Ukraine 🇺🇦 Launches $21 Million Initiative to Mass-Produce Domestic Military Explosives

07/02/2026

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has announced six winners of a competitive grant program to scale the domestic production of military-grade explosives, Hromadske reported on July 1.

The total budget for the approved manufacturing projects stands at 944 million UAH ($21.07 million), with the state providing 620 million UAH ($13.84 million) in non-refundable co-financing. Under the terms of the program, selected private companies will cover 30% of the scaling costs, while the government provides the remaining 70%.

According to Hromadske, citing Minister of Defense of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov, the funding will enable local companies to establish large-scale production of critical explosives, including TNT, RDX (hexogen), PETN, and plasticized C4 analogs, addressing a persistent domestic deficit of raw munitions materials.

The initiative was launched through the state defense-tech cluster Brave1 to reduce Ukraine’s heavy reliance on foreign chemical imports. Brave1 CEO Andrii Hrytseniuk explained that while local defense laboratories had previously mastered producing high-quality explosives in small volumes, the vast majority of explosives used in domestic Ukrainian artillery shells are currently manufactured abroad.