Russia’s full-scale invasion put Ukraine under immense pressure. But pressure creates diamonds, and if it’s value you’re looking for, look no further than Ukraine’s unique defense industry. Since 2022, the sector’s annual production capacity has exploded from around $1 billion to $50 billion, and Kyiv is now a world-leading hub of defense tech where products are designed, tested, and immediately refined by the demands of perpetual modern war.
Now though, Ukraine’s innovators face a challenge that will surely prove harder to defeat than any Russian weapon. Kyiv must turn a fragmented wartime startup ecosystem into an industrial powerhouse that the West wants to invest in at scale without importing its bureaucracy—or watching the value created on Ukrainian soil migrate abroad. Newsweek joined former Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk—now co-founder and chairman of Ukrainian defense tech leader UFORCE—in Kyiv to discuss exactly how his company and the rest of the sector are working to solve this very problem.
Russia’s Geran-4, a jet-powered variant of the infamous one-way attack drone based on Iran’s Shahed-style UAV, is a fearsome weapon. It can carry a 110lb warhead at reported speeds of up to 300 mph—too fast for many of Ukraine’s own drone interceptors to handle. Ukraine’s Air Force typically shoots down 90-95 percent of slower propeller-powered drones, but the interception rate of jet-powered ones is roughly 60 percent, according to Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat.
Consider that Moscow launched more than 2,800 jet-powered UAVs into Ukraine last month alone, and you can imagine the scale of destruction they have caused. Honcharuk, however, was remarkably relaxed. This, he said, is simply the nature of modern war.
"Every season Russia is trying to invent something really new to create a problem for us," he told Newsweek. "I’m sure that in a couple of months we’ll already have an efficient solution…I think this need to innovate is Ukraine’s superpower, not our disadvantage." His confidence is well-founded. Ukrainian unmanned systems manufacturers, of which there are now more than 500 according to the Defense Ministry, have consistently produced minor miracles for the past four-plus years.
The ministry says 95 percent of drones procured for Ukraine’s defense forces are now Ukrainian-made. Put simply, Ukraine’s defense industry has perfected the art of designing, manufacturing, and deploying battlefield solutions at a rapid pace, and crucially, with a fraction of its adversary’s capacity and budget. "The invention usually is driven by the purpose… for example, when Ukraine needed a way to target the Russian Navy, we invented the maritime drones." Honcharuk was referring to UFORCE’s MAGURA family of unmanned surface vehicles.
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