A BBC defence correspondent in Kyiv reports on their secret missile factory:
We’re driven blindfolded to a secret location where Ukraine is making one of its latest weapons.
We’re told to turn off our phones — such is the secrecy around the production of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile.
For Ukraine, dispersing and hiding the production of weapons like this is key to survival. Two factories belonging to the company that makes it — Fire Point — have already been hit.
Inside the one we’re visiting we’re told not to film any features such as pillars, windows or ceilings. We’re also asked not to show the faces of workers on the assembly line — where Flamingo missiles are at various stages of completion.
Even under fire, Ukraine is ramping up its arms industry. President Volodymyr Zelensky says the country now produces more than 50% of the weapons it uses on the front line. Almost its entire inventory of long-range weapons is domestically made.
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The head of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says Ukraine’s long-range strikes have already cost the Russian economy more than $21.5bn this year.
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Of course Russia has been doing the same, and on a greater scale. On average it has been launching around 200 Shahed drones a day; Ukraine’s response has been about half that number.
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Fire Point didn’t even exist before Russia’s full-scale invasion. But the start-up is now producing 200 drones a day. Its FP1 and FP2 drones, each the size of a small aeroplane, have carried out 60% of Ukraine’s long-range strikes. Each drone costs around $50,000 — a third of the price of a Russian Shahed drone. Russia is still producing nearly 3,000 of those a month.
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Until the end of last year, under President Biden, the United States supplied nearly $70bn-worth of military support to Ukraine. That was soon stopped under President Trump — instead he has set up a scheme to allow European Nato to purchase US weapons.
Ukraine still needs outside help, not least with intelligence, targeting and money. But it is trying to be more self-sufficient.