PARIS — More than two dozen Ukrainian defense companies traveled to Paris this week to meet with French counterparts, laying the groundwork for co-production deals in France and seeking to bolster integration with the European defense-industrial base.
French defense firms have been slow to set up joint companies with Ukrainian partners, with just one joint venture created so far, compared to 11 for Germany and five for Spain, said Ihor Fedirko, the chief executive officer of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry. He was speaking at a press briefing late Wednesday after a day of meetings organized with French land defense industry group GICAT.
Ukraine has developed unmatched expertise in Europe in drone warfare after four years of fighting Russia’s invasion, coming up with new use cases and doctrine as well as scaling up drone production to millions of units per year. Meanwhile, France is home to some of Europe’s biggest defense firms and is the world’s second-biggest arms exporter.
“We have to establish a win-win strategy with the defense industry of France, to find our best partners,” Fedirko said. “We want to know as well how you produce your products, your production culture, your standards. That’s what you can bring to our industry.”
Ukraine was present with 27 companies, most of them drone makers, while nearly 60 French firms showed up for the day of match making, according to Fedirko. He said some Ukrainian companies would follow up with visits to French manufacturers on Thursday.
Co-producing Ukrainian defense products with strategic partners, on their territory, means an additional flow of equipment to send to the front, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former minister of strategic industries. He said allied governments buying co-produced kit to donate to Ukraine “is the fastest and the best way how we can support our front line.”
Kamyshin said Ukraine’s industry has historically been integrated “into the East” and now needs to become part of the European defense framework, while Europe’s defense industry will become stronger by integrating capabilities learned and developed in Ukraine.
“We come with our lessons learned,” Kamyshin said. “We offer a model which is definitely beneficial for your country, for your industry, for your economy. And we want to do more together.”
Fedirko said no other European country has a defense industry like that of France, active in deep tech and completely independent, with the French industry strong in aerospace and “classic weaponry.” With France able produce everything from missiles and radars to night-vision equipment, what Ukraine can bring is knowledge, technologies and innovations in the field of drones, he said.
“When we will combine our experience and expertise and your deep technologies, your standards, your production culture, we can establish something pretty new,” Fedirko said.
French companies may announce at least one or two drone joint ventures with Ukrainian partners in the coming weeks, said Clément Requier, GICAT’s director of export and European partnerships. He noted France’s defense industry already works with Ukraine’s industry in formats other than joint ventures.
Ukraine is offering a level of industrial collaboration that wouldn’t have been available five years ago, and is open to sharing what it learned to produce, in the interest of integrating with European industry, according to Kamyshin. The Ukrainian official said in turn he sees strong interest in cooperation from the French side.
Wednesday’s meeting was the fourth between the French and Ukrainian defense industries since July 2023, and the first in France, according to Requier. France often frames cooperation with other countries in terms of delivering stand-alone solutions, and should think more about also being a provider of critical components and equipment, he said.
Ukraine has the expertise it needs, with more than 1,000 companies active in defense, most of them producing unmanned systems, said Kamyshin. He said Ukrainian drones have sunk Russian ships and submarines, saying it “looks like Lego drones work well,” an oblique reference to reported comments by Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger widely seen as dismissive of Ukraine’s drone innovation.
France has deep knowledge and expertise in artificial intelligence, and “we would be happy do to more in that domain,” according to Kamyshin. Ukraine sees France as a strategic partner, and the focus is on promoting collaboration and co-production in France, rather than sales, the special adviser said.
Ukraine in March raised the possibility of sharing battlefield data with partners to train AI models, and Kamyshin said Ukraine would be happy to share datasets with countries with which it starts co-production, and “not only in Ukraine,” with an announcement on partnerships expected on April 13.
With regards to what France can bring to the table, Ukraine could benefit from more sharing of strong standard setting in Europe, said Éloi Delort, public affairs director at Alta Ares, a French defense AI firm. He said France’s Directorate General for Armament puts “a lot of stress” on French companies to secure systems and ensure technology is not getting stolen.
One of Wednesday’s participants, Ukraine’s MOWA Defense, which provides training and advisory services for defense, sees France as a key market, co-founder Fedir Serdiuk said. Operating in France would require a local partner, which the executive says he hopes to have found, with a possible final agreement or at least a letter of intent in coming months.
Ukrainian drone maker eDrone came to Paris looking for new partnerships, chief commercial officer Pavlo Valenchuk said. He cited the example of a French company with radars, a good drone-tracking system and software, “everything to develop a really good system” to protect strategic objects in France, but lacking interceptor drones. “This type of partnership we’re looking for.”
French company SBG Systems, which makes low-cost inertial navigation systems in France that are used by Ukraine in strike drones, is looking to qualify partnerships to relocate some production to Ukraine, CEO Thibault Bonnevie said. Some manufacturing may be difficult to move because it relies on machine tools from Switzerland, with export restrictions for countries in conflict, he said.
SBG is working to enhance feedback on its products from the front line, a key issue in Ukraine because of the fast-evolving battlefield and Russian electronic-warfare, Bonnevie said. The company’s customers are manufacturers rather than the armed forces directly, which means relying on the drone makers for user feedback, something that was “discussed a lot” on Wednesday, the CEO said.
Meeting with Ukrainian companies in Paris was a way to meet potential new partners rather than sign contracts, according to Bonnevie.
“The next step is usually to go visit those companies directly in Ukraine, because there is nothing really happening in Ukraine for European companies without stronger links,” Bonnevie said. Even if discussions center around drones and robots, “there is still a story of humans working together and trust that needs to be built between the companies,” he said.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.