On July 22–23, StrategEast led the next delegation visit to Washington, D.C. under the U.S.-Ukraine Tech Partnership Initiative, reinforcing ties between Ukraine’s tech sector and the U.S. innovation and defense ecosystem. This initiative, organized by StrategEast in partnership with Diia.City.Union and Kharkiv IT Cluster, and with the support by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, aims to expand Ukrainian tech companies’ access to the U.S. market and deepen collaboration on dual-use technologies.
The Ukrainian delegation featured a diverse lineup of leading tech entrepreneurs and executives: Daria Yaniieva, Head of Defense & Investment at Sigma Software Group; Iaroslav Fisiuk, CEO of S-PRO USA; Alex Fink, Co-founder of Swarmer; Jennifer Scocca, Business Development Partner at Colmatek; Kyle Rachau, Director of Technical Sales, US Government Business, and Patrick Renteria, Account Manager, both from ELEKS; Valerii Zarubin, Co-founder & CEO of BlueBird Tech; Felipé Campos, CTO and Co-founder of Organized Matter; and Aaron Mindel, VP Flight Ops at Pegasus Aerospace. StrategEast was represented by President Anatoly Motkin and Regional Director for Ukraine, Moldova, and the Gulf States, Hanna Myshko.
Over two days, the delegation held high-level meetings with top U.S. institutions and policy centers. At the invitation of the Embassy of Ukraine, the team joined the EU Defense Night and held key bilateral talks with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), where Taiwan’s leadership expressed interest in hosting a Ukrainian dual-use tech delegation to explore joint ventures and ecosystem collaboration.
A briefing at the Brookings Institution, featuring Dr. Fiona Hill and Michael O’Hanlon, focused on Ukraine’s innovation-driven resilience and long-term U.S.-Ukraine strategic alignment. With the representatives from the National Defense University, including Jeffrey Payne, Jeff Mankoff, and Jackie Kerr, the delegation discussed avenues for deeper collaboration between Ukrainian tech companies and U.S. defense partners, particularly on dual-use innovation.
An engagement at the Hudson Institute with Luke Coffey underscored the growing interest in Ukraine’s defense tech capabilities and the country’s growing role in the global innovation economy.
The visit concluded with a pivotal roundtable co-hosted by StrategEast and the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), bringing together top U.S. defense industry stakeholders and policy experts, including representatives from Northrop Grumman, RTX, Auterion, Anduril, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies as well as Bill Taylor, Distinguished Fellow at Atlantic Council. The discussion focused on aligning Ukrainian innovation capacity with U.S. technology and capital to address urgent dual-use priorities across military and civilian sectors.
This visit demonstrated Ukraine’s strategic value as a tech innovation partner and highlighted the strong commitment of U.S. institutions to support Ukraine’s integration into global innovation and defense markets. As the landscape of security and economic resilience continues to evolve, initiatives like this one are key to fostering mutually beneficial transatlantic partnerships.
