Growing up, you spent quite a lot of time in Crimea, a region where war has shaped everyday life for nearly a decade now, essentially half of your lifetime. How has growing up with this reality influenced the way you see the world, responsibility, and your own future?

I am from Crimea and half of my family lived in Crimea - my grandparents, my aunt, my cousin. Before 2013, everything was fine. Then came the Revolution of Dignity. At first, my relatives supported it. They were even in Kyiv. But then they started consuming Russian media, and within weeks their views changed completely. They began saying it was all an American provocation, not a people’s movement. That shift was shocking to witness.

Russian propaganda worked extremely effectively. There were stories spread in Crimea about Ukrainians attacking Crimeans, about hatred towards them, and people started believing that Ukraine did not want them. Many people who were initially pro-Ukrainian changed sides very quickly.

I stopped speaking with those relatives. The last time was in February 2022. Before that, many Ukrainians still believed that their minds could be changed. After rockets started hitting houses, after you call your relatives and say, I see rockets with my own eyes, and they still deny it, you understand there is no conversation left to have.
Growing up with this taught me that war is not something abstract or distant. It is not news. It divides families. It destroys trust. And it forces you to take responsibility early, because you quickly understand that nobody will protect your future for you.

How did your personal background and lived experience lead you into the defence technology field specifically? Was there a clear turning point when you realized this is what you need to be building?

With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, my father was the head of a volunteer fund. They started helping the army and soldiers, and I was involved as well. I was 15 at the time. Nobody really thought it was strange because there were many underage people involved. I knew guys who were similar in age and already helping or involved in different ways.

Because of this volunteering work, we started to build a very large network. We were not working for money, just helping people. And when you give your time and resources without expecting anything back, people start to trust you. And once you are involved, it pulls you deeper and deeper. It becomes a never-ending process.
Through this work, I was around people who were among the first to develop fiber-optic FPV drones in Ukraine. We helped them with resources, connections, and support. They later became the first company to receive official codification from the Ministry of Defense, which allows them to sell products to the Defense Forces.

At first, even in Ukraine, many did not believe in fiber-optic drones. The government and parts of the army had doubts. But in 2024, during the operations around Kursk, everything changed. Russians used fiber-optic drones extremely effectively, especially against logistics. Electronic warfare did not work against them. Roads became death zones. That was the moment when everyone understood how powerful this technology really is.

After that, demand exploded. The army and the state started investing much more into fiber-optic systems. Our partner company and us received large orders. And then it became clear that the limitation was not demand, but production capacity and funding.

That is when the decision became very clear. If this technology saves lives and changes the battlefield, it must be scaled. But Ukraine is not a safe place for large-scale, stable production. So we started building this in Europe to take proven wartime technology, scale it properly, and reinvest back into further development and support for Ukraine.

What has starting a defence startup taught you about leadership, risk, and decision-making?

At the beginning, we thought that my co-founder and I could cover everything ourselves. We were doing 10 roles at the same time. We were engineers, technicians, factory workers, operational managers, heads of production, sales, marketing, everything. It was too broad, and we didn’t properly differentiate which roles were critically needed for the company to run smoothly.

What I would change is bringing in an operational manager from the very beginning. Someone full-time, responsible for manufacturing and operations. We didn’t have enough money for a big team, but the lack of clear role differentiation created problems. You need to understand priorities first, then identify which people are needed to fulfill them. If your priority is constant production and consistent quality, you need people who are clearly responsible for that.

The second big lesson was responsibility. If people don’t understand what they are responsible for, there is no real responsibility. You can create structures, processes, and documentation, but if there is no person who knows that they are responsible for quality or for output volume, the company will not move forward.

Workers do exactly what they are told and exactly what is written in the specifications. But if you don’t build a culture of responsibility from the first level up to management, it becomes a serious problem. Leadership is about clearly defining responsibility, priorities, and ownership. Without that, decision-making becomes slow, risky, and ineffective.

What is something surprising about defence tech that most people outside the field completely misunderstand?

Almost everything. Defence is not understandable to civilians, and especially not to Europeans. Even in Ukraine, if you are a company in a civil city and you don’t have real soldiers or veterans in your team, people who have actually fought, and you want to build something for soldiers, it is like trying to design a product for drivers when you have never driven a car.

People think that if you build something for the military, you sell it to people in suits, and then they pass it on to soldiers. But like in any business, you have to build for the customer. And the customer is the soldier on the frontline.

Many ideas sound great in Europe, but on a conceptual level, they simply don’t work in real war conditions. Products are often too fragile, too complex, or only work under perfect conditions. In war, nobody will follow instructions carefully. A product has to be taken, thrown into a car, carried through mud, packed into a backpack, and used immediately. If it needs attention, maintenance, or perfect handling, it will fail.

Another thing people misunderstand is speed. War evolves extremely fast. Russians develop countermeasures within weeks. If you are one or two weeks behind, your solution may already be irrelevant. That is why you must constantly test on the real battlefield, improve, and deploy again. If you only do hidden R&D in Europe without real frontline feedback, you will almost certainly fail.

And finally, people underestimate the experience on the other side. Russian engineers are very strong, very numerous, and constantly adapting. This is a real cat-and-mouse game. Innovation here is not about fancy ideas. It is about survival, speed, and constant iteration. If you are comfortable, safe, and far from the battlefield, you are already slower.

When modern warfare evolves extremely fast, how do you balance the need for fast upgrades driven by battlefield feedback with the discipline and structure required for reliable production and long-term R&D?

This is actually crazy to manage. It can happen that we change something in the technology every single day, and then you have to somehow deal with this. If we say that fast adaptation is the company's value, then we have to follow it. We cannot say we take feedback without anything really happening.

When soldiers call and say, we tested this and there are these problems, the feedback goes directly to engineers. They try to understand what the issue is and how to solve it. They test different solutions in the production process, and if a solution works, it is immediately rolled out to all manufacturing facilities. Production starts with changes right away.

It is not like producing an iPhone in a single batch, where everything is identical. In one batch, we can have three or four different specifications of the same product. Something is always slightly different. It is difficult, but there is no alternative.

What we are now trying to do is move part of the R&D to Europe and introduce more standardization. With fiber-optic systems, this is theoretically possible because the technology is physical, and if you manage to keep it alive, it will fly.

In practice, this is not solved yet. On the frontline, fiber-optic FPVs are used immediately, not stored, because storage currently reduces efficiency. What we are working on now is how to store fiber-optic spools properly. If this is solved, it changes everything. You could store the same fiber-optic FPV system for years and later use it, and it would still fly. This is something Ukraine cannot focus on during the war, but it is critical for Europe’s long-term readiness.

In Ukraine, products are built and immediately sent to the frontline. Nobody thinks about what will happen to them in five years. In Europe, we have to think differently. We take technology that works in Ukraine, further develop it here, standardize it, re-engineer production processes, and ensure it remains reliable over time without becoming dramatically more expensive.

The goal is to take Ukrainian technology that already saves lives, make it more stable and scalable in Europe, and still keep it simple, fast, and affordable. That balance is extremely hard, but it is the only way to make this work.

What has been the hardest personal sacrifice you have had to make on this journey?

I had two academic exchange plans, one was in the Netherlands, and the other was in Japan, both at the university. But because of the company, I decided to stay. There was too much need to keep production running, to keep the company alive, and to expand it further. So I stepped away from the academic and university path and moved fully into the practical side.

The reason I came to Europe originally was to study at universities and follow that path. That is something I am not doing now.

If there were no war and if your country and region had known peace during your lifetime, what kind of life do you think you would be living today?

I have thought about it, but I have never thought about it realistically, because the war has been going on for twelve years. I have never lived outside of war, so it is very hard to speak about it.

I don’t like the war. I don’t like working in this context; I don’t like what is happening. But this is needed. You have your values and your principles, and you have something to live for and something to do. In the context of war, we have a strategic vision, and that gives meaning to what we are doing.

For me, it is strange to speak with people who don’t understand why they wake up every day or who don’t have a mission or vision for their lives. At this point, I am actually grateful to have a clear vision and to know why I am doing everything.

Sometimes I think I would even be scared of a life without this mission. I don’t know what I would do without it.

After everything you have seen and built so far, what does a good life mean to you today?

I heard this many times from my soldier friends. To go to work every day is not hard. To have problems at work is not hard. War is hard.

Not having war is already a good life. Peace is not just when fighting stops. For Ukraine, peace is when there is no Russia. I don’t think this will come soon.
Living civilian life is not hard. What is hard is living every day thinking about what will happen to your country, how many friends you have lost, what is happening to your friends, and whether your country will still exist in six months. This constant pressure is what is hard.

One day, there will be a moment when there is no Russia, and there will be real peace. Whatever comes after that will already be much better. Just not having this constant fear in your head would already be a good life.

Every day work problems, career obstacles, business challenges - these are not real problems for people who have not lived through war. They are just obstacles. Without war, any of this would already feel like a good life.