Day: July 24, 2025

• There’s a new way partner nations are using to arm Ukraine faster and cheaper.
• It has helped surge production of a key piece of artillery, the 2S22 Bohdana self-propelled howitzer.
• Allies are buying weapons for Ukraine from Ukrainian manufacturers, avoiding issues with Western supplies.

Ukraine was able to supercharge the production of a key homemade artillery system through a new way allies are employing to arm Ukraine faster and cheaper. It could be the new template for helping Ukraine arm itself against Russia.

Ukraine has significantly boosted its production of the 2S22 Bohdana 155mm howitzers with funds from allies under the new funding system, industry bodies that represent Ukrainian defense companies told Business Insider. Artillery systems remain critical in this war.

For much of this conflict, Western partners have sent their weapons to Ukraine, emptying stockpiles. This new model involves partners purchasing weapons for Kyiv’s forces directly from Ukrainian manufacturers. The former approach is still key for Ukraine, but the latter has shown real potential.

The new system, pioneered by NATO member Denmark and nicknamed the Danish Model, has helped Ukraine get more weapons for it to fight back against Russia’s invasion.

In particular, it has had a really “significant impact” on Bohdana production, Serhiy Goncharov, the CEO of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries (NAUDI), told Business Insider. His group represents around 100 Ukrainian companies.

Production increased from six units a month in 2023 to more than 20 of these systems in 2025, according to Ukraine’s Defence Procurement Agency.

The Bohdana is a NATO-standard, self-propelled howitzer produced by Ukraine’s Kramatorsk Heavy Duty Machine Tool Building Plant, and Goncharov described it as “a symbol of resistance and the symbol of Ukrainian industry.”

Funding weapons that are made in Ukraine is important given current challenges. European military stockpiles have little to spare for Ukraine, and many Western defense companies already have big backlogs in production. So even funding new Western weapons doesn’t help Ukraine in the short term. Ukraine frequently deals with shortages of foreign weapons from its partners given the war’s tremendous demand for war material.

The model is also useful for NATO, with many countries in the alliance wanting to maintain and grow their own arsenals, worried that Russian aggression could someday extend beyond Ukraine.

Goncharov said that the Danish model has helped Ukrainian industry scale production by giving it the finance it needs, as usually it is limited to what Ukraine’s defense ministry can afford, which is out of sync with industrial capacity.

That financial support, he said, gives producers “more confidence” to increase their production, knowing the funding is there. In addition to the homemade howitzers, the Danish model has helped fund more drones, as well as anti-tank and anti-ship missile systems.

A host of countries, like Sweden and Iceland, are giving money to Ukraine through the model, which is growing.

In 2024, the model finalized procurements for weaponry worth more than $550 million, and Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said last month that support through this model is expected to reach more than $1.7 billion this year. And more partner countries are continuing to join while some countries, like Germany, are launching independent programs inspired by the model.

New help for Ukraine

Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark’s defense minister, told Business Insider in March that the model so far “has been a great success” and that under it, the weapon prices are “quite low compared to buying the artillery systems in Europe.”

Goncharov called the model a “new vision of how you can support Ukraine” and said that work on the Bohdana was a big “success story.”

He said NAUDI has a list of weapons that it is ready to make more of through the Danish model or a similar model, including artillery, armored vehicles, jamming systems, and drones.

Ihor Fedirko, the CEO of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry (UCDI), a body that represents more than 100 companies, told Business Insider that the increase in Bohdana production was “made possible thanks to the Danish model and associated funding.”

And the capacity exists for increased total production, he said. Fedirko described the Danish model as “the largest hope for the private sector” in Ukraine.

Within Ukraine’s defense industry, “there are huge hopes and expectations in terms of the Danish model, and we hope that far more countries will join it,” Fedirko said.

He said that would strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities, “so this is why the private market is very much looking forward to its further unfolding.”

Ukraine’s defense industry

Private companies have been essential to Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. The domestic defense sector has exploded, developing and testing new weaponry that is then purchased by Ukraine’s military and sometimes by units buying directly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 30% of the military equipment Ukraine used in 2024 was made in the country. He said recently that has climbed to 40%.

Fedirko said there are around 700 market players in Ukraine’s defense industry, with just 76 of those being state-owned.

The Danish model helps with a problem that is facing Ukraine’s defense industry and military, which is that its defense companies have the ability to produce far more weaponry than Ukraine’s government can afford to buy.

Goncharov said that “our capacity of the Ukrainian producers is at least three times higher than our potential to purchase.” If it does not receive outside support, the defense sector is limited by the Ukrainian budget.

Goncharov said that in Ukraine, “we are ready to increase our production,” if more purchases are made. The Danish model lets Europe arm Ukraine without emptying its stockpiles.

He said sometimes defense companies can be “sitting in the office and have no contract at all” but be ready to produce. The Danish model gives companies the financial means to keep producing, he said.

He said he hoped for increased cooperation with Europe, as he sees Ukraine as holding back Russia. “The European Union should understand that we are not fighting not only for Ukraine, that we are fighting for Europe.”

• The invite-only groups on apps like Signal and Slack are meant for people let go from the same company.
• Members vent and help each other find new roles — but bonds can strain when job prospects intersect.
• Experts say the groups reflect a surge in worker resistance driven by post-pandemic work anxieties.

After getting let go from Meta in February, Shayna Moon accepted an invitation to a private LinkedIn chat where she recognized the names of its roughly 40 members. All were former colleagues who’d also been dismissed from the tech giant.

Moon, who’d been laid off earlier in her career from Microsoft, said she shared tips with the group on how to apply for health and unemployment benefits, as well as advice she’d received from an employment lawyer.

“There’s all this administrative stuff you have to do when you’re laid off from a job,” said the 34-year-old technical producer who lives in California. “It is nice to have a group of people to talk to who are all going through the same bullshit as you are.”

Getting laid off used to mean having to hastily say goodbye to colleagues and start a job search alone. Not anymore.

Many workers who’ve been let go as part of mass restructurings are staying in touch by joining private online chat groups to vent, grieve, and help each other move on.

Unlike more generic alternatives open to anyone hit with a pink slip, these invite-only groups are strictly for individuals booted from the same organization, as they share many of the same frustrations and challenges.

A communication lifeline

Sara Russell, whose more than 25-year-career as a federal worker came to an abrupt end in February, said a group she joined helped her cope with the pain — and in ways friends and family couldn’t.

“Everybody’s in shock and you need to support each other,” she told Business Insider. “As a group, we understood what was going on. We didn’t have to explain it all.”

Russell, 58, said one of her former colleagues set up the chat on the encrypted mobile app Signal a few weeks before they were axed. They sensed that layoffs were coming, she said, because the Trump administration had pledged to trim the federal workforce, and they chose Signal out of concern that their work computers were being monitored.

The club, which they named “Survivors,” initially served as a way of exchanging information about their predicament, explained Russell, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. It later morphed into a communication lifeline once they officially got the boot and lost access to their work email.

“We were just cut off,” she said. “There was no closure. I worked with 70,000 employees and I just disappeared off the map.”

Surging worker resistance

In the wake of the pandemic, workers have been gravitating toward private online groups to contest the incursion of the workplace into their personal lives, according to Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University who studies social-media culture.

“We have seen a surge in worker resistance,” she said, citing the emergence of movements in recent years such as “quiet quitting,” “bare minimum Monday,” and “lazy girl jobs.”

Though it’s unclear just how many private worker groups exist, lately they’ve become increasingly important hubs for discussing topics such as layoffs, workplace surveillance, and the impact of generative AI on job security, added Duffy.

Between January and June, US-based employers slashed nearly 750,000 jobs, the most for the first half of any year since 2020, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Excluding 2020, that number is the highest midyear total since 2009, the career-transition firm said.

“Against this backdrop, it makes sense that workers are turning to whisper networks,” Duffy said.

Such groups tend to provide more than just emotional solace for layoff victims. They’re typically also safe places to gripe about a former employer and ask sensitive questions, such as whether anyone in the group got a severance check yet, said Alison Fragale, an organizational psychologist in Chicago.

By contrast, taking complaints or sensitive questions to social media instead isn’t likely to be as satisfying and could turn off prospective employers. “We’ve seen a lot of people do those things to their peril,” she said.

The power of connections

Another benefit of private layoff clubs is that members are often willing to critique each other’s résumés, engage in mock interviews and share job leads since everyone is in the same boat and already knows each other.

An exception, though, can occur if the group is small and comprises mostly people who previously had the same job function and are looking for work in the same industry and region, warned New York career coach Roy Cohen. In such cases, members might clam up since now “they are competing for the same opportunities,” he said.

“Game Industry Job Hunt,” a private Slack group for laid-off videogame-industry workers and volunteer helpers, is divided into 12 channels, each representing a game company that has been hit with heavy job cuts in recent years. Members are vetted before getting access only to the channel where they belong, though they can all go into a separate one called “Can You Refer Me,” which works just like the name sounds.

The group’s creator, Cristina Amaya, a producer of game-industry events in Los Angeles, said she chose Slack over other messaging apps since it’s a common workplace tool and she thinks many people miss using it after losing their jobs. While she is currently employed and had a job when she formed “Game Industry Job Hunt” in late 2023, she said she’s been laid off three times and set up the group because she likes helping people.

A big believer in the power of networking for finding jobs, Amaya recently introduced a member who was let go earlier this month from a job at “Assassin’s Creed” developer Ubisoft Entertainment to a volunteer. The volunteer works at a game studio that the laid-off woman aspires to join.

“Your connections make everything for you,” Amaya said. “They can be the people who get you in the door.”

Have a layoff or job-search story to share? Contact the reporter via email at sneedleman@insider.com. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing.