They must admit mistakes and explain prices: Taras Chmut told how "Come Back Alive" chooses weapons manufacturers

At the Brave1 Defense Tech Valley 2025 forum, Taras Chmut, the head of "Come Back Alive", spoke about what the foundation pays attention to when distributing donations from Ukrainians to the army. In his speech, he addresses domestic arms manufacturers and draws attention to widespread negative phenomena in the Ukrainian defense industry.

Chmut expressed his opinion on a discussion panel with the commander of the K2 regiment, Kyrylo Veres, moderated by journalist Yuriy Fedorenko. The full version of the conversation can be seen in the video on the UT-2 channel. And read the adapted version of Chmut's remarks below on "Defense":

"Sometimes manufacturers say it's the user's fault"

"We don't need to buy "something from someone." We have a customer - these are specific military units. These can be specific products that they use. Or we can follow a technical task, that is, solve certain problems at the front.

We look at how open the manufacturer is, how adequate they are in communication, how willing they are to explain pricing. The latter is very important to us, because a lower price means more purchased products.

It is important for us to understand how adequate it is in terms of document flow, how quickly it completes the deal, and does not take a whole month to complete.

It is important for us to understand how adequate the manufacturer is in terms of recognizing its shortcomings. Because very often, when something goes wrong, the manufacturer says: "you have a bad user." Sorry, this user provides you with a reservation and the opportunity to sit in the office in Kyiv right now and produce your drone.

This is not a bad user, he is adequate. Maybe your drone is not like that? Maybe you will at least ask about it? Maybe you need to give instructions for this drone? Or maybe you just understand that there really is some kind of factory defect and try to solve it? Or the solution that works great on the test site is not practical in real conditions?

Therefore, a manufacturer who even makes defective products says: "sorry, high volumes, we'll fix everything, we'll manage" is a much more valuable partner than a manufacturer who can make a very cool drone, but if something goes wrong, the military is always to blame. This is a certain indicator.

"We won the case against the Ukrainian supplier"

A lot has changed in the last three years. We entered a full-scale war with funds, but without a market for producers. You come to some producer and he says, "Yes, everything will be ready in six months," but in fact he does it in 9-12 months. These are well-known large Ukrainian producers.

Now it's more even, but there are different situations. This week we won another court case with a supplier who was brought in by the military. He broke the contract for 8 months, scored on penalties and simply said "do whatever you want, we don't care."

"We are not supporters of monopolies"

We have an R&D budget. Roughly speaking, it is 120-150 million UAH per year. It is formed by managers or instructors who see something interesting on the market and buy it for testing in the military. This can be either at the request of the military for something new or when we see some promising manufacturer in some uncompetitive niche, and we would like to support it from the point of view of competitiveness.

We do this to improve quality, lower prices, and make people a little more communicative. We are not supporters of monopolies; it is difficult to work in monopoly markets.

"We need to think about the ecosystem and learning"

Sometimes manufacturers ignore people's training. They often say "you'll figure it out yourself." Sorry, but there are teams with great, highly educated specialists, and there are a bunch of teams where people are of worse quality and need to be trained. The best tool in the wrong hands is just an expensive toy.

And when we go to manufacturers and offer to do some kind of "training" to train people on good programs, very often manufacturers say: "Why not? They'll figure it out on their own." This is not a very good approach.

Another important thing is the ecosystem of assets around it. The product may be great, but what's next to it is either not there, or it doesn't work at all, or it needs to be redone. This creates a lot of problems.

Often, manufacturers do not care about ensuring that their product works "step to the right, step to the left, step up, step down", that is, in a complex. No product by itself gives results, only in a complex.

"This is not the time to make all the money in the world"

We do NOT need the best products, we need the most necessary and in sufficient quantities. Accordingly, we need solutions that work here and now. Solutions that are simple, cheap, but sufficient to perform the tasks expected of them.

Let's not forget that this is a war for the survival of our country, and we can still lose it. And all the production facilities, all these factories, production facilities, they will all go to Russia at best, and at worst - they will be destroyed along with the people in them.

Sometimes manufacturers forget that this is not the time to make all the money. This is the time to not lose the war. Remember: what you are doing is not going somewhere or for someone, not to Africa. You are doing it for a soldier who is currently fighting and defending this country. You are not doing it for yourself, you are doing it for a person: someone's father, son, daughter, sister. And someone's life depends on how well or poorly you do it.

"It's about a war for survival. But very often in recent years it seems like the task of producers is to make as much as possible, sell as expensively as possible, export as much as possible abroad, and that's it."