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Ukraine, EU launch $117 million military innovation partnership

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Ukraine, EU launch $117 million military innovation partnership
An FPV (first-person view) drone. (Mykhailo Fedorov / Facebook)

Ukraine and the EU will allocate 100 million euro ($117 million) to boost battlefield-driven solutions under the newly-launched BraveTech EU initiative, announced at the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC) in Rome on July 11.

The initiative was jointly announced by Ukraine's Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and European Commissioner for Defense and Space Andrius Kubilius.

BraveTech EU marks the first major technological alliance between Ukraine and Europe on equal terms, with each side contributing 50 million euro ($58 million).

The initiative will focus on small and medium-sized enterprises and startups in Ukraine and Europe. It will help exchange regulatory experience, develop innovations, scale them up, and rapidly procure new defense technologies.

"European colleagues will receive results from the battlefield," Fedorov said at URC.

Other European countries may also join the initiative's funding, according to Fedorov.

"The EU and its member states have an industrial capacity that can help Ukraine develop new defense systems and increase European resilience," Kubilius said in a press release.

The program will unfold in two phases, starting with hackathons for Ukrainian and European defense companies in autumn 2025, Fedorov wrote on his Telegram page.

In 2026, they plan to expand the program with larger grants, startup scaling support, and investments in the most promising projects.

The BraveTech EU initiative will integrate Ukraine's defense industry into European mechanisms, connecting Ukraine's BRAVE1 defense technology platform with EU instruments, including the European Defense Fund (EDF) and the EU Defense Innovation Scheme (EUDIS).

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Yana Prots

Newsroom Intern

Yana Prots is an intern on the business desk of the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a journalist at the NGO Center of United Actions and as a social media editor at Hromadske media. Yana holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and completed a year as an exchange student at the University of Zurich. Now, she is pursuing a master’s degree in International Finance and Investment at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

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