KIEV, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Friday that his country's defense industry has made significant progress in the past four years.
While previously Ukrainian state defense conglomerate Ukroboronprom was mainly engaged in the repair and partial modernization of military hardware, now it has turned into a producer of new weapons and military equipment, Poroshenko wrote on Facebook.
Currently, Ukroboronprom, which unites more than 130 enterprises from various sectors of Ukraine's defense industry, executes almost 100 percent of the state defense orders, Poroshenko said.
Ukraine's defense industry has witnessed significant growth since 2014, when the armed conflict started in the country's eastern Donbas region.
Over the past four years, Ukroboronprom has supplied the Ukrainian armed forces with more than 18,000 units of weapons and military equipment, including armored vehicles, planes, helicopters, air defense systems, artillery systems and missiles.
In 2017, Ukroboronprom gained a net profit of 55 million U.S. dollars compared with a 33-million-dollar loss in 2014.
