Grey plastic elements lie on wooden tables. There's a sharp odor of glue in the air. Workers assemble wings, hulls and drone beaks. Almost everything is handmade. Vitali Kolesnishenka stands in the mediate of the workshop. It's my masterpiece. – says a 36-year-old engineer, pointing to a 1.5-metre-long drone. president Volodymyr Zelenski is betting on companies like him. As early as last year, then chief of the Walerij Załużny wrote in a strategy paper that in order to win with Russia, Kiev needs quite a few ammunition, drones and rockets best own production.
In order to scope the Kolesnishenka factory, you must leave Kiev and after bumpy roads scope the industrial region full of abandoned production workshops. But behind the military checkpoint lies another world. fresh factories are being built next to each other. Shining in the sun, corrugated sheets defend them from curious glances. Here we work for the independency of Ukraine.
Unbeatable drones
Kolesniszenko planned to produce cargo drones. – I never thought I'd be in a technological war 1 day. – he says. After the Russian invasion, he decided to make a military drone. A year later, his task was already in service. The drone weighs 11 kg and has an HD camera attached. It can orbit Russian positions for 2.5 hours at an altitude of 1500 m and transmit coordinates to artillery units. It has never been seriously tested, so information from soldiers is immediately taken into account in the improvement and production process. 125 copies have already been sent to the army, another in production.
Alexander Kamyszyn sits in the lobby of a luxury hotel in the capital. He is simply a minister of the strategical manufacture and is considered a genius of improvisation. As erstwhile chief of the railroad, he faced a gigantic task at the start of the war. But despite rocket attacks, passenger trains achieved a higher punctuality rate than Deutsche Bahn. Last year, Zelenski appointed Kamiszyn as Minister. erstwhile he took office, Ukrainian weapons production barely existed.
There are presently more than 300 private arms companies, plus 100 state-owned enterprises. They all produce at full speed; 200 of them are said to produce drones – more than a million devices are produced each year.
Ukraine is doing better
Kamyszyn explains why Ukraine puts emphasis on drones: the average Stugna-type anti-tank weapon costs $4613, and statistically allows to neutralise from 2 to 3 Russians. The drone achieves the same goal for 1 $1,650 and besides helps defend the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. However, Kiev inactive needs conventional and dense weapons. To this end, he uses reactivated factories from russian times. As a result, Ukraine is reportedly already able to produce armored vehicles on its own.
But Kiev is not limited to private factories and post-Soviet plants. Under agreements concluded with 7 Ukrainian countries, support was promised in the arms sector. The German arms company Rheinmetall has already announced the construction of an artillery mill in Ukraine. She can produce 200,000 rounds a year. This is the second joint Ukrainian-German project: last year Germany decided to build a mill for the maintenance and repair of military vehicles in Ukraine. The factories on site besides want to build British BAE Systems group and Turkish maker of Baykar drones. – This shows that Ukraine is an attractive marketplace for western weapons production – explains the Minister. – Each product can be tested immediately.
Meanwhile Kiev hopes for further projects from private workshops. Vitali Kolesniszenko is presently working on a fresh kamikaze drone with a much lower cost and production time than the reflection drone. – We want to surprise the Russians..
