On November 28, Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, as well as Rustem Umerov, Minister of Defense, and Oleksandr Kamyshyn, Minister of Strategic Industries, met and talked with students and faculty of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
The Head of the President's Office thanked Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute students and staff, as well as all representatives of the military-industrial sector for their contribution to Ukraine's victory. "Our military-industrial complex and what we have set as a goal by the President's order is not just a goal, but a matter of our Victory," he emphasized. He dwelled on the work of Kyiv Polytechnics in this area: "Everything that has already been done - both your Institute of Advanced and Defense Technologies and the Sikorsky Challenge system - really have great potential. Even what has already been accomplished this year in terms of implementing breakthrough modern Ukrainian technologies in UAVs and other weapons impresses not only us. It impresses the enemy in the first place." He also emphasized that since the development of the military-industrial complex is one of the state's priorities, today's students, who will become engineers tomorrow, will create the peaceful future of our country, because the development of the military-industrial complex is an important prerequisite for future security guarantees for Ukraine.
The attention that the state is currently paying to the development of its own defense industry is evidenced by the fact that, according to Rustem Umerov, next year it is planned to increase the capacity of the domestic defense industry sixfold. This means that Ukraine needs engineers. Therefore, the head of the Ministry of Defense delivered three main messages with which he came to Kyiv Polytechnics: "A - we will win, B - we have a plan, C - you must be involved in this. You are welcome in design bureaus, in miltech startups, in the laboratories of our military-industrial enterprises."
Actually, as it was said at the beginning of the meeting, KPI students and staff have already joined the work for Victory. And among the developments and startup projects they have worked on or are working on, there are those that are already successfully used in the fight against the enemy, or those that require only appropriate amounts of investment to be successfully implemented. Therefore, given the importance of the scientific and technological achievements of Kyiv Polytechnics, it was decided during the meeting that three KPI students would fly to the United States to present their projects to American investors.
"This is not just a war of soldiers and generals. It is also a war of engineers," said Kamyshyn, "It is a race of technologies in which we have to be faster, smarter, more inventive. Speaking to the polytechnics, the Minister for Strategic Industries revealed an interesting fact: since the beginning of the full-scale war, about 2,000 students have been trained at Ukroboronprom enterprises, and a third of them have stayed on.
He also outlined a typical portrait of today's Ukrainian weapons developer: a young inventor who has not only created his own product, but also scales it up and promotes it to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This portrait is very similar to many students and staff of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and participants of the traditional festival of innovative projects "Sikorsky Challenge", which was founded in Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and is held annually at our university, isn't it?
Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak, Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov and Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshyn met with students and teachers of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
The guests emphasized that high technologies are crucial at the front and stressed the importance of training engineers and designers.
The developments of our scientists are already helping to defeat the enemy. And the cooperation of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute with the Ukrainian military-industrial complex will only expand.