Ukraine's arms industry wants the government to scrap a steep fee on weapons exports, warning it undercuts their prices just as Europe's defense market opens, RBC-Ukraine reported. The same fee has opened a second fight in Kyiv, where parliament this week declined to turn its revenue into money for the army.

Russia's war on Ukraine has pushed Europe into rearming, and Ukraine's battle-tested arms makers are among the few that can deliver at scale right now—an opening that domestic red tape could blunt, handing the advantage to competitors just as the market grows.

A €60 billion European window—and a fee in the way

The push comes as Europe opens a major market for Ukrainian weapons. The EU's €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-2027 reserves €60 billion for defense purchases, and partners increasingly want weapons built on their own soil. International partners report more than 200 cooperation approaches to Ukrainian firms still without a decision, according to the industry's press release. Producers link the fee fix to Build with Ukraine, a co-production push they consider strategically significant.

Parliament won't route the money to the army

On 15 September, the Verkhovna Rada—Ukraine's parliament—rejected a bill in first reading that would have sent fee revenue collected from 1 August 2026 into a special budget fund for the Defense Ministry, half for buying, modernizing, and repairing weapons, half for soldiers' pay. The vote left the fee itself untouched, since it rests on the Cabinet resolution, and settled only that its revenue will not be earmarked for the army.

The fee producers want gone

The Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers, joined by other defense and employer groups, prepared proposals to rework the July government resolution, No. 875. They want the fee—20% on finished goods and technologies, 30% on parts—cut to zero, or capped at 5%. Firms must also pay upfront, before any foreign payment lands, with no refund guaranteed if a deal collapses. A UAH 15 million (about $337,000) threshold shuts out the small test shipments new clients often begin with.

The fee has drawn complaints since the resolution took effect in early July. Ihor Fedirko, the council's executive director, earlier said the 30-day review window was welcome but warned it could clog into a bureaucratic queue as staff leave the agencies running it. One of the associations behind the submission calls the 30% rate on parts prohibitive, since Europe is where Ukrainian firms would undercut Chinese suppliers on price.

Ukraine has swung from banning weapons sales abroad to courting foreign buyers, and its defense sector now ranks among the country's fastest-growing industries. Wartime certification to NATO standards is turning that output into something European militaries can actually buy.

The US House of Representatives has approved sweeping new sanctions on Russia and the countries and companies that help finance its war, sending the measure to the president to sign into law, The Hill reported. The vote breaks a nearly two-year stretch in which Congress passed no major measure to back Ukraine. It also hands Washington fresh power to choke the oil money that keeps Moscow's war running.

For most of the full-scale war, US backing for Kyiv came through emergency spending battles, not laws built to cut off Moscow's income. Washington's long wager that negotiations would end the fighting kept its sharpest economic tools on the shelf. That bet has now shifted toward squeezing the customers who keep the Kremlin's oil trade alive.

The vote and what comes next

In the House, 58 Democrats broke from their party's leaders on 16 September to join most Republicans. The bill passed 262-159, with 203 Republicans and one independent also voting yes, and seven Republicans joining 152 Democrats against.

Whether the full weight of the bill lands is now Trump's call. A White House official said he planned to sign it, and the White House had pushed House Republican leaders to move it. The bill directs him to impose the tariffs and mandates sanctions on Putin, senior officials, and Russian banks, though he can waive them by certifying that it serves US national interests, and how far he goes stays uncertain.

His posture on Russia keeps shifting. Days before the vote, he urged Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries. He said the strikes were pushing diesel prices up worldwide. Those same strikes drain the war economy this bill sets out to squeeze.

What the sanctions do

The bill directs Washington to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the five biggest buyers of Russian crude, the five biggest buyers of its gas, and the five countries doing most to help Moscow evade oil sanctions—a target aimed squarely at China and India. Countries whose Russian gas imports are less than 15% of everything Russia exports in gas, and that take significant steps to cut them, would be exempt from the gas-based tariff. There is no such carve-out for crude.

It also blacklists Russian officials, banks, and the aging tankers of Russia's shadow fleet, the vessels that move sanctioned crude around Western restrictions. The measure also extends US sanctions on Iran's energy and weapons sectors, a piece Trump asked for. That is why the bill's full name is the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act.

Why a stalled bill finally moved

For more than a year, the package sat frozen. It had a veto-proof majority of co-sponsors, but the White House wanted room to negotiate with Moscow, and the bill never reached a vote. Its author, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, spent more than a year negotiating the measure before he died in July. Lawmakers in both parties revived and fast-tracked it in his name, and Trump dropped his resistance and signaled he would sign.

Not everyone wanted it. Most House Democrats voted against, saying the bill hands the president broad new tariff powers and lets him waive away the sanctions it claims to impose. Nearly a dozen Republicans privately pressed leaders to strip the new powers out, alarmed they could push up prices at home before the midterm elections. Their leaders moved it through anyway. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had lobbied for weeks, even watching an early Senate vote from the chamber.

"To Vladimir Putin—we have your number," said Senator Richard Blumenthal, who co-wrote the bill, after the vote. "And to Ukraine—you are not alone."

Kyiv's response

Ukraine welcomed the vote within hours. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha thanked the House for its bipartisan leadership and said Ukraine honors Graham's legacy. Parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk thanked both chambers of Congress and House Speaker Mike Johnson. He singled out Blumenthal for carrying the bill through after Graham's death. What matters for Ukraine, Stefanchuk said, is that pressure on Russia's war funding is turning into concrete decisions.

President Zelenskyy called the timing symbolic: the House voted during another Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine. The bill and other strong sanctions steps are "an extremely powerful instrument capable of stopping this terrorist war," he said.