Ukraine's Bureaucrats Are Finishing What China Started

Townhall 

In any war, the side that sustains its production advantage wins. Ukraine understands this. In under three years, it built a drone industry from virtually nothing — seven manufacturers before Russia's 2022 invasion to approximately 500 by 2025, producing over four million units annually. That industrial mobilization gives Ukraine a decisive asymmetric edge, enabling a military outgunned in conventional artillery to inflict devastating losses through unmanned systems. Ukrainian drones now account for up to 80 percent of Russian battlefield casualties. This is not a sideshow capability. It is the backbone of Ukraine's war effort.

China understands it too. In May 2025, President Zelensky confirmed that Beijing had halted drone and component sales to Ukraine while continuing to supply Russia. After China's September 2024 export ban, direct procurement became impossible. Ukrainian manufacturers adapted — building alternative supply chains through European intermediaries, routing components via the Czech Republic, and relying on partners willing to absorb significant legal and financial risk. This was the only route. The Ukrainian armed forces understood, accepted deliveries, deployed the systems, and paid knowingly. The military broadly supported these arrangements because the alternative was no drones at all.

The sector attracted serious American interest. Zelensky proposed a $50 billion drone deal with the United States — ten million drones annually over five years. President Trump expressed direct interest. Secretary Hegseth's directive to fast-track U.S. drone production acknowledged that America lags in small military unmanned systems. Ukraine's battle-tested manufacturers are exactly the partners this strategy requires.

Then Ukraine's own government attacked the industry from within.

The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) — widely regarded as highly politicized— has driven sweeping investigations into dozens of drone manufacturers, with the Economic Security Bureau (ESBU) providing support. Their focus was not corruption, but the very supply chains that kept production alive after China's embargo. According to Yuriy Gudymenko, Chair of the Public Anti-Corruption Council of the Ministry of Defense, ninety percent or more of Ukrainian drone manufacturers have been targeted by these agencies since 2022. The SBI-led investigations halted production of critical systems including heavy-bomber and reconnaissance drones that frontline units depend on daily.

What happened next should alarm every military professional. Investigators demanded that drone manufacturers disclose detailed lists and geolocated coordinates of their production facilities. In a country where Russia actively hunts drone factories with cruise missiles and strike drones, forcing manufacturers to compile and transmit precise facility locations through bureaucratic channels is an extraordinary operational security failure. Ukrainian drone producers have spent years dispersing and concealing their manufacturing — operating from unmarked sites, relocating after strikes, maintaining the kind of operational discipline familiar to any special operations professional. The SBI and ESBU demanded they hand all of that over on paper.

The results speak for themselves. In recent months, Russian precision strikes have destroyed the main manufacturing plant producing drones for Lasar's Group — one of the most effective UAV units in the National Guard — burning $35 million in equipment and weapons stockpiles. A separate Russian strike caused significant damage to another major plant — the production facility for Reactive Drone’s Kazhan heavy-bomber drone, one of the most feared Ukrainian weapons on the battlefield. These factories had survived years of Russian intelligence efforts to locate them. The coincidence of their destruction following demands that manufacturers disclose their locations to agencies with no understanding of operations security demands investigation, not dismissal.

The broader operational damage is equally severe. Supply chains built over years under wartime conditions have been severed. The SBI's appeals to Czech authorities, supported by the ESBU, resulted in the freezing of international supplier accounts. Production lines have gone silent. Fewer drones reaching the front means degraded ISR coverage, reduced strike capability, and Ukrainian soldiers dying in positions that unmanned systems should be protecting. From a force-employment perspective, this is the equivalent of a friendly-fire incident against one's own industrial base.

The legal foundation of these investigations would not survive scrutiny in any wartime tribunal. Investigators are applying peacetime commercial law to wartime defense procurement — comparing end prices against nominal factory costs while ignoring the true burden: clandestine supply chains under sanctions pressure, intermediaries absorbing legal exposure, logistics through multiple EU jurisdictions, and the destruction of thirty percent of one leading manufacturer's facilities by Russian strikes. When the buyer — Ukraine's own military — knowingly accepted delivery and deployed the systems, alleging fraud against the supplier inverts basic legal logic.

The SBI's selective enforcement, backed by the ESBU, has also distorted competition. One company's domestic market share rose from 30 to 60 percent as rivals were investigated into paralysis. That is not anti-corruption — it is monopolization by bureaucratic fiat. The timing — investigations launched shortly after leading manufacturers returned from discussions with American counterparts about post-export-ban sales — raises unavoidable questions about who benefits.

For Washington, this is not an academic concern. A $50 billion drone partnership cannot rest on an industrial base that Kyiv's own agencies are dismantling — or one whose facility locations are being funneled through insecure channels while Russia watches. American interests require a competitive, resilient Ukrainian drone sector, not one hollowed out by the SBI and ESBU operating under peacetime assumptions without the knowledge to evaluate wartime defense procurement.

China tried to strangle Ukraine's drone industry and failed. Russia has spent billions trying to destroy it from the air — and is now apparently receiving help from inside the house. These investigations must cease. The geolocation demands must be rescinded. The supply chains must be restored. And Washington must make clear that the future of allied defense cooperation depends on Kyiv protecting — not exposing — the industry that keeps its soldiers alive.