KYIV, Ukraine — The U.S. State Department and Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington have outlined a memorandum that would route Ukrainian drone technology into joint ventures on American soil in an attempt to inject Kyiv’s combat experience into the military’s equipment supply chains.
The draft agreement would open a legal channel for Kyiv to sell its weapons to the U.S. for the first time since it effectively banned arms exports to maintain its own forces at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, CBS News first reported.
The memorandum, drawn between the State Department and Ukrainian Ambassador Olha Stefanishyna, would integrate Ukrainian producers into joint ventures and tech-transfer arrangements with American firms.
The development caps two weeks in which Kyiv adopted an export framework dubbed “Drone Deals,” launched a procurement coalition with multiple European partners and watched Washington lift a 1997 import ban – all while signing four bilateral export contracts and pursuing roughly 20 more across the Middle East and partner countries, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week.
Zelenskyy touted the new framework at a May 13 summit in Bucharest, Romania, with delegates from NATO’s nine eastern-flank members and their Nordic allies, as seen in a clip of the event posted on X.
