by PERRY BOYLE
EDITOR’S NOTE: We welcome guest columns from respected members of the pro-Ukraine ecosystem. American Perry Boyle, frequently in Kyiv, is co-founder and CEO of MITS Capital LLC, which invests in Ukrainian mil-tech.
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One of my Ukrainian friends insists that Europe wants to prolong Russia’s war on Ukraine. His logic: Ukraine is holding Russia off from its next phase of attack on Europe, while Europe’s military-industrial complex is making a fortune from the war and is modernizing its defense industry.
Ukraine doesn’t need high-cost European UGVs; it needs money to scale domestic production.
Ukraine is their laboratory, not their partner. In his view, Europe will provide Ukraine with just enough money to stay on life support, but will never provide Ukraine with the resources it could deploy to defeat Russia.Talk about cynical. What if he's right?
We have a recent example below of how Germany is exploiting Ukraine to develop its own drone industry. ARX Robotics just announced a deal with the UK MoD to invest £45 million in a UK ground drone plant to produce its Gereon UGVs for the British Army.
Foreign firms are testing—or claiming to develop—their UGVs in Ukraine. Then they donate maybe three dozen of them to Ukrainian warriors. To convince, say, the UK MoD to buy them, they tout that they are “battle-tested” in Ukraine and that they have orders for several hundred more. No one in Ukraine is asking for these drones—European governments pay for them. Ukraine doesn’t need high-cost European UGVs; it needs money to scale domestic production.
The UK pursues a similar model for its UAV program. Recently, the UK announced its “largest-ever” donation of UAVs to Ukraine. All made in the UK (from a Ukrainian design). So, “battle-tested” in Ukraine. Ukraine does not need drones from the UK. It makes more UAVs than all of NATO combined. What Ukraine needs is money to scale its domestic production.
If Ukraine does not get the €90 billion loan from the EU, it is only a matter of months until it’s game over for Ukraine.
Neither the UK nor Germany has a competitive advantage in drones. They will spend billions on what are more job programs than defense programs. They will not invest directly in a Ukrainian defense company. Instead of competing with Ukraine, they should be integrating Ukraine’s defense industrial base into NATO’s and keeping it out of Russia’s hands. **What will they do if they lose their lab to Russia?**What can Ukraine do about this exploitation? Right now, not very much.
If Ukraine does not get the €90 billion loan from the EU, it is only a matter of months until it’s game over for Ukraine. Until this money is released, Ukraine has to accommodate the EU, no matter how absurd (peace negotiations with Russia) or exploitative (disadvantaging its own defense tech companies to build Europe’s) the relationship.
How does Ukraine shift the narrative from “using European money to stay alive” to “using frozen Russian assets to defeat Russia?” That is the fundamental change needed to secure not just peace in Ukraine, but also peace for Europe, and, perhaps, regime change in Russia.
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