The head of the Ukrainian parliament examined the armoured vehicles developed and manufactured by SOE KMDB (including the newest Ukrainian Oplot main battle tank, Dozor light armoured personnel carrier, BTR-4 and BTR-3U armoured personnel carriers, BMPT-72 heavy infantry combat vehicle and computer-based tank crew training simulators), as well as personally driving the Oplot tank for almost half a kilometre. It took just several minutes to teach the Ukrainian parliament's speaker (who is a historian in his background education) how to drive the Oplot MBT, because the driving procedures of this 50-ton vehicle is quite similar to driving procedures of an modern motor-car. Volodymyr M. Lytvin joked that, although the Oplot is a very sophisticated fighting machine, it is much easier to handle it than to handle the Ukrainian parliament.

The Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building Design Bureau (KMDB) is a state-owned enterprise, which is now Ukraine's leading design authority for armoured fighting vehicles and used to play a key role in the development of armoured tracked vehicles in the former Soviet Union.

The contemporary activities of the KMDB are distinguished by three main factors:

• the ability to offer customers a wide range of armoured vehicles and other products for both military and civil use, as well as obsolete vehicle upgrade packages

• the provision of equipment closely tailored to customer's individual requirements

• the availability of long-term support for the end user