A year and a half after Russia launched its invasion, Ukraine's military-industrial complex (MIC) has been laboriously pursuing a long overdue transformation. In doing so it has found itself caught between two infernos, one coming from Russian missiles and the other from a Ukrainian population exasperated by the desperately low levels of ammunition and weapons production.

The situation has proven especially dire for the Soviet-type ammunition used in the most widespread artillery pieces in Kyiv's army. While the demand calls for several thousand shells daily, Ukrainian producers have currently plateaued at a rate of a few thousand a month. Frustration has been that much greater considering that Russian aggression effectively began almost 10 years ago with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by the military occupation of part of Donbas.

Since the country's independence in 1991, Ukraine's MIC sector, which at the time employed 700,000 people and accounted for a third of the Soviet MIC, has shrunk by half. Having reoriented itself toward the production and maintenance of equipment for export (much of it to Russia), it abruptly broke away from Russia's MIC in 2014. The sector, partially privatized in the 1990s, became mired in corruption, smuggling, questionable governance and Moscow-driven networks of influence.

The most striking example was the arrest in October 2022 of Vyacheslav Boguslayev, chairman of the board of directors of aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sitch, on charges of treason. Known for his pro-Russian stance, he had for 30 years headed this flagship of the Ukrainian MIC and until 2017 had persisted in supplying Russia, through devious means, with helicopter and aircraft engines still used today to bomb Ukraine.

To top it all off, attempts at reform have added a layer of Kafkaesque bureaucratic regulations that have stymied the handful of competitive projects. Established in 2010, the extensive national conglomerate UkrOboronProm (UOP) was created to streamline the various branches of arms production. Plagued by recurring scandals, UOP's presence is towering, yet its production is diminutive.

In March, the long-sabotaged and postponed cleanup of the consortium was entrusted to Oleksandr Kamyshin. Appointed to lead the Ministry of Strategic Industries, this dark-haired, 39-year-old giant of a man "has enjoyed the full confidence of President [Volodymyr] Zelensky since his time at the head of Ukrzaliznytsia [UZ, Ukrainian national railway company], where he demonstrated his ability to rapidly reorganize a vital infrastructure under the worst conditions, during the first year of the war," said Hlib Kanievskyi, director of Statewatch, an NGO that assesses good governance.

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