On stage

FF

Francis Farrell

Moderator · Kyiv Independent

VB

Vlad Belbas

CEO, Ukrainian Armor

SL

Simon Levy

ADS Group

VP

Volodymyr Ponomarov

Ukrgasbank

★

A former Deputy Defence Minister

name withheld

Panellists diagnosed the barriers to scaling Ukraine's defence output: bankability and AML/KYC hurdles, a low approval rate on state-backed military loans, and export restrictions that deter investment. They contrasted Ukraine's surplus production capacity (able to produce several times the national procurement budget) with Western financing that treats the war as a business case rather than a military threat, and debated moving production onto NATO territory as Russian strikes hit facilities.

The substance

Key takeaways

1

Volodymyr Ponomarov (First Deputy CEO, Ukrgasbank) diagnosed the core bottleneck as bankability: the "military 5-7-9" 5% loan programme has an approval rate below 15% — five of six producers are ineligible — because companies that "look very good on the battlefield but very bad on paper" often cannot even open a bank account, making financial-management education, not liquidity, the binding constraint.

2

Vlad Belbas (CEO, Ukrainian Armor) said his sector's production capacity (over 30 billion) is roughly five times Ukraine's ~7 billion euro procurement budget, and argued Western allies have money but lack the technical capability to build effective weapons, while Ukraine has the reverse — the synergy the whole panel circled — and warned that waiting on the promised 2023 million artillery rounds (delivered in 2024) cost Ukraine two years of its own capability.

3

Belbas reframed the entire financing debate as a category error: the West still evaluates production as an economic proposition (return on investment, whether a factory will have future orders), when it should apply a "military-threat" logic as in WWII — build whatever is needed at whatever cost — because the threat is not Ukraine's alone.

4

A former deputy defence minister stressed that investors need stable "rules of the game," and that the ambiguity around exports is scaring capital away: Ukrainian developers could produce far more than Ukraine needs, and blocking export means that surplus capability simply never gets built.

5

Simon Levy (ADS Group) laid out the UK-side frictions — anti-money-laundering rules, a banking system poor even for domestic SMEs, no precedent for a defence risk profile — but pointed to emerging mechanisms (EIB dual-use mandate, British Business Bank, National Wealth Fund, the Danish model using frozen-Russian-asset profits) and argued whoever moves first wins, because a post-war Ukraine with battle-proven, scalable products will be in a commanding export position.

In their words

Key quotes

“

The companies that produce cutting-edge weapons, and that have ingenious engineers, look very good on the battlefield but very bad on paper.

Volodymyr Ponomarov

“

It's not yet considered in Europe that we have a military threat, so we have to put all efforts into production, whatever money is needed.

Vlad Belbas

“

Whoever moves first is the one that will gain the advantage.

Simon Levy

Full transcript

The complete transcript of this session is being prepared for publication after a review pass.

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