Borrell announces opening of defense innovation office in Kyiv.

The EU will open an innovation office in Kyiv at the end of the year to promote the growth of Ukrainian start-ups and defense companies.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell stated this today in Brussels before the EU-Ukraine Defense Industries Forum, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"The cooperation we want to inspire today must indeed go both ways. Europe's defense ecosystem has a lot to offer, but also, has a lot to learn from Ukraine. We need to step up structurally our industrial defense capacities. This is key in a long war of attrition like this one," Borrell said.

"This is why, when presenting recently the first European Defense Industrial Strategy, we proposed to start immediately working on the integration of Ukrainian defense companies into the European Union's defense industrial ecosystem. We have to integrate the Ukrainian defense capacity, from the industrial point of view, with ours. […] Our ability to deliver – more and quicker - missiles, artillery ammunition and [anti-]aircraft systems more massively and quickly to Ukraine is a matter of life and death for thousands of Ukrainian civilians and their military personnel. It is [also] our security which is at stake," he said.

According to Borrell, in concrete terms, this integration means particularly to promote joint procurement between European and Ukrainian defense industries. The forum, which is taking place today in Brussels, should serve to identify concrete opportunities for joint initiatives between Ukrainian and European companies, boosting Ukrainian industrial production, helping Ukraine to rearm, and funding it, Borrell said.

He noted that such work had already begun, as several European companies have recently entered into joint ventures in Ukraine, which allowed to move repair and maintenance closer to the front, but also to produce artillery ammunition.

"We do not start from scratch, but we need to go further. We [will] open a new EU Innovation Office in Kyiv later this year to facilitate matchmaking between Ukrainian start-ups and [European Union] defense companies. We associated the European Defense Agency to this Hub in the field of autonomous systems for military logistics. But I repeat: financing is key in all these efforts," Borrell said.

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The EU-Ukraine Defense Industries Forum is taking place in Brussels on May 6. The event brought together more than 350 participants, including representatives of government organizations and European businesses. The main goal of the event is the further support and integration of the Ukrainian defense industry into the European defense industry to immediately meet Ukraine's needs in armaments and military equipment and increase European defense production capacities.