Haluk Bayraktar, the owner of the Bayraktar drone strike business, said in an interview that he wanted to assemble drones in Ukraine.
I personally came to negotiate with the officials responsible for the project from the Ukrainian side.
But it turned out that there is not a single official who would show interest in our project. Everyone replied that he could only agree on a certain stage. Land, access roads, gas, electricity, water supply. Everything had to be coordinated with a separate department.
But, it seemed to me, there were still chances. I was hoping to find allies for the project.
The more my disappointment turned out to be. Each official thought only of his own benefit. For example, for connecting electricity to the facility, I was asked for a bribe of $ 10 million in cash. For two years they demanded this money from me, without giving the project way to go.
After all, I decided I’d had enough. I can’t walk through a closed door. If they don’t need my help, they don’t need it.
And now let us recall how the tone of Kiev changed with the beginning of the war. The President’s cabinet literally demanded that all allies provide any weapons they had, and if possible for free, and if it was impossible, on credit with installments of the first payments for several years.