The fiber-optic drones that laugh at Russian jammers. The $10,000 radars that beat $10-million systems. The netgun quadcopters snatching enemy eyes from the sky. None came from NATO labs — they came from basements, battlefields, and backchannel Zoom calls.

While Ukraine’s allies debated aid packages and tiptoed around “escalation,” a global league of engineers, tinkerers, and combat-tested coders — calling themselves Defense Tech for Ukraine (DTU) — has built a rapid-response tech pipeline their own governments can only dream of.

Putin bet everything on a slow grind to wear Ukraine down. Instead, every second now fuels his worst nightmare: a grassroots tech incubator taking on his billion-dollar systems with garage-built solutions. While global defense giants waste years in development hell, these 150 volunteers deliver life-saving solutions in weeks — and shift the balance where it matters most: Ukraine’s front line.

The geeks who decided Russia had to lose

This volunteer force wasn’t built in boardrooms — it was born in crisis. As Ukraine’s defenders scrambled in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, a handful of pro-Ukrainian veterans, engineers, and foreign tech allies realized crowdfunding a few drones wouldn’t cut it. They needed something faster, smarter — and scalable.

The answer? Build a nimble incubator to support Ukraine’s burgeoning defense industry and help its engineers win a war of attrition with invention—skipping the bureaucracy and contracts to beat traditional arms pipelines by months.

The stakes were existential. Andrii, a drone pilot in Ukraine’s 109th Territorial Defense Brigade, explains that modern war demands rapid tactical shifts and the near-immediate deployment of new technologies, often moving straight from blueprint to battlefield.

Nowhere is this urgency more visible than in drone warfare, where reconnaissance, targeting, resupply, and strike all hinge on real-time aerial dominance.

“Drones play a very big role on the battlefield, more than anything else,” adds Yaroslav, a drone pilot from the 110th Mechanized Brigade.

The war room Putin never saw coming

DTU has become one of Ukraine’s fastest-moving defense incubators — a decentralized network where frontline urgency meets global engineering talent. Its 150 members span European and North American engineers, manufacturers, veterans, donors, and active-duty Ukrainian soldiers — all working to turn battlefield needs into deployable tools at record speed.

There’s no boardroom — just six weekly calls, split between English and Ukrainian, where developers sync directly with end users — soldiers testing their inventions under fire. As co-founder Carl Larson noted, the pressure is real: at one meeting, a member warned that if Ukraine didn’t move fast enough, Russia would field the same idea first.

“The group is dedicated and passionate about helping Ukraine,” says Roy Gardiner, a former Canadian Armed Forces officer and open-source weapons researcher who volunteers with DTU. “Members devote what time they each can.”

Explore further

No aid? No problem. Ukraine’s engineers hit Russia 7,000 times with homegrown tech

The US veteran who hacked Russia’s jammers

By late 2024, DTU’s work had outgrown the screen. Seven of its American and European members flew to Ukraine to fast-track what they had been building remotely: a high-speed supply chain for battlefield innovation. In a whirlwind of meetings, they linked up with 15 defense manufacturers — including 12 drone makers and three anti-drone developers — along with drone schools, NGOs, military units, and the rising constellation of Ukraine’s wartime engineers.

The results speak for themselves. DTU-backed projects range from drone-mounted netguns to vertical-takeoff bombers and low-cost radar systems. But the breakthrough was a fiber-optic drone control system — a jamming-proof lifeline that beams stable high-definition feeds to the operator.

The concept came from Troy Smothers, a US Marine veteran and founder of the Drone Reaper initiative. DTU helped sharpen the prototype and pushed it to its first confirmed success on the battlefield.

“We gave it away,” says Carl Larson, a DTU co-founder and former soldier in Ukraine’s International Legion. “Now, it’s everywhere.”

By open-sourcing the design and proving it in combat, DTU helped trigger a wave of fiber-guided drone adoption — not just for strikes, but for resupply missions in places too deadly for manned vehicles.

“They used the DTU drone against a target they couldn’t reach due to jamming,” Roy Gardiner adds. “It worked on the first attempt.”

Gardiner notes that DTU played a key role in pushing fiber-optic adoption across Ukrainian units. The tech didn’t stop there: that same fiber-optic system now powers ground drones delivering food, fuel, and ammo to frontline troops — replacing high-risk resupply runs with cable-controlled precision under fire.

The day Kremlin’s engineers stopped sleeping — and killed a HIMARS from 6 miles away

For all its promise, Ukraine’s fiber-guided tech still trails behind Russia’s in both range and reliability. On missions up to 15 kilometers (9.3 miles), Ukrainian drones succeed just 10–30% of the time, climbing to 50% only when using shorter 10 km (6.2 miles) spools.

By contrast, Russian fiber-optic drones boast an 80% success rate over 20 km (12.4 miles) — powered by stronger signal transmitters, superior optical wavelengths, and sharper digital IP cameras that beat Ukraine’s analog setups.

Russia’s edge is also structural. Their drones use thicker, more resilient cables that reduce breakage mid-flight. Ukraine’s platforms often rely on ultra-thin 0.25 mm (0.01 inch) fiber — lighter, but far more prone to failure.

“The enemy is using fiber-optic drones more extensively than we are,” says Roman Kostenko, Ukraine’s MP and secretary of the parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence

To make the competition worse, the Kremlin is scaling fast. Moscow has begun mass-producing the Knyaz Vandal (KVN) drone — a fiber-guided platform with near-total immunity to jamming, 1 Gbps data transmission, and a reported 95% hit rate. It can carry up to 20 km (12.4 miles) of cable, though even 10 km (6.2 miles) adds 2.3 kilograms (5.1 pounds), limiting its agility.

Despite its limits, it’s still lethal enough. In one recent strike, a KVN drone flew more than six miles (9.7 km) behind the front line and destroyed High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers — one of Ukraine’s most prized US-supplied artillery systems.

Explore further

Ukraine’s own drones crash Putin’s $7-billion “red lines” aircraft — while Russia fights them back with sticks

Kyiv’s response: bomb the factory copying your garage

Ukraine is innovating fast — but to stay ahead in the drone war, it needs all the help it can get. Much of that help still comes from outside formal structures, through agile volunteer networks that move faster than any bureaucracy.

“When something is urgently needed, you call your volunteer contacts and they’ll bring you everything, and often even more than you asked for,” says Danylo, a drone pilot from Ukraine’s 108th Territorial Defense Brigade.

As Kyiv races to scale its own fiber-guided drone production, it’s blowing holes in Russia’s. In a long-range operation, Ukrainian drones hit the Optic Fiber Systems plant in Saransk, deep in Russia’s Mordovia Republic — about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the border.

“The fiber optic systems plant in Saransk was very seriously damaged after the strike,” confirmed Andrii Kovalenko of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

Meanwhile, DTU keeps hunting for battlefield fixes — even the ones that seem small on paper but make a big difference under fire. Co-founder Carl Larson has crisscrossed Ukraine meeting with developers of radio-frequency detectors, searching for tweaks that troops can use immediately.

One engineer added a foldable sun visor to a pocket-sized signal scanner, printed with key frequency ranges and a QR code that links straight to the manual — so even if the paper instructions are lost, the tool stays usable on the front.

“It might seem like a small thing,” says DTU’s President Jonathan Lippert. “But it means a significant percentage of soldiers who might lose paper instructions will still be able to access them online and actually use the device effectively.”

This kind of field-adapted thinking is the backbone of DTU’s model: rapid fixes, open-source sharing, and no time wasted.

“Success for us is helping improve Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, however that might look,” Lippert adds. “That means getting advanced capabilities into soldiers’ hands faster and more broadly.”

When “calling a guy” beats Pentagon red tape

DTU is currently field-testing a wave of new tools — including an RF detection device, an acoustic system now being trialed in combat, and a sub-$10,000 radar urgently needed to spot Russia’s newest fiber-optic drones.

“In the next month or two, we expect to have three different drone-mounted devices ready for testing, focused on counter-drone and anti-jamming operations,” Lippert says.

Unlike traditional defense contractors, DTU doesn’t chase contracts as its volunteers operate in a space between formal military procurement and guerrilla maker culture. Their projects, like the “Iklo” drone-mounted shotgun system or drone-mounted RF detectors, are often too niche, fast-moving, and unorthodox for large vendors or government defense ministries. But on Ukraine’s high-tech battlefield, these are exactly the tools that decide everything.

And DTU doesn’t operate alone — it’s plugged into a broader ecosystem driving battlefield innovation. It partners with Brave1, the Ukrainian government’s official defense-tech incubator, and works alongside grassroots groups like Kyiv Defenders and UkrLegion — NGOs supporting drone teams, training, and tactical innovation. Regional tech clusters in cities like Lviv and Kharkiv round out the network, turning Ukraine’s war zones into live innovation labs.

This decentralized model gives DTU an edge that most governments can’t match: speed. While traditional defense programs are bogged down by bureaucracy, DTU moves with the urgency of war — powered by engineers, soldiers, and volunteers solving problems in real time.

It also offers Western investors and defense planners a glimpse of the future: a wartime innovation pipeline powered not by national labs but by networks of passionate individuals working outside of hierarchies.

The model isn’t just fast — it’s scalable. DTU is already exploring how to bring in venture capital to match proven battlefield tools with dual-use potential down the line.

“Our future plans include close partnerships with UA units, supporting innovation amongst their drone teams to accelerate the testing and adoption of new technologies,” Larson says.

5 million reasons Putin should be terrified

Ukraine has redefined modern defense not with billion-dollar programs, but with speed, scale, and cost-efficiency. In just three years of resisting Russian aggression, it’s built a wartime tech industry capable of overwhelming more sophisticated systems through sheer volume.

“Victory on the battlefield now depends entirely on the ability to outpace the enemy in technological development,” said Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief — a warning that has become the backbone of Ukraine’s defense.

That mindset is exactly what Ukraine’s global backers are betting on. Deborah Fairlamb, Founding Partner at Green Flag Ventures — a US fund investing in Ukrainian-founded companies that can scale globally — pointed to Ukraine’s biggest strategic breakthrough: speed at scale.

In just three years, the country turned battlefield urgency into an advantage, flooding the front with cheap, effective hardware built fast enough to beat Russia’s slower, more advanced systems.

The numbers tell the story. From zero drone production in 2022, Ukraine is now on track to manufacture up to 5 million units in 2025. Iteration cycles that once took years are now completed in weeks. New tools can reach frontline troops in just three to four weeks — a speed few traditional defense ecosystems can match.

Explore further

“Kill a navy for the price of a car”: Ukraine’s drones drove out Putin’s fleet from the Black Sea — then turned on his fighter jets

Justin Zeefe, co-founder of Green Flag Ventures, adds that wartime innovation gives these startups a critical edge. By developing and stress-testing their products under live battlefield conditions, Ukrainian firms gain real-world validation and credibility. That, in turn, positions them for faster adoption in NATO and Eastern European markets facing similar threats.

Powered by volunteers, Ukraine has outpaced one of the world’s biggest militaries — but in this race, falling behind even once could be fatal. This is a fight built on everyone showing up — and every personal contribution is vital to keeping Ukraine in the fight.

“It’s an easy sell to tell engineers and students they can join a free group in their spare time to help defend democracy, save lives and stand with the Ukrainian people on the right side of history,” Larson says.

The Moscow generals who planned a “three-day” victory. The nuclear bombers that threatened Alaska for decades. The Wagner mercenaries who carved up African nations like personal fiefdoms — all neutralized by a country the world still sees as David fighting Goliath.

In just three years, Ukraine’s shadow warriors have rewritten the playbook of 21st-century espionage. They’ve assassinated Moscow’s top brass in their own capital, sabotaged Russia’s strategic bomber fleet with drones hidden in delivery trucks, and turned Putin’s African empire into a hunting ground — without a single Western spy officer leaving their desk.

As the West debates red lines and escalation risks, Ukraine’s spies are doing what no NATO agency dared: hunting Russian war criminals across three continents, from Moscow’s suburbs to Mali’s deserts — the very territories where Russia projected power unopposed for years.

Russia’s failed blitzkrieg birthed something far more dangerous than Ukrainian resistance — Ukrainian revenge. Putin’s quick war fantasy created a long-term horror: adversaries who follow no playbook but their own, with the owl now hunting the bear in its own den.

When David learned to fight dirty

Since 2022, Ukraine’s army has rapidly grown into one of the most inventive forces of the 21st century. As former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken quipped in 2023, Russia now fields “the second-strongest army in Ukraine” — a nod to how Ukrainian defenders have outsmarted what was once seen as a global military giant.

Yet, while Ukraine’s conventional forces make headlines, it’s the country’s intelligence services – especially the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) — that are quietly waging a global shadow war against Russia. Many of Ukraine’s boldest missions bear HUR’s fingerprints: from assassinations deep inside Russia to sabotage operations across Africa and Syria, Ukraine’s military intelligence has become one of the world’s most active — and feared — covert forces.

Now, Ukraine’s domestic security agency, the SBU, has shown up too, reshaping the future of warfare. On 1 June, after 18 months of planning, the SBU neutralized 34% of Russia’s nuclear-capable long-range bombers in a single operation.

Explore further

Ukraine’s own drones crash Putin’s $7-billion “red lines” aircraft — while Russia fights them back with sticks

Dubbed “Spider Web,” the operation used 117 smuggled drones hidden in cargo trucks to strike five Russian airbases — some as far as 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) from Ukraine. The attack damaged or destroyed at least 13 strategic bombers, with Ukrainian estimates putting Russia’s losses at $7 billion.

In effect, Ukraine also did the United States a favor by striking the Tu-95 bombers — aircraft that have loomed as a nuclear threat to the US, especially near Alaska, for decades.

However, after what may be one of the most daring operations to rewrite the modern intelligence playbook, the race between HUR and the SBU is only heating up — and Moscow has every reason to fear what comes next.

The secret squad that crosses every red line

HUR’s reach now extends far beyond Ukraine’s borders, reflecting a doctrine forged through years of war with Russia and close cooperation with Western partners like the CIA and MI6.

“If you’re asking about Mossad as being famous [for]… eliminating enemies of their state, then we were doing it and we will be doing it,” said HUR chief, General Kyrylo Budanov. “We don’t need to create anything because it already exists.”

Israel’s Mossad has long been considered the gold standard in espionage and sabotage. That image faltered after its failure to prevent the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks — but Israel quickly reasserted its reputation with a dramatic retaliation.

However, in September 2024, it made a brutal comeback with a headline-grabbing retaliation known as the “pager attack,” when explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies were slipped to Hezbollah fighters and remotely detonated, killing dozens and injuring thousands more.

Ukraine, it seems, was taking notes. In February 2025, its intelligence services reportedly pulled off an echo of the pager attack: FPV drone goggles rigged with explosives were funneled to Russian units by fake donors posing as pro-Kremlin volunteers. When Russian drone operators opened the gear — it blew up in their hands.

“Ukraine’s ability to carry out an operation akin to the pager attack in Lebanon hinges on a robust and evolving intelligence service capable of complex global operations,” said Treston Wheat, chief geopolitical officer at Insight Forward and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Russia, meanwhile, was waging its own shadow campaign. In July 2024, it was suspected of sending parcel bombs across Europe, hiding incendiary devices in packages disguised as sex toys and fake cosmetics — a covert operation revealed months later by a Reuters investigation.

Yet, in the world of modern spycraft, it’s Ukraine that’s increasingly setting the pace. While Ukraine remains tight-lipped about its role in targeted assassinations, the precision and success of its recent operations speak volumes.

As a leading Russia analyst Mark Galeotti put it, the Kremlin is “well aware of HUR’s capabilities,” adding that Russian security agencies “treat it with considerable professional respect — even if equal dislike.”

Why Putin’s generals can’t sleep safely in Moscow

Andriy Cherniak of Ukraine’s military intelligence has made the stakes clear: anyone attacking Ukraine “is being watched.” Working hand-in-hand with the SBU, Ukraine’s spies have hunted down Russian war criminals and collaborators — even deep inside Moscow. In recent months, Kyiv has eliminated several Russian generals, with the Kremlin’s security agencies seemingly powerless to stop the growing reach of Kyiv’s covert war.

“They’ve been effective in terms of tactical outcomes, many of the missions have succeeded, including high-profile assassinations beyond Ukraine’s borders,” said Ukraine’s MP Oleksandra Ustinova, claiming that hunting down war criminals offers a powerful morale boost for Ukrainians.

Beyond revenge, these strikes serve a larger purpose: exposing the cracks in Russia’s security and political system, shaking confidence in its military leadership, and sending a message to the Kremlin itself. As Ustinova explains, military victories help reshape the political landscape — making it harder for Russia to sustain its campaign — the strategic logic behind Ukraine’s covert war.

“They’ve also shown the West that Ukraine’s capabilities go far beyond what we’ve traditionally been credited with,” Ustinova adds. “Even if they deliver smaller-scale successes, they still play a vital role in the broader campaign.”

Kyiv also believes it has shattered a long-standing Western fear: that any Ukrainian strike inside Russia — even in Moscow — would trigger massive escalation.

“These assassinations help demonstrate that,” Ustinova said, adding that the West seems far more afraid of what Ukraine could do to Russia if finally allowed to fight without limits.

How the CIA trained Russia’s most dangerous enemy

Ukraine’s rise as an intelligence powerhouse didn’t happen overnight — and it didn’t happen alone. After Russia launched its war in 2014, both the SBU and HUR — riddled with Russian infiltration, abandoned by fleeing operatives, and crippled by lost documents and shattered capabilities — were left in disarray and in urgent need of rebuilding.

The CIA saw it as a rare chance to rebuild a key ally against Russian aggression — but remained wary of the SBU, burdened by its Soviet legacy, a track record of corruption, and deep entanglement in economic crimes. While the CIA did invest in the SBU, including the creation of a new spy unit called the Fifth Directorate, it was HUR — Ukraine’s foreign-facing intelligence agency — that emerged as the biggest beneficiary of Western support.

In 2015–2016, under then-HUR chief Valerii Kondratiuk, Kyiv quietly began laying the groundwork for covert warfare, anticipating the day Russia would escalate to full-scale invasion. Soon after, the CIA funneled millions into training and equipping Ukraine’s intelligence officers. The goal was bigger than short-term support, seeking to transform Ukraine’s post-Soviet spy services into a modern, proactive force capable of striking deep behind enemy lines.

According to a former US diplomat stationed in Kyiv, Kondratiuk took significant personal risks to forge the partnership, likely handing over intelligence he wasn’t officially authorized to disclose. The gamble paid off: soon, the US began receiving sensitive data it hadn’t seen in decades.

Explore further

The world’s largest bank says Ukraine will fail—apparently forgetting Ukraine doesn’t take orders

The day Ukraine went too far — and was right

With US help, Ukraine built a network of secret forward bases near the Russian border — launchpads for sabotage, electronic warfare, and deep-penetration missions. The true scope of CIA support remains shrouded in secrecy: much of the partnership is classified, and the boldest operations likely unfolded far from public eye.

However, one glimpse into that shadow war came in August 2016. With Russian helicopters deployed in occupied Crimea, HUR special forces crossed enemy lines on a sabotage raid. A firefight erupted with Russian security agents. According to HUR, its agents killed Colonel Roman Kameniev — one of the top commanders of Russia’s special service (FSB) in Crimea — and Sergeant Semen Sychov, injuring others before exfiltrating.

The incident was so sensitive it sent shockwaves through capitals. Then-President Petro Poroshenko cut short a foreign trip, while US President Barack Obama considered shutting down Ukraine’s covert operations program entirely. Joe Biden, then Vice President, warned Ukraine’s president that “it cannot come close to happening again,” while Putin threatened to “not let such things slide by.”

That fear of Russian escalation has haunted US policy ever since, with Biden administration officials often paralyzed by fears of crossing Kremlin “red lines.” However, Kyiv has taken matters into its own hands — crossing Moscow’s so-called red lines again and again, and proving the Kremlin’s threats are more bark than bite.

The owl that haunts Putin’s nightmares

That firefight in Crimea would go on to shape more than just tactics — it forged the identity of Ukraine’s modern intelligence services. The mission, carried out by operatives from Ukraine’s Budanov’s unit, ended with the death of a Russian Spetsnaz commander who was also the son of a general. In the aftermath, the unit, already known for its audacity, adopted a new symbol: an owl with a sword piercing the heart of Russia.

The owl was chosen not only as a symbol of wisdom, but because it is the natural predator of bats — the emblem of Russia’s special forces, commonly known as Spetsnaz. It was also a deliberate counter to the Spetsnaz motto “Above us only stars.” It was also a bold answer to the Spetsnaz motto, “Above us only stars.” HUR’s quiet reply, etched in Latin: Sapiens dominabitur astris — Only the wise rule the stars. The Kremlin tried to smear the emblem as “fascist” and “extremist” — a sure sign it hit where it hurt.

The emblem was seemingly born from that very raid. Budanov reportedly kept live owls at their base, and the symbol was intended as a message to the Spetsnaz: we see in the dark, and we strike without warning. The image now sits behind Budanov’s desk, an enduring nod to the roots of HUR’s rise and to sticking it to the Russians. Budanov has also been the target of 10 Russian assassination attempts.

The assassins who saved democracy

By 2021, Ukraine’s intelligence operatives were not only trained for war – they were carrying out global missions. During the fall of Kabul, HUR executed a high-risk evacuation operation, rescuing some 700 people over six flights, including Ukrainian nationals and foreign allies. Ukrainian soldiers escorted convoys through Taliban-controlled streets to the airport, often on foot and under threat in Afghanistan.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, HUR’s elite “Shaman Battalion” helped stop Kyiv from falling. The unit played a crucial role in the battle for Hostomel Airport, a key target Russia hoped to seize quickly to land troops just outside the capital. While they held the line there, other HUR teams sabotaged Russian convoys and supply routes, disrupting the advance toward Kyiv.

Later that year, the battalion carried out one of the war’s most daring missions — in the besieged city of Mariupol. As Russian forces surrounded the Azovstal steel plant, where hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were trapped, HUR organized a series of helicopter raids behind enemy lines. Over the course of seven missions, they dropped supplies and evacuated the wounded, flying through hostile airspace in low-altitude, high-risk runs — piloted by volunteers who knew they might not return.

Explore further

“Dudes with track pants and hunting rifles”: why Ukraine became the West’s most embarrassing blind spot

How Ukrainian spies made Wagner afraid of the desert

HUR’s ambitions haven’t stopped at Ukraine’s borders. The Washington Post reported that in late 2024, Ukrainian intelligence sent around 20 experienced drone operators and around 150 first-person view (FPV) drones to Syrian rebels to assist in the fight against the Assad Regime — an echo of Budanov’s earlier pledge that Ukraine would hunt down Russia’s war criminals “in any part of the world.”

In Africa, HUR has supported efforts to attack Wagner mercenaries in Sudan and Mali, including an ambush in Mali that killed 84 Wagner mercenaries. ​Serhii Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, claims that among the Russian mercenaries killed in Mali were numerous criminals who had previously fought in Eastern Ukraine, some dating back as far as 2014.

Bah Traoré Legrand, a researcher from Senegal, noted that “Due to the current dynamics of international geopolitics, Mali has become the backdrop for indirect clashes between Russia and Ukraine.” 

However, not everyone is convinced Ukraine had a direct hand in the operation — a view reinforced by HUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov, who claimed Kyiv provided the Malian rebels only the “necessary” information to carry out the attack.

Antonio Giustozzi, a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), also cast doubt on Ukraine’s involvement in Mali, pointing out that no solid evidence links it directly to the operation.

“If there was an involvement, it was likely by providing some funding and perhaps some equipment to rebel groups in Mali,” he said.

These operations, however, have clearly unnerved Moscow. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused Ukraine of “opening a second front in Africa,” claiming Kyiv now seeks to destabilize Russia wherever it can.

From Syria to Sudan — and deep inside Russia itself — HUR’s expanding shadow war reflects Ukraine’s psychological campaign aimed at shaking Moscow’s grip on influence and fear.

“They [the Ukrainians] have to prove to African countries that the Russians are not all-powerful and can also lose,” said Irina Filatova, a Russian historian based in South Africa.

Tensions boiled over in April 2025. During a press conference in Moscow, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop — standing beside Russia’s Sergey Lavrov — labeled Ukraine a “terrorist state.” The outrage stemmed from a deadly strike in Mali that killed Wagner-linked fighters.

Kyiv fired back. Yevhen Dykyi, former commander of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion and a military analyst, added that Ukraine is determined to hunt down Wagner mercenaries wherever they operate — including across Africa, having “a score to settle.”

“The true threat to African stability and progress is the Russian Wagner mercenaries, who bring nothing but death, destruction, and plunder wherever they go,” declared a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry in response to the accusations.

When Ukraine’s revenge became the West’s best investment

These moves leave little doubt: Ukraine has no intention of halting its global campaign against Russian mercenaries. On the contrary, the operation is gaining momentum. And if the West stepped up support for HUR’s worldwide missions — even with modest investments — the returns could be game-changing.

Such backing could help Ukraine erode Russia’s expanding influence in Africa, disrupt Wagner’s operations, and strengthen local resistance to authoritarian entrenchment.

“Russia essentially benefits from its African involvement by gaining votes in the UN assembly and by showing Western powers that it has the ability to undermine their interests in various parts of the world,” Giustozzi said.

Mick Ryan, a former Australian major general, echoed that point. He argued that Ukraine’s growing reach — from Africa to the Middle East — sends a clear signal: the West has far less to fear from Russia than it imagines. Even in war-torn Afghanistan, Moscow is no longer seen as untouchable — increasingly seen not as a global force, but as a frequent target of Kyiv’s drone strikes

In contrast, the Biden administration’s early posture in 2022 was shaped by fear of escalation and crossing Putin’s self-proclaimed “red lines.” While Ukrainian forces reclaimed occupied territory, Washington hesitated. The White House didn’t enable a Ukrainian victory — it played it safe.

However, history shows that bold intelligence work can help bend history toward justice. During World War II, Czech and British agents assassinated Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich, while Mossad hunted down and eliminated members of Black September responsible for the Munich Olympics massacre.

In the years to come, NATO intelligence services will look to their Ukrainian counterparts not as students, but as peers. Ukraine has already shown what it means to punch above its weight. This is a nation, after all, that the current CIA Director John Ratcliffe recently described as willing to “fight with their bare hands if they have to, if they don’t have terms that are acceptable to an enduring peace.”

Last year, Ukrainian military intelligence did what sounds like science fiction: they fed thousands of images of Russian jets into artificial intelligence systems, training machines to hunt and dive-bomb strategic bombers meant to launch nuclear annihilation.

On 1 June, those AI-trained killing machines proved they learned their lessons perfectly.

Ukrainian forces loaded homegrown drones into ordinary trucks, smuggled them deep into Russia’s rear, and unleashed mechanical predators that struck four airbases from the Arctic to Siberia — wiping out a $7 billion of Russia’s elite air force in a single day.

With 41 aircraft reduced to wreckage — the largest single-day funeral for Russian aircraft since WWII — Putin’s elite “red lines” air threat that kept the West cowering for years would take decades to restore — if sanctions ever allow it.

Behind this massacre lies Ukraine’s domestic drone empire that has exploded from desperate start-ups into a $2.8 billion war machine in just three years — and it just launched the AI arms race that will haunt every future battlefield.

From garage tinkering to 4.5 million killer drones

The devastating attack, dubbed the operation “Spiderweb,” resulted from three years of rapid drone evolution — a transformation that turned Ukraine’s drone warfare from a desperate improvisation to a high‑volume, precision‑strike ecosystem Russia often struggles to match.

In the early days of full-scale war, Ukraine’s defense ministry purchased thousands of drones, still relying heavily on ad hoc production, crowdfunding, and volunteer ingenuity. Yet, it took just two years to leap from garage builds to global leadership, pioneering drone technology.

By 2024, the government had scaled up procurement to over 1.5 million drones, with 96% of contracts awarded to domestic manufacturers. In 2025, Ukraine tripled its investment, allocating more than $2.6 billion – one-fifth of Ukraine’s total defense procurement – toward drones, including plans to deliver 4.5 million FPV models to the battlefield.

With factories now producing millions of drones and some operators flying up to 15 missions a day, Ukraine’s domestic drone industry has evolved from battlefield improvisation to full-scale industrialization — delivering lethal, low-cost systems at speed, with growing flexibility and automation.

Explore further

No aid? No problem. Ukraine’s engineers hit Russia 7,000 times with homegrown tech

These drones have become central to Ukraine’s battlefield strategy — pinpointing, punishing, and relentlessly pushing back Russian forces. As The New York Times put it, “It feels as if there are a thousand snipers in the sky.” Still, Ukraine’s technological edge is under pressure, with questions mounting over how long it can maintain dominance.

In contrast, Russian troops are often starved for drones, with some battalions receiving just 10 to 15 FPV (First-person view) drones per week.

“We know where they are flying from, but there is nothing to kill with,” lamented one Russian operator.

Regulatory bottlenecks have made matters worse. “Heavy drones now require state approval,” wrote a Russian blogger, noting that units have begun constructing their own drones to fill the gap left by a struggling domestic industry, increasingly strained by the relentless race to modernize.

The bomb witch that haunts Russians armed with sticks

While Russia faces production setbacks, Ukraine is pushing forward with increasingly advanced systems. Among the most distinctive innovations is the “Baba Yaga” — a heavy multirotor drone named after the mythical Slavic witch.

Unlike smaller FPV drones, the Baba Yaga can carry 45-pound payloads like aerial bombs, mortar shells, anti-tank mines, and even guided bombs, making it ideal for hitting bunkers and supply depots. In response, Russian troops have resorted to crude countermeasures — attaching long sticks to knock Ukraine’s bulky bombers out of the sky.

However, Baba Yaga is just one part of Ukraine’s evolving drone arsenal. While new platforms continue to emerge, older systems are also being upgraded to stay deadly. Mavic drones, for instance, pioneered light bombing tactics early in the war, serving as surprisingly lethal anti-personnel systems despite their commercial origins

Since then, FPVs have taken over the role, offering greater payload capacity and flexibility. Some FPV drones now carry up to six VOG grenades – compared to the two typically deployed by Mavics – allowing for more impactful strikes with greater reach and frequency.

This drive for greater range, precision, and coordination has led to Ukraine’s next leap in drone warfare.

Putin’s next nightmare: Ukraine’s mothership drones

Among Ukraine’s latest innovations is mothership drones — large UAVs capable of carrying and launching multiple FPV drones mid-flight. Designed for long-range missions, these platforms allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep behind enemy lines, overwhelming Russian defenses with coordinated, multi-drone assaults.

FPV drones have become Ukraine’s key interceptors, targeting Russian reconnaissance drones, while Russian units use theirs to hunt down Ukraine’s Baba Yagas.

“FPV drones are about tactical dominance. They bring chaos, fear, and uncertainty to close combat,” a Russian commentator wrote. “They are cheap, massive and deadly effective – and their potential grows with each passing day…These are no longer makeshift weapons, but new close-combat artillery.”

And in Ukrainian hands, they’ve become a relentless force — now fired more often than many large-caliber artillery shells.

Explore further

How Ukraine can win, p.1. Swarms of dirt-cheap drones decimate Putin’s armor

AI drones vs. motorcycle cavalry: how Ukraine forces Russia into WWI desperation

Much of Ukraine’s drone warfare success comes from specialized units. The Birds of Magyar, one of the country’s most prolific teams, carried out over 11,600 sorties in March 2025 alone — striking more than 5,300 targets, or one every eight minutes.

The majority of these hits came from FPV drones (67%) and heavy bombers (31%). While FPV strike footage tends to dominate social media, it’s the less flashy “Baba Yaga” night bombers that may be doing most of the actual damage on the ground.

These UAVs specialize in destroying infrastructure and personnel shelters, not just enemy armor. In March alone, they carried out 1,701 strikes on Russian infantry, with 1,002 confirmed kills and dozens of bunker-busting missions. By April, Ukrainian drone brigades reported hitting 83,000 targets — a 5% increase in just one month.

Russian milblogger “Vault 8” noted that Ukrainian FPV and reconnaissance drones now dominate up to 25 kilometers behind the front line — making road travel perilous and turning rear areas into a “highway of death,” where even vehicles far from combat zones are frequently destroyed. Both sides are being forced to adapt to this new reality — and the consequences are already visible on the battlefield.

Now, Ukraine is using these drones to construct a “drone wall” along the front line — extending the no-man’s land by dozens of kilometers and deterring Russian advances through constant aerial threat.

With FPV drones now functioning as the new artillery of modern warfare, mobility has become critical. For months, Russian forces have used motorcycles to lead high-risk assaults, a tactic born out of necessity due to mounting losses of armored vehicles to Ukrainian drones. In response, Ukraine’s 425th Skala Assault Regiment has established its own motorcycle assault company — aiming to match speed with survivability on a battlefield shaped by drones.

Explore further

Ukraine’s WWI-style drone hunter worked so well that Russia had to steal the idea

Ukraine’s drones deliver ammo — and dead Russians every 6.5 minutes

Beyond direct strikes, the unit also lays mines, conducts aerial reconnaissance, and has carried out over 10,000 missions to date — including tests of jamming-resistant drones. As national production ramps up to 200,000 drones a month, the Birds of Magyar have seen their kill rate skyrocket: from fewer than 300 confirmed targets a year ago to over 5,000 today, eliminating one Russian soldier every 6.5 minutes.

Even Ukraine’s logistics have taken to the skies. Vampire drones are now being used to deliver food and ammunition to frontline units, flying at low altitudes to evade detection. Smaller FPV drones, typically 10 to 15 inches in size, are also employed — their crews far more mobile and adaptable.

While larger bombers must release payloads from higher altitudes to avoid small arms fire, FPVs can dive straight into targets as small as a single meter across, offering unmatched precision.

“FPVs are more effective against pinpoint targets, where the scale of damage doesn’t matter, but accuracy does,” says Danylo, a drone pilot from the 108th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade.

FPVs hunt by day, bombers mine by night

However, larger drones like the Vampire come with trade-offs. They require vehicle transport, limiting mobility, and must either launch close to the front — risking exposure — or fly long distances, increasing the chance of detection.

“At long range, it’s very visible in thermal cameras and can be intercepted, even shot down by another FPV, before it even crosses the line of contact,” says Oleksii, a drone unit commander from the same brigade.

Even Russian volunteers admit it: Ukraine’s heavy Vampire drones — built to hunt down artillery crews, tanks, and command posts — are giving Kyiv a strategic edge, thanks to their disciplined rollout and battlefield precision. And the arms race isn’t slowing down. Ukraine recently logged its first confirmed kill with a drone-mounted grenade launcher, pushing the boundaries of what flying machines can do in combat.

“Ukrainian ‘Vampire’ type heavy drones have a complementary role to FPVs,” explained Roy Gardiner, an open source weapons researcher and former Canadian officer. “While FPVs attack Russian logistics vehicles during the day, heavy drones attack the same vehicles at night by precision mining Russian roads.”

In some cases, however, FPVs outperform larger drones. Russian vehicles often stay far from the frontline — beyond the effective range of many Vampires, but still within reach of nimble FPVs. FPVs also handle Russian jamming more effectively, thanks to their ability to switch control frequencies mid-flight — an edge bulkier drones lack.

“FPVs, even with an effectiveness rate of 30–40%, cause more damage than the Vampire,” said Andrii of the 59th Brigade.

Ukraine teaches NATO to hunt Russia’s Frankenstein drones

Russia, meanwhile, is still playing catch-up — with no counterpart to the Baba Yaga and a drone fleet that trails badly in both design and deployment.

“Ukraine invested in its fleet of larger, long-range drones as a response to Russia’s investment in Shahed/Geran drones,” observed Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

He adds that Russia seems content with the performance of its Geran drones, having produced them by the thousands and prioritized their low cost and mass deployment — although points out that these systems serve a different purpose.

Gardiner notes that Moscow has talked up its plans for a homegrown drone industry, yet it failed to deliver.

“There have been indications that Russian drone units have been forbidden to make direct purchases without permission from above,” he adds.

In the meantime, Russian units have resorted to bizarre improvisations, including the “Vobla,” a jerry-rigged drone with four quadcopters connected to a single flight controller.

Ukraine’s latest export: combat expertise the Pentagon wants to buy

While Russia leans on improvised workarounds, Ukraine’s drone innovation is drawing international attention, with Kyiv marketing itself as Europe’s future defense hub.

According to Branislav Slantchev, a political science professor at UC San Diego, Ukrainian specialists are now training NATO personnel in Poland and the UK. They have even consulted the Pentagon on how to use American weapons more effectively in combat — a testament to how far Ukraine’s defense innovation has advanced.

“Ukraine’s defense industry will be massive as well. It was a critical hub in Soviet production and will now be part of Europe’s,” he says.

In this dynamics, Ukraine’s growing defense industry is part of a larger shift — one that positions the country not just as a supplier, but as a cornerstone of Europe’s security architecture.

“Europe needs Ukraine as a shield. We have the biggest army on the continent. We are the only ones with an army that knows how to contain Russia.” Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief, said. “The only one with an army that knows how to wage modern, high-tech warfare.”

The 1,000-drone barrage that could tip the war

However, Ukraine’s technological edge won’t last unchallenged. Russia is rapidly catching up — and in some areas, pulling ahead, such as with fiber optic drones.

Russian strike drones are now reaching deep into Ukraine’s rear — including the Kramatorsk–Dobropillia highway, a key supply route located more than 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) behind the front line. These attacks are being carried out with fixed-wing “Molniya” drones and the smaller “Tyuvik,” a modified version of the Iranian-made Shahed drone.

A Russian kamikaze drone was also reportedly using AI and machine learning to enhance targeting, scanning highways for military vehicles, and recently adapting to evade interceptor drones.

Amid these developments, some Ukrainian experts are sounding the alarm. Maria Berlinska, head of the Air Intelligence Support Center, warned that Russia may soon be capable of launching over 1,000 Shahed-type strike drones per day.

“By the end of May 2025, we are starting to fall further and further behind in the technological race,” she says. “In a number of areas, parity still exists, but in general, the Russians are increasingly ahead.”

She attributs this shift to something more structural than battlefield improvisation.

“We lasted for more than three years. But these solutions are increasingly being surpassed by systemic, monumental scientific projects from joint Russian-Iranian-Chinese engineering teams,” Berlinska says.

These warnings underscore a growing anxiety within Ukraine’s defense tech community: the innovation gap is narrowing. Oleksandr Yakovenko, who leads one of Ukraine’s leading drone companies, warned that while Ukraine previously was two steps ahead of the Russians, now they’re only “one step ahead of them.”

That concern extends far beyond the present battlefield. Tatarigami, a former Ukrainian officer and open-source intelligence analyst, warned that unless Russia suffers a major defeat or economic collapse, it could use the coming years to build and stockpile equipment.

“If Russia spends several years building and stockpiling equipment while leveraging Chinese industry and Western parts, its future military will be more modern and technologically advanced than during the 2022 invasion,” he wrote.