Garage Land: Ukraine’s Defense Start-Ups  (2025)

For Americans Justin Zeefe and Deborah Fairlamb, the war was a wake-up call. They met amid the early chaos of the invasion and saw an opportunity to support Ukraine’s wartime, often-ingenious startups, and to take them global.

Zeefe, a former US intelligence officer who spent years tracking Russian cyber threats, and Fairlamb, an American embedded in Ukraine’s tech scene since the 2000s, joined forces to launch Green Flag Ventures (GFV), a venture capital fund for local startups.

The aim is to help “Ukraine sustain itself through innovation during wartime and simultaneously invest in technologies that address global defense and infrastructure needs, particularly in markets like Europe and the US,” Zeefe said. “These companies have a unique competitive advantage in rapidly developing and battle-testing new technologies.”

The fund targets early-stage startups with investment needs from $100,000 to $600,000. Its current portfolio includes Kara Dag, which builds drone countermeasures, Himera, a tactical communications company, and Swarmer, a startup developing autonomous drone swarms.

Zeefe, who founded the risk intelligence firm Nisos, arrived in 2022 as a volunteer, while Fairlamb’s ties run deeper. She moved to Kyiv after the 2004 Orange Revolution and helped shape Ukraine’s innovation sector. She served in advisory roles across the region and helped design the Ukrainian Startup Fund, based on Israel’s highly successful Yozma model. At the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion, she was leading cyber programs for USAID.

“Our skills just clicked,” said Zeefe. “Deborah brought deep financial and local knowledge, I brought ops and intel. Together, we could help these founders survive and grow.”

The two see echoes of 1990s Israel: a culture of ingenuity, a surplus of engineering talent, and innovations tested under extreme conditions. “Wartime creates clarity. These startups move fast and build things that work,” Zeefe said.

The fund is just one piece of a much larger transformation. Ukraine’s once-neglected defense industry has surged from $1bn in output in 2022 to an expected $15bn this year, with hundreds of tech startups joining state firms to produce vital equipment, including artillery, drones, and missiles.

While Ukraine’s progress is accelerating, the same cannot be said of its allies. While Ukrainian drone makers have mastered mass production despite limited resources, The Wall Street Journal reported that US startups have spent billions to meet Pentagon demand and have too often produced costly aircraft that struggle to fly.

Drones in Ukraine are also upgraded every few weeks, far faster than the Pentagon’s years-long budgeting cycle. Californian startup CX2 says no US company is matching Ukraine’s pace.

In 2023, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation launched Brave1, a platform designed to evaluate defense tech ideas and fast-track the most promising for development and frontline deployment. The program supports more than 1,500 Ukrainian tech companies with grants and logistical and technical aid, helping boost investment to $40m in 2024, an eightfold increase on the previous year.

Ukraine’s decentralized approach to defense innovation drives intense competition and rapid iteration across the country, creating a complex battlefield environment for Russia as it contends with a wide variety of drone models and constantly evolving technologies. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian drone operations have played a critical role in slowing and complicating Russian advances, particularly around Pokrovsk. Despite Russia introducing additional units and increasing mechanized assaults, it has only made marginal gains due to swarms of Ukrainian drones, which have disrupted supply lines, targeted armored columns, and even forced Russian troops to rotate on foot across long distances.

Russian state media admitted that their forces near Pokrovsk are facing “massive attacks by Ukrainian drones.”

With substantial European investment, Ukraine now produces approximately 40% of its military equipment domestically. Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands have been investing extensively into Ukraine’s drone development. Volunteer groups also play a key role. Lyuba Shipovich, CEO of Dignitas, which runs the Victory Drones project, said her team collaborates directly with Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline. This allows them to receive instant feedback, quickly improve technologies, and redeploy them to the battlefield.

“80% of Russian casualties in Ukraine are caused by low-cost, software-defined First Person View drones,” US Congressman Pat Harrigan said in a posting on X/Twitter in April. “If America doesn’t start investing in fast, scalable drone tech to match this shift, we’ll lose the next war before it starts.”

Yet, despite the battlefield success, Ukraine’s defense innovators still face major funding gaps. Of the $3bn invested globally in defense tech in 2024, only $100m went to Ukrainian companies, Zeefe said.

But interest is growing. In just six weeks, GFV raised $2m, bringing its total to $5.2m of a $20m target. Europeans, particularly in Scandinavia, are showing strong interest, and other NATO countries want to place direct orders with Ukrainian companies.

While global investor interest is rising, especially from Nordic and Baltic countries, Ukrainian founders still face capital shortages due to legacy restrictions against defense funding.

The GFV fund expects to deploy all capital by the end of 2026 and launch a larger second fund in early 2026. Zeefe is also betting that the world’s reliance “on Ukrainian experience and leadership in defensive readiness capabilities” will grow if the war with Russia reaches a cold phase.

Ukraine’s resilience is showing that wartime innovation can attract investment and bring real results. As Europe scrambles to rearm for a potential future conflict with Russia, Ukraine’s tech will become an important part of the continent’s security architecture.

David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist and an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko. 

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