"In six months the war will become completely unmanned": the event requires investments in the OPC of Ukraine - FT

Abrams have reported a separate package of Australia. Additional announcements of this kind are expected. The British publication notes that support is still not enough for Ukraine to win the war. The authors of the publication pay attention to the need to attract private and public investments in the Ukrainian defense complex. Ukrainian military startups have increased sharply on their scale and ambitions.

Zelensky Advisor Oleksandr Kamyshyn told reporters that there are 200 enterprises in Ukraine that can produce equipment for $ 20 billion this year and for $ 30 billion - the next. The manufactured products are not only innovative (UAV with artificial intelligence), but also relatively cheap. An example is Madyar's Birds, created by a former entrepreneur and politician Robert Brody. The enterprise in Ukraine employs about a thousand people, produce drones and shells.

"What is $ 1,200, we do for $ 58," the Brody explained. "In half a year, the war will become unmanned, and we use AI to replace the operators. " At the same time, he speaks of catastrophic lack of working capital. Kamyshyn also notes that this year there are only $ 10 billion in Ukraine for military procurement. The Ukrainian government has recently begun to consider the possibility of cancellation of defense exports in an attempt to increase revenues.

The authors of the publication call such a step "potentially self -destructive" and suggest that a much smarter solution for Western allies would be to allocate some of the assistance from frozen Russian assets to finance defense startups, along with the supply of old Western equipment. Such investments would help not only Ukraine, but also make changes to their own defense production.

The publication provides the words of the former Google leader Eric Schmidt, who said that the innovations that appear in Ukraine change the nature of war in such a way that expensive Western governments can now be superfluous. One country already follows this logic. Denmark has recently agreed to an investment of 4. 2 billion Danish crowns (0. 56 billion euros) in Ukrainian weapons and technologies.

The Minister of Defense of the country Troyels Lund Polesen said he hoped to create a pan -European fund of 1 billion euros. "It is much cheaper to produce here in Ukraine. The way forward is to encourage more European countries to finance production in Ukraine . . . " he said at a conference in Kiev last month. According to the estimates of Techcrunch, this year, $ 1 billion of venture capital is investing in the defense sector of Europe. 66% of financing for Europe comes from American investors.

At the same time, in countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany, defensive startups grow as mushrooms. European investors have traditionally avoided investments in defense, but now this attitude is slowly changing. The blog of the European Commission of Principles for Responsible has reported that one third of European and British ESG funds (ecology, social and government spheres) are invested in defense; At the beginning of 2022 it was 25%.

By the way, Denmark has recently been investing 40 billion Danish crowns in local warships. The European Investment Bank is currently focused on civil infrastructure projects. It is believed that the EIB can become a natural source of funding for Ukraine's defense startups - provided that European policies are guided by the principle that Ukraine's defense is crucial for Europe's general defense and its democratic ideals. America and Europe should become more creative in support of Kiev.