Thieves and looters never win wars
Drone Industry
Danish national broadcaster DR reports that the Danish government will use the broad powers granted to it by a new emergency law to override 20 other laws and speed up the construction of a rocket fuel plant for Ukrainian company Fire Point with Danish taxpayers’ money.
In particular, the strict safety standards that are mandatory for hazardous industries will be ignored, which has raised concerns among local residents and criticism of the Danish authorities by NGOs and journalists.
The DR is conducting its own investigation into the use of Danish money to finance Ukrainian defence contracts, in particular the company Fire Point, which has already received more than €1 billion from the Danish government for the production of its long-range FP-1 drones and missile programmes.
Also, according to the company's management, it has received another €5 billion from the German government. At the same time, the production of long-range drones "Lutyi" by the state-owned "Antonov" company was financed by the Germans for only €500 million.
I was able to talk to Danish journalists, and they themselves are surprised that the top officials of the Ukrainian state, including the president himself, are lobbying for the interests of a private defence company that was established only in 2023, but which already received a third of all state defence orders for drones in 2024.
They explain the Danish government's position simply: "Ukraine is defending European security. If the Ukrainians do not fight, the Danes will have to fight. That is why the Danish government is willing to satisfy all requests from the Ukrainian government."
At the same time, the government and the president of Ukraine are asking for money for the private company Fire Point, not for the state-owned company "Antonov". It was in the interests of Fire Point that Zelenskyy and Yermak visited Denmark on 3 September and agreed to build a rocket fuel plant.
In fact, the entire so-called "Danish model" of assistance to Ukraine - about €1.4 billion - is money that Fire Point received in 2024 and 2025.
It is unclear why such huge sums of money are being allocated - with the full support of the state and direct lobbying by the president - to a private company, not a state-owned enterprise. It is unclear why there is no agreement on funding for state missile programmes such as "Neptune" and "Grom".
Fire Point director Yehor Skalyha is known until 2024 as a "location manager", i.e. a manager for finding locations for filming commercials and scenes for films. In 2019, as part of the programme "Strengthening the Capacity of the Ukrainian Audiovisual Sector", the team he worked with received almost UAH 2 million in grant support from the state.
For several years now, Yehor Skalyha, together with Iryna Terekh, Production Director at Fire Point, have been appointed by the President to the Presidential Council for Entrepreneurship Support. Previously, Iryna Terekh worked as the director of an architectural bureau that produced furniture made of concrete.
In his New Year's address on 31 December 2025, the President mentioned Fire Point - the company had only existed for a year at the time, but had already managed to take 30% of the Ukrainian market and get $320 million.
The President says that as a citizen, he is ashamed that for 30 years the state has not noticed the people who drive science, create rockets and drones. And now, it seems, the state has noticed - not engineers and designers, but location managers, lawyers, architects, producers and fitness trainers.
Bots write in the comments that I am jealous.
"Fire Point is making a lot of money by monopolising the market for long-range strike drones and selling them to the state at a premium - I'm jealous. I am jealous of the lion's share of the state defence procurement order captured by "General Chereshnia", a manufacturer of fpv drones, supplying mediocre drones by train cars.
And what is there to be jealous of? The ability of businessmen who have never had anything to do with drones - lawyers, location managers, fitness trainers, architects, film producers - to become giants in the drone market in a country at war in two years? To envy the enormous profits, the photos on the covers of business magazines, the bright stands at international arms exhibitions, the attention of the top officials of the state?
There is nothing to envy. I would have been ashamed, as the President said in his New Year's address. I would be ashamed not to go to war, but to "start a business", to have a cut, to receive from the state, without any competition and without comparative tests, a third of the state defence order at once, to supply unmanned slag at triple the price, to bathe in money, to buy journalists and entire media outlets "for image", to bend everyone who is not so "successful", to go to the president's office without knocking and to resolve issues in the Cabinet of Ministers by phone...
I would be ashamed of myself. I'm cut from a different cloth. I haven't made business plans since 2014. When I have money, I spend it on drones and my unit. For me, success is measured in the dry figures of the combat report and the growth of the combat capabilities of our guys and our equipment.
Of course, I'm jealous - if I had as much money as our new crimson jackets "earn", or even a tenth or a hundredth of that, I would try to change the course of the war - I would bring together all the smartest, most experienced, most ambitious people and create the best drones with them - short and long range ones, regardless of the company name, ownership and profit distribution, And to ensure that we are always one step ahead of the enemy, or better yet, two steps ahead, to regain our technological advantage and maintain it, to replace unmanned junk with real combat robots, and to finally have Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems in service with our air defence forces to stop the enemy's air terror.
Of course, the war is won by people - smart, experienced, ambitious and... honest. Thieves and looters never win wars.
