today, we can produce weapons worth 20 billion dollars a year, this was said in particular by the minister of strategic industries of the ministry of strategy and industry kamyshyn, but there is still potential, relatively speaking, for larger quantities, and the question is where to find money for our defense enterprises, and this , by the way, was one of the issues raised at the first defense industry forum ukraine-european union, which was held in brussels. this week and we will be able to learn about the topic of this forum, about how the ukrainian and european discussed company, in the conversation with our guest anton mikhnenko, a military expert who was at this event and took a direct part in this, in my opinion, historical event, joins us. mr. anton, greetings, nice to see and hear, greetings, mr. sergey, in return, i would like to start with the first simple question, because... anyway

, there were reports that some new financial mechanisms were proposed to support our defense industry , using the potential of the european union, what are the mechanisms, what is promised, how will it work? in fact, we really have to note that such a large forum as the european union ukraine is being held for the first time at the moment, there were several forums that were aimed exclusively at ukraine's cooperation with... countries, countries, and now such a more serious one, in particular denmark, great britain , such other larger-scale forum, where it was precisely the cooperation of the european union with ukraine, where a fairly wide range of issues were raised, including the issue of providing assistance to ukraine at the expense of financial resources, which are of the european union, on the one hand, creating certain programs and projects aimed at helping ukraine, creating conditions for ukrainian manufacturers, in particular, to cooperate. with european manufacturers,

cooperated actively with the european union, so that ukrainian manufacturers could join those programs and projects that exist within the framework of the european union regarding the creation of certain models of military equipment, and of course the europeans, in particular, during the form emphasized on the subject of because they eventually came to an agreement on the possibility of obtaining, let's say, the financial resources that the russian federation currently has... in europe, which are frozen, frozen assets, but there are profits on them, and the use of profits of these frozen assets of the russian federation in europe, this is the mechanism, one of the mechanisms that the european union proposed and now, as you know, has already approved in fact, that is, it is about financial resources that russia could receive at the expense of dividends, they will asked for it to be possible to buy weapons for ukraine, and this can be a different mechanism, the only mechanism is direct purchase at the expense of these funds. arms from

ukrainian enterprises for the ukrainian armed forces of ukraine, another mechanism is the purchase of these arms, possibly from enterprises in europe, and these arms are directly needed by our armed forces of ukraine, and will be delivered in the interests of ukraine. in principle, such mechanisms, in particular, were discussed, many such and problematic points were discussed, but this it's a separate topic, which was at the political level, but you had the opportunity to communicate with european companies. because there were 40 ukrainian companies and 100 european companies, what were they talking about, how was the dialogue built, do european companies perceive us as potential partners, or for now only as a sales market for their products? look, the forum was divided into two key parts: the first, let's put it this way, is simpler, it is a political component, where representatives of the european union and some european associations spoke. ski

officials, ukrainian companies and ground companies, this is, let's say, a component of the forum, where political statements were made and certain problematic points and ways to solve them were discussed. the other component, exactly what you are talking about, is precisely the business component, where there was an opportunity for ukrainian enterprises, ukrainian companies to communicate with european companies directly, and directly european companies also had the opportunity to communicate with us, because we are, in principle, bilateral. dialogue, meaning it didn't mean we were the only ones were the initiators of us communicating with these or other manufacturers, but the europeans were also interested in communicating with manufacturers in ukraine, i'm sorry, but nevertheless, if i had just been to several forums in ukraine of a similar meaning, i would like to emphasize that a certain change of perception is being noted, if we say so, at the first such forums of a similar type in ukraine, it was mainly about the fact that...

europeans sold or supplied their weapons to ukraine, now they are already changing their philosophy a little, they understand that ukraine has a powerful defense-industrial complex, there are good solutions that sometimes even... prevail on the battlefield than the solutions proposed by the europeans, they understand very well that some of their solutions do not work effectively, and precisely because due to cooperation with ukrainian enterprises, due to cooperation with customers in ukraine, the armed forces, the defense forces, they can improve their own models of military equipment, and that is why this approach is more so now, of course they are interested in selling, but nevertheless they are interested, including in cooperation and collaboration, and there were questions when approaching... how can we help you, how can we find points of contact in the creation of certain samples, what you can do, and what we can do , what we can do together to make it effective, that is, the dialogue was open enough, as they say, but nevertheless certain shifts in this context are definitely there, if compared to what was

at the beginning, let's say such similar forums in ukraine, and with what we have now, and were there are there any wishes from european companies, because sometimes i heard it from... from our manufacturers, european manufacturers, that everyone wants to know the practice of combat use of certain samples on the battlefield, is there such a dialogue between our military and european suppliers weapons? you know, this is a question, i must say, this question has been raised, by the way, some manufacturers have pointed out that they lack this feedback, it's true, there is a lack of this feedback with our direct users. that is, armed forces of ukraine, regarding how this or that sample showed itself on the battlefield, what is missing, how it can be modernized, where its effectiveness can be increased, they lack this feedback, it can be for several reasons, one the reason that , for example, these manufacturers do not have access

to the territory of ukraine at all to come, on the one hand, he perfectly understands the issue of security, the second point, the enterprises themselves, the managers of these enterprises, they do not allow, european countries, i mean, they do not allow... their direct employees to go to ukraine to see why, because they are worried about their own safety, and this is logical, we also have to understand, and here is an important point of organizing proper cooperation between the ministry of defense of ukraine, where, in principle, this feedback from the use of this weapon are also ukrainian and european institutions, perhaps specifically with european companies so that they simply understand how it is possible to improve this or that type of weaponry. to apply it more effectively, i.e. this an important point, and i think it is such a point that needs to be developed and resolved as soon as possible. the europeans have a serious potential to improve certain models that have been delivered, and we should definitely use that potential, this invention is beneficial for us, because we end up

with such a more efficient model, if it is currently less efficient due to to increase this communication than it was before , on the one hand, on the other hand, it is definitely an opening... for the same export markets of european countries, that is , they can show that their model was really effective during the hostilities in ukraine and it can really be sold on export markets not only there in ukraine, but also in other countries. mr. anton, thank you very much for the explanation, i will remind our viewers that it was anton mikhnenko, a military expert on security and technology. i hope that the defense industry forum of the eu and ukraine will have a fruitful continuation. and let me remind you that , relatively speaking, this forum was about that there is a european aid fund for ukraine in the amount of eur 5 billion, and it is precisely one of the proposals of the ukrainian side, which is currently being considered by the european union, that the funds from this fund

be directed to the purchase of ukrainian weapons at ukrainian enterprises, not all countries from the very beginning. were very willing to do this, because if we recall even the story with france, when there was an idea to purchase ammunition for the armed forces from this fund, then at the very beginning france itself said that it made sense to first of all deploy production in european countries, but when it became clear that the pace of production of these munitions in europe will not be what ukraine needs, because in fact it is necessary to deploy the european defense industry, then it was decided that from these budgets from this fund... it is possible purchase ammunition outside the european union, and we can see that the same model will now be implemented, when these funds will be used to purchase equipment and weapons from the ukrainian companies themselves. it was also discussed that it is necessary to create common ones

enterprises, and also at this forum it was discussed that it is necessary to create not only joint enterprises, but also joint projects, because for... currently, the european union has somewhere around 1.5 billion euros allocated for the creation of new models, new technological solutions. european companies themselves. that 1.5 billion is actually a very small amount, but in any case, everyone recognized that it is worth involving ukrainian enterprises in these processes, because the creation of new types of weapons will first of all require not only a technological base, but also a certain experience, and now the same european companies do not always understand what requirements the battlefield creates for certain models, and those companies that... have already developed and delivered such weapons in ukraine, already have this certain experience, and new models need just that well

, close interaction with our users, with our armed forces, security and defense forces, this actually applies to the entire spectrum, starting from unmanned systems, completing impressions by one or another means, because even the most technological samples, in particular the same german howitzers panzerga obc 2000, which were considered the most technological solutions on the battlefield, in fact, when in... did not find themselves in combat conditions, it turned out that the intensity of use of these howitzers is so high that even the german designers could not estimate the load that would fall on their designs of this howitzer, then they were the same before the development of this technological howitzer, which is now effectively and actively used in the armed forces. a similar story was with the german un... pilot complexes, which now relatively speaking are purchased quite actively by the armed forces, but at the first stage, all these and

the german ones, by the way, are american unmanned systems, they sometimes turned out to be powerless in the conditions of the operation of the russian slave, while our seemingly simpler systems worked quite stably and stably in the conditions russian oar, then these refinements of the designs of american and european unmanned systems, they are now in... are made into those samples that we purchase with our own money or with the money of our partners for equipping of our armed forces, so in any case we understand that the war is associated with significant technological requirements and new companies that are created in ukraine, and those companies that are already more powerful, in one way or another, are forced to respond to price requirements, so that the weapons samples meet our needs. and now we are waiting for bray1 cluster head natalya

kushnerska to join our conversation. let me remind you that this cluster was created a year ago in order to speed up the implementation of technological solutions in work security and defense forces. this cluster was created at the initiative of the ministry of defense, the general staff of the national security and defense council, the ministry of digital, the ministry of economy, and it was supposed to become such a platform, a launch pad, where all young ukrainian companies that create certain types of weapons had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the requirements military, on the one hand, and on the other hand, taking into account these requirements and a number of procedural difficulties, they would still have the ability to quickly pass test cycles, receive support and financial, sometimes and organizational support so that later these... solutions are used on the battlefield, in particular, indeed, during the year of operation of the brain one cluster

, quite a lot has been done, we know that, in particular, now we see robotic platforms, during this time at least 200 different technological solutions in the field of unmanned ground platforms have been created, and now 50 of these platforms are in use or are being tested by the armed forces, and this is just one direction. which is extremely important for the technological approach to conducting hostilities. this also applies to the new priorities for bry one, because we know that the minister of digital transformation, in particular, there, miss tom, announced that teams are being created to find solutions on how to fight these russian eagles, because relatively speaking , preschool to our armed forces by the fact that they carry out reconnaissance in the depths of our

territory, then the intelligence data from the eagles is transmitted to the means of impression, and such a fire complex of impression is created in the enemy, which becomes more and more, more effective, and that's why we need these russian eyes in the form of eagles or halls, we just need to blind them. ms. natalya, i congratulate you, i am glad to see you on the air of the espress channel. let me remind our guests that this is natalya kushnerska, head of the brave one cluster. if you can hear and see me now, i would like to ask you a few questions. yes, of course, good evening. glad you. you see, exactly a year has passed since the formation of your technology cluster, i would like you to sum up what your team managed to do during this difficult year? but first, we managed to create a unique project in the whole world, a project of rapid development,

defense innovations and their delivery to the front, in the literal sense of the word, it is, on the one hand , to build an architecture and structure when all manufacturers have the opportunity to receive a military opinion of expertise, when there is an opportunity in manufacturers, after a high evaluation of this conclusion, calculate and receive assistance for the preparation of documents and for passing the codification procedure, then the state is purchased for a year of work for exactly more than ten. such successful cases, who have already received their contracts, such decisions, but the main thing is that during this year of work we were able to open, let's say, the field of defense innovations in ukraine, we were able to show the whole world how powerfully we are developing, how much in we have a lot of effective solutions and

we need to work on such solutions, you were absolutely right, you gave an example of ground... robots, there is another direction that we have taken in our work, this, sir, is the application of artificial intelligence in products, and in fact we see , as such directions, we can say following the example of drones and following the drone army project, which opened such a market and the sphere of drones, full-fledged spheres of ground robotic complexes are also opening, the sphere of ukrainian... burer , the sphere of application of artificial intelligence, i am sure that these are far from all our great opportunities and successes , precisely in the development of technologies. and this year, by the way, you have received much more funds from the budget than in the previous year, if i am not mistaken, for this year in the budget

it is planned to allocate as much as 1.5 billion hryvnias for the needs of technological solutions. i wanted i would like to ask you, what part of these funds is already? distributed, what is the use of these funds to support either young teams or certain technological solutions? you are absolutely right, last year for the past year up to this moment we have financed more than 180 projects in the amount of more than 3 million dollars, for this year 1.5 billion uah have been allocated from the budget, just tomorrow our grant program will start, we will start with grants for 500, hryvnias, a million and... 2 million hryvnias, and i think that in a month more large grants will be launched there, grant program, where it will be possible to get uah 4.8 million for those priority developments that the security and defense sector needs today. and i somehow change the request from young teams at the beginning of the start of the cluster itself and now

are there any nuances in the interaction with, well... with these teams, maybe some priorities have changed, interests, opportunities, what, what has changed? well, first of all, when the grant program and brevan in general started last year, you can say that we acted blindly, because we did not understand the full scope teams, did not understand their level of readiness, did not understand the entire list of solutions that exist and the actual needs of the teams, and therefore it is obvious that $500.25 is a grant program that... now i am stopping my activity just to be continued yes, the updated grant program, let's say, was a minimal amount, and many manufacturers said that they were really able to purchase certain components, pay for certain services, salaries, even hire people to work full-time on the development of these technologies, and these grants helped them precisely in

this, but for a large number of teams it was also motivation from... the state, that they, their teams, their developments, their work are needed by the state, needed by the military, and they have an interest, but we understand the same , that 5.25 thousand dollars is a rather small amount of money, when we say proukoy, science-intensive r&d developments that require more funding, because we, we understand today both the teams, and their capabilities, and their for... and the requests of the military , what exactly is needed today at the front, these are precisely these grants are large, they will help teams to create such leases. ms. natalya, thank you very much for your work, for the work of your team. for our security forces, for the defense forces, let me remind you that it was natalya kushnerska, head of the brain one cluster. these were the main military results of this day, and more

international and economic news later on vasyl zima's big broadcast, so stay tuned to the espresso channel. thank you very much to serhii zgurets, thank you to his guests, these were the military results of the day. and now i will announce the meeting and call you to join, yesterday, by the way, i actively encouraged you to join, and you joined, today we have already collected more than uah 70,000, although yesterday there were still 58,000, so we are asking you to join the collection for the repair of heavy armored vehicles in the war zone on solodarskyi and zaporizhzhia directions, the repair and recovery regiment works mainly on the contact line or in the gray zone, in the open air in any weather day and night, so for emergency... restoration and return to the battlefield of damaged military equipment, in particular tanks, combat cars, infantry, armored personnel carriers, we need a minibus that will deliver

mobile, repair teams and equipment to the combat zone, as well as pneumo-hydraulic jacks for the prompt repair of foreign equipment that arrives at the front and works at the front. our goal is uah 630,000. i don't even spare time now, it's literally a second, we have a second. it will take time, well , come on, after we watch the plot, we will look at the amount that we have already managed to collect with you by our respected and beloved viewers of the tv channel who trust us and during this time we collected huge sums and closed a lot of needs, i believe that we will close this one of 63,000 hryvnias , we will just take it as they say and do it, but now we will have a story about the problem , and this is a problem that did not arise yesterday, but it is gaining momentum and is unclear. how will all this end: an attack on freedom of speech or an attack on democrats, which actually are identical concepts, the goal is simply partial and general,

democracy is general, freedom of speech is partial, but actually the conflict, which does not arise, its provoke for the public a broadcaster who works, let me remind you, in different regions of our country, in fact in all regions of our country, covers local problems, covers regional problems, covers problems of national importance, has grants from... abroad, the existence of a public and transparent work of a public broadcaster - this is one of the conditions for ukraine's accession to european integration, i will remind you once again that the representatives of certain authorities, i do not know who they are, but such people were found, apparently at one time more than two years ago they turned off the t2 network, the espressu tv channel, tv channel 5, tv channel pryamy, but this turned out to be not enough, and now there is an active attack on public affairs, plus the fact that such an odious deputy as yana bezugla joins this, let's watch the material, then we will talk with the head of the board of public affairs, what is happening, what are the risks and threats, let's watch the plot. a telethon for

your own. community, one of the six producers of the national marathon only news this week found itself between two fires. colleagues announced their intention to take away the prime evening slots, which are watched the most, from him number of viewers and the people's deputy from the servant of the people maryan. bezugla published several posts on social networks accusing the broadcaster. experts immediately linked these two events and recalled the story of the dismissal of the head of the armed forces of ukraine valery zaluzhny, which was reminiscent of a special information operation, and maryana bezugla also started it. this time, the deputy blamed the public for the seemingly small reach of the audience, for the high salaries of the management and even the organization of schemes. arrangement of men for the purpose of their reservation, but the main message was an appeal reduce state funding of the broadcaster. so,

currently we have de facto a6 state channels, public with all ramifications, council, dom, freedom, telethon, army media holding. i believe that the six state broadcasters should be made one, and the funds should be redirected to the creation of information and cyber forces of ukraine. to create an information and cyber military ukraine. but public has long ceased to be state. thanks to the support of western countries. after the revolution of dignity, the once truly state channel was reformed and became public. the office of the president, the cabinet and even the verkhovna rada has no direct mechanisms of influence on its editorial policy. monitoring shows that the public is the only participant in the telethon that allows itself to give different points of view. for example, invite. people's deputies from various factions, in particular from european solidarity. perhaps there are some stop letters to other channels or something else, as the opposition often says in... they are forwarded

and established, they agree on specific speakers in the marathon, we don’t have such a thing, and maybe this is what worries her, well, the representatives authorities that they cannot interfere in our editorial policy. the telethon - the only news was launched on february 24, 2022, leading media groups and tv channels united to participate in it. at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the telethon fulfilled its function, to prevent panic and promptly inform ukrainians about the progress of the war, but now, according to many media experts, it has become an informational relic, and trust in it continues to fall. according to a kmis survey conducted in february 2024, only 36% trusted the marathon ukrainians, while 47% did not trust. the telethon was also mentioned in the recent report of the american. of human rights in

ukraine in 2023, as an example of restrictions on freedom of speech. however, the authorities do not plan to abandon the format under their control. serhii leshchenko stated this, in particular, on the air of the same telethon. adviser to the head of the president's office andrii yarmak. part of the russian information war is being waged against ukraine by discrediting the marathon, realizing that if there is no marathon, then a media house will emerge. in terms media house extremely. it is easier to create provocations that will split society and send ukraine inwardly ahead of russian aggression. the telethon is not the only example of the authorities' desire to completely control the information space, introducing not only military, but also political censorship. on april 4 , 2022, an unprecedented event occurred in the ukrainian media field, without any formal decisions and even without explanations, the authorities illegally removed

three national tv channels from digital broadcasting at once. espresso, direct and fifth channel. this decision has not yet been overturned. obviously, not to talk about what these three channels have done, to say: "no, you will leave the public." well, we will quietly forget about them, because we are ashamed, we understand that we will not convince them, because this is the government. well, this is hypocrisy, what is our social and everything else? where is the truth then? the truth is that the public must definitely be protected, the telethon definitely needs to be closed. on the other hand even before the war, from the first days of the full-scale invasion , the authorities helped ukrainians to become addicted to the information needle of the telegram messenger, which was launched by the russian pavlo durov, and which, as many experts assume, may be connected to the russian special services. in particular , representatives of anonymous telegram channels were invited to president zelensky's press conference. now it seems that even the banking industry has realized that this is a threat.

gur kyrylo budanov directly called messenger with russian roots a problem of national security, and the verkhovna rada has already registered a bill on the regulation of this and other social networks in the part that concerns information activities. well, actually, the problem is obvious, the problem is actually artificially created, the only question is for what purpose, who can be the beneficiary in this story, we will ask mykola about it. chornotytsko, who is the chairman of the board of the national public television and radio company of ukraine or public broadcasting. i congratulate you. good evening. congratulations mr. mykola. well, actually, in the plot, we briefly talked about the main problems. let's start with what. who created this problem and what is the real problem. i'm talking about you now about a team of people who do public broadcasting. well, look, we don't have any.

times of the fact that it's there some kind of it's all things are connected because there's a lot going on that when it can be several things that coincided in time, but nevertheless, if we have a discussion and well about what the allocation of slots inside marathon, it is true, and today we have finally returned to a constructive discussion, i said so at the committee, at the meeting of the humanitarian policy committee, for public broadcasting we are for us in principle, either the preservation of the parity condition of content production within the marathon, or we are ready to consider the possibility of expansion and broadcasting on the first channel, then in any case both and that option are okay for us, we are ready for two scenarios of this, today we actually and with the help of the representatives of the committee.