Ukraine will always face the threat of Russian attacks and cannot rely on the “kindness of strangers” for protection. Therefore the government must open the gates for exports to continue to nurture the defense industry, MITS Capital co-founder Perry Boyle told Kyiv Post.
Over the last three and a half years since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, 2,100 weapons manufacturers have registered with Ukraine’s defense cluster Brave1 alone, according to Forbes Ukraine.
Although Ukrainian companies are developing cutting-edge defense solutions, Ukraine’s regulatory bodies restrict military exports. Industry experts, law enforcement officials and private defense manufacturers that Kyiv Post spoke to say these obstacles prevent Ukrainian companies from attracting capital, supplying Europe in the face of the Russian threat, and competing in the global weapons market.
After Kyiv Post spoke with Boyle, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that a concept for “partial arms exports” is about to be announced, but few details were voiced at the time of publication.
“Ukraine needs two sorts of funding: investment capital and customer capital. It needs revenues derived from non-Ukrainian buyers because that’s what will improve the macro environment. But nothing will happen without free exports and free repatriation of capital,” Boyle said.
He said that local defense manufacturers are starved of capital to fund frontline R&D and scale production; and that new investors will not earn returns without access to export markets. The problem is compounded by the absence of a developed capital market, active stock exchange, or major private buyers.
“How much money are we going to make? I have no idea. When are we going to make a profit? I don’t know. Who would buy the companies in Ukraine? Well, there are no natural buyers of these companies in Ukraine,” Boyle said.
Yet Boyle came to Ukraine from the US, having co-founded MITS Capital, an investment group based in Kyiv and New York and focused on Ukrainian defense innovation. He believes investing in Ukraine’s defense is the only way to stop Russia’s war against the country and prevent it from invading Europe.
Boyle said he “had converted to Ukrainianism,” wearing Ukraine’s traditional Ukrainian embroidered vyshyvanka shirt paired with thin blue and yellow bracelets to the interview.
“The best outcome for everyone is defeating Russia in Ukraine. It’s clearly the best outcome for Ukraine,” Boyle said.
Just three and a half years after Russia violated Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, NATO members pledged to spend 5% of their GDP annually on core defense needs and broader security-related programs by 2035. But he believes the pace of rearming against Russia’s threat might still be too slow.
Russia may be worn out fighting its war against Ukraine, on a 1,400-kilometer (875-mile) frontline, but it is conducting active offensive operations on roughly 20% of the front, “Come Back Alive” Foundationʼs CEO Taras Chmut told Ukrainska Pravda in July 2025.
“I don’t think NATO … has the capability to defend Europe against Russia, primarily because it doesn’t have the will. And what Ukraine has proven is that the number one thing in a war is the will to fight. If you don’t have the will to fight a war, you’re going to lose,” Boyle said.
From Wall Street to Ukraine’s battlefield
On Feb. 24, 2022, Boyle thought Russia’s invasion would be “over in a couple days.”
“And then it wasn’t over. And so about a week into it, I realized the Ukrainians are going to fight back,” he told Kyiv Post.
Boyle thought that if the Ukrainians were fighting back, America would help them. “Because that’s what America does – but we didn’t,” he said, before adding that the US was not behaving like a superpower.
Boyle said he “only knew where Ukraine was on the map” at that time. He did not have any family roots in the country and did not have any friends there. However, he decided that with his family grown up and taken care of, he should come to Ukraine.
Back in Idaho, where Boyle lived with his wife after retirement, he opened the website of the International Legion. He had no previous military experience – Boyle worked as an investment banker and financial analyst for 35 years – but he still wanted to be “help any way he could,” as a driver or cook.
The Ukrainian embassy in the US turned down his request to join the military. But another Ukrainian resident of Washington DC, Denys Gurak, a volunteer in the embassy in the first days of Russia’s invasion, saw Boyle’s emails, connected with him and they decided to work together.
“When I showed up, Denys was like: ‘You’re not Ukrainian. You’re gonna flank out on me too,’” Boyle said.
In March 2022, Boyle and Gurak first thought of bonding with existing well-stocked partners, trying to raise the money for defense. But first “an established venture fund,” then a partner – “didn’t do the work,” Boyle said. “They weren’t Ukrainian.”
Boyle said he secured $10 million from US billionaire Bill Ackman, but after the Zelensky White House quarrel, he pulled out.”
With a year wasted on partners who failed them, Boyle encouraged Gurak to invest with him and to start an accelerator for miltech startups.
Boyle’s lifetime finance career spanned US investment banks and equity research, including Thomas Weisel Partners and SAC Capital. The latter became a 1,000-employee Point72 hedge fund with offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and London.
After retirement in 2019, he participated in local Idaho politics and continued with clean tech investing. “I am not really a retiring kind of person,” Boyle said.
Instead of retiring and joining the international legion, Boyle set about investing in Ukraine’s defense tech.
The rise of MITS: From innovation lab to ‘defense-tech powerhouse’
The first Military Innovation Technology Solutions (MITS) accelerator took place in April 2024 in Kyiv and was joined by a new Ukrainian managing partner from Kharkiv, Alina Lovchynovska, and another co-founder and CMO/GR director Anton Melnyk.
The accelerator was the first step for MITS. Boyle and Gurak put out a call out for applicants “not knowing what would happen.” They got 60 applicants from whom, they chose six who graduated at the end of August 2024. Another cohort from the accelerator graduated in February 2025, adding another four investment deals to the MITS Capital portfolio.
“We’ll do one other accelerator cohort later this year,” Boyle said.
Boyle’s starting capital was not infinite, but the pulling out by Bill Ackman did not cause a funding problem. In June 2025, individuals from Germany and Denmark, as well as smaller US investors, reached out to MITS Capital to provide cash.
“They just called us up and said, ‘hey, we hear you’re doing this, we need to… [invest in Ukraine’s defense],’” Boyle told Kyiv Post.
Apart from accelerator graduates, MITS invested in two US companies that were operating in Ukraine. Ukraine-based startups include next-gen frontline tactical communications firm Teletactica, TerMIT ground drone manufacturer Tencore, an autonomous drone piloting system Nordic Dynamics and drone gimbals developer M-FLY.
After our interview took place on Sept.1, MITS also announced the launch of a product company MITS Industries, set to unite Ukraine’s defense manufacturers under one roof for better efficiency, including those that are outside MITS’ portfolio: Infozahyst, a major Ukrainian signals intelligence (SIGINT) manufacturer with over 20 years experience; one of Ukraine’s largest electronic warfare (EW) systems manufacturers, Unwave; and an undisclosed air drone manufacturer.
The new company, MITS Industries, established in Denmark, has been created to boost scaling and revenues.
In August 2024, Forbes Ukraine estimated MITS Capital’s investment volume at $200,000, with a fund target size of $50 million. Many of their competitors such as Green Flag ventures or Darkstar accelerator do not disclose their cash investment volumes.
But more than a year later, the fund did not disclose the updated portfolio volume after recent investments in Teletactica and Tencore but did say they had invested in 11 companies as of Sept. 1.
There could have been 12, but one investment failed – the owner of the company did not “want anybody else” in his team.
“He wasn’t coachable,” Boyle said.
Being coachable is one of the keys to MITS Capital investments. Frontline products, especially drones, can change beyond recognition over a couple of months, or become irrelevant weeks after a solution was ordered by military commanders on the battlefield.
This is why MITS Capital invests in processes and “people rather than products,” also asking the American University Kyiv to educate the teams on business-making cornerstones.
“Products become obsolete quickly. We need management teams who understand that and are constantly trying to make their products better and cheaper, paranoid about what’s going to replace them,” Boyle said.
Other fundamental criteria for “MITS investing” are techniques or technologies that do not exist in NATO. Or if they do, then at prices 40% or less than the NATO equivalent.
And finally, MITS Capital wants to invest in minimum viable products (MVPs) that are suitable for the battlefield. “We’re not investing in crazy ideas,” Boyle added.
Product categories include air, sea and land drones, and even more in the components – sensors, guidance systems, software – that can be integrated in Europe’s defense suppy chain, viewed by MITS Capital as the future market, and are also dual-use and commercially viable.
But for now, one cannot make a fortune investing in Ukraine’s defense due to Ukraine restricting exports and an immature market inside the country.
Ukraine’s military export limitations restrain its defense industry
“If you’re a standard venture capitalist, you’re in a system where your investors expect a certain return on their money over a certain time frame with certain exit patterns which do not exist here,” Boyle said.
Ukraine does not have a stock exchange to launch an IPO. There are no buyers for vibrant Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) deals either. “You only have one defense prime, it’s Ukroboronprom and it’s state-owned,” Boyle said.
Ukraine’s laws do not formally ban military exports, but regulatory bodies restrict licenses and permits for exporting physical products, sharing information or software abroad or with foreigners, and providing services to foreign customers.
Ukrainian companies can be criminally prosecuted for such action. More than three years after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s government has still not finalized a specific policy on what to do with military exports.
“I'm fortunate that I don't care if I ever get my money back or when I get my money back. But that's not normal. Exports are the only way that people can get their money back, along with the acquisition of Ukrainian companies by non-Ukrainian buyers.”
Ukraine’s military manufacturers mostly sell to the state for use on the frontline. The state budget finances defense, but it regularly faces liquidity gaps since several of Ukraine’s partners don’t want international aid to be poured directly into the military.
Ukraine spends almost all its internal revenues on defense, yet even so repeatedly faces cash shortages of dozens of billions of dollars. Additional fiscal measures to get more money – raising taxes in 2024 and reviewing the budget in 2025 – still weren’t enough for Ukraine, which faces a $7.2 billion shortfall for defense until the end of 2025.
Ukraine’s partners, except for Denmark, the Czech Republic and the UK, do not want to finance defense directly or macrofinancial aid programs for ongoing hostilities that could last another two years and increase the cashflow to Ukraine and help it finance defense against Russia.
Without it, Ukraine does not know where to find the extra $12.7 billion for 2026 and $29 billion of state financing it needs if hostilities continue into next year and beyond, according to National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) estimates.
The only alternative for Ukrainian defense manufacturers to financially survive in this situation is opening the window for private capital, Boyle said. If Russia ends hostilities now and there is peace tomorrow, the newly created miltech companies will vanish, he added.
Limitations to export also mean Ukrainian military innovators will leave Ukraine and set up companies abroad where they are not limited in their business activity outside their home country.
“Without the chance to have exports, Ukraine is telling them: ‘You have to leave Ukraine’. To grow your company, you have to leave. This is an insane national policy!” Boyle exclaimed..
And he thinks there are countries waiting for such “industrial refugees” – Poland or the Czech Republic. “They already have a program to do it. They call it ‘Invest in Bravery,’” he said.
Boyle believes there needs to be a national strategy to create defense primes “in Ukraine for Ukraine.” “It is an existential requirement because your generation is fighting Russia today, so your children won’t have to fight them tomorrow. … Russia will come back. It’s the very concept of what Russia is to a Russian.”
Do Ukrainian officials understand it? Ukraine’s ministries regularly invite him to talk, but when it comes to military exports, they “smile and say it’s possible.”
“But possible is not the same thing as a national priority,” Boyle said, adding that these conversations made him feel that he was banging his head on the table.
After Kyiv Post spoke to Boyle, President Zelensky announced “a concept for partial arms exports” will be introduced “in 10 days,” at the beginning of October 2025.
Speaking to reporters on Sept. 19, Zelensky admitted Ukraine’s defense manufacturers lack funding, and there is a surplus of high-quality weapons produced. Exports will include both private and government supplies, with the balance strictly controlled – what is shipped, what remains in warehouses, and what is added, RBK-Ukraine reported.
Officials and economists cite two risks when it comes to exports: critical technology release and lack of provision to the front line, Boyle said.
In his view, it is impossible to protect the drone technology Ukrainians are sending to the frontline. “Once you send it over the line, they [Russians] have it, and re-engineer it as we have done to their equipment. We should not underestimate the enemy. They are very capable, terrific technologists,” he said. But computer chips or software code can be protected.
As for the lack of frontline procurement, Boyle thinks things in short supply should be prioritized for the frontline. But some of it should be exported if the urgent need for cash can be produced by exports. “We have soldiers on the battlefield suffering and they are not always fully equipped.”
If exports become more open, who will invest?
From domestic Ukrainian investors, Ukraine’s Horizon Capital could fit the role, Boyle said, but they don’t want to focus on military investing and cast a shadow on their portfolio of “civilian” businesses. “They don’t do defense because their investors won’t do lethality. And if Horizon had done what MITS has done, we wouldn’t need to be here.”
Foreign defense investors?
The ones operating in defense investments now are not 100% focused on Ukraine, aiming to invest in outside companies in European or other foreign defense industry.
Boyle called them “defense budget investors” – “they’re looking to get their slice of this government budget,” not thinking about who is risking their lives using the product.
MITS Capital is still happy to work with those while focusing on Ukraine first, calling themselves “defensive investors” and seeing military commanders as their clients. “It’s not about money for us,” Boyle said.
For MITS Capital, investing in Ukraine’s defense will bring profits, but it’s about war first.
“We at MITS Capital are very keen on getting the Russians out… bringing capital into Ukraine to get the Russians out and to get Ukraine in.”
Underfunding Ukraine fuels the Russian threat and risks WW III
Boyle believes Ukraine’s defense will be internationally competitive, even post-conflict.
He said it costs less to produce in Ukraine while production rates have doubled in the US and Europe. For the US, partnering with lowest-cost producer allies for various components is more effective than US President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy. US energy prices alone are “double what they are in China.” Boyle added.
Ukraine’s military innovation cycle is horizontal from innovator directly to the end user, and is easily funded with cash from formations and avoiding the labyrinth of bureaucracy. Neither of these options exists in either NATO or the Pentagon.
“Sometimes the warfighter is the innovator, inventing things and then their friends in Kyiv or Lviv start producing it in their factory and ship it… that fuels innovation as well, because they’re only going to buy things that they need,” Boyle explained.
He points to Brave1, the government-backed platform that provides investment to Ukrainian defense startups and runs a marketplace where brigade representatives can directly find and purchase innovations directly from defense tech companies.
“It’s not perfect, but nothing like this exists in NATO and the US has more than a dozen new bureaucracies that were formed to get around the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said.
“In the US we have five defense primes who the Pentagon has chosen as the winners,” Boyle explained. “And all the little guys who come up with new stuff… sell their company to Lockheed because they’re too small. There’s a whole infrastructure of bureaucracy designed to keep the war fighter away from the weapons producers.”
In the same way, Boyle is skeptical about the Zelensky-Trump $50 billion “mega-deal” for the US to purchase Ukrainian drones in return for Kyiv to purchase US weaponry.
“It’s very transactional. None of the details have been worked out… If there is something serious, you would have been contacted,” he said.
Then who is serious? The Baltic countries, Denmark and individuals in Germany, according to Boyle.
“I think there's growing acceptance that the world is in the early stages of World War III.”
The MITS Capital founder thinks there are three fronts of the war right now: the Middle East, Ukraine and Taiwan will be next, alongside “the entire South China Sea.”
“China is threatening the Philippines on a daily basis. The autocracies are expanding, and the democracies are losing. We’re losing this [global] war, partially because we refuse to admit that it exists.” Boyle told Kyiv Post.
To Boyle, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been “very clear about what his plans are: Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltics, Finland, fourth and final partition, as he said of Poland.” Denmark cannot create a sufficient base to protect its 5 million population, but it has the money it can invest in Ukraine’s defense industrial base.
Ten days after Kyiv Post spoke with Boyle, on the night of Sept. 9-10, at least 19 Russian drones – launched from both Russian and Belarusian territory – breached Poland’s borders.
“We know it was not a mistake,” Polish Secretary of State Marcin Bosacki said at the United Nations Security Council. “It was a conscious decision of Russia to cross yet another red line and test our patience,” he added.
“They’re not scared of NATO,” Boyle told Kyiv Post on the day of the interview. “For NATO to think they are is a fantasy.”
“I am investing in things that I think that can be used on the battlefield today to defeat Russia, but also are needed beyond Ukraine’s war effort that will be needed in every country,” Boyle told Kyiv Post.