Ukraine’s low-budget tech wizardry has stunned Western audiences since the war’s outset. Soldiers operating out of front-line garages have modified donated artillery, rehabbed captured weapons, amped up off-the-shelf drones, and coded software to streamline it all.
. . .
As Russia’s war carries on into its third year, the Ukrainian government has tried to promote investment both from abroad and domestically into the defense tech startups for its current wartime arsenal and a prospective peacetime cash cow — particularly as global venture capital has gone gung-ho on weapons.
But money has been painfully slow to come in from abroad. The average weapons firm in Ukraine faces stout financial barriers from all sides — reactionary policy at home where the central bank has put measures in place to prevent capital flight, and abroad, where major insurers and investors won’t touch either Ukraine or defense.
The companies are gun-shy because their governments are gun-shy. Here it’s easier to see the paltry transfer of weapons outside the nice words and promises.