Ukraine investing in firearms ammo production, Ukrainian defence conglomerate CEO says

Herman Smetanin, the CEO of the state-owned Ukrainian Defence Industry conglomerate, has said that Ukraine is investing in its own firearms ammunition production in order to meet the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In an interview with Economic Pravda, Mr Smetanin said that the firearms ammunition production that Ukraine has now is not owned by the Ukrainian state and is not enough to meet the needs of the Ukrainian military.

"In 2024, the budget will allocate seven times more funds for the development, modernisation and development of the defence industry than this year," he said, adding that part of this money will be used to develop ammunition production capabilities.

After Russia’s occupation of the Luhansk cartridge plant in 2014, Ukroboronprom, as the Ukrainian Defence Industry was known earlier, lost its ammunition production capacity.

Since then, only a small private company has been producing ammunition, and officials promise to restore state-owned ammunition production every year.

In 2017, the Ukrainian government called for allocating UAH 1.4 billion for the purchase of equipment and construction of an ammunition plant, but work is yet to start.