From Architect to Arms Manufacturer: How Iryna Terekh Is Transforming Ukraine’s Long-Range Arsenal

In a bustling assembly facility in Kyiv, the chief executive overseeing one of Ukraine’s most critical defense manufacturing operations stands out sharply from typical defense industry leaders. Dressed in a black knit outfit and wearing mismatched earrings, 34-year-old Iryna Terekh leads Fire Point, a domestic enterprise that has rapidly evolved from a modest drone startup into a powerhouse producing hundreds of long-range strike weapons each day.

Terekh’s presence on the factory floor presents a stark contrast to the surrounding environment. While teams of workers manage industrial tools, haul fabricated airframe components, and navigate demanding manufacturing shifts, Terekh moves through the facility alongside a youthful team of millennial managers and assistants. She views her distinctive personal style as a natural extension of executive leadership in an industry undergoing profound generational and strategic transformation.

According to Terekh, the privilege of running the company includes the freedom to establish her own standards, including her attire. More broadly, her leadership reflects the massive realignment of civilian life across Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion commenced in February 2022. The crisis forced millions of professionals to reconsider how their civilian skills could be repurposed to support national resilience and territorial defense.

Before the outbreak of full-scale war, Terekh established her professional career far from the military sphere. Educated as an architect in the northern city of Irpin, she channeled her design skills into urban planning, building outdoor furniture and patios, while concurrently founding and running a specialized high-performance concrete enterprise. Her days were spent managing construction projects and aesthetic urban developments rather than ballistic trajectories.

That reality changed drastically in the opening months of 2022 when Russian ground forces pushed toward the capital and occupied Irpin. During the fighting and occupation, artillery and airstrikes destroyed roughly 70 percent of the city’s residential infrastructure, devastating the communities and spaces Terekh had worked to build.

Witnessing the devastation of her hometown firsthand and escaping the occupation became a defining turning point. Terekh recognized the severe exposure Ukraine faced in the confrontation and concluded that any organizational, managerial, or design competence she possessed had to be redirected toward the country’s defense.

The specific impetus for entering long-range weapons manufacturing came in the autumn of 2022. Russian forces began bombarding Ukrainian civilian centers and energy infrastructure using Iranian-designed Shahed loitering munitions, along with Russian-built variants designated as Geran drones. Observing the strategic impact of these relatively low-cost, long-range weapons, Terekh determined that Ukraine required a reciprocal domestic capability to conduct deep-strike operations against military targets.

To achieve this, Terekh partnered with Denys Shtilerman, a businessman with prior expertise in defense engineering with whom she had collaborated on urban design initiatives before the war. They were joined by Yehor Skalyha, a former film producer who became the venture’s third co-founder. Together, this diverse leadership team bridged civilian creativity, project management, and specialized engineering to build Fire Point from the ground up.

The company's initial manufacturing goals were modest, focusing on producing approximately 20 units per month of its proprietary FP-1 long-range drone. Despite the initial small scale, these systems proved effective. By 2024, the FP-1 had become a staple of Ukrainian deep-strike operations, repeatedly striking high-value targets deep behind front lines, including Russian military airfields, fuel depots, and ammunition storage sites.

Over the subsequent two years, Fire Point underwent an extraordinary industrial expansion. The company’s manufacturing capacity surged from dozens of units per month to an output of 300 to 400 long-range attack drones every single day. This exponential scale turned the enterprise into a backbone of Ukraine's autonomous strike capabilities.

Beyond mass-producing propeller-driven attack drones, Fire Point has progressively expanded its technical focus into sophisticated jet-powered and guided systems. In June, the manufacturer marked a historic milestone when one of its custom cruise missiles executed an operational combat mission spanning more than 1,000 miles. Company leadership highlighted the flight as the longest-distance combat strike carried out by an operational cruise missile in military history.

This expanding domestic output has fundamentally shifted the operational balance of deep strikes. Terekh noted that during 2026, Ukrainian forces conducted twice as many long-range strikes into Russian territory as Russian forces directed at Ukrainian targets. She estimated that Fire Point’s systems accounted for approximately 60 percent of all deep-strike weapons launched by Ukraine during this period.

Now, Fire Point is preparing to make its most significant technological leap yet. The company is only months away from finalizing and deploying Ukraine's first indigenously designed and built ballistic missile. The weapon is intended to deliver heavy payloads over extended ranges, placing distant military logistics and command hubs well within reach.

Unlike low-altitude cruise missiles that navigate around terrain and radar envelopes, ballistic missiles follow high-arching suborbital trajectories at extreme velocities, presenting much greater interception challenges for air defense systems. The imminent rollout of this domestic ballistic system demonstrates how Ukraine's improvised wartime defense sector, guided by former civilian innovators, continues to rapidly evolve into a high-technology weapons industry.