Motor Sich JSC

Motor Sich has built aero engines in Zaporizhzhia since 1907, and for most of the post Soviet period it was the largest Ukrainian defence industrial asset in private hands. That is over. Chinese investors led by Beijing Skyrizon built a controlling holding from 2016, Ukraine's security council moved to unwind the sale in March 2021, a court froze and then seized the shares, and in November 2022 the government used martial law powers to nationalise the company outright alongside Ukrnafta, Ukrtatnafta, KrAZ and Zaporozhtransformator. Skyrizon has pursued arbitration over the loss and trading in the stock had already been suspended back in 2018. Any description of the firm as an independent private exporter now belongs to the past. The defence ministry installed new management after the seizure, and Ukrainian reporting has described the works as a supplier of ammunition to the armed forces as well as engines.

The engine catalogue is why it matters. Turboshafts run from the TV3-117VM and TV3-117VMA through the TV3-117VMA-SBM1V series that powers the Mi-8MSB upgrade, plus the VK-2500, the very large D-136 built for the Mi-26, the MS-500V and the small AI-450M. Turboprop aircraft engines include the AI-20, the AI-24, the AI-450C and the MS-500V-S. Turbofans cover the D-18T that flies the An-124, the D-36 and D-436 families, the AI-25TL trainer engine with its AI-25TLSh derivative, and the AI-322 series fitted to the L-15. The D-27 propfan developed for the An-70 sits in a category of its own, and auxiliary power units run from the long serving AI-9 to the AI-450-MS. These engines fly in more than a hundred countries, and the TV3-117 line alone has been delivered in numbers above thirty thousand since the 1970s, which is why the loss of Ukrainian supply reshaped the helicopter overhaul market well beyond Ukraine.

Three further lines sit around the engines. Helicopters are overhauled rather than built new, covering the Mi-2, Mi-8 and Mi-17, with conversion to transport, passenger and medical fits, new avionics, and the Mi-8MSB and Mi-8MSB-V upgrades powered by Series 4E engines. Helicopter main gearboxes are a business in their own right, with the VR-8A and VR-14 manufactured and overhauled along with tail rotor transmission units. Industrial installations take the same gas generators into ground use as gas turbine engines, power generating sets and gas pumping units, the PAES-2500 mobile turbine power station being the best known of them. Machine tools come from the Lubensky Machine Tool Plant, which builds grinding equipment and rebuilds metal cutting machines and machining centres. Zaporizhzhia sits close to the front line and the works has been struck by Russian missiles more than once, so nothing about current output rates is published. Services are sold separately from products, covering engine maintenance, gearbox and tail rotor transmission overhaul and machine tool rebuild, with warranty and post warranty support travelling with everything the company ships.