Zelensky announces creation of Defense Industries Alliance

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the creation of the Defense Industries Alliance.

The head of state said this at the First International Defense Industries Forum in Kyiv, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"At this forum, we announce the creation of the Defense Industries Forum. An alliance that values international law and knows how to work for real protection of international law, protection of security from any aggression - and I am talking not only about Ukraine, but about the security of any nation in the world," Zelensky said.

He said that a basic declaration had been developed as the basis of the alliance and added that manufacturers of military equipment and weapons from all over the world "who share our intention to provide real protection against aggression" are free to join.

Zelensky said that the declaration had already been signed by 13 "prominent" companies that are ready to build "a new arsenal of the free world" together with Ukraine.

He noted that with its criminal and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, Russia showed every nation that it could pose a threat to the sovereignty and normal life of any nation on the planet. And in terms of Ukraine's defense in this war, in his opinion, in terms of Ukraine's movement to liberate its territory, each nation understands what it needs for its own defense – "what weapons, what industries, what modern technologies, what alliances."

"By how we have endured in the war and by how Ukraine will prevail, we provide a successful strategy for national and collective defense to all others in the world who value peace. A long-term strategy. Right now, for the next decades, the most powerful defense-industrial complexes are being determined, what their priorities will be, and what the standard of defense in the world will be. It is being determined precisely in Ukraine," he said.

Some 252 defense companies from over 30 countries participated in the First International Defense Industries Forum in Kyiv.