How world’s only "Bohdana" liberated Snake Island and more: what is film "Weapons of Independence" about?
Drone Industry
On Thursday, 7 May, a preview screening of the documentary film "Weapons of Independence" by MIR & CO PRODUCTION took place in Kyiv. The film tells the story of the transformation of Ukraine’s defense-industrial complex, from post-Soviet decline to one of the key factors in the state’s survival during the full-scale war.
The film is based on the personal stories of soldiers, engineers, inventors and volunteers. They explain how a country that had lost a significant part of its defense capability after the collapse of the USSR was forced to rebuild its army almost from scratch and create modern weapons already during combat operations.
"After the collapse of the Soviet Union, independent Ukraine inherited enormous military-technical potential. And in the first 20 years, it managed to do the impossible, to completely destroy it: sell it off as scrap metal, destroy huge world-class enterprises, privatize them, pull them apart, and build shopping centers on the sites of defense plants. That is why, in 2014, without significant financial resources but understanding that Russia was already effectively at war with us, we began working to restore our military-technical potential," said Serhii Pashynskyi, head of the NAUDI association.
At the center of the story is the emergence of new types of weapons: the "Bohdana" artillery system, "Neptune" missiles, unmanned and naval drones that are changing the very logic of war.
Incidentally, the "Bohdana" self-propelled artillery system is one of the film’s main themes. After all, it played a key role in the liberation of Snake Island from Russian occupiers. The only prototype of the artillery system at the time fired at the Russian garrison from a position in the Odesa region. This is what forced them to flee Snake Island.
The film also reveals the transition from chaotic volunteer initiatives and the first drone experiments to high-tech warfare, where the speed of adaptation becomes decisive.
One of the film’s protagonists, Oleh "Kinder", an operator with the fire adjustment platoon of the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade named after the Black Zaporozhians, said that at the beginning of the full-scale war they did not even know how to turn on a drone, and because of communication problems, there was no one to consult. According to him, the manufacturer’s manual included in the box came in handy at the time.
"When I first took off on a Mavic, I saw wild horses," he recalled in the film.
Overall, the film combines frontline testimony with political and historical context, exposing the systemic mistakes of the past, corruption and the underestimation of the army that cost the country dearly. At the same time, it is a story about ingenuity, horizontal ties and people who, under conditions of limited resources, are creating tools of resistance.
"This is an attempt to film and document real heroes and people who directly know the history of what happened. We already have national achievements, achievements of global scale. Different countries around the world are now paying attention to Ukrainian weapons. And we are far from telling everything, only what can be told," Myroslav Hai, the film’s main driving force, told journalists of Censor.NET’s "Drone Industry " project.
"Miltech is one of the sectors that is now actively developing, so in our film we tried to structure what seemed important to us. Of course, many more such films could be made, because Ukraine’s defense industry is not standing still," said Kornii Hrytsiuk, director of "Weapons of Independence".
