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trillion ($112bn), or 6% of GDP, as Russian President Vladimir Putin goes all out on the war and prepares for a long fight. Ukraine’s 2024 budget has also boosted military spending to 20% of GDP, but at UAH1,164bn ($33bn), Russia is spending three times more on its war effort than Ukraine.
Turkey had already promised to set up a Bayraktar TB2 drone factory in Ukraine before the war started and now says it is investing $100mn in three projects in Ukraine, among them the construction of a drone production plant that will be completed in one and a half years.
And last week leading German weapons maker Rheinmetall entered into a joint venture with Ukraine’s state-owned counterpart, the Ukraine Defence Industry group (UDI), to build facilities to make and repair weapons, Rheinmetall said on its website on September 29. The strategic co-operation between Rheinmetall and UDI, formerly known as Ukroboronprom, began in May 2023 but now the relationship will deepen.
British arms producer BAE Systems has also announced plans to team up with Ukrainian producers.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Ukrainian producers had signed about 20 agreements with foreign partners for
joint production, exchange of technology or supply of components to make drones, armoured vehicles and ammunition. It did not identify the companies.
"It will be a mutually beneficial partnership. I think it is a good time and place to create a large military hub,” Zelenskiy said during a separate meeting with US, British, Czech, German, French, Swedish and Turkish weapons producers, Reuters reported.
Counter-offensive makes no progress
The focus on weapons comes as several recent reports say that Ukraine’s much vaunted counter-offensive is making very little progress. After a secret meeting between Ukraine’s high command and top Nato generals at the start of September saw a change of tactics and a concentration
of Ukraine’s forces on the southern front, little new territory has been taken, despite reports that the AFU has broken through Russia’s defensive lines there.
The NYT ran a report that shows Ukraine has retaken almost no new land since the highly successful Kharkiv offensive last September and Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson at the end of the same month.
Another report shows that the least territory changed hands in August since the war started and that there have been
no significant territory changes in the last month.
The war has now descended into a stalemate, with Ukraine unable to make any progress because of the limits on the supply and power of weapons being supplied by the West. Bringing production of arms to Ukraine would give Kyiv more options to increase the strength of its offensive.
It would also allow Kyiv to produce more armour that is more appropriate to the war it is fighting. The West’s supply of the modern German-made Leopard tanks was hailed as a major advancement when they were promised last year, but without the accompanying air support – the mooted supply of US-made F-16 will not arrive until at least next year – the Leopards have failed to make any significant impact on the battlefield.
Indeed, some have questioned the value of the supply of these high tech Western weapons. Western-made armour isn't working in Ukraine because it wasn't designed for a conflict of this intensity, Ukrainian analyst said in a recent interview with Business Insider.
Other weapons systems, like the highly accurate HIMARS missiles and the Javelin anti-tanks missiles, clearly have
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