The Ministry of Defence launched the Investment Support Office. What does it do?

Deputy Minister of Defence Hanna Hvozdiar announced that in 2025, the Investment Support Office was launched at the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine. She wrote about the initiatives the Office is working on, including a draft law on foreign investment screening, the creation of a pool of investment requests from Ukrainian manufacturers of weapons and military equipment, and the Smart Force Academy training programme. Defender Media highlights the key points.

Draft law on foreign investment screening

According to Hvozdiar, the draft law on foreign investment screening will help establish clear rules of the game on the market: the state must understand who is entering strategic assets, with what ownership structure and with what motivation.

“Screening is not about bans, but about transparent verification of an investor’s integrity and the origin of capital,” she writes. “This approach has long been the standard in the United States and EU countries, and we are consistently moving towards harmonisation with European practice.”

Hvozdiar noted that the next step will be consideration of the draft law by the relevant parliamentary committee and preparation for the first reading.

Pool of investment requests from Ukrainian manufacturers

The Deputy Minister noted that the Investment Support Office has already collected more than 50 initial investment requests from Ukrainian manufacturers of weapons and military equipment. Companies can submit their requests via a dedicated link.

According to Hvozdiar, the Ministry of Defence has also established systematic cooperation with the UkraineInvest platform, a state institution that works with investors. The platform will help Ukrainian projects find investors more quickly and be ready for international venues as early as 2026. “One example is that together we are preparing an update to the investment pool for the Ukraine Recovery Conference, starting from February–March this year,” Hvozdiar writes.

Smart Force Academy

An educational platform for executives and teams of defence companies that helps businesses prepare to attract investment. Smart Force Academy was launched by the Ministry of Strategic Industries in the summer of 2025, together with the Kyiv School of Economics. Later, the Ministry of Strategic Industries was dissolved, and Hanna Hvozdiar moved from there to the Ministry of Defence.

“Here, manufacturers work on strategy, scaling, and, in particular, the high-quality preparation of investment projects and pitches,” Hvozdiar writes. “This is a necessary condition for dialogue with investors to be professional, substantive, and effective.”

In the Deputy Minister’s view, all these instruments are designed to allow manufacturers to grow, scale up, and deliver results for the Ukrainian military.