Capital is no longer the main thing Ukrainian defence companies look for in a European partner, Andrii Hryshchuk, Investment Manager at Defence Builder, said at a conference hosted by the German-Ukrainian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK Ukraine). Funds are coming to Ukraine and launching local vehicles, and money can be raised here, he said; the shortage is elsewhere.
Hryshchuk spoke on the panel "Joint ventures and market entry in Ukraine: how can German and Baltic companies establish successful industrial partnership in Ukraine", moderated by Serhii Sviatenko, Defence Consultant at AHK Ukraine. The other speakers were Frederik Schumann, Programme Officer for Defence Innovation at the EU Defence Innovation Office (EDIO), and Olena Bilousova, Co-lead of the Defence Research Centre at the Kyiv School of Economics.
The first gap is scaling. Ukrainian teams mostly come from an engineering background rather than a business one, and moving from 100 units to 50,000 is a question of operations, production and supply, not of engineering. This is where a European partner closes a real gap, Hryshchuk said.
The second is supply chains without Chinese components, which a Ukrainian company often cannot build on its own. He advised holding a strategic reserve of critical components for two to three months, because a supply chain can be cut at any moment.
A European partner also shortens the route into European defence programmes such as EDIP and SAFE — without one, the path to participation and a contract takes a Ukrainian company significantly longer. A joint venture with a European partner behind it also changes how the company is read by customers elsewhere, Hryshchuk said, opening sales beyond Ukraine and the EU, in Asia for example.
Asked about the risk that worries European manufacturers most — producing 100,000 drones that are no longer relevant at the front by the time they are delivered — he pointed to the division of roles inside a joint venture.
"The answer is having a Ukrainian partner. In a joint venture, it is the local partner who is responsible for fast feedback. If that loop is in place, you have time to change the fast-moving components — for frequencies under EW, for example," Hryshchuk said.
He named two practical steps for companies entering the market now. The first is dual incorporation, set up early: a 100% Ukrainian-owned company with a holding structure, since registration and bank accounts take months. The second is resilience of operations — diversifying manufacturing sites across regions and reserving critical staff, in the knowledge that under the current rules a company cannot reserve its whole team.
