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AIPROPX ReportCNBC · 6h ago
Inside the startup drone maker powering Ukraine's deep-strike campaign
The chief executive of Ukraine's leading arms company says Kyiv has "learned the hard way" that military strength is an essential precursor to diplomacy, describing deep strikes into Russian territory as a core tenet of the country's pressure campaign.
Missile and drone maker Fire Point , which says it currently facilitates more than 60% of Ukraine's so-called "long-range sanctions," has scaled exponentially since being founded in response to Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
The defense-tech startup produced around 200 drones that year, a feat CEO Iryna Terekh described as a "huge achievement."
Since then, the Kyiv-headquartered startup has swelled from three founding members to more than 7,000 employees and Terekh says it "looks realistic" to expect the team to produce more than 100,000 drones by year-end.
"We have to understand that we live, unfortunately, in the same timeline with a completely barbarous, imperialistic neighbor and we can expect whatever," Fire Point CEO Iryna Terekh told CNBC by video call.
"Unfortunately, I was in that naïve state of mind before the full-scale invasion that we will find a way to de-escalate the situation and find a diplomatic way to deal with this, but from what we can observe, this is not something that is possible."
Russia's Foreign Ministry did not respond to CNBC's request for comment. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously framed the conflict as a pursuit to reverse Russia's post-Soviet retreat and revive Moscow's superpower status.
From Siberia to occupied Crimea , Ukraine's drone campaign appears to have revived hopes that the war could be shifting in Kyiv's favor, although commentators have warned that efforts to raise the cost of the conflict for Russia risk further escalation.
Some analysts have also questioned whether Ukrainian drones alone can force Putin to the negotiating table, with the Atlantic Council's Christopher Isajiw suggesting that progress toward peace may only become possible when continuing the war becomes more costly for the Russian president than ending it.
Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia's Amazon-style retail giant Wildberries in recent weeks, seeking to squeeze a critical piece of Russia's consumer economy and create a new pressure point for Putin.
Russian forces, meanwhile, have increased the number of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, likely seeking to exploit Kyiv's shortage of ballistic missile interceptors.
Known for flagship products such as the FP-1 series of deep-strike drones and the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, Fire Point's CEO said the company is doing whatever it can to support Ukraine's deep-strike ambitions.
"I'm very proud and I feel a huge responsibility to be a big part of this. We have to understand that the whole war doctrines are changing live in the moment," Terekh said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy singled out Fire Point as putting Siberia "within reach of Ukrainian precision" following an attack on a major oil refinery in the Russian city of Omsk last month.
The attack was seen as further evidence of Kyiv's long-range drone capabilities in the run-up to a crunch NATO summit in Turkey, where U.S. President Donald Trump told Zelenskyy that the U.S. would allow Ukraine to produce ballistic missile interceptors.
The U.S. president has since cast doubt on plans to allow Kyiv to manufacture Patriots domestically and in Europe, however, raising alarm among Ukrainian officials who fear a winter assault could pose the country's toughest challenge of the war yet.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on international partners to expedite the supply of ballistic missile interceptors to Ukraine, saying that the technology could have saved the lives of those killed in Kyiv on Aug. 5.
Fire Point aims to produce a ballistic missile interceptor for a fraction of the cost of a U.S.-made Patriot. However, Terekh said these efforts require the company to achieve in a few years a program that usually takes two to three decades.
A hold-up in European funding has also prevented the company from maximizing production of its Flamingo cruise missile, Terekh said.
"The production of Flamingo is not running at full power [at] the moment because we were waiting for the funds for a European loan to come in but we expect to ramp it up to expected maximum capabilities that we named when we started the Flamingo production."
Terekh has previously compared European bureaucracy to the security threat posed by Russian forces.
"Probably I put a little bit too much drama in this phrase, but I really wanted it to be heard because we need to understand that whatever Fire Point achieved, and as well as other Ukrainian manufacturers, would be never possible in any [other] European country, simply because of bureaucracy," Terekh said.
"You take the same people, the same money, the same factories, they would simply not be working in Europe for one simple reason, because of the hold of regulations and I would love to inspire European politicians to review how the bureaucracy should work under such a huge threat that we are all facing now," she continued.
"When we compare these two threats, so the Russians and the bureaucracy, with the Russians you can fight with drones and missiles but how do you fight with bureaucracy when you cannot receive a paper that you need very much to do some job?"
A spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, declined to comment.
Alongside diplomatic, financial, military and humanitarian support for Ukraine, the EU recently introduced its largest sanctions package against Russia in four years, targeting almost 220 individuals and entities as it seeks to squeeze the country's economy and its capacity to prolong its full-scale invasion.
"Ukrainians were pretty imaginative in trying an alternative strategy," Alex Kolyandr, director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, told CNBC.
"I'm not entirely sure it was the right decision to s...
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