With the outbreak of the war, it became clear that Ukraine’s system — including export control — wasn’t quite suited to wartime conditions. It had been built to respond to specific threats typical of more peaceful times.
This was stated in an interview with the Defence Industry Courier news agency by General Volodymyr Havrylov, who served as Ukraine’s Defence Attaché to the United States from 2015 to 2018.
He specifically noted that Ukraine and the United States had completely mismatched systems for tracking weaponry and military developments — with differing standards and even fundamental approaches. So, from the very start of the war, the key question arose: how to align and adapt Ukraine’s military and technical system to meet American requirements. The U.S. system is more bureaucratic, but they consider it effective.
The general added that Ukraine had a lot of work to do at both the legislative and government levels to establish effective coordination between various agencies.
“The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine should’ve taken a more proactive role. They needed to be the driving force and motivators, but instead, every small change we needed on our side came only under pressure from the Americans,” explained V. Havrylov, pointing out the delays in military and technical cooperation between the two countries.
The interviewee revealed that quite often “the Americans were the ones calling the shots, while the Ukrainians would just agree and do nothing.”
According to the former Defence Attaché to the US, Ukraine’s decision-making system is outdated, with a completely Soviet-style, centralised management pyramid. There’s also a lack of authority at the lower and middle levels to handle operational matters, a shortage of staff fluent in English, and a general lack of government understanding when it comes to protecting ground technologies.