KYIV — Iryna Terekh doesn't mince words. "We learned the hard way," she says, leaning over a table littered with drone components, "that diplomacy without military leverage is just begging." Terekh runs Fire Point, a startup drone maker that's become a quiet backbone of Ukraine's deep-strike campaign. Her factory, hidden somewhere in the country's west, churns out hundreds of long-range drones a month — and she's not shy about what they're for.
"These aren't for show," she says, holding up a wing that could pass for a toy glider. "They're for making Moscow feel the war at home."
That's been the strategy since 2024, when Ukraine started hitting refineries and airbases hundreds of miles inside Russia. The drones are cheap, disposable, and devastating in the right hands. And they've turned the war on its head.
The Startup That Outflanked the Giants
Fire Point started in 2023 with a handful of engineers and a crowdfunding campaign. Today it employs over 300 people, most of them in what Terekh calls "the garage phase" — assembling airframes, wiring control systems, testing engines. The company's drones have flown over 4,000 missions, according to Terekh, including strikes on oil depots in Rostov and a military airfield in Kursk.
"We don't build the most sophisticated drones," she admits. "We build the ones that work."
That pragmatism is a slap in the face to the big defense contractors. Lockheed and Boeing build machines that cost millions and need a crew to operate. Fire Point's models cost a few thousand dollars, can be launched by a single soldier, and often survive just long enough to hit their target. It's a different philosophy: quantity has a quality all its own.
"We don't need a drone to return home," Terekh says, a wry smile crossing her face. "It's a one-way ticket, and that's fine."
Deep Strikes as Diplomatic Currency
The political calculus is brutal: Ukraine can't win a grinding war of attrition against a bigger enemy. So it aims to make Russia's costs unbearable. Every refinery fire, every exploded radar station, every disrupted supply line — these are the chips Ukraine brings to the negotiating table.
"Putin only understands force. The drones are our language." — Iryna Terekh
Terekh is blunt about the alternative. "If we don't make this war expensive, there's no reason for them to stop. They'll just grind us down," she says. "So we make it expensive."
The strategy seems to be working. Russia has been forced to move air defenses to protect key infrastructure, leaving front-line troops exposed. Ukrainian strikes have reportedly disrupted Russian fuel supplies, and analysts say the economic toll is adding up. Moscow, for its part, has responded with its own strikes on Ukrainian cities — but that only fuels the resolve.
"They think terror will break us," Terekh says, her voice hardening. "They don't understand us."
The Human Cost of Precision
There's an uncomfortable truth here: deep strikes kill civilians, too. Russia says Ukrainian drones have hit apartment blocks and power plants. Terekh acknowledges the risk but argues it's inherent in war. "We target military objectives," she insists. "But war is chaos. Mistakes happen."
That's a hard sell for a country that's supposed to be the moral high ground. But Terekh doesn't flinch. "Would you rather we do nothing? Let them roll over us?" she asks. "We're defending our homes. Every tool we have is legitimate."
The West has largely backed Ukraine's right to strike inside Russia, though some allies still restrict the use of their weapons. Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, have pushed for more long-range missiles — but drones fill the gap. They're made locally, with no dependency on foreign approval.
"We don't need permission to defend ourselves," Terekh says. "And we don't need to wait for a foreign government to decide our fate."
A Grim Equation for the Future
As the war grinds into its fourth year, Fire Point is scaling up. New factories are planned, and the company is exploring AI-assisted targeting to improve accuracy. "We're getting smarter," Terekh says. "Each generation of drones is harder to jam, harder to shoot down."
But there's a deeper question: what happens when this war ends? The drones won't disappear. The technology will spread, and the playbook will be copied. Terekh knows this. "It's the future of warfare," she says, almost sadly. "Small, cheap, and everywhere."
For now, though, she's focused on the present. The next batch of drones is ready for shipment, and her team is already testing a new model with an extended range. "We have a war to fight," she says. "And a peace to win."
That's the irony: the same machines that bring destruction are meant to bring an end to destruction. Whether that equation works remains to be seen. But Terekh is betting on it, one drone at a time.
