Kamyshin said his country’s arms industry could produce weapons worth about $20 billion. The Ukrainian government plans to award contracts worth $6 billion, while another $4 billion would come from local partners; Ukraine’s allies could provide the missing $10 billion.
Denmark is leading the way, announcing last month that it would allocate 200 million crowns (27 million euros) to buy equipment from Ukrainian companies. Canada also promised to give 3 million Canadian dollars (1.1 million euros) to Ukraine for the production of drones by the Ukrainian national defense industry.
The idea now is to expand these efforts by mobilizing more financial aid to enable Ukraine to sign supply contracts.
“Our main task is to find additional funds for the defense forces in Ukraine. My task is to obtain this financing for production in Ukraine, because we are already capable of this,” he added. Kamyshin said. “We have additional uncontracted capacity, and we want it to be financed at the expense of European funds.”
Kamyshin said he had discussed with Borrell the idea of using the EU’s European Peace Facility, an off-budget fund that partially reimburses countries for weapons they send to Ukraine. The EU recently agreed to provide €5 billion to the Peace Facility’s Ukraine Assistance Fund for this year, with additional annual cash injections expected until 2027.
“It’s short-term, it’s a quick solution which could be a really good solution,” Kamyshin said on the sidelines of the conference, which was attended by around forty Ukrainian companies and around a hundred European companies.
Politico
