A short-range radar that could spot FPV drones without having to detect their radio frequency signature.

An open-source intelligence data crawler that can autonomously discover military threats ahead of time.

A way for permanently-injured soldiers to operate air defense systems. 

Representatives of the Ukrainian armed forces chose these as the winning projects at the four-day European Defense Tech Hackathon, which brought together hundreds of techies and over a dozen companies from across Ukraine and Europe. 

It was the first event of its kind held in Kyiv, with previous hackathons taking place in Lviv, Prague, Paris, and elsewhere. The winning teams will go on to develop and implement these solutions for the military, under the guidance and supervision of experienced service members.

“Defense technologies must be built with the soldiers who know what actually works in combat,” Viktoriia Honcharuk, head of defense tech at Zmiinyi (Snake) Island Institute that sponsored the hackathon, said in a statement. 

Participants gathered in the capital from 6-9 November to develop solutions related to air defense, anti-drone systems, autonomous interception, and multi-sensor data. 

They split into 32 teams, trying to tackle these challenges from many different directions, under the guidance of people from the 3rd Army Corps, the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, and the 412th Separate Brigade of the Unmanned Systems Forces “Nemesis.”

Team Uvaga’s solution for FPV detection is a 60+ GHz wave surveillance radar which can be assembled from easily accessible dual-use components for under $1,000. The team reported that it can be mounted on a fixed observation platform, on a surveillance drone, or on short-range gun turrets. 

Team Genova tried to tackle the problem of analyzing open-source intelligence for early warning of Russian strikes, which takes lots of time and effort. They came up with a system that uses existing AI platforms to scan through online data and detect information that can warn users of upcoming attacks on a specified location. 

And team A1 showed a video of a drone control panel that can be operated with a synthetic hand. By implementing this handicap accessibility, people with damaged limbs may be able to operate UAVs and participate in air defense, among other drone operator roles. 

Other teams created concepts for automated interceptor drones that fire rockets and shotguns, systems that could allow a single pilot to fly multiple drones simultaneously, improved sensors and guidance systems, new training systems, and unmanned ground vehicles that can recover other UGVs from the battlefield.

“Some technologies live for months, some for weeks, that's why we must have a very fast cycle of development of new technologies,” Yevhenii Panchenko from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, said in a statement. 

“The way to win this war is to be ahead of our enemy. We need new technologies, constant developments, and we have to think about the future changes on the battlefield all the time.”

Operation Midas revealed a systemic management failure at Energoatom, one of Ukraine’s largest state companies. But things can get much, much worse. 

How the government responds will determine if this scandal only affects the nuclear operator, or every other state company, destroying years of hard-won reforms that tried to lift Ukraine out of its Soviet past. For now, the government is not off to a great start. 

Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko announced three decisions after news of the corruption scandal broke:

• Energoatom’s supervisory board was fired without following the legal framework
• The Ministry of Economy was told to find new board members in just a week
• An urgent audit of Energoatom was launched

However, it later emerged that another decision was adopted on the same day, without being announced — effectively nullifying independent performance evaluation for supervisory boards of all strategic state-owned enterprises (SOEs), not just Energoatom.

These steps, in combination, raise serious concerns that a reform rollback is possible. If that happens, it can lead to more political meddling at SOEs, paving the way for a new wave of systemic scandals in the future. 

This can weaken the greatest pillars of Ukraine’s economy during a time of war, compromise the country’s future recovery, erode its integration into the EU, and make it more like Russia, something that thousands of volunteers fought tooth and nail to prevent. 

Corporate governance reform is meant to fix Ukraine’s post-Soviet dysfunction

Energoatom runs the nuclear plants and is responsible for more than half of the country’s power generation. 

Like other strategic SOEs, Energoatom went through corporate governance reform in 2023 and 2024, to establish efficiency and transparency. Part of this reform involved creating a supervisory board — the first one Energoatom had in history. 

This was supposed to break Ukraine's Soviet legacy of state enterprises where ministers acted as owner, manager, and controller simultaneously — a system where only 15% of Ukraine's 3,100 state enterprises turned a profit, while the rest accumulated $16.7 billion in debt between 2018 and 2023. 

The 2024 reform, a prerequisite for EU membership and IMF funding, aimed to replace political appointments and extraction schemes with independent boards selected through transparent competition. It was meant to finally complete what reformers started in 2014.

The failures of Energoatom’s supervisory board

For Energoatom, proving Ukraine could manage strategic assets to OECD standards is essential for attracting the billions in reconstruction investment the country desperately needs.

In theory, the system should work as follows: the state sets strategic goals and appoints a supervisory board to ensure their implementation. The board hires and oversees management. The state then evaluates whether the board has fulfilled its mandate.

In practice, however, the board’s independence was compromised from the start. 

Despite official statements denying political interference, real events suggested otherwise. A six-month delay in signing contracts with newly elected board members — which prevented the board from starting its work — led to the resignation of independent member Timothy Stone. 

As a result, the supervisory board never obtained the legally required majority of independent members. And it subsequently failed in its responsibilities: 

• Controlling management activities: Regular reporting, risk assessment, and personnel decisions are basic tools the board should have applied.
• Establishing an effective internal control system: Compliance, risk management, and internal audit mechanisms at Energoatom proved ineffective. For example, if the whistleblowing mechanism had functioned properly, the so-called “bar gate scheme,” in which officials stole $100M of state money through kickbacks, could likely have been detected much earlier.
• Ensuring transparency: The suspension of financial and non-financial reporting during wartime — although justified as protection from external threats — effectively facilitated internal abuse by corrupt officials.

Members of supervisory boards at SOEs must fully understand their fiduciary duties.

If a board cannot explain what it has done over the past year to prevent or detect corruption schemes in a company long associated with scandals — and provides only vague general statements — this indicates a lack of due care.

As such, the Ministry of Economy’s position that the supervisory board “was not involved” in the actions under investigation seems unclear. While board members were not beneficiaries or perpetrators of the corrupt schemes, their core responsibility was precisely to ensure such schemes could not occur.

Even more contradictory is the Ministry’s claim that this board “helped establish modern corporate governance processes.” If large-scale corruption was allowed to flourish, it is difficult to describe the system as modern or effective.

A comparison with the banking sector is instructive: managers and board members whose banks collapse lose their impeccable business reputation and are barred from similar positions. At Energoatom, however, the board under whose watch corruption thrived was essentially thanked for “building modern corporate governance.”

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

One of the government’s first reactions to the scandal was to prematurely terminate the powers of this board. 

At first glance, this may seem logical: the board is the key element of the corporate governance system and is accountable to the state as the owner.

However, the way the government went about it — firing from the hip while ignoring legal procedures —may suggest that it’s more interested in sweeping the problem under the rug than solving it.

1. The premature dismissal of the board

The Law On the Management of State Property Objects contains an exhaustive list of grounds for early dismissal of supervisory board members.

Nothing on that list says you can fire the board based on a subjective assessment of ineffectiveness. 

The decision must rely on a formalized performance evaluation. Since no proper evaluation was conducted, the government likely lacked legal grounds for the dismissal.

Even the government’s amendments adopted on 11 November, allowing evaluations to be conducted solely by Energoatom’s owner (the Cabinet of Ministers through the Ministry of Economy) — without independent consultants — do not eliminate the requirement to actually perform the evaluation.

Under the legally-mandated procedure:

• All board members must complete questionnaires
• Company data must be analyzed
• Each element within the scope of evaluation must be given a score
• An action plan to fill identified gaps must be prepared
• Board members must be allowed to give their explanations

None of this could reasonably have been completed in a single day. The absence of a published evaluation report, which is explicitly required by law, further indicates that the evaluation did not take place.

If this violation of a core reform safeguard is ignored, protection of SOE supervisory boards from political interference will collapse. If Energoatom’s board can be dismissed in this manner, any SOE board could be dismissed next, regardless of objective justification.

2. Appointment of a new supervisory board in one week

The Ministry of Economy stated that, in coordination with G7 partners, it would propose a new board composition within a week.

However, the procedures established by law and Cabinet resolutions 142, 143, and 777 require:

• a formal decision to launch the selection;
• competitive selection of a recruiter;
• publication of candidate requirements;
• acceptance and evaluation of applications;
• shortlisting by a nomination committee;
• Cabinet approval.

This process typically takes at least three months. Completing it in seven days is not realistic under current rules.

Some stages may be accelerated in exceptional circumstances, but bypassing transparency and competition is not flexibility — it is regression. Transparent, merit-based selection is a cornerstone of sound corporate governance. Any informal or opaque approach will further erode trust.

The inconsistency is striking: the government can amend resolutions overnight when it seeks to weaken transparency (as with the evaluation procedure), yet has failed for months to approve reforms aimed at strengthening selection rules — despite these being legal obligations and long-overdue IMF benchmarks. 

This explains why official claims of “commitment to reform” now face skepticism.

3. Dismantling the supervisory board performance evaluation mechanism

A key win of the 2024 reform was the introduction of regular performance evaluations of SOE supervisory boards. The law required the Cabinet to define procedures and specify cases where an independent consultant is mandatory.

The core principle was clear: board effectiveness must be assessed based on objective evaluation, not political judgment.

However, on 11 November, the government decided that, during martial law, evaluations will be conducted solely by the ministry that owns the SOE. 

This enables ministries to unilaterally determine supervisory board effectiveness without independent oversight.

This marks a return to direct state control over these companies. Any supervisory board can now be dismissed at a ministry’s discretion — a practice common before the 2024 reform.

Also, the legality of the amendment is highly questionable. The 2024 reform law clearly defines the list of exceptions allowed during martial law — and none of them involve evaluating a supervisory board’s performance.

Reform on the brink

Corporate governance cannot be strengthened by methods that undermine its core principles: procedural integrity, transparency, and independence.

Operation Midas demonstrated that Ukraine still operates within a framework of simulated corporate governance.

The reform will become real only when:

• Supervisory boards are held personally accountable for their actions and inaction;
• Transparency and accountability of SOEs and managerial decisions are ensured;
• The government refrains from political interference in corporate processes.

Violating established rules in pursuit of a “quick result” is not reform — it is dismantlement. Unless these decisions are reversed, Operation Midas will be only the first in many similar scandals to come. 

Oleksandr Lysenko

Oleksandr Lysenko is an independent corporate governance and legal consultant, who co-authored the 2024 corporate governance reform for Ukraine's state-owned enterprises.

Taiwanese companies continue to supply precision industrial machines for factories that fuel Russia’s war machine, in defiance of sanctions, according to an investigation by Ukrainian watchdog organization StateWatch. 

Precision tools process high-strength alloys used in the production of artillery barrels, missile bodies and drones. Russia imports at least 70% of its Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines from companies in Europe and Asia. Most countries involved have banned selling Russia equipment that can be used to make war materiel. 

Moscow gets around these bans, largely by working with middlemen in countries like China and Türkiye. However, “even Taiwan, a strategic partner of the US, has been implicated in these supply chains,” StateWatch wrote in its 13 November report. 

Since 2022, millions of dollars worth of dual-use machinery has made its way into Russia through Taiwan’s involvement. These include brands like Fedek, Sunmill, and Golden Machinery.

The recipients include companies linked to Russia's military-industrial complex, including Zenik, Kami-Group, Intervesp, Metalmash, and Stanki Tekhnologii Instrument. 

At least 70% of Russia's CNC machine tools are imported, largely from the US, EU, and Japan. Over 80% of all CNCs end up in Russia's military production facilities. 

Over $10 million worth of industrial equipment 

LNS Group is a global company that manufactures bar feeders and CNC lathes. According to Russian customs data, LNS machines worth nearly $5 million have entered Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion. 

These exports were mainly facilitated by Taiwanese company TWT Global Enterprise limited. Kami-Group, which sells machine tools, is the largest Russian recipient, according to the report. 

Russian company Zenit published a YouTube video in December 2024, showing LNS’s Fedek-branded equipment at its factory.  

A flashlight manufacturer, Zenit also makes red-dot and thermal sights, laser target designators, and tactical firearm accessories for Russia's troops and intelligence agencies, on top of donating products to Russian troops in Ukraine.

Fedek machines have also been spotted at the G.I. Petrovsky Plant in Nizhny Novgorod, which makes equipment for the Russian Navy, engineering troops, and manufactures avionics.

Zenit's video also shows Sunmill machines. The manufacturer, Jeenxi Technology Co, of Taiwan, “supplied high-precision equipment directly to Russia’s military sector” also to the tune of $5 million, as of December 2024, according to StateWatch.

Russian state contractors Intervesp and Intervesp-M, both of which are internationally sanctioned, were reportedly among the recipients. 

Taiwanese Golden Machinery Co, which manufactures beverage bottling equipment, supplied $800,000 worth of industrial machines  to Russia, according to customs data.

The main recipient was Stanki Tekhnologii, which trades in metalworking equipment and its website shows it regularly signing contracts with Russian defense enterprises.

Stanki Tekhnologii got $430,000 worth of equipment directly from the manufacturer and the rest via a Turkish intermediary.

South Korean firms also implicated 

South Korean brands have also been spotted in Russia, according to a recent report by the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, a Kyiv think tank. 

Between 2024 and 2025, more than $3.7 million worth of Korean-made cutting tools and CNC machines got into Russia through complex transshipment networks involving China, Türkiye, India, Uzbekistan, Lithuania and Thailand.

Products from at least three South Korean precision toolmakers were exhibited at the annual Metalloobraboka expo in Moscow in May.

“The key issue is not simply covert shipments,” Olena Yurchenko, director for analysis and investigations at ESCU, wrote in a statement to Korea JoongAng Daily and Euromaidan Press. 

“What we find alarming is that products made by South Korean brands, which are de facto banned from Russia [since 2022], are now being openly advertised and promoted in Moscow."

Moscow casts a wide net

These figures are a drop in the bucket compared to the $18 billion worth of machine tools reportedly supplied to Russia from Europe and China.

This includes 57 CNC machines worth over $26.5 million from European subsidiaries, along with components and consumables valued at more than $9.5 million.

In October, Germany raided Spinner, a high-precision machine tool manufacturer suspected of knowingly supplying equipment to Russia's military industry. Three individuals have already been charged with violating sanctions.

Russian crews complain that hefty, improvised armor shells break the transmission on their tanks after just a few kilometers. 

According to interview excerpts posted by Russian tank historian Andrei Tarasenko, mounting this “tsar mangal” style turtle armor on the tank’s chassis quickly overloads the gearboxes. 

One Russian tank “didn't even make it 10 kilometers before one of the side gearboxes failed,” an interviewee told Russian outlet Vault8. This tank was equipped with a makeshift shell made out of cables.  

If the armor shell is instead mounted on the turret, the weight burns out the driver, making the turret impossible to rotate, especially by hand. 

Ukrainian tank operators from the 13th Khartia Brigade confirmed the Russians’ woes to Euromaidan Press.

Passing along his colleagues’ words, Khartia spokesman Volodymyr Dehtiaryov said that improvised armor that weighs several tons does take Russian tanks out of order quickly.

However, he added that the Russians don’t seem to mind losing tanks in this way, as long as they are able to get close enough to inflict enough damage to Ukrainian positions. 

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According to Tarasenko’s post, the Russians are also complaining about shortages of reactive armor, especially the modern Relikt system. Russian crews are trying to make up for the shortage with improvised solutions. 

“On the turret cheeks, there’s a homemade version from garage workshops — sheet metal shaped like factory plating with an explosive insert from the UR-77 mine-clearing line charge. It works about 50/50 at a 45 degree angle,” the Russian crewman is quoted as saying. 

Tanks struggle to evolve in the age of drone warfare

Tanks often lead Russian mechanized assaults, absorbing drone attacks with their bolted-on armor, clearing mines with their front-mounted rollers, and firing their cannons to suppress Ukrainian troops.

This add-on armor comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and weight profiles, evolving over the course of the full-scale invasion from simple cages, to solid steel sheds, to an arrangement of bristling cables, resembling the quills of a porcupine.

There is evidence to suggest that improvised armor is effective at letting the tanks survive more hits from certain types of drones, like FPVs. Some Russian assaults hinge on whether the defenders can run out of drones before the Russians run out of vehicles to overwhelm their positions.

However, the Russians cannot keep sacrificing tanks forever. The Kremlin may be desperate enough for usable armor to pull old T-64s out of storage and try to make them work. Alternatively, the Russians could continue to rely on infantry offensives in the short term, to buy more time for their mechanized forces to recover.

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As Washington flip-flops on granting Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv, there is a more practical, politically expedient solution, which doesn’t involve an American veto of every target that Ukraine may want to hit. 

That solution is twofold: fund Ukraine’s defense companies to make their own missiles and long-range drones, and supply Kyiv with cheaper, less advanced munitions in greater numbers, observers and insiders said. 

This will still let Ukraine scale up its deep-strike campaign, meant to grind down the Russian offensive rather than face its full might on the front lines, saving both lives and money. 

“Right now, we need less missiles to meaningfully reduce the Russians’ capabilities, compared to 2022, because now we have drones,” said Serhii Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center. 

"But let's imagine that you also add missiles... this is a few dozen-fold enhancement to our long-range capabilities."

American Tomahawks and German Tauruses, which would be very helpful for deep strikes, remain blocked by politics for the time being. However, the Ukrainians have already made up for their dearth of missiles by innovating a menagerie of effective homegrown solutions. They just need support to make more. 

Ukraine’s drones have proven effective at hitting softer targets like refineries, but also factories. One Kyiv-based developer told Euromaidan Press that drones can now penetrate a meter of concrete and deal heavy damage with warheads lighter than 100 kilograms.

Ukraine also produces its own missiles, like the Neptune and, more recently, the Flamingo. It also gets cruise missiles from less reticent allies — the Storm Shadows and SCALPs provided by the UK and France, respectively. All of the above have been used in successful strikes against Russia.

“The situation is not binary, and Ukraine could undoubtedly make effective use of 50 or so Tomahawks. However, since the US is highly unlikely to donate these missiles, European governments might be better advised to channel the estimated $125–200 million they would cost… directly into Ukraine’s missile industry,” wrote missile expert Fabian Hoffmann of Oslo University. 

“Given that expanding Ukraine’s domestic missile production remains a major strategic priority, this may represent the more beneficial option.”

Deep strikes into Russia need to be scaled up

If necessity is the mother of invention, she has been an especially fruitful mother in Ukraine, birthing a wide variety of tech for both the front line and strategic attacks deep inside Russian territory. 

When Western allies refused to grant long-range weapons out of fear of escalation, Ukraine was forced to develop a plethora of effective attack drones of different shapes and sizes, from their Shahed analogues like the Batyar, to bombers resembling civilian aircraft, like the UJ-22 or the Horynych, to high-altitude balloons and more. 

Using these unmanned technologies, Ukraine has been striking Russia’s hydrocarbon infrastructure for years, but this campaign really kicked into high gear in 2025, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claiming that attacks are happening practically every day. 

In spite of the economic damage, Russia has so far kept up the frontline pressure, demonstrating that it can still afford to throw money and bodies at the problem, something that Ukraine, short on both funds and manpower, cannot do. 

Still, Kyiv hopes that by disabling enough strategic targets with more attacks, Russia’s military sustainability will falter. 

Observers and insiders who spoke to Euromaidan Press said that deep strikes will not win the war or reconquer lost territories, but they can still weaken Russia’s war effort and halt its advance, with the right choices of targets and sufficient means to hit them. 

• Drones work better against softer targets like refineries, but these are easier to replace
• Industrial machinery is harder to replace but harder to damage and is farther away from the front, so missiles work better against it
• Missiles are also useful for killing commanders in bunkers — if enough are killed, this can paralyze a regional offensive, thanks to Russia's top-down command style
• Tomahawks would be very useful to hit hardened targets, but chances of Ukraine getting them seem remote, with the White House constantly changing its mind
• Up to 50 missiles were under discussion; Ukraine would need hundreds of Tomahawks to take out entire factory complexes — plus, Washington could tell Kyiv what targets it's allowed to shoot
• For the same cost, the US and European allies could provide cheaper missiles and funding to buff up Ukraine's deep strike capabilities

Blasting Russia's refineries and industrial base

Designing a deep strike campaign around drones means choosing softer targets, said Marc DeVore, a defense policy scholar, who advised the UK’s Foreign Office on Russia’s full-scale invasion. 

“I think that Ukraine has done a great job in terms of identifying some of those target sets,” he told Euromaidan Press. 

Well-placed drone strikes can take refineries offline but to keep them that way, the attacks have to be regular and repeated, with most drone-sized payloads. 

“Repairs and restoring a refinery to operation is not necessarily rocket science and there's a sufficient number of producers of the necessary equipment that the Russians will be able to source,” DeVore said. 

Replacement piping, pumps, and other components can be easily acquired from China or built at home. Now, drones can do lasting damage to cracking units, which break down crude oil, and may be harder for Russia to source.

Missiles are able to do a lot more devastating damage to these targets, which would keep them offline longer. But missiles can be even more valuable if used to strike harder to reach targets, such as factories that make weapons or the stuff that goes into them.

Such plants are better-protected and also contain hefty industrial machinery like CNC machines or rotary forges that make parts for military vehicles. A recent investigation by InformNapalm showed that Russia must resort to evading sanctions to get its hands on more of these machines. 

These machines are hard to damage with small payloads, but also much harder to replace if they are destroyed by a larger blast.

“Russia doesn't produce its own rotary forges, and China also is a laggard. So the rotary forge industry is largely dominated by one Austrian company, (GFM), and Russia depends on it for rotary forges,” DeVore said.  

“So if one could either destroy those forges or inflict sufficient damage, it would be very difficult for Russia to replace them,” assuming the company doesn’t sell its tech to a random middleman that pops up overnight. 

Range is also a factor. Tomahawks can go up to 1,500 kilometers. A significant proportion of Russia’s heaviest military production assets are located far from the front lines, requiring any weapons to cross major distances to reach them.

The majority of long-range attack drones and cruise missiles that Ukraine uses now typically have ranges in the hundreds of kilometers, without breaching the 1,000 kilometer mark. Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile has a claimed range of up to 3,000 kilometers, but this has yet to be verified independently. 

Killing Russian command staff to halt the advance

Missiles are typically more effective at penetrating command and control centers, which are typically shielded by thick concrete. An attack like that can kill important command staff, which can be very disruptive to the Russian military, with its top-down command structure.

It was a Ukrainian Storm Shadow strike in 2023 that blasted the Black Sea Fleet headquarters and command center in Crimea, reportedly killing dozens of officers. 

Missile strikes were also instrumental in hitting the command posts of Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry, “paralyzing that entire direction” for a while, according to Kuzan. “The same story played out in Kursk in the spring.”

Successful attacks over the course of a month can disable command and control of an entire assault grouping, he said. But this requires a sufficient number of missiles.

The limits and opportunity costs of expensive missiles

With a few dozen good missiles, Ukrainians can force Russians to divert their air defense assets to protect more strategic sites, possibly weakening air coverage along the front. Or the Russians can be forced to spend resources to disperse production and harden facilities, especially if they don’t know how many missiles Ukraine has. 

However, “if your goal is inflicting decisive damage on the Russian economy, yes, you would need hundreds,” DeVore said. 

Hoffmann would agree, writing that destroying production plants with conventional missiles requires large salvos. Each Tomahawk can obliterate everything within a radius of 13 meters, but the Alabuga plant that makes Russia’s weapons stretches across 160,000 square meters. 

It’d take at least 150 Tomahawks to destroy 50% of the facility, assuming all of them reach their targets. This is a lot more than the amount Washington had reportedly considered.

“This is not to suggest that this type of counter-industry targeting is inherently unfeasible. It is not,” Hoffmann wrote. “Still, such operations are more demanding than commentators generally suggest, and arguably require more heavy missiles than Ukraine has access to in the short-term.”

With fewer missiles, Ukraine can focus on disrupting supply chains like electronics, explosives, propellants, and so on, which it has been doing with some success, using drones and Storm Shadows. 

“The other problem… is that for the Tomahawk to be used, it requires an entire targeting infrastructure that's dependent on the Americans,” DeVore said.

“Even if the Americans were willing to provide this system, they would have a de facto veto on every use case which I'm not sure is the situation you want to be in when the occupant of the White House seems to change his mind a lot.” 

The more expedient alternative: help Ukraine develop missiles and drones

With that in mind, if Washington is unwilling to supply Ukraine with its most advanced, exquisite missiles, the US and other NATO allies can still improve Kyiv’s ability to degrade Russia’s oil industry and military production capabilities. 

“Whether or not Tomahawks arrive in Ukraine, this will not decide the war. What matters far more is that European governments continue to invest substantial funds directly into Ukraine’s missile sector,” Hoffmann wrote. 

Zelenskyy said that while Ukraine uses foreign missiles like Storm Shadows, 95% of deep strikes are conducted using Ukrainian weapons. 

For example, some Ukrainian attack drones are more powerful than people give them credit for, despite having a limited payload size on paper, said Viktor, a Ukrainian technician who works in a lab developing Shahed-like delta-wing UAVs to attack Russia. His full name was omitted from the article for security purposes. 

He claimed the cost of the basic hardware is just $5,000, although incorporating jamming-resistant antennas raises the price several times. According to Viktor, some Ukrainian companies have learned to squeeze a lot more damage out of a relatively small payload, just tens of kilograms in mass.

"Some ammo is made by ordinary guys... they don't know the chemistry or physics that they should know," he said.

"But I know a few companies that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for special simulation programs for how they need to make the ammo to penetrate a meter of concrete, with a small amount [of explosive charge] and cause huge damage inside."

He added that Ukrainians already have the ability to use digital image matching to hit stationary targets on the ground. This is similar to what the Tomahawk uses for its terminal guidance. 

In fact, there is a “whole list” of much simpler weapons that allies can deliver to Ukraine by the thousands, relatively inexpensively, Kuzan said. For example, air-launched munitions with cheap guidance, like turbo-powered versions of the glide bombs Russia keeps dropping — these “ersatz-missiles,” as he called them, can strike from 300 to 450 kilometers away. 

While Russian air defenses are able to shoot cheaper weapons down with relative ease, Ukrainians have proven adept at punching corridors through these defenses with decoys, anti-radiation weapons, and other tech, enabling them to deliver sufficient firepower against stationary targets. 

"You can carry out strikes against sites where weapons, equipment, fuel, and everything else the army consumes, are being stockpiled. That's the mission," Kuzan said. "The more such sites are hit, the slower the advance. So, in fact, it's precisely these strikes that can halt the invasion."

Russia’s next-gen strategic bomber program may struggle to get off the ground if the West can prevent Moscow from evading sanctions, according to an investigation by InformNapalm, a Ukrainian intelligence community.

InformNapalm on 4 November reported that it acquired a trove of internal documents from Russia's aerospace component manufacturer OKBM, which the EU sanctioned in October. Purported copies of some documents were published with the investigation. 

The papers show that development of the Poslannik strategic bomber and parts for the Sukhoi-57 fighter are running into delays. This is partly due to Moscow’s shortage of precise machining tools made by foreign companies that have left the Russian market. The documents linked by InformNapalm directly name this as a reason. 

“At this stage, the Russian Federation is not able to produce parts for its promising aviation complexes on its own… they need to purchase foreign automated production equipment, high-precision CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines,” InformNapalm wrote.  

“This is why sanctions work and they are important, because they significantly hamper Russian military capabilities. But it is no less important to track schemes and ways to circumvent sanctions through third countries and impose secondary sanctions.”

According to the investigation, OKBM used Taiwan-made Hartford HCMC-1100AG and Johnford SL-50 machines, as well as a Serbian Grindex BSD-700U CNC grinder, bought through subsidies from Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade.

InformNapalm pointed to these acquisitions as examples of the Russian state’s attempts to evade sanctions. 

The founder of InformNapalm, who goes by Roman Burko, told Euromaidan Press that the intelligence gathering operation directly contributed to OKBM being included in the latest sanctions package. The organization went public with the data to cause additional damage to the Russian manufacturers.

"Russian contracts explicitly state that information leaks lead to investigations, bureaucracy, and contract terminations," Burko said.

Russia’s aircraft modernization program

The Tupolev PAK DA, also known as the Poslannik (Russian for "Envoy"), is a subsonic stealth bomber meant to replace the venerable Tu-95, which dates back to the 1950s.

Russian media and other online sources report that the PAK DA is meant to have a range of 12,000 kilometers, an operational ceiling of 20 kilometers, and carry a conventional or nuclear payload of up to 30 tons. Moscow reportedly began financing development in the late 2000s and since then, the program has run into multiple delays. 

Russian media previously reported that the bomber was supposed to be ready for serial production in 2027. According to InformNapalm’s investigation, OKBM is supposed to deliver components for actuating the Poslannik's weapon bays by August 31, 2027. 

The documents released by InformNapalm state that the program is marked secret and OKBM may lose its contract if it fails to maintain that secrecy. 

The investigation also found that OKBM is involved in making gearboxes for the weapon bays of the Sukhoi-57, a Russian multi-role stealth fighter with the NATO reporting name Felon. 

The Su-57 has fought in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As of 2023, Russia had only 22 Su-57s in service, although it intends to increase production. Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation plans to deliver 76 fighters by 2027. 

On top of modernizing its air force, Russia has entertained plans to export the Su-57 as a competitor to the American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. 

India initially participated in the development of the Su-57 but pulled out of the program in 2018, citing lack of satisfaction with performance and other concerns. In October, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov made an offer to India to launch “local production” of Su-57s. 

Russia evades sanctions to keep up manufacturing

At least 70% of all Russian CNC machine tools are imported, largely from the US, EU, and Japan. Over 80% of all CNCs end up in Russia's military production facilities. 

While Russian military manufacturing has suffered as access to this equipment dried up following the full-scale invasion, Moscow has been able to get its hands on foreign equipment either through intermediaries or foreign companies violating sanctions. 

Ukraine's Economic Security Council reported that Russia has procured $18 billion worth of machine tools from both Europe and China. This includes 57 CNC machines worth over $26.5 million from European subsidiaries, along with components and consumables valued at more than $9.5 million.

In October, Germany raided Spinner, a high-precision machine tool manufacturer suspected of knowingly supplying equipment to Russia's military industry. Three individuals have already been charged with violating sanctions.

More leaks on the way

According to InformNapalm, the documents it released on 4 November are only a fraction of the total it has managed to acquire and go over, in partnership with the cyber analytics center Fenix. Ukrainian intelligence was also reportedly involved in the operation.

InformNapalm wrote that it plans to continue publishing leaks about OKBM into the future, with the hopes that publicity will help strengthen the impact of Western sanctions on Russia's military industry.

Ukraine has taught the rest of Europe a lesson in what innovation is, and what it isn't. 

Gripped in the teeth of Russian aggression, Ukraine has harnessed engineers just out of university to develop next-gen drones, produced them at scale at the lowest possible cost, tested them in the field, refined them according to frontline feedback, and then repeated the process. 

Thanks to this ultra-modern approach to arms development and procurement, cheap, lethal, and increasingly sophisticated drones, which are able to keep pace or beat Russian countermeasures, have been streaming out of Ukrainian factories.

Compare this to what's happening in the European NATO member states. Defense budgets are growing, but procurement officers favor the big primes. These companies have big reputations, well-paid lobbyists, and direct lines to the right people. They receive lucrative contracts to develop platforms that take years to fulfill. 

Start-ups and smaller companies, exactly those best placed to innovate, are largely ignored. They often go unnoticed altogether.

Europe's drone wall faces reality check

These differing approaches to innovation matter. Last month, it was widely reported that the NATO member states would move forward with their plans to build a "drone wall" along the eastern flank of Europe. 

It would, in theory, be made up of a giant system of drones working together to create a defensive screen. These drones would fly in patrols, be linked by sensors, and be able to track and intercept threats. 

Plans have been expedited because Russia has been testing the waters outside of Ukraine. Poland shot down Russian drones that had entered its airspace. Denmark has been forced to buy anti-drone equipment. Romania said it found "new drone fragments" near its border with Ukraine.

Breaking free from Chinese supply chains

To build a drone wall, Europe will need to find a way to wean itself off Chinese materials. Much of the software and hardware used in drones comes from China, which makes NATO dependent on supply chains that are largely controlled by a major non-NATO power. 

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It's revealing that the US has been thinking about relaxing its decades-old controls on exporting certain American technology to its allies. Washington has historically limited the number of external operators allowed to use drones like the advanced MQ-9 Reaper. 

But it now sees that expanding sales of MQ-9s and other technology would have the twin effects of increasing interoperability with partners and of blocking out China and others from exploiting a gap in the market.

In short: the White House doesn't want NATO reliant on and strengthening its biggest rival, particularly by buying equipment critical to modern warfare.

This isn't the only issue, however. Talk of a "drone wall" betrays a lack of understanding about the nature of modern warfare. 

Why a wall won't work

This is no longer the year 122 CE, when Roman Emperor Hadrian built a wall in the north of England separating the so-called civilized world and the unconquered barbarian wilderness. You can't simply put up a wall of drones between Eastern Europe and Russia, and so block Russian forces from getting into the rest of Europe. 

Drones can appear anywhere, at any time. You can hide them in a truck, on a boat, or in a submarine. You can drop them out of space. Even if this "wall" is made up of a state-of-the-art drone fleet, an attacker can completely bypass it and release their drones thousands of miles away, near critical infrastructure. 

This is why Europe needs something like a drone dome: an integrated solution that includes connected drones, as well as passive systems, and countermeasures. That will take time, which is why Europe should start by shielding the most vital infrastructure and then, as drone production accelerates, protect other assets.

How Europe can learn from Ukraine

But Europe's main challenge is the drone technology itself. Drone countermeasures are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The vast majority of even state-of-the-art drones are intercepted, and a well-timed electromagnetic pulse can down a whole swarm. 

The drone wall on the Eastern flank has to be made up of cutting-edge drones, with the best software and hardware, shielded with the latest, EMI-resistant advanced materials. 

That requires, in turn, a truly modern approach to innovation and procurement that draws on the Ukrainian model and puts energy, ambition, expediency, and creative freedom above historic defense relationships and big, headline-grabbing platform procurement deals.

Neither this, nor the suggestion that Europe needs to inculcate a Ukraine-inspired culture of innovation, are unreasonable or unrealistic demands. The European NATO member states have the money, the research institutions, the intelligence, the innovation culture, and the talent to build a world-class, indeed world-leading defensive drone system. 

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And, as Ukrainians know all too well, conflict isn't something that happens "somewhere else." Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Romania have complained that Russia is probing at their defenses. The former head of Britain's MI5 said only recently that she believes the UK may already be at war with Russia. 

The urgency of now

There's no time to lose. What is unreasonable, as well as unrealistic, is thinking that hostile actors will wait for Europe to wake up to the threat, or that without a concerted, sustained, urgent effort, Europe will rearm in the way that it needs.

EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius thinks a drone wall could be built in a year. Evika Siliņa, Latvia's prime minister, told reporters she thinks it could be "doable" within a year to a year-and-a-half. German defense minister Boris Pistorius says it will take more than three or four years. Though EU leaders in general have given the idea "broad support," there are clearly disagreements to iron out. 

But what we need is a dome, not a wall, and we need it to be in place quickly. To policymakers and opinion-formers: we need you to act before our enemies take the ability to act away from us.

Robert Brüll

Robert Brüll is the CEO of FibreCoat, an advanced materials technology company which develops ultra-resistant fibers and coatings used in dummy tanks, decoy ships, spacecraft, and chaff for fighter jets.

Editor's note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press' editorial team may or may not share them.

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