Despite Russian strikes, Ukraine’s BTR-4 maker built 600 vehicles

A Ukrainian armored vehicle maker has built more than 600 BTR-4 troop carriers since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, working through repeated missile strikes on the country’s defense industry.

The Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau, known as KhKBM, disclosed the production figure to a Militarnyi correspondent at the MSPO defense exhibition in Kielce, Poland.

The company relocated its operations after the 2022 invasion put its home city of Kharkiv within range of Russian strikes, and it has kept building the eight-wheeled BTR-4 armored personnel carrier throughout the war.

KhKBM says it can build about 200 BTR-4s a year at current capacity. The vehicle’s BTR-4E variant is roughly 80% Ukrainian-made by component count, according to the company representative, a level of domestic content that has let the plant keep working even as some imported parts became harder to source during the war.

Despite that output, the state currently has no active contract to buy more BTR-4Es, the KhKBM representative said. Militarnyi first reported the funding gap in June, when plant workers said they were finishing the last government order on their production lines.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has not placed new armored vehicle orders since the start of 2026, according to earlier Militarnyi reporting, with procurement officials saying deliveries are continuing under contracts signed in prior years while the General Staff works out this year’s requirements. KhKBM says it has enough parts in stock to build another 100 to 200 vehicles even without a new order.

The company used MSPO to show an updated BTR-4E fitted with a rear ramp built to a specification the military requested, which KhKBM plans to make standard on future production vehicles. The armor meets NATO’s STANAG 4569 standard, with frontal protection rated to stop 12.7 mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds and side and rear armor rated against 7.62 mm rounds. Mine protection comes from layered armored plates rated to STANAG levels 3a and 3b, backed by an aramid anti-spall liner inside the hull.

The updated vehicle also carries slat armor around its perimeter and upper hull to defeat shaped-charge weapons, along with chain and rod curtains meant to counter loitering drones that wait above a target before striking. KhKBM has fitted the vehicle with a Ukrainian-made electronic warfare system and says it plans to eventually add an active protection system and additional anti-drone netting to both the hull and its gun turret.

The exhibited BTR-4 also carries a new turret called Topaz, which KhKBM said is still undergoing testing.