In workshops across the country, engineers are devising new ways to produce rockets and drones — and racing to develop long-range weapons
Jack Clover
March 10, 2025
The Times
Before, her hands tied ribbons on to bouquets and clipped marigold stalks. Now, the same hands mould weapons of war. “Friends who know me from the time I was a florist say this workshop looks very similar,” Ksenia Kalmus, 36, says in a basement studio in central Kyiv. “[One] said, ‘You used to have a flower boutique, now you have a drone boutique: exclusive, small, good quality’,” she added, prodding the small rotors on the recently completed stock. Kalmus’s story is like that of many Ukrainian civilians. When the full-scale Russian invasion began she made petrol bombs to stop enemy tanks. Since last summer, she has built drones.
As the war changed, so did the priorities of those helping on the home front. But since the US paused its military assistance to Ukraine last week, perhaps for ever, and Europe began the time-consuming process of increasing its own defence spending, Ukrainian domestic arms production has been thrown into the spotlight. It is now seen by many not only as a nimble supplement to western weaponry, but as the engine of Kyiv’s war machine.
On March 4, hours after the White House withdrew military support, Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, highlighted that domestic arms production had grown 35-fold in three years. “We already make a third of the weapons we need, our goal is 50 per cent,” he wrote on Telegram.
Early in the war, the defence ministry was at times dismissive of independent arms producers, but now it struggles to keep up with them. Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who was defence minister from 2019 to 2020, said: “It started to grow out of garages and people’s homes and small factories in 2022.”
At first the government did little to help beyond a joint “drone army” procurement programme, Zagorodnyuk said, but the sector continued to grow. “In 2024, the arms industry outgrew the government’s capacity to buy,” he said. “Now the capacity is two to three times larger than the purchasing power. It is what has stopped Russians amid the constant deficit of western firepower. A few [companies] have already become world class.”
Many companies, such as Kalmus’s Klyn Drones, do not have contracts with the defence ministry, whose bureaucracy can take months to overcome. Instead, she has contact with several units on the front, often through friends, and delivers drones directly. The start of the war created a rush for western-supplied firepower — tanks, artillery and 155mm shells — to take the fight to the invading Russian army, but now the priorities have shifted.
Oleksii Reznikov, who was Ukraine’s minister of defence from the start of the invasion until September 2023, said: “Any war is a war of resources. Human resources, financial resources, material resources. Therefore, of course, we will only be able to survive with western help. But now the question is, which resources are the most key?”
Although European and American weapons are still extremely valuable, making money to invest in domestic arms production is now Ukraine’s first priority, Reznikov said over a coffee. “We have our own Silicon Valley. In garages across the country we have ingenious researchers and engineers that are making things that no one has ever made before. “The largest military laboratory on the planet is Ukraine — the second is Israel, but we are the largest. Therefore the best investment in European defence is an investment in Ukrainian defence, because if you invest in Ukrainian manufacturing, or make joint ventures, Europe will defend itself.”
Reznikov was not always so open to new technology. In December 2022, during the battle for Bakhmut, he was criticised for dismissing as “wedding drones” the small aircraft that are now integral to the Ukrainian war effort. Now he describes these forms of Ukraine-developed high-tech warfare as the “sling” that has helped his country find parity with its adversary in what he calls a “David and Goliath” struggle. It is also thanks to Innovation in this area that, he believes, the withdrawal of US military support is not likely to cause a significant shift on the front. He said: “The war today, after three years, is a different war entirely. In February 2022, this war began like a conventional 20th-century war.”
Now, with the notable exception of the fighting in Kursk, the line of contact is largely unmoving over a vast 100km front line, and both sides have embraced new technologies. Reznikov said: “This is absolutely a new war, a hybrid war; the war of the future is already here. We, humanity, have passed through the portal.”
He added: “Infantry seldom meet each other on the battlefield.” He was referring to the 25km-wide grey zone, protected by high-tech weaponry, that spans most of the front. “A significant breakthrough of our lines by the Russians is very unlikely at present. If they send a column of tanks like there was in February 2022, it will be destroyed by drones.”
However, despite the cautious optimism among officials about the state of their domestic capabilities, the loss of US assistance is a tough break. “A permanent loss of US support would still be a massive blow,” said Zagorodnyuk. “Today’s war is still about a mix of capabilities. [Drones], while they practically mark a military technical revolution, still cannot replace large missiles, air defence, intelligence and manned aviation in many respects.”
US Patriot missile systems have helped to defend Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, and targeting systems and long-range weapons have helped Ukraine to strike deep behind enemy lines.
The most hawkish advocates of Ukraine’s defence industry believe that there will be a home-grown alternative to the latter within the year. Valeriy Borovyk, who has been a drone developer since 2014 and is commander of the “White Eagle” attack-drone unit that works with the defence ministry, said: “I think a breakthrough has occurred, a possible positive step that will make
Ukraine even stronger. Rocket manufacturing has already begun and I think that soon, perhaps this year, we will see an equivalent to the Storm Shadow [British-made long-range weapon].”
Moreover, although western weaponry such as Bradley armoured personnel carriers and British Challenger 3 tanks are all valued elements of Ukraine’s arsenal, they are expensive at between $3 million and $10 million each.
A first-person-view kamikaze drone, such as those assembled by volunteers in Kalmus’s workshop, costs less than $500, and one or two can take out a $3 million Russian tank. Back in the Kyiv workshop, Kalmus said that, even if the network of drone suppliers had plugged the gaps when western weapons supplies had not arrived, Ukraine was looking more then ever to western Europe for investment. The buck will always stop with Ukrainians, though. She said: “I always say to Ukrainians every day: prepare for the worst. It’s great if [the West] helps us. But we can’t just sit here and wait and see.”
The urgency is clear. Before she turned her attention to drones last year, Kalmus raised money for clothes for units on the front. On one occasion a group of soldiers ordered 100 pairs of shoes but, by the time she had finished raising the money and bought them, the men had all died on the outskirts of Bakhmut. “That is the hardest part — when you find out that they are not needed any more, there is no one to give them to.”
Jack Clover commissions and edits stories on the world news desks of the The Times and The Sunday Times. Previously, with The Sunday Times, he has reported from Ukraine, Lithuania and the Isle of Iona.