Technology export as a guarantee of a future strong security alliance

Speech at the forum "Export of Security: Ukrainian Technological Weapons in the World", May 22, 2025

The topic of security exports is always very relevant and important and I am always ready to respond to an offer to discuss issues of innovation, technology, and other topics related to building the security of our state.

So I will talk about the current state of our war, about the possibilities of exporting our technologies. Moving on to discuss this issue, I suggest you look at exports from three positions:

1. as a source of resources for survival and development;
2. as a source of innovation in the design and application of defense technologies;
3. as the main tactic for ensuring Ukraine's entry into future alliances and unions through the integration of experience.

Now let's talk about modern war and security. I hope that there are no people in this hall who are still hoping for some miracle or wonder, for some white swan that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022, and after that there will be great happiness. In my personal opinion, as long as the enemy has the resources, the strength and the means to strike at our territory and attempt individual offensive actions, he will do so.

Whether it's pleasant for anyone to hear or not, Russia's ability to wage war will absolutely depend on its availability, first and foremost, of the resources to do so. And somewhere, probably from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, Russia is doing just that. This is a real war to exhaustion. 

Ending this war is only possible through the complete destruction of Russia's very ability to wage this war. First of all, I mean the destruction of its military-economic potential.

In our current demographic and economic conditions (and for us this is a shortage of human resources and the catastrophic economic situation in which we find ourselves) we should only talk about a high-tech war for survival. It uses a minimum of human resources and a minimum of economically cheap means to achieve maximum effect.

Then we must understand that such a war must solve two tasks for us:

1. Using new technological capabilities, ensure the following goals:

• ​to make the economic burden of the war unbearable for Russia and its allies, so that it would abandon further waging of the war and accept our conditions on which they could sign an end to the war;
• ​ to undermine the economy and social component in order to deprive Russia of the opportunity for scientific and technological development and launch processes of civil unrest and disintegration;

2. The enemy is already doing all the things I just mentioned to us. Therefore, we need to take measures through new technological capabilities to protect our own military and socio-economic potential. And the second thing that is important is to create a system of protection and recovery in order to be able to develop and grow economically without stopping, even in times of war. If you tell me it's impossible, let's think of a country like Israel, and we'll find all of this there. We don't have a third option.

And in this situation we need to understand that:

1. our financial and economic resources are limited;
2. our dependence on the help of our partners is absolutely obvious and this must be taken into account;
3. we do have our own achievements in the field of technology, but they are quite limited, sectoral in nature and do not cover the entire spectrum necessary for the implementation of a survival strategy;
4. today we fail to continuously generate and scale innovations even in areas where yesterday we were ahead of the enemy. The enemy has already outpaced us and we are lagging behind – and we must speak honestly about this;
5. we do not conduct systematic research and search for partners in various fields. For example, intelligence, air defense (especially in the fight against ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons), control systems and the search for new physical properties of communication, on which the development of unmanned systems will depend tomorrow. 

In addition, when we talk about arms exports, we have to be honest about one more point. Export under management pressure is now absolutely impossible because:

1. A weapon that is effective now will not be as effective tonight;
2. Modern technology is not just a tank with improved driving capabilities that can be taken and sold. This is a completely new nature of war. And so the global exporter of security must understand what we have to offer for export:

• new weapons;
• new technologies for their production;
• new forms and methods of their application;
• new organizational structures in which this application will be most effective;
• then we must also propose new doctrines of application;
• new training doctrines;
• and as a result – completely new approaches to forming the security sector budget.

All of this is an extremely complex process that cannot be implemented without:

• a full-fledged state policy aimed at implementing a survival strategy, where innovation in the design and application of defense technologies is the basis;
• seeking partnerships to jointly develop and share advanced technologies, strengthen our production capacities and consolidate resources.

Before we move on to the final export of technologies, we need coordination between state institutions, public associations, and private businesses to unite around this survival strategy. On such grounds it is necessary to create mechanisms for coordination with the state. And of course, to seek, as far as possible, a balance between the state and business to ensure the level of technologization at the level of state policy.