, tanks. They will simply fly and drive. But it is special chemical products that eliminate the enemy, and this reality will not change – these are explosives and gunpowder. If we now turn back to the issue of explosives and talk about making the industry self-sufficient, then the range of chemical products needs to be expanded to include chemical elements that are not explosives proper, but are part of them, in particular, highly concentrated nitric acid, sulfuric acid. We do not have this. Do you know where it all went? The Russians, under Yanukovych’ presidency, did not destroy our ammunition assembly factories, but destroyed our chemical industry.
And when we now talk about the defense industry, what I want to see is a separate chemical industry sector, special chemistry sector, which will produce explosives from everything we have here in Ukraine. This is a separate sector to manufacture initiator explosives, a separate sector to manufacture different powders, different powders that exist and are needed. And then everything else should follow, high-tech products in the first place. Because we can build the Sapsan ten times, which will fly to 200, 300, 500 kilometers, but if there is nothing to charge it with, then there is no point in it flying anywhere. Therefore, we must understand that there are some founding milestones in the development of our defense-industrial sector, to which we must go and reach. Unfortunately, we are not moving fast enough, this is because there is not enough money, and because we need to do everything in the fly. Here the math is simple: just look into the national budget of Ukraine and see how our defense-industrial sector works. The defense industries say: we can produce weapons worth UAH 1.5 billion a year. But these don‘t include the weapons we need the most, for example, Patriot-class air defense missiles and much more. Then look into the budget of the Ministry of Defense, and you’ll see that it includes approximately UAH 500 billion appropriated for the purchase of weapons and military equipment systems. Industries claim they have the capacity to manufacture UAH 1.5 trillion worth of weapons, but the defense ministry’s budget can only absorb UAH 500 billion, meaning a billion capable capacities will be left without government contracts and will be standing idle.
– And exports are prohibited.
– Exports are prohibited, but from these 500 billion we have obligations under import contracts, we purchase what our defense industry cannot produce, including particularly explosives, landmines, ammunition, cartridges. As Marshal Trivulzio wrote to Louis XII of France in 1499, ‘To carry out war three things are necessary: money, money and yet more money.’ And this all is indeed based on the economy. We need to pay taxes, collect taxes, fight corruption and devote all the revenues generated to financing our defense. This year, Ukraine’s national budget totals approximately UAH 4 trillion, of which UAH 2.2 trillion is budgeted for the Defense and Security Forces. We devote half of our overall budget to the needs of defense, with only UAH 2 trillion remaining for financing other internal expenses. Everything else is financed with the money provided by our partners, we have to understand that. And the needs of the Armed Forces, if we are talking about the UAH 1.5 trillion and the UAH 500 billion the Ministry of Defense can secure, the war consumes trillions, trillions and yet more trillions. Waging a war is very expensive luxury, and none of NATO countries would have enough money to independently wage a war against the Russian Federation, because Russia has huge stockpiles of both weapons and military equipment left behind from Soviet times.
The math is as simple as that to understand what the defense-industrial sector is like and how it should work. We have made it bigger and diversified, but I would say that it needs to be developed deeper. Take drones, for example. Statistics shows that, last year, 65 percent of Russian soldiers on the battlefield were killed by Ukrainian drones. Not by artillery, not by landmines, not by small arms, but by drones. And 75 percent of Russian vehicles and equipment was destroyed by drones. That is, statistics shows that artillery, although it still retains its significant role on the battlefield, can change the enemy’s intentions, but it is not an overwhelming force, the enemy suffers most losses precisely from drones. We have the capacity to produce up to 10 million drones, and should the country request it, we would probably produce them. But we understand that this is an assembly line production: hardly there is a company that can assemble a drone from 100 percent components and materials made in Ukraine. I don’t know, maybe there is some, but it is definitely not 100 percent reliant on parts and components produced domestically in Ukraine.
Even when we make motors here in Ukraine, some magnets or some other miscellaneous components still need to be imported from China. We therefore need to expand and deepen the capacities of our defense industrial sector to the extent where we can reach self-sufficiency in manufacturing everything we need for war.
And what if the country that is now silent – China – changes its policy? Drone warfare is currently in their hands. They can either bring it to a halt by terminating supplies of drone components to both Russia and Ukraine, or give an advantage to one of the sides. Just imagine them saying tomorrow, “We don’t supply anymore to Russia, but to Ukraine only”, and we don’t need any more types of weapons but drones. We immediately gain an edge on the battlefield and win back our territory from Russia.
We are now trying to localize the production of many different things in the event imports are no longer available so that we can manufacture them in country. But there are other aspects to this. For example, there are carbon materials or, again, motors that are produced in China, and there are people who want to produce them here in Ukraine in order to make it self-sufficient in this regard. But the cost of a motor that entered into production ten years ago, the one that we made ourselves, our, Ukrainian, can be twice as high. From a state perspective, it is better to have this made domestically in-country than to depend on another country, and we understand this. And there are people who do not understand and say: if you buy this, you will be sent to prison, because you are not buying what is cheaper. And we also need to handle this and to show for everyone to see that whenever we support our domestic manufacturer, there are things that are important strategically. Therefore, the defense-industrial sector needs to have its capacities expanded, deepened and localized, needs to create “closed-loop” weapons production cycle to become self-sufficient, and needs to make the population understand where the corruption is and where the meaningful national interests are.
– This all is very interesting, one can talk much about these topics for a long time. Here is just one fact to better understand the whole picture. When 2025 began, politicians and diplomats had great hopes, which reached the population, that this would be the last year of the war, the war would end soon, there would be negotiations, security guarantees, peace would arrive. And economists at that time planned that the war would continue for all the year 2025, and the budget should be calculated to absorb the cost of war. Moreover, with regard to the defense-industrial sector, the end of the war does not mean defense production would come to a halt. On the contrary, given the situation that currently exists in Europe and elsewhere in the world, this would only give a push to developing what you are talking about. Localize, manufacture everything in country where appropriate, realizing that full self-sufficiency is hard to achieve. Even the Swedes, as far as I can tell, who can make almost everything when it comes to defense production, use some parts and components from their partners.
The pandemic has shown us that the level of globalization in the world today is so great that the disruption of some supply chains immediately ruins the whole picture. It is therefore crucial that everything is made in country where appropriate, but you can’t produce everything. And is it really necessary to make everything by ourselves, given that Europe has embarked on a major rearmament program, and in this program, which will cost 800 billion euros, there is a role reserved for Ukraine. Ursula von der Leyen has repeatedly emphasized that the rearmament of Europe and technical refitting of Europe’s defense industry are impossible to achieve without Ukraine being engaged. Ukraine’s defense industrial capacities must be integrated into this system, and immediately at that. How are we preparing for this?
– First and foremost, I would like to cite France as an example. Because France has a defense-industrial sector that I would like to see in our country. Because they make everything domestically. Tanks are manufactured in Germany, for example (there are few countries worldwide that can build tanks), even we can make them, can still produce them, but they make tanks of their own. They build airplanes of their own, because they were not lured by the story about the F-16s and chose to make own-designed Mirage fighters instead. They are domestically making submarines, warships, and developing nuclear weapons on their own. Their defense industry is fully self-sufficient, and they try to provide their own demand for the most critical components either through their own capabilities or through close partners. No other country in Europe can boast this. The UK is perhaps somewhere close, but its army is more technological, smaller in numbers, and supported with the largest budget. We therefore need to be like them and stick to them, because they have components, capabilities, and development.
As far as our own defense-industrial sector is concerned, we indeed have made it bigger and diversified, and we hold a great potential for working together with our partners. Criteria are currently being developed so that we can export some products or parts of products to partner countries. Our committee is working on this, alongside the Ministry of Defense, the Security Service, and the interdepartmental commission on military-technical cooperation. I am hopeful that a decision will be made soon, and I do appreciate them raising this matter, and the chair of our committee, Oleksandr Zavitnevych, is also working to this end. I believe that this will be the first step, and we will see an overall picture of the opportunities for this to happen, taking into account our national interests. At the same time, we must put in place all the safeguards so that the weapons we make do not fire at our own soldiers in the trenches. We understand that we can sell something to Africa, and tomorrow it will end up in Russia. Therefore, regarding exports, if there are any, there should be very strict control over our partner countries with respect to end-user certificates.
Another problem is that we have made a request for many things, including drones. Hundreds of companies have been created, they have certain resources, people, capabilities, technologies, they are known entities at the front, they have their advantages. But they have not been contracted, and they are running out of both reservations from mobilization and finances. And the partners are saying: let them come and work with us. We need to find a mechanism of some kind, we can’t just kill companies that can work for the benefit of our partners just because of some fears of “what will our partners say?” That’s why this matter is being discussed, and will hopefully be brought to a logical end.
Looking at the story with the United States, no one wants to buy in large quantities, everyone wants to manufacture in country. And currently more requests are coming in to our manufacturers regarding the establishment of industrial partnerships, where we provide technologies, and they provide investments. But, for example, if it’s France, they want these to be located on the territory of France, and the Germans want these to be located on the territory of Germany. I understand them well, because everyone has already seen: you don’t give away rare earths – we will give you nothing more. Everyone has already learned this lesson. And this is going to be one more challenge facing us when our companies invest and go there. We need to reach an agreed format where we will retain our taxes and, simultaneously, are able to work there.
– You touched on a very important problem: those manufacturers who can produce but have no contracts, who have developed a prototype and now cannot see where to move next. And it is very good that, like you said, both the government and the committee on military-technical cooperation are aware of and think about this. People are our foremost capital that must not be lost, but must be maintained and cherished. Private sector businesses entering a very specific and highly competitive market such as arms market is a new phenomenon for Ukraine. And there is a demand for industrial partnerships with partners, like you said. What is hindering this effort, what is holding back such partnerships being established?
– Previously and until now we had a policy stipulating that almost everything that is deployed on the battlefield, that our defense industry produces, cannot be sent abroad because this could prompt our partners to terminate their assistance. But now we see that the partners are themselves interested in this to happen. And we can say: look, we have created lots of businesses, fully provided for our needs, and the businesses have grown to the extent where there are free capacities for something else. There are some innovative, some exclusive products. We need to explain to our partners that this is our advantage, that we care not only about ourselves, and that with new capacities put in place, we are ready to assist, because we are one, we want to be in NATO, we want to be in the European Union, and we are interested in our partners receiving advanced weapons, the ones that are among the most efficacious on the battlefield. Ukraine invented these technologies and improved them at the army level, and we are ready to share them. Making a drone is not a problem, it makes just 30-40 percent of the effort. People, training, deployment tactics, explosives, means of communication – this comprises invaluable experience.
– There are two components to this, and both are of vital importance. One concerns safeguarding intellectual property rights. We must work towards this end, because before a technology is given away for shared production with a foreign partner, we need to protect the intellectual property rights of the company that designed it, protect the intellectual property rights of the professionals who devised and created this technology. That is, safeguarding intellectual property rights is the number one issue. Second comes the issue of standardization and compatibility with NATO requirements. We are talking about the technologies that NATO does not yet have. That’s to say, we dictate these standards, one might say. Is such cooperation getting underway with our partners?
– We already have introduced a new concept such as codification. Before a new weapons product is inducted into service, it needs to be first contracted by the Ministry of Defense, following an outdated procedure – Soviet-style, cumbersome, ineffective — for putting new capability into military use. During the war, this was replaced with a codification procedure that allows new capabilities to be inducted using a simplified procedure. Each product contracted by the Ministry of Defense undergoes testing, and immediately after is assigned a NATO code, in other words, becomes codified for the duration of martial law according to NATO standards.
Regarding the protection of intellectual property rights – this is more of a question for the entrepreneurs who produce these technologies, this should be their concern. I know that serious manufacturers are working in this regard.
– This conversation was very enriching indeed, but I still see the need to continue and revisit the issues that we had not time to discuss here. After all, it is clear that we have entered a period of rapid development, and not only of defense production, but also in terms of building up weapons manufacturing capabilities. This period will last for many years to come. And therefore, the highly skilled workforce that we already have and will have to bring up in the future, combined with unique and extremely valuable experience that our military have gained fighting on the front lines, the need to create a huge security capital for the future, not only for us, but also for all of Europe, that it is worth talking about in more detail more than once. So, thank you for this conversation and see you later.
Interviewed by Ihor Dolgov
Photo: Danylo Antonyuk
The interview can be watched in full here
