Ukraine’s Place in the New World: What Experts Say About Defense Tech and AI

The discussion aimed to define Ukraine’s place in the new architecture of global security, where technology, the defense industry, and digital sovereignty are becoming key factors of influence. Contemporary geopolitical developments — particularly events in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region — are opening new opportunities for Ukraine to integrate into international markets and partnerships. At the same time, they expose systemic barriers: regulatory constraints, market access, and integration into global supply chains.

Topics of integration into global defense chains, the opportunities and risks of arms exports, the role of artificial intelligence, digital sovereignty, and the prospects for Ukraine’s defense tech sector were discussed by: Oleksandr Bazar (co-founder of the Kyiv Institute of National Interest think tank), Yaroslav Bozhko (head of the Doctrine Center for Political Studies), Oleh Zayarny (scientific advisor to the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, Doctor of Law), Dmytro Korniyenko (founder of the Resurgam analytical community), Yuriy Lomkivsky (co-founder of the IRON defense technology cluster), Pavlo Mykhaylyuk (Director of Ecosystem Development at UNIT.City), and Andriy Starzhynsky (co-founder and CEO of Di-agnostics).

Oleksandr Bazar: The Victim Narrative No Longer Works

Oleksandr Bazar, co-founder of the Kyiv Institute of National Interest think tank:

“For the first two, two-and-a-half years of the war, we essentially relied on the victim narrative. It served its purpose, but by 2024 and early 2025, it had exhausted itself. We remain a victim of aggression, a state that was unlawfully attacked — but that no longer interests anyone. Both in the US and gradually in Western Europe, forces are coming to power that think in different categories. They are bringing the concept of national interest back into foreign policy and thinking in terms of spheres of influence.

In such a situation, if Ukraine does not begin to shape the politics of the region around itself, it will find itself in a region shaped around someone else. And that would not be a favorable fate for such a large country, which has the potential to be part of the regional architecture. Right now, an opportunity has emerged for us, and we need to seize it so as not to get lost.

We lack an institutional tradition of conducting foreign policy. As a state, we spent a long time as a pendulum — swinging between Russia and the West. That pendulum was our foreign policy for 25 years. The absence of a tradition of presenting ourselves as a state in other regions shows in everything. Russia, for example, brands every bag of grain for Africa with its flag, while we use the UN emblem. We have never learned to use our resources — limited as they may be.”

Yuriy Lomkivsky: Ukraine’s Defense Industry Is Delivering Results

Yuriy Lomkivsky, co-founder of the IRON defense technology cluster:

“What will Ukraine look like in the world of the future? We are a unique laboratory, because we are conducting experiments on ourselves. We hardly wanted this, but Russia launched a full-scale invasion, to which our only response to the scale of the enemy’s threat was quality in our decisions. The numbers for 2025 confirmed that our industry is more than capable. The Defense Procurement Agency last year made 82% of all purchases from Ukrainian suppliers and manufacturers. A year earlier, that figure was 47%. In a single year, we scaled up production of everything: ammunition, unmanned systems, long-range artillery, other strike systems, and reconnaissance tools.

The defense sector is the most protectionist industry in the world — everyone always buys domestically. And yet our partners have decided to give us 6 billion dollars for our defense products, because they are capable of mounting a better defense against the enemy. Our defense industry is delivering real results. Another example: America, having learned from the war in Iran that its expensive systems don’t work, recently announced a mass production program for cheap drone strike systems. A British company won — which is essentially the company SkyFall, a leading Ukrainian defense drone manufacturer specializing in heavy strike bomber drones (Vampire, known as “Baba Yaga”), FPV drones (Shrike), and Shahed interceptors (P1-Sun).

All of this shows that, while we are still a laboratory for ourselves, we are already beginning to establish ourselves on the international stage. Although at the state level there are still unresolved issues with arms exports and bureaucratic capacity, we are already demonstrating our technological achievements quite well.

Ukraine’s defense industry means fast decisions and no bureaucracy. And that is where the main friction can arise. We come to the global market with solutions that work, and we’re told: “But this doesn’t comply with NATO recommendations.” The dialogue breaks down, and they buy solutions that are easier to sell to their clients — even if those solutions are not competitive at all. So we will have to build dialogue, learn to strive for NATO standards, play the certification game, and so on. But we will also have to pull Europe along with us, explaining that the enemy is not weakening — that, for example, the Baltic states don’t have enough security depth to hold off Russia for five years.

It’s also worth asking the reverse question: why aren’t Western countries integrating into our security processes? We have potential, and our companies can aspire to prime contractor status in Europe. Most Ukrainian technologies have already been copied in one way or another. What saves us is speed of response: events at the front move so fast that within a few months a given technology no longer works and has to be reworked again.

We need to open up the arms export process, and we should do it now. Because only by legally entering our partners’ supply chains will we secure our position in the international market and carve out our own niche. But everything must be transparent.

On the subject of AI in defense: in our country there are two ecosystems on which AI models can be trained — one based on video, one based on audio. Very recently, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution regulating the possibility of providing our data to other countries’ defense ministries on a commercial basis. So the government recognizes that this data has great value. We are ready to share it with partners, as they share a great deal with us — but there are certain conditions. And that is already a sign of our maturity: we have gained knowledge and experience, and we know their worth.”

Dmytro Korniyenko: Ukraine as a Security Exporter

Dmytro Korniyenko, founder of the Resurgam analytical community:

“Ukraine has already demonstrated strong prospects, but our economy is many times smaller than that of many countries in the world. So we can focus on specific things. And events in the Middle East have already shown that Ukraine can be a security exporter — in contrast to Muscovy, which is an exporter of insecurity, and often builds its geopolitical capital on that basis.

For Ukraine, this is a narrow window of opportunity. Right now it is important for us to build trust quickly, to construct the right image as a security-exporting country. To become a player on the geopolitical map of the world, Ukraine has two paths. The long one — being strong economically and politically, building international connections. And the short one — producing a new civilizational framework, a framework of European geopolitical revival, in which Ukraine is one of the centers generating ideas, meaning, values, and the foundations of the European way of life. At the same time, in an era of national interests, we must accept our partners with respect and mutual understanding — as equals.

When we talk about security exports, we need to build a narrative, a brand for Ukraine in the world, so that “Ukrainian” is associated with stability. Our economy does not allow us to hand out billion-dollar infrastructure loans. We cannot flood the world with weapons, since our defense-industrial complex works primarily for domestic needs. But we can demonstrate our expertise in security matters — especially where the Kremlin operates systematically, including in African countries, among other things through dozens of various PMCs. And in doing so, form a narrative on that continent that we are not a colonial power, as we tend to be perceived there.”

Yaroslav Bozhko: Time Is Strategy’s Most Important Resource

Yaroslav Bozhko, head of the Doctrine Center for Political Studies:

“Time is strategy’s most important resource. And that is what Ukraine must understand first of all when building its plans. The most important thing is for us to become a strategic nation — a nation with strategic thinking. Then we will be able to turn our geopolitical situation into an advantage. We simply have no intermediate option. As the prominent Ukrainian writer and relative of Lesya Ukrainka, Yurko Kosach, said: ‘Ukraine will either be great, or it will not exist at all.’

After all, what is security? It is the absence of danger. Security is therefore a conceptual phenomenon. To be independent means to have a capable and adaptive understanding of current reality. The path to a meaningful security role in geopolitics does not begin with foreign policy — it ends there. It begins with domestic policy, which is full of contradictions. Until we produce our own Napoleon who can smooth out these contradictions, it’s hard to see a bright path forward. All we can do for now is invest in the generation that is growing up. Because, having gone so long without our own statehood, we as a state have lost the understanding of what the external game is, what foreign policy is, and that it is a far harsher environment with its own rules. So when the realities of the external world reach us, they will shatter our utopian, idealistic inner “cherry orchard near the house.”

Pavlo Mykhaylyuk: AI and Cybersecurity at UNIT.City

Pavlo Mykhaylyuk, Director of Ecosystem Development at UNIT.City:

“UNIT.City residents are actively implementing artificial intelligence, including in cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Defense. It’s not really possible to comment on the results of this work at the moment. As for the private sector, a trend is emerging around the role of Chief AI Officer, for example.

UNIT.City is one of the co-coordinators of the European Digital Innovation Hub, which includes twelve institutions — eight universities, private organizations, and civil society organizations. This hub is connected to the network of European digital hubs that provide services to small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, and businesses. The focus is on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. And this is already a general trend. UNIT.City now also has its own laboratory developing robotic systems. We are engaged in various areas of activity, including AI — because there is demand for it.”

Oleh Zayarny: Digital Sovereignty and Data Protection

Oleh Zayarny, scientific advisor to the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, Doctor of Law:

“Should we share data, especially defense-related data, and AI applications? This is a question of digital sovereignty, which encompasses data, the AI ecosystem, testing, and application. My position: we need to create a legislative framework — most likely a separate law — on the specifics of data sharing in the national security and defense sector.

On one hand, we value our partners and we are grateful to them. On the other hand, today’s geopolitical world has shown that these partners can sometimes end up on the opposite side. Ultimately, data is our greatest advantage. Modern warfare today can only be waged by three countries: Ukraine, Russia, and partially North Korea. The rest of the world is simply not ready for the latest challenges.

We need to introduce regulated sharing of military-purpose data, especially for automated systems. The speed of exchanging such data is our greatest advantage in the world today. So we must support and safeguard this advantage of ours, including for deploying domestic AI-based systems. The digital assistants we have implemented may be of interest to EU countries, especially from an economic perspective. Economic arguments are always the most persuasive. We have much to share. And much to learn.”

Andriy Starzhynsky: Legal Challenges of AI

Andriy Starzhynsky, co-founder and CEO of Di-agnostics:

“The black boxes used by artificial intelligence are legally unregulated everywhere in the world. The process of identifying the data on which AI is trained is itself unregulated. For example, if your language AI copies the style of a specific author, it is legally impossible to prove that it learned to write based on, say, Hemingway’s novels.

The military data we provide for training AI — primarily drone targeting video and battlefield footage — is something no lawyer in the world will be able to prove was used to teach an AI to strike the enemy. Yes, we provide such videos, and they are highly valuable. But we will not be able to prove that our specific videos were used.

In addition to video, intelligence data export is also possible. There is high demand for it from the military, primarily for intelligence training. AI can be trained to analyze geolocation, but such knowledge cannot be applied in, say, Saudi Arabia — the model would be far too localized.

It is worth focusing on the question of what existing large language models cannot do — what questions they cannot answer. There may arise a need for a language model uncensored by its developer and owner. And here we return to military purposes, where cybersecurity and cyber threats are of primary importance. Such a language model could be trained on our data and its use regulated.

I should add that the Ministry of Digital Transformation has plans to create its own Ukrainian Large Language Model. This could take around two years. I hope that before our officials decided to develop their own LLM, they tested the existing ones and concluded that they do not meet our needs and objectives.”