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Ukraine breaks ground on NATO-soil plant

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11:27UTC

Fire Point, the Ukrainian maker of the 3,000km Flamingo cruise missile, has begun building a rocket-fuel plant beside a Danish F-35 base, the first Ukrainian weapons production on NATO ground.

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Fire Point, the Ukrainian maker of the 3,000km Flamingo cruise missile, began building a solid-rocket-fuel plant at Skrydstrup, Denmark in early June, beside a Danish F-35 air base. Kyiv Post and Defence Express report it as the first Ukrainian weapons production on NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) soil ¹. NATO is the 32-member collective defence alliance founded in 1949; until now its members supplied Ukraine, not the other way round.

That reverses the pipeline this topic has tracked for months. Western kit, money and combat data flowed into Ukraine; now Ukraine exports the manufacturing doctrine back out. President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed exactly this at the B9 and Nordic summit in mid-May, bilateral drone deals struck independent of US export approvals. Skrydstrup executes that policy in concrete and steel.

Ukraine built roughly 4 million drones in 2025, more than every NATO member combined, and targets 7 million in 2026 ². The plant on Danish soil also hands Russia a cleaner targeting argument than a hidden production line ever did. Russia's own drone and aircraft output is climbing fast, a parallel surge this briefing tracks separately .

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Fire Point is a Ukrainian company that builds a long-range missile called the Flamingo, capable of reaching targets 3,000 kilometres away. To make that missile work, you need solid rocket fuel, which is difficult to manufacture safely at scale. Ukraine's factories have been badly damaged by Russian attacks, so Fire Point is building its fuel plant in Denmark instead, next door to a Danish military airbase. This is the first time a Ukrainian weapons company has put a factory on NATO territory. It changes how Ukraine's war effort is plugged into the alliance: Ukraine is no longer just a recipient of weapons from NATO countries; it is now making weapons inside NATO.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Ukraine's domestic propellant production capacity was deliberately targeted by Russian missile strikes throughout 2023-2025. Fire Point's Flamingo requires solid rocket fuel that cannot be produced at adequate quality or scale inside Ukraine's depleted industrial base.

Denmark accepted the facility because its government had publicly committed to deeper bilateral defence cooperation with Ukraine at the B9 Nordic summit in May 2026 . Skrydstrup's co-location with an F-35 base is not coincidental: shared security perimeters reduce incremental protection costs for Denmark while signalling deterrence depth to Russia.

What could happen next?

Precedent
Denmark hosting Fire Point opens a template for other NATO members to co-site Ukrainian production facilities, distributing Ukraine's defence industrial base across the alliance and hardening it against Russian strikes.
Medium term · Assessed
Risk
Russia may treat Skrydstrup as a legitimate military target under the laws of armed conflict, creating a new direct threat to Danish sovereign territory beyond the existing drone-incursion pattern.
Short term · Suggested
Consequence
NATO's legal directorate faces pressure to publish guidance on the co-belligerency question before additional facilities are announced; silence creates ambiguity that could be exploited by both Russia and domestic Danish politics.
Short term · Assessed

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Britain's Royal Ordnance Factories were embedded in Canada and Australia during the Second World War from 1940 onwards, producing propellants and shells outside the UK to protect supply from Luftwaffe strikes. The structural mechanism matches: production sited in an allied country to reduce strike risk, with the host nation accepting that the facility is a legitimate military target for the enemy.

Counter-parallel: Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems opened a US joint-production line at General Dynamics' Scranton facility in 2024 for 120mm tank rounds, an arrangement in a non-combat context where the producing nation was not itself under active bombardment. Ukraine's situation involves an active belligerent siting production in a peacetime NATO host, which is structurally distinct and has no precise modern precedent.

Consensus view: Bruegel Institute analyst Guntram Wolff and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) have both noted that Ukraine embedding production in a NATO ally changes the legal character of allied support from arms transfer to co-production, a shift that tightens the legal obligations on Denmark as host and potentially activates Article 5 implications if the facility were targeted.

Counter-view: Moscow's Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) argues the placement is primarily a commercial hedge: siting a propellant plant in Denmark insulates it from Russian strikes on Ukrainian territory, which is a logistical decision rather than a political escalation, and NATO's legal perimeter has not formally moved.

Key tension: Whether hosting an adversary's weapons production on alliance soil converts Denmark from a supplier state into a co-belligerent under customary international law: a question no NATO legal review has publicly resolved.

Sources:Militarnyi

Mentions:Fire Point →Denmark →Ukraine →NATO →SIPRI →Kyiv Post →Bruegel →General Dynamics →Australia →Moscow →Russia →Kyiv →Israel →F-35 →Canada →Volodymyr Zelenskyy →FP-5 Flamingo →Skrydstrup →

First Reported In

Update #11 · Ukraine starts exporting the factory

Militarnyi· 7 Jun 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Zelenskyy proposes EU drone deals at Bucharest summit

Zelensky's 13 May bilateral-drone proposal at B9+Nordic summit was the policy precursor; Skrydstrup plant and ten export offices are its concrete execution.

Occurred 13 May 2026

Read story →

This Event

Ukraine breaks ground on NATO-soil plant

Ukraine has moved from receiving Western kit to manufacturing its own weapons on allied soil, reversing the wartime supply pipeline.

Different Perspectives

Denmark (host nation)

Denmark accepted Fire Point's Skrydstrup plant after committing to bilateral defence co-production at the B9 Nordic summit in May; the facility sits beside a Danish F-35 base, sharing security perimeters. NATO has published no legal guidance on whether hosting Ukrainian weapons production converts Denmark into a co-belligerent, leaving the host-state obligation unresolved.

Russian Ministry of Defence

Russia's 117% YoY drone-output rise in April, accelerating from a 68% full-year 2025 baseline, validates the FPV mass-production doctrine and hands Moscow a cleaner targeting argument for the Skrydstrup plant than any hidden production line offered; a Ukrainian weapons facility on NATO sovereign territory is a legitimate military target under the laws of armed conflict.

Baltic NATO states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania)

Latvia deployed mobile drone-intercept teams on 29 May using domestic Origin Robotics and Eraser interceptors, the first kinetic Baltic border response to Russia's 117% output surge. The Baltic states are the primary target market for Ukraine's ten EU export offices, giving them direct commercial access to combat-tested interceptors their own manufacturers have not yet matched.

Pentagon / Joint Interagency Task Force 401

Two Ukrainian entrants in Drone Dominance Phase 2 and Red Cat's SEC-filed STE partnership bring combat-iterated Ukrainian designs into US procurement without triggering Foreign Military Sale approvals; the programme's performance-scoring methodology does not require US-origin hardware. Northrop holding the Common UAS Payload standard means a heritage prime captures interface revenue regardless of which startup airframe wins.

Ukrainian defence industry (Fire Point / Spetstechnoexport)

Fire Point's Skrydstrup construction start and Spetstechnoexport's Red Cat partnership execute Zelensky's 13 May Bucharest proposal: converting wartime production surplus into a state export apparatus, independent of US approval chains. For Ukraine, embedded manufacturing on NATO soil protects propellant supply from Russian strikes while generating hard currency the war effort needs.

Chinese drone manufacturers (DJI, Autel)

Autel's Ralls Corp Fifth Amendment filing and DJI's Ninth Circuit quantification of USD 1.56 billion in 2026 losses are parallel constitutional attacks on a classified-evidence exclusion mechanism; neither company can contest the intelligence allegations directly, so both are betting on due-process doctrine to reopen the FCC authorisation route.