Now he is bringing the lessons learned on Ukraine’s battlefields to Western militaries through a new training initiative.

We spoke with him about the future of warfare, the challenges facing the West, and why he believes Ukraine has become the world’s leading source of combat innovation.

“When I first arrived, I was training Ukrainians. By the end, I was learning from them more than they were learning from me.”

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

My name is Bryan Pickens. I spent twenty years in U.S. Special Operations and retired after a military career that included nearly seven years working with Ukrainian forces. During that time, I watched the evolution of drone warfare firsthand.

When I first arrived, I was training Ukrainians. By the end, I was learning from them more than they were learning from me. Drone warfare has evolved into something that NATO doctrine still does not properly incorporate. It has fundamentally changed how maneuver warfare works and how modern militaries must operate.

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“That [realization] led me to create a program designed to transfer Ukrainian knowledge to Western militaries.”

The realization I came to is that the United States—and the West in general—is dramatically behind in its understanding of drone warfare, modern technology, and how these capabilities integrate with conventional operations. We’re essentially trying to chase a jet ski in a rowboat while all of our adversaries are already on the jet ski.

That led me to create a program designed to transfer Ukrainian knowledge to Western militaries. The goal is to train Western instructors through Ukrainian subject-matter experts, creating a scalable bridge between Ukraine and the West that can spread this knowledge throughout allied militaries.

There are still areas where America does things better than Ukraine. But when it comes to modern drone warfare, Ukraine has become the world’s leading laboratory. That knowledge is an invaluable resource that needs to be shared.

“For me personally, combat has always felt natural.”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

Rather than tell my own story, I’d rather tell the story of one of the men I worked with.

Before joining my team, he was fighting deep inside Russian territory—roughly one hundred kilometers beyond the border. He’s an American Marine who has spent [more than a decade] fighting alongside Ukraine. He had served in Donbas, during the early years of the conflict, and through numerous campaigns since.

He was also trained as a Special Forces medic.

During one operation, his unit was devastated. He was severely wounded, suffering multiple injuries including a broken pelvis, a broken leg, and extensive internal trauma. Most of the men in his element were killed.

At one point, he was effectively pronounced dead.

A Ukrainian soldier from another unit happened to find him and drag him back toward friendly lines. He eventually regained consciousness at a stabilization point.

As a medic, he immediately understood the severity of his injuries. He knew he needed higher-level care. Despite a broken pelvis and severe trauma, he managed to get himself moving, found transportation, reached Kyiv, and received treatment.

Most people would have stopped there.

Instead, after recovering, he organized an operation to recover every American who had been killed in that area of Russia. He personally helped identify the bodies and ensured they were returned home to the United States.

When people ask me about heroes, I think about men like him. I’m a leader of men, but the men I’ve served with are the real heroes. I’d rather tell their stories than my own.

“Ukraine possesses something of immense value: the most advanced practical knowledge of modern warfare on earth.”

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

For me personally, combat has always felt natural.

I boxed growing up and had more than forty fights before joining the military. I deployed sixteen times, fourteen of them into active combat zones. Fighting has been a constant throughout my life.

Ironically, the moment I hear the first gunshot or the first bullet cracks overhead is often when I feel most comfortable.

But if I had to explain how people stay calm under pressure, the answer is training.

“I’ve watched frontline drone operators explain concepts so advanced that they sound like aerospace engineers.”

You train until the correct response becomes automatic.

In the military, we call these battle drills. A battle drill is a collective action that is rapidly executed without deliberate decision-making. If two soldiers take fire, they already know exactly what they’re going to do. Nobody needs to stop and think. Nobody needs instructions.

You immediately return fire, move to cover, identify the threat, communicate, and begin executing the next steps. The response happens automatically because it has been rehearsed countless times.

The same principle applies today in drone warfare.

The challenge is that modern warfare is no longer simply about shooting back when someone shoots at you. Today’s soldier may need to understand radio frequency theory, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, drone maintenance, software systems, airspace deconfliction, mission planning, and networked operations—all while under combat stress.

I’ve watched frontline drone operators explain concepts so advanced that they sound like aerospace engineers. Yet these are infantrymen operating on the front lines.

The answer remains the same: training.

If we expect soldiers to perform under stress, we must train them until operating these systems becomes second nature. Every military in the West is going to have to learn this, or they will lose the ability to compete on future battlefields.

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4 | How can people support your work?

People can support our work by helping us scale the bridge we are building between Ukraine and the West.

The company is called Valoryx, and our mission is to turn Ukraine’s battlefield knowledge into structured training for Western militaries. After more than four years of full-scale war, Ukraine has become the world’s leading laboratory for drone warfare, electronic warfare, and the integration of unmanned systems into modern combat. The lessons being learned on the battlefield today will shape the future of warfare for decades to come. The problem is that much of the West is still struggling to keep pace.

Our goal is to create a system that takes the knowledge being developed in Ukraine and transfers it to Western militaries in a scalable and organized way. We want to train instructors who can return to their own units as subject-matter experts, advise commanders, help shape procurement decisions, and build training programs that reflect the realities of modern warfare.

We already have the framework in place. We have Ukrainian partners willing to train instructors, veterans prepared to go through that pipeline, and a clear vision for how this knowledge can be shared across the United States and eventually throughout NATO. What we need now is the ability to scale.

One of the biggest lessons from Ukraine is that support cannot remain purely charitable forever.

Many foreign volunteers spend years fighting for Ukraine while earning little more than subsistence wages. That model isn’t sustainable. The next phase must be transactional.

Ukraine possesses something of immense value: the most advanced practical knowledge of modern warfare on earth. The West needs that knowledge.

The model we’re building is not limited to the United States. It could be expanded across NATO. Norwegian veterans could train alongside Ukrainians and bring those lessons back to Norway. The same could happen throughout Europe and North America.

This creates a genuine exchange. Ukraine is compensated for its expertise. Western militaries receive critical knowledge that may save lives in future wars.

Most importantly, it strengthens the relationship between Ukraine and the West.

If America finds itself in another major conflict, I want Ukraine standing beside us. Ukrainians fought alongside coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people have forgotten that.

“The nonprofit allows us to begin building teams and conducting training now, rather than waiting for years of bureaucracy to catch up.”

This is an opportunity to honor that partnership, build something lasting, and ensure that the lessons paid for in blood on the battlefields of Ukraine are not lost. Especially today, when Ukrainians are developing capabilities that every Western military will eventually need.

That is why we have established a nonprofit organization alongside the company. Government contracting processes move slowly, and while there is broad agreement that this capability is needed, the battlefield and the technology continue to evolve every day. The nonprofit allows us to begin building teams and conducting training now, rather than waiting for years of bureaucracy to catch up.

People can support the effort in several ways. Donations are the most direct way to help us build and deploy training teams. Beyond that, spreading the message, introducing us to decision-makers, connecting us with potential partners, and helping us reach people who understand the importance of this mission can all make a meaningful difference.

Every good military leader is taught not to arrive with a problem alone, but with a proposed solution. We have identified the problem. We have built the solution. We have created the bridge between Ukraine and the West. Now we need the support to put it into action and ensure that the lessons being learned on Ukraine’s battlefields today are not lost, but shared with the soldiers who may depend on them tomorrow.

5 | Where can people follow you?

Our website is:

Valoryx.us

We have also launched social media channels for Valoryx where we’ll share updates, training activities, and stories from veterans who have served in Ukraine. You can find them here:

Instagram

LinkedIn

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• Zelensky Puts Belarus on the Clock—President Zelensky has given Lukashenko one week to remove or shut down equipment in Belarus that Ukraine says is helping Russia guide attacks against Ukrainian civilians.
  
  The warning targets signal relay stations allegedly located in two Belarusian border regions, but it also carries a wider message: Belarus cannot keep pretending it is outside the war while its territory, infrastructure and refining industry support Moscow’s campaign.
  
  Zelensky also pointed to Belarusian fuel supplies for the Russian army, making clear that Kyiv knows Lukashenko not as a neutral bystander, but as an active enabler of Russia’s war machine.
  
  

• Russia Starts Hunting Men in the Streets—Russian security forces are reportedly detaining men on the streets of Penza (Western Russia) and nearby towns, taking them to military offices and pressuring them into signing contracts for Russia’s war on Ukraine. Local accounts describe police, Rosgvardia units and military enlistment officials stopping cars, checking documents, patrolling public transport and pushing men into vans, while families gather outside enlistment offices trying to stop relatives from being sent away.
  
  The pattern fits the pressure inside Russia’s war economy: the Kremlin wants to avoid another formal mobilization while still feeding the front with bodies. That means coercion moves downward, from patriotic propaganda to debt pressure, prison recruitment, regional quotas and now street-level roundups.

• Russia’s Border Terror Continues—Russia struck Kharkiv overnight with guided aerial bombs, hitting a residential area and badly damaging a building where rescuers pulled survivors from the rubble and continued searching for people believed to be trapped. At least one person was killed and several civilians were injured, including a small boy, after three bombs were launched at the city, with Ukrainian air defenses intercepting one.

• No US Parts Means Liberation from Washington’s Veto—The United Kingdom has unveiled three prototype long-range strike missiles for Ukraine, built deliberately without US components so London can decide when and how they are supplied and used.
  
  The project is an answer to one of the war’s most damaging Western habits: giving Ukraine weapons, then wrapping them in political hesitation, export controls, and escalation management. If the prototypes pass further tests, at least one system could reach Kyiv by the end of 2026, with the ambition to produce cheaper weapons in larger numbers than prestige systems like Storm Shadow.

• Russia Is Burning Thanks to Ukraine’s Long-Range Kinetic Sanctions—Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign has moved from occasional raids into an organized, intelligence-led strike system: hundreds of drones on major nights, decoys to saturate Russian air defenses, AI-assisted route planning, and targets chosen for their value to Moscow’s war machine. Refineries, military plants, logistics nodes, and energy infrastructure are no longer safely hidden behind Russia’s geography, as systems now reach deep enough to threaten sites far beyond Moscow.

• Switzerland Talks, Lebanon Burns—Steve Witkoff and Abbas Araqchi are heading to Switzerland for US-Iran talks meant to turn a fragile interim pact into a broader regional settlement, but the timing could hardly be more revealing: Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon continued only hours after a ceasefire with Hezbollah was supposed to take effect.
  
  The diplomacy is aimed at a 60-day process covering Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, the Strait of Hormuz and a wider end to fighting, yet the battlefield is already testing whether any paper deal can control the region’s armed facts. Israel says it is not party to the arrangement, Hezbollah still operates as an Iranian-backed army inside Lebanon, and Iran wants Washington held responsible for violations by actors Washington does not fully command.

• The Ally Trump Couldn’t Keep Close—Giorgia Meloni has publicly pushed back against Donald Trump after he claimed she had “begged” for a photo with him at the G7, calling the story fabricated and accusing him of showing more softness toward the West’s enemies than toward its allies. The insult has triggered a rare Italian political closing of ranks, with ministers and rivals alike objecting to the humiliation of Italy’s prime minister and foreign minister Antonio Tajani canceling a planned US visit in protest.
  
  In her video, the Italian PM said neither Italy nor she ever begs the USA or anyone for anything.

• China Finds Another Chokepoint: Indium—China is tightening scrutiny on exports of indium, a small-market metal that has suddenly become strategically large because of its role in high-speed optical chips for AI data centers. Beijing already controls nearly 70 percent of global indium production and placed indium phosphide under export controls last year; now buyers are seeing slower approvals and new end-user questions even for the metal itself.
  
  No shipments have been clearly blocked yet, but the direction is hard to miss. China is mapping supply chains, testing pressure points, and reminding Washington and Europe that the AI boom still rests on physical inputs often refined or controlled by geopolitical rivals.

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For the first two years of Russia's full-scale war, Polish broadcaster MICHAŁ RACHON gave me a weekly chance to report from Ukraine.

With hundreds of thousands tuning in, together we raised the funds for dozens of vehicles and hundreds of drones for its defenders.

When the new government sent riot police into his newsroom in December 2023, "Rock Rachon" rebuilt overnight, turning a tiny station, TV Republika, into the biggest in Poland.

He has interviewed Trump and visited Mar-a-Lago—and he wants American conservatives to know that Ukraine's fight is theirs too.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

My name is Michał Rachon AKA Rock Rachon. I’m program director of Television Republika, the biggest conservative TV news station in Europe and probably the only anti-Russian transatlantic TV station in Europe and the biggest news station in Poland.

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And my mission is to fight for a world free of Russian imperialism in the post-communist countries. Poland is one of the post-communist countries and we have a memory of the Russian imperialism that made my home country a land basically taken over by Russia for 300 years.

So for my fellow citizens, the memory of the slavery is the biggest geopolitical challenge that we have to basically tackle. That’s my mission.

“[T]he reason, Joe, why … I believe that you love what Ukraine is doing right now is that because there’s love of freedom”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

A new Polish government took over, switched off the TV station that I used to work for [TVP]. I used to build it for many years. The day that the riot police entered our [TVP] studios back in December 2023, I tuned in as an anchor man of a station that was switched off the next day when my station was not running. It was switched off for like 10 or 15 days. The next day I connected to Television Republika, the TV station that I was building years ago, which was a small one and I appealed to my viewers during the last minutes of existence of the TVP.

I appealed to my viewers to switch to TV Republika the next day, because you will probably see me there. So after my program, I came back to the new office and I don’t know if you’re familiar with the way that the Nielsen data, viewership data, is being delivered to the TV stations, you usually get it the next day.

So you don’t know on the day that you are doing your show, you don’t know the viewership numbers, you know it the next day. So when I was sitting the next day in my new office in the new tiny station that I used to start my career in like five or 10 years earlier, I received a pack of data from Nielsen in the morning and I thought that there is a mistake in this data, that there is a problem with the comma in the numbers because the station that used to have like 0.01% of the total viewers, the market share, I received a report that concluded the growth of the viewership over the span of one day on the level of three and a half thousand percent.

I was sure that it’s just a mistake in the calculations. So I called the guy who was responsible for the numbers and I told him, “You’ve made a mistake, buddy.” No. “I know that we are bigger than yesterday, but we missed a comma.” And he came back to me, “No, Michał, I did not.”

We [TV Republika] grew by three and a half thousand percent day by day and then we even grew bigger. So the moment I realized that this is actually happening was the moment that I believed that when you follow the values that you actually believe in and you follow the people who trust you, the sky is delivered and this is something, those are the moments that really very rarely happen in the history of media.

So those are some significant moments that happen very rarely, but when you are over there and you understand that this is the moment big things can happen.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

I would say that the most important thing is to stick to the values that you truly believe in. I mean, when there are hard times and we had moments of real despair and hopelessness, for example, the moment when the people who the political powers that were going after me and my friends three years ago, they switched off the TV station that we’ve built. They raided the offices of our newsrooms with the riot police back then. And we had a choice either to back down and say, “Okay, it’s over, or decide that we will do what we believe in no matter what are the circumstances.”

And the result was that from a small, tiny TV station that we’ve created years ago, we’ve managed to build an organization that is right now the biggest news station in Poland and it’s totally private. It’s independent from the politicians.

It’s even bigger and even better than the one that was destroyed by the politicians that wanted to silence us and they didn’t manage to do it. And the reason why we succeeded is that we believed in our values and we believed in the people that actually share those values and those values are really simple love of freedom, love of independence, of sovereignty and faith. And those are the principles on which we’ve built the TV Republika station that we are actually running right now—the station that is the major, the most important, most significant voice of the conservative movement in Poland, basically being also the biggest news station in my home country. There are really no conservative stations in Europe apart from our station.

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4 | How can people support your work?

By following us on the social media, by watching TV Republika, by trying to understand the nature of the hard times that we are all witnessing, that we live in Poland and Central Europe is a place in which you really see that the geopolitics isn’t over, that the history is not over.

We are basically living on a geopolitical highway between Moscow and Berlin. And this is the place in which all the wars for last hundred years either begin or ended. So when we are watching the war in Ukraine, the Russian aggression against Ukraine, when we are watching the fall of communism, when we are watching the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Second World War, this is one of those geopolitical global choke points and it seems to me that we can understand those geopolitical winds here very well.

So the way you can support or if someone wants to support what we do is to try to understand the nature of those geopolitical winds that are blowing this part of the world.

If you do want to understand what is the reason for which Polish people love freedom and love the sovereignty of their own nation is because those values that we share are in a way universal.

I think that we are talking about something universal because the reason, Joe, why you loved Ukraine and I believe that you love what Ukraine is doing right now is that because there’s love of freedom that you talk about, that you experienced and in a way we are freedom lovers as well. So if you do want to understand what we do, you have to love freedom.

5 | Where can people follow you?

Rock Rachon

Rock is rollin

By Michal Rachon

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• Every Second Ruble Goes to War—Nearly every second ruble from Russia’s federal budget went to the military in the first quarter of 2026, with defense spending reaching 5.9 trillion rubles—about 30 percent more than a year earlier. Classified spending hit record levels, while military expenditure equaled roughly two-thirds of federal revenues for the quarter, exposing the scale of the Kremlin’s wartime distortion.
  
  Russia is still dangerous because it is willing to sacrifice living standards, civilian investment and future growth to keep the war machine moving. But the pressure is visible: weaker tax revenues, oil sanctions, a cooling economy and rising secrecy all point to a state increasingly organized around war rather than prosperity. Putin’s Russia is not returning to normal. It is budgeting itself deeper into mobilization.
  
  

• The Warnings Increase: Now, Sweden Says Russia Might Test NATO Soon—Sweden’s Defence Commission says the country’s security situation has deteriorated further, with Russia escalating in the Baltic Sea region and potentially willing to test NATO’s Article 5 cohesion in the near term if the Kremlin sees a favorable political opening.
  
  The warning is striking because it comes from a broad parliamentary defense process, not a single alarmist voice. Sweden’s NATO membership has changed the map, but not removed the danger: Europe is now expected to carry more of the burden for defending itself as U.S. policy becomes less predictable.

• AI Starts Shortening the Kill Chain—Ukraine’s defense AI chief says the next phase of the war will be decided by integrated artificial-intelligence networks that can fuse battlefield data, recommend decisions and shorten the kill chain faster than human staffs alone.
  
  Kyiv already uses AI for drone targeting, combat planning, missile-attack analysis and command systems, but the ambition is larger: a single battlefield operating system linking weapons, sensors, units and strategic command into what officials describe as one coordinated organism. Russia is moving in the same direction, including AI-assisted planning for drone and missile strikes, which means the contest is no longer just about who has more drones or missiles. It is about who can collect more data, understand it faster and turn it into action before the other side adapts.

• China’s Neutrality Mask Slips—EU officials say China trained Russian soldiers on its own territory, with some of those troops later returning to fight against Ukraine. The reported training involved hundreds of personnel at several locations in China, including instruction connected to drones, electronic warfare, army aviation and armored units.
  
  Beijing has long claimed neutrality while Chinese companies supplied dual-use goods into Russia’s war economy, but evidence of direct military training would move the relationship into a more serious category, strengthening the already blossoming anti-Western Russo-Chinese axis.

  
  

• Macron Puts China on the G7 Agenda—Emmanuel Macron wants the G7 to confront China’s subsidized export surge, from electric vehicles and batteries to chemicals and other strategic industries, but Beijing is already trying to reframe the issue as harmless “cooperation” rather than market distortion. China’s vice premier joined a Macron-led call ahead of the summit and called for open trade and inclusive growth, the familiar language of a state that subsidizes at home while demanding access abroad.

• America Puts AI Behind Export Controls—The Trump administration is blocking foreign access to Anthropic’s most advanced models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, bringing frontier AI under export-control logic normally associated with chips, missiles and sensitive software.
  
  The order reportedly covers use outside the United States and access by foreign nationals inside the country, forcing Anthropic to suspend the models more broadly while it works out compliance. The national-security concern is clear enough: the most capable AI systems may help identify software vulnerabilities, automate cyber operations or accelerate weapons-relevant research. The harder question is how to regulate them without crippling trusted allies, commercial deployment and America’s own AI companies.

  
  

• The Gang Leader Hit From Above—U.S. forces killed Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero, the leader of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, in a military strike coordinated with Venezuelan authorities. The operation marks a major escalation in Washington’s treatment of transnational organized crime, moving from sanctions, deportations and police cooperation toward direct military action against a group designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
  
  Tren de Aragua is not a street gang in the old sense; it is a cross-border criminal network tied to human trafficking, extortion, smuggling, money laundering and contract killings across the Americas.

  
  

• Raybird Heads for Germany—Skyeton Germany and INTEC have signed a strategic letter of intent at ILA Berlin to bring Ukraine’s Raybird unmanned aircraft system to the German Armed Forces and allied markets. The partnership pairs INTEC’s engineering, systems integration and lifecycle support with Skyeton’s battlefield experience in long-endurance ISR and ISTAR missions. Raybird has accumulated more than 350,000 combat flight hours in Ukraine, with proven resilience against electronic warfare and demanding frontline conditions.
  
  

• Peace Talks, Attack Drones—U.S. forces shot down multiple Iranian one-way attack drones heading toward the Strait of Hormuz, after a source said they posed a threat to commercial traffic. The incident came even as Washington and Tehran spoke of progress in peace talks, which captures the problem with Gulf diplomacy under fire: Iran can negotiate at the table while probing the world’s most important energy chokepoint with disposable drones.
  
  Trump had warned Tehran earlier the same day against targeting ships trying to transit the strait, and the interception shows why words alone do not secure sea lanes.

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We spoke in Odesa, on the sidelines of the Black Sea Security Forum, about managing missions under fire—and what Ukraine needs.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

My name is Mike. I’m the team lead for Força Ukraine, and I also now work for TAPS International (supporting families of warriors who have been killed), which is based out of Dnipro.

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Força Ukraine: We are a small 501(c)(3) based in the U.S. We specialize in teaching Ukrainian-informed advanced pre-hospital trauma medicine.

One of the things we try hard to do is take best-practice trauma medicine, kind of like U.S. and NATO standards, and confer with our Ukrainian colleagues and the people we teach, and try to make it as contextually appropriate to Ukraine as possible.

“Where is the system breaking down so badly that a unit is not getting resupplied any other way? It’s strange.”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

There are so many moving stories that have come out of this war, but I often get asked: Why Ukraine? Why do you keep coming back to Ukraine?

In general, it’s the people. But there was a very specific moment on our first trip, in April 2022.

“In their moment of incredible need, they were still generous enough to support who we were and what we were trying to do for them.”

Fuel was still being rationed across the country. I was working for a different organization then, and we had three vehicles with us. We were in Vinnytsia, and we had to get all the way back to the Polish border. The gas lines were insanely long. At that time, you could get five liters of fuel, which gets you nowhere.

One of our interpreters called everybody he knew. Every single person donated their gas ration to a team that was leaving the country.

There was this sense that they were so grateful we were there, while I felt like we had not done anything in return yet. It was just the goodness of the Ukrainian people. In their moment of incredible need, they were still generous enough to support who we were and what we were trying to do for them.

I think about that all the time. Just the sheer generosity. People were living in incredible hardship, but if you needed something, the attitude was: what can we do for you?

That galvanized the desire to keep helping here. We thought we had knowledge and a skill set that we could give back, and that became the foundation of the mission.

“We leave space for people to say how they are doing and, if they are not at their best, to lean into the team instead of pulling away from it.”

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

I think, weirdly, it’s transparency.

One of the things that has given our team access and good connections here is that we are very transparent about who we are and what we do. We are here to teach good medicine, and we try to build genuine relationships with the people we work with. That transparency works externally, but it also works internally. Everything we do as a team is built around being a cohesive unit. We leave space for people to say how they are doing and, if they are not at their best, to lean into the team instead of pulling away from it.

Even though I am, on paper, the team lead, it is a very democratic process. We use the slogan: all to go, one to say no. We have been in shaky situations where you go around the room quickly and ask: What do you think? The first person who says no—that decision is made. If there is hesitation, that is an all stop.

It does not matter if you are brand new to the team, if you are Ukrainian, if you are a doctor, if you are a medic. As a teammate, every voice is heard, and every voice is equal. That has built a lot of trust into the organization. If one of our interpreters says, “I don’t feel comfortable,” I know that carries the same weight as me saying, “Maybe we take a second here.” That trust is not built around one person. It is built into the organization.

“[G]rowth can also dilute the values that made the work good in the first place.”

We are also transparent with donors. Our budget is open. What we do is open. The things we protect are who we work with and where we work with them, because of the sensitivities around units and locations. We will never compromise that. But everything else is done transparently, so people can look at us and see what they are going to get.

It is also very hard to build a team that can function that way, and that is part of why we have stayed very small. Our team is generally 10 to 12 core members who shift in and out as schedules allow. It is built on personal relationships. If we think someone might be a good fit, we get them on a call with everyone who is available. It does not matter whether someone is an interpreter, trainer, doctor, or medic. Everyone has a say. Then that person gets off the call, and we discuss it internally. If one person says no, that matters.

To maintain the values that are important to us, it is hard to grow. We have all seen organizations get bigger in order to do more good, but growth can also dilute the values that made the work good in the first place. That is something we are struggling with now. Ukraine is different in the medical training space, and we have had to learn and adapt over four years. Sometimes you bring out a fantastic instructor from the United States, someone with amazing depth of knowledge, but they cannot teach here.

So what we often look for is not just medical knowledge. It is: can you still be a good person and a good teammate after two weeks of living in the field? Can you still function as a human being? Will you lean into the team?

You can teach good medicine. You cannot really teach good character and good teammate skills. You either have them or you don’t.

Teaching combat medicine in Ukraine is also different from teaching at a school or hospital in the United States. From a Western perspective, you often imagine a certain demographic. But here, especially if you are working with soldiers or territorial defense in a conscript army, the age is often older. If someone is 45, they did not just grow up in a Soviet system. They grew up in the Soviet Union before Ukraine became independent. That changes how people think and make decisions.

On the medic side, especially here, you often have to act autonomously. That can be a hard concept to get across to [those who come from countries that] often prefer top-down hierarchy and protocols. Everyone wants a protocol. But the Western protocol is not always fully effective here. Medicine is not a checklist. It is not flying an airplane. You are dealing with people, and people have different presentations.

So you are trying to teach through cultural and demographic issues, not just medical issues. You are trying to make it contextually appropriate for someone who may have a very different background, understanding, and skill set. And then there are the language barriers. In the east, there is often more Russian spoken. So are you teaching in Ukrainian? Are you teaching people who speak Russian but are trying to understand Ukrainian?

There are so many nuances in how you effectively get information across.

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4 | How can people support your work?

Força Ukraine sits under the broader umbrella of the Força Foundation, which is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3). We have a website where people can donate. We are also on Instagram and Facebook, so people can follow along with our missions.

Keep understanding what is happening here. Keep listening to the people telling the stories.

We try to put out information about our work in a way that makes it accessible, while still protecting where we are working and who we are working with. That is ultimately the most important thing. We are here to do medicine. If people want to support that and help Ukraine, that is an additional benefit. But we do not want to compromise on being good partners to the people we work with here.

But honestly, the obvious answer is to give money. The better answer is to keep the conversation going.

Especially in America, where the attention span is short and people are in this constant cycle of overwhelming news and information, Ukraine has largely fallen out of the general discourse. So instead of saying, “Support us,” I would say: support Ukraine.

There are a million good causes here: stray animals, media, the people telling the stories, food efforts, healthcare efforts. All of these things matter. I am more agnostic about who you support, as long as you keep the conversation going. Keep understanding what is happening here. Keep listening to the people telling the stories.

I gave up on changing foreign policy a long time ago. I am not going to have that kind of sway. I can change lives one at a time. But people who keep the story alive can change public perception. And ultimately, that changes policy.

5 | Where can people follow you?

Instagram and Facebook, that’s currently it. We are talking about trying to diversify that and capture a larger audience.

“There is a very small remaining pool of money and a lot of competing needs.”

One of the ironies of our team is that we are medical. We do not really understand grant processes or how to tell a good story. We will go train an organization, and they will have somebody in the corner shooting video. Thirty minutes later, they have this amazing, glossy, finished production. Meanwhile, we have taken three blurry pictures and posted them on Instagram.

With our focus being on medicine, we are still trying to figure out the best way to put our work out there in a way that does not feel like self-promotion, but brings awareness.

There is a lot of self-promotion here [in wartime Ukraine], and it is an interesting dynamic because, in many ways, this is a crowdfunded war. There is a very small remaining pool of money and a lot of competing needs.

We have always felt more strongly about doing good medicine, aligning people in the right direction, and doing less competition and more collaboration.

What our team does is very specific. We do not want to be in every other space. There are other people who do other things really well, and I want to be able to say: You do this thing really well, so let’s collaborate. You take that. If you ever need what we do, we will do that.

So long answer to say our social media presence is not as professional as others. But we are doing it. We are working on it.

In the early days, I called this a cottage-industry war, because literally everyone was doing something. People were making camouflage nets, homemade medical products, all of it.

As the war has gone on, the social media sphere has become more and more important. But it is also crazy to me that medics still have to run campaigns to get equipment, or hope that when do an evac and they reach a main town, one of their sponsors has sent something to the Nova Poshta.

My team is very small, but we usually bring enough equipment to fill around 200 IFAKs [Individual First Aid Kits], plus other medical supplies.

But why is any military unit in any war, especially a Western-backed war effort, reliant on a small team of volunteers for basic medical supplies?

You arrive as a small team of Americans and provide this stuff, and you think: how do you not have this? Where is the system breaking down so badly that a unit is not getting resupplied any other way? It’s strange.

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• Devil, Devil, I Defy Thee: Kyiv Offers Talks—Zelensky has made his most direct public move toward Putin since the full-scale invasion began, calling for face-to-face negotiations in a neutral country and proposing a full ceasefire during talks. In an open letter, he suggested Switzerland, Turkey or Arab states as possible venues, ruled out both Moscow and Kyiv, and pushed for an all-for-all prisoner exchange as an opening step.
  
  With Washington distracted by Iran and Russia still making strikes on Ukrainian cities, Kyiv is trying to prevent Russia’s war on Ukraine from slipping into the background. Zelensky’s message to Putin was unusually personal, arguing that Russia is tired, its people are feeling inflation, fuel shortages and Ukrainian long-range strikes, and Russian history shows what happens when exhaustion reaches the top: revolution.
  
  Zelensky also said that, if Moscow won’t agree to talks, not only Russia must be afraid of its future, but so must Putin.
  
  Speaking at his St Petersburg conference, Putin mocked and dismissed Zelensky’s outreach.

• Hoodlum Russia Puts Masks on Its Ships. Ukrainian Drones Find Them Anyway—Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces struck five vessels operating in the occupied ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk and in Russian-controlled coastal waters, targeting dry cargo ships and a tanker allegedly used to move stolen Ukrainian grain, military cargo, and fuel.
  
  Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi said the vessels had their names painted over and radars turned off—the maritime equivalent of wearing a mask while looting. Heavy FP-2 drones were reportedly used in the operation, turning Russia’s occupied Sea of Azov routes into another exposed logistics corridor rather than a safe rear area.

• Russia Uses Donbas as a Missile Range—Putin is trying to rebrand Russia’s Oreshnik mid-range ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine as “testing,” which is a strange word for firing a nuclear-capable ballistic missile into a country your army is invading.
  
  Speaking to foreign media in St. Petersburg, he claimed Russia had not used Oreshnik in “real combat” and said the strikes on Bila Tserkva and occupied Donetsk Oblast were carried out where Russian forces could conveniently observe how the warhead blocks dispersed [Incidentally, Oreshnik was also used on the city of Lviv]. He even said drones were sent afterward to measure the results “to the millimetre” before any future full-scale use, including against urban areas.

• The Pro-Russian UFO Sect That Got Into Parliament—The European Parliament managed to host one of the strangest influence stories in Brussels: an event by AllatRa Global Research Center, a group accused by Ukrainian authorities and several critics of promoting pro-Russian narratives, pseudoscience, apocalyptic theories, and claims about extraterrestrial influence on humanity.
  
  The February event was officially about nanoplastics and was held with Czech MEP Ondřej Knotek from the Patriots group. Afterward, MEPs from the EPP and Renew asked why an organization with this kind of baggage was allowed inside Parliament at all, warning that such events can give questionable networks an institutional stamp.

• Europe Rethinks Refugee Protection for Ukraine’s Fighting-Age Men—EU governments are moving toward a harder line on Ukrainian men of fighting age, with ministers showing broad support for excluding new arrivals from the bloc’s temporary protection scheme. The system has allowed more than 4.3 million Ukrainians to live, work and study in Europe since 2022, but it expires in March 2027 and is now being reworked under the pressure of Ukraine’s manpower needs. Sweden, Germany, and others argue that protection for Ukrainians must continue, but not in a way that quietly drains the country of men who could be mobilized to hold a line that protects not only Ukraine but all of Europe.
  
  The most discussed option would affect only new arrivals, not Ukrainians already covered by the scheme, and would focus on men eligible for military service, roughly the 23–60 age range.

• Washington Chops Germany’s Tomahawk—The Pentagon is reportedly preparing to cancel plans to send Tomahawk cruise missiles to Germany, a reversal of a Biden-era agreement that was meant to give NATO a stronger long-range deterrent in the middle of Europe.
  
  U.S. officials are said to be worried that Moscow would treat the deployment as an escalation, while strained American stockpiles after the Iran war are also hanging over the decision. Merz has already signaled he does not expect Washington to station the missiles, and Berlin has been exploring its own purchase of Tomahawks and Typhon launchers.

• The Robot Built to Carry Soldiers Out Alive—Ukraine’s upgraded Vepr UGV has been codified and cleared for operational use, giving frontline units a heavier robotic workhorse for the missions that usually get soldiers killed: logistics runs, casualty evacuation, demining and recovery under fire.
  
  The 350 kg platform can carry roughly its own weight, move at more than 7.5 km/h, and cover nearly 40 km on one charge using two 1,500 W electric motors, digital cameras and multiple secure communication channels. The key upgrade is evacuation capacity: Vepr can now carry two wounded soldiers at once, while also delivering ammunition, recovering damaged robots or vehicles, supporting remote demining and even serving as a one-way attack platform.

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EDTH runs hackathons across Europe—Munich, Copenhagen, Paris, London, Vilnius, and with military brigades in Ukraine. The Berlin-based network takes no EU grants and operates on event sponsorship alone.

It is a bet that Europe’s defense will be built by engineers, not declared by ministers.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

I’m Benjamin Wolba and I’m the co-founder of the European Defense Tech Hub. We’re building a truly pan-European network for defense innovation. We have a strong alliance to make Europe and our allies stronger, to help Ukraine win the war, and in the end to give democracy the upper hand by developing defense tech that will deter future conflict through technological superiority.

“We’re rebels. We’re not an EU institution. We write defense with ‘s,’ [not ‘c’]”

We help those fighting for our lives at the Ukrainian frontline every day to save their lives and help us really win this war.

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2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

Gosh, there’s so many stories and experiences since we started two years ago to build this network. But for me, it has just been incredible to see people move beyond our hackathons that we’re running from Europe to develop stuff in real life.

And to maybe give you one example as a story, we had one guy come to our very first European Defense Tech Hackathon in Munich in June ’24, winning second place with the idea to develop very low cost micro missiles to take out enemy drones.

He came to our Copenhagen hackathon half a year later. He then came to our London hackathon six months after that. He’s right now in Ukraine working with several army units to refine this prototype to a point that they can actually use it in combat. We’re so proud to see this development over the past two years.

“We help those fighting for our lives at the Ukrainian frontline every day to save their lives and help us really win this war.”

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

Absolutely to focus on things that are effective, that move value forward, and really going grassroots. Together, we’re really moving things bottom up and actually organizing events pretty much throughout Europe, country by country, because all of those top level government initiatives have largely failed.

There’s no European army, no joint procurement, no joint standards. Instead, what we did was really to go bottom-up country by country to organize events with hackathons, meetups, and drone-building workshops to get the best builders in Europe into Defense Tech to work on the most urgent security challenges. And in that, we have built an actual company being funded by event sponsorship and to basically ignore all of the EU grants. We have not received any government grants, but instead focus on providing actual value.

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4 | How can people support your work?

First off, we’re always looking for help in sharing what we do, be it co-promotion, be it telling others just by word of mouth, really just sharing about what we do.

Second, we really appreciate partners who help us with equipment, with testing facilities, with pretty much anything that helps our alumni move forward, move beyond the hackathon to build stuff in real life. And lastly, we’re entirely self-funded. We’re always looking for sponsors and partners who want to make events happen or with whom we can help build companies in real life.

5 | Where can people follow you?

You will find me online everywhere by my actual name and I’m very active on LinkedIn. Please follow us. Please follow the European Defense Tech Hub. We also have a Substack newsletter: .

Our website is https://eurodefense.tech.

Importantly, that’s “defense” with ‘S,’ [not a ‘c’]. We’re rebels. We’re not an EU institution. We write defense with ‘S.’

You can also send me an email: Benjamin[at]eurodefense.tech.

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• Iran’s Exiled Crown Prince Attends Ukrainian Mil-Tech Forum in Odesa—Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the most visible figure of the Iranian opposition and son of Iran’s last Shah, has arrived in Odesa Saturday to take part in the Black Sea Security Forum. His presence gives the gathering a wider meaning than another regional security conference: Ukraine is not only speaking to NATO partners and European officials, but also to opposition forces from regimes aligned with Moscow.
  
  The forum brings together politicians, diplomats, military figures and experts, while Pahlavi’s appearance signals that Iran’s anti-regime movement remains politically active despite repression at home and the wider military crisis around Tehran.

• The Kremlin Was About to Bomb All of Ukraine But Then Two of Russia’s Key Planes Went Up in Smoke Before They Could Take Off.—Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces say they destroyed two Russian Tu-142 long-range maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft at a military airfield in Taganrog, along with an Iskander tactical missile launcher positioned in marshland near the city. The strike was carried out overnight on May 30 by drones from the 1st Separate Unmanned Systems Center, according to commander Robert “Magyar” Brovdi.
  
  The Tu-142 is not just another parked aircraft: it is a rare Soviet-era naval aviation platform derived from the Tu-95 bomber family, used for long-range patrol, submarine hunting and maritime surveillance.

• Gotland Becomes NATO’s Baltic Lock—NATO is racing to turn Sweden’s Gotland into a Baltic stronghold, because the island has become one of the alliance’s most exposed and strategically valuable pieces of terrain. Sitting in the middle of the Baltic Sea, roughly 300 kilometers from Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, Gotland is the kind of place that looks quiet on a tourist map and decisive on a military one.
  
  Control of the island would shape air defense, sea lanes, reinforcement routes, and NATO’s ability to protect Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in a crisis. Sweden’s entry into NATO changed the map, but it also gave the alliance a new responsibility: fortify the space that now turns the Baltic from Russia’s playground into a NATO lake.

• Putin Tries to Bomb His Way Out of Stalemate—Putin is trying to turn a stalled war into a renewed show of force, as Moscow’s rhetoric and actions are increasingly escalating. With Russia’s advance along the front slowing or being reversed, while Ukraine’s long-range strikes are reaching deeper into Russian energy sites and arms factories, the war is becoming harder for the Kremlin to keep distant from ordinary Russians. Drone attacks near Moscow, internet shutdowns, rising taxes, manpower strain and a cooling war economy are all eating into the old image of effortless control. So the Kremlin is reaching for what it knows best: missile pressure, nuclear theatrics, and warnings to Europe.

• Kyiv Puts Billions Behind Mid-Strike Drones—Ukraine is putting another UAH 5 billion (roughly $110 mln) behind a new “Logistics Lockdown” program designed to scale mid-strike drones and intensify attacks on Russia’s rear. The money will go first to the most effective units under the ePoints system, meaning brigades that have already shown results in destroying enemy logistics, depots, equipment, command posts and supply routes at operational depth.

  
  A second phase will launch state tenders for larger centralized purchases, with the first results expected to reach the front this summer. According to defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine has already quadrupled the destruction of Russian rear-area logistics in recent months, helping reduce the number of enemy assault actions.

• The Pacific’s Most Dangerous Flashpoint—A new defense study warns that a war over Taiwan could move dangerously fast from a conventional fight into a nuclear crisis. The problem is not simply that the U.S. and China both have nuclear weapons, but that any serious conflict would likely involve strikes on command centers, communications networks, satellites, sensors, and intelligence systems, exactly the machinery each side would also rely on to understand whether its nuclear forces were under threat.
  
  The report notes that the Asia-Pacific is becoming the center of a new arms race, with China rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and regional powers investing in longer-range strike capabilities. The most worrying part is the absence of Cold War-style guardrails: Washington and Beijing do not have the same dense web of nuclear risk-reduction talks that once existed between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

• The Simulator Behind Better Air Defense–Ukraine’s SKIFTECH has revealed the technical details of its newly cleared Stinger MANPADS simulator, giving air-defense training a cheaper and more repeatable way to prepare operators without burning through precious live missiles.
  
  The system uses a laser training kit mounted non-invasively onto a real Stinger, preserving the weapon’s weight, dimensions, and operating logic, while a sensor-equipped target drone flies within a 100-meter training range. Instructors can monitor live telemetry, record hit statistics, and adjust training based on performance data, while the entire package can be deployed in the field in about 10 minutes and run autonomously for up to 28 hours.

• Beijing Builds for the Second Strike—China is building a vast support network around its nuclear missile silos in the remote desert near Hami, with satellite imagery showing more than 80 launch pads, hardened bunkers, communications nodes, roads, airfields and rail links spread across thousands of square kilometers.
  
  The infrastructure appears designed to make Beijing’s land-based nuclear force harder to destroy in a first strike, giving China more ways to move launchers, protect silos, disperse air defenses and preserve command links under pressure. Analysts say the network may support mobile missile launchers, electronic warfare, satellite communications and command-and-control operations, while China is also expected to keep expanding its nuclear arsenal toward roughly 1,000 warheads by 2030.

• Moscow’s Safe Space Keeps Shrinking—Russia has declared a missile-danger alert in Yamal for the first time since the start of its full-scale invasion, meaning that Ukraine is now threatening Russian areas more than 2,000–2,500 km from Ukraine’s borders, as Ukrainian offensive capabilities continue to increase. The alert was also triggered across the wider Urals Federal District, including Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Tyumen, Khanty-Mansi and Yamal, while airports in Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Perm were temporarily closed.

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I first met her at the café Lyublyu Kavu (”I Love Coffee”) in Odesa, where she had just arrived with baking gear she’d lugged from London on her own.

Felicity has been spending her vacations in Ukraine since the summer of 2022 to support Bake for Ukraine, a non-profit baking and delivering sourdough to frontline communities. Their work is the subject of her 2025 book, Bread and War.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

Felicity Spector—I have been a television news journalist for 37 years, I live in London, and I’ve been traveling frequently to Ukraine since the summer of 2022. Firstly to support an Odesa-based non-profit called Bake for Ukraine, which does amazing work baking and delivering Ukrainian sourdough bread to people in need and frontline communities.

I also wrote a book last year called Bread and War, telling the stories of Ukrainians who work or volunteer in food and are helping their country keep going during war. It’s been an honour to give a platform to their experiences!

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“All of a sudden someone shouted ‘drone!’ and everyone raced back down to the basement”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

We were driving fast through Kherson city a few months ago, towards the Dniprovsky district near the river, with a van delivering hot meals to people who had been forced to leave their homes in Antonivka. We passed many burned-out buildings and boarded-up homes, and it was a relief to find the aid distribution place where everything was being organised really efficiently in a safe space underground.

I saw one elderly lady struggling to climb up the steps with a bottle of drinking water and her box of food, and one of the volunteers rushed over to help her. All of a sudden someone shouted ‘drone!’ and everyone raced back down to the basement until they could hear soldiers shooting it down.

I couldn’t imagine the distress of that elderly lady, robbed of her home, clutching her one decent meal of the day, and dodging that kind of lethal threat just to make it back to her accommodation alive. We drove back to Chornobaivka extremely fast, a local volunteer shouting directions from the back seat.

Kherson goes through these nightmares every hour of the day.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

I find joy through discovering all the beautiful food in Ukraine, so I always make sure of seeking out something delicious when I can, especially syrniki [curd cheese pancakes]. I am lucky to get support from the amazing friends I have made—and also I can’t think straight without good coffee so I always travel with a box of drip packs in my bag.

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4 | How can people support your work?

They can support Bake for Ukraine by donating directly to my JustGiving or through Bake for Ukraine.

You can order my book at:

Waterstones | Duckworthbooks | Blackwells | Amazon

5 | Where can people follow you?

I’m on Instagram and Substack, which is always free to read.

’s Flour Power on Substack:

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• Russia’s Energy Fortress Has Open Gates—Ukraine has struck another Russian refinery, this time in Yaroslavl roughly 700 kilometers from Ukrainian territory, as Kyiv’s campaign against Russia’s war-funding oil system moves from occasional punishment to systematic economic warfare.
  
  Oil revenue funds Moscow’s war on Ukraine, refineries turn crude into usable military and civilian fuel, and repeated strikes force shutdowns, repairs, rerouting, and air-defense dilemmas far from the front. Ukraine has hit 11 Russian oil facilities in May alone, including Kirishi, one of Russia’s largest refineries, while major plants in central Russia have reportedly been forced to halt or reduce output after drone attacks.

• Gabbard Leaves—Tulsi Gabbard is leaving as U.S. director of national intelligence, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis, with deputy Aaron Lukas set to take over as acting DNI when she exits on 30 June. The personal reason is real, but the timing is interesting: Gabbard has long spread falsehoods about Ukraine, and she built her brand on anti-interventionism—which, Ukraine aside, has not been Trump's approach in the world's hot spots.

• Rubio Lands in India—Marco Rubio arrived in India for his first visit as secretary of state, with meetings expected to focus on trade, energy, and defense cooperation. The trip comes at a delicate moment for U.S.-India relations: the two countries are still trying to finalize a broader trade agreement, Washington wants to expand energy sales to reduce India’s reliance on Russian oil, and New Delhi is watching U.S. engagement with Pakistan and China closely. Rubio is also expected to meet Quad foreign ministers (United States, Australia, India, and Japan), keeping the Indo-Pacific security format alive at a time when China’s influence remains the main strategic concern for both sides. He also paid a visit to Mother Teresa’s shrine at her Missionaries of Charity mother house.

• Where Pilots, Points, and Factories Meet—Ukraine held its “Wild Drones” competition near Truskavets, bringing together pilots from 19 elite military units and frontline drone manufacturers for races, interceptor trials and direct feedback sessions.
  
  The event was part sport, part procurement lab: pilots tested systems, units competed for hardware such as Vampire heavy drones, and manufacturers used battlefield complaints to adjust designs that can change significantly within months. It also showed how far Ukraine has formalized the drone war, from verified-kill points that units can spend on online defense marketplaces to growing demand for automation so fewer operators can control more systems.

• Ukraine Rejects a European Half-Seat—Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected a German proposal to give Ukraine an interim form of EU “associate” membership, arguing that Kyiv should not be brought into European institutions without a real voice. The idea would allow Ukraine to take part in EU meetings and institutions without voting rights, while gradually gaining access to parts of the EU budget and security guarantees, including a political commitment to apply the bloc’s mutual-defense clause.
  
  Berlin presents it as a bridge between candidate status and full accession, especially given the practical difficulty of admitting Ukraine quickly. Kyiv’s response is that the political moment has changed: with Viktor Orbán no longer blocking the process after Hungary’s election, Ukraine wants accession talks to move forward in a full and meaningful way.

  
  Mustafa Nayem, a key Ukrainian civil society voice who helped lead the 2014 Maidan Revolution, noted that when it comes to defense, it is Ukraine that has much to offer Europe, and so Ukrainians need not beg.

• China’s Diplomatic Split Screen—Xi Jinping hosted Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Beijing within the same week, offering both leaders similar state-visit theater but using noticeably different diplomatic choreography. Trump received the higher-ranking airport welcome and a heavily business-focused visit, with U.S. executives and officials talking of trade, aircraft sales, agriculture, and tariff relief.

  
  Putin’s visit produced a lengthy joint statement, a larger government-heavy delegation, and documents spanning energy, banking, nuclear issues, and political alignment. The contrast is revealing. Beijing is treating Washington as a power to bargain with and Moscow as a partner to integrate more deeply into its anti-Western orbit, even if the relationship remains unequal.

• Taiwan Watches the Waterline—Taiwan says China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard, and other vessels across waters stretching from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific, in a sharp increase in activity after Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing. Taipei’s security chief Joseph Wu described the move as a threat, while Taiwanese officials say the vessel count had already been rising before the summit and has now climbed above 100.

• Starship Takes a Bigger Step—SpaceX launched the upgraded V3 version of Starship from Starbase, Texas, in the rocket’s 12th test flight, completing most major objectives: stage separation, mock satellite deployment, atmospheric re-entry, and a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The flight was not flawless—one Starship engine failed, an in-space engine restart was skipped, and the Super Heavy booster did not complete its planned boost-back burn—but it still marked a clear step forward. SpaceX is building the vehicle around full reusability, heavier Starlink deployments, future lunar missions, and, eventually, more ambitious deep-space plans.

• Hunter Biden Meets the Ukraine-Hating Right—Candace Owens, a frequent voice against Ukraine, aired a nearly two-hour interview with Hunter Biden, an unlikely meeting between a right-wing podcaster who spent years attacking him and the son of a Democratic former president who has long been a favorite target of Trump-world media.
  
  The conversation moved through addiction, the laptop scandal, corruption allegations, the Epstein files, Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories and Hunter Biden’s resentment toward parts of the Democratic establishment, while Owens apologized for turning his lowest moments into political entertainment.

  
  What makes the pairing politically interesting is not reconciliation, but realignment: the Ukraine-hostile, anti-establishment right and the anti-Trump Democratic orbit are discovering shared language in grievance, suspicion and contempt for the people they believe run Washington. What was not discussed: How Hunter Biden had been paid by Putin-friendly energy firm Burisma, which contracted him from Moscow starting in 2014 when his father, as U.S. vice president, was running Obama’s foreign policy that allowed Putin to take Crimea from Ukraine.

• Old Tech, New Signal War—Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has codified Aerobavovna’s AB12TC aerostat, a tethered airborne platform designed to lift communications and control equipment 100 to 700 meters above the battlefield and keep it there for up to 72 hours.

  
  It can carry roughly 5 kg of payload, including digital and analogue relay systems, FPV drone command links, video transmission equipment, and communications suites such as HIMERA, SILVUS, L3Harris, and MPU5, while heavier 10 kg and 25 kg versions are already being prepared. More than 50 systems have reportedly been delivered to the Armed Forces, Special Operations Forces and National Guard.

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It’s part of a larger NGO led by London-based American JEFFREY HARTMAN, who first traveled to Ukraine years ago as a Peace Corps volunteer—and now returns frequently to help his friends in their resistance to the Russian war machine.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

My name is Jeff Hartman. I am the co-founder and CEO of Ukrainian Action, which is a British American Ukrainian NGO. My mission is to support my friends in Ukraine and that has not changed from day one and I’m grateful to have a team of friends and supporters who are also engaged in supporting and helping our Ukrainian friends.

We teach Ukrainian veterans and their families to ski and snowboard in the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains, but it’s much more than that.

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We are engaged in four primary areas in Ukraine. We provide emergency support, humanitarian aid, as well as recovery and reconstruction projects.

We organize volunteers to drive humanitarian aid convoys of vehicles from the UK. We donate the vehicles such as pickups and ambulances to Ukrainian charities and other frontline users, and we donate medical supplies to hospitals, generators, to schools, etc.

In terms of recovery, we have a flagship rehabilitation program for Ukrainian veterans and their families. We teach them to ski and snowboard in the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains, but it’s much more than that. Our program is called Ukrainian Action Heroes and it is a comprehensive multidisciplinary program combining psychological support, physical activity, adaptive sports, family work, and social integration for the brave men and women who four years ago were civilians and took the initiative to defend their country and suffered physically and mentally because of that.

I ended up driving to Ukraine from London every weekend in a row for three months.

I started that program because I had personal friends who became soldiers overnight and became injured veterans and there was a lack of support by the Ukrainian state, which admittedly is working very hard and committing most of its resources to eliminating the invaders in the country. We have been very focused on building a very unique program in the Carpathians to support veteran families.

“And he told me that he had gotten shot in the head, but that the bullet glanced off his helmet and he was not injured. And he looked at me at that point and he said—”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

So I was in a bar in Dnipro. That day we had driven to the front lines to deliver some equipment and we returned to Dnipro, and we were having dinner with our team. The son of my friend’s former colleague came to meet us.

We had previously assisted him in the early days with some equipment. I think we gave him some tourniquets. He was a member of the Territorial Defense Force. We gave him some helmets and some other tactical supplies.

Over drinks in this bar in Dnipro, he and his commander who had come to visit with us were telling us stories of their period on the front lines and he told us a story about a time when they had come under attack and the commander had managed to outrun a Russian tank.

So this was 2022, 2023 maybe. And the other guy had taken fire in the trench. And he told me that he had gotten shot in the head, but that the bullet glanced off his helmet and he was not injured. And he looked at me at that point and he said to me, “Your helmet saved my life.” And he shook out his hand and I will never fucking forget that moment.

And that was when I realized that we have to do everything we can to help Ukraine.

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3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

We have a ‘no stress’ policy. … We can only be effective if we are not burned out.

So when we first began our work in late February of ‘22, like probably most volunteers and groups, it was a frantic sprint to get as much assistance to Ukraine as possible. And we literally spent every spare minute acquiring resources and organizing ourselves, buying vehicles.

I ended up driving to Ukraine from London every weekend in a row for three months. And over time, I think probably by the second year we realized that the war was not going to end anytime soon and we had to take a slightly more marathon approach to it and not so much a sprint.

I realized then that we needed to embrace two principles. One, that we were a people-first organization, and, two, we needed to have a no stress policy because our volunteers were literally working all hours of the night compromising their own mental health and thus physical health to support our friends who were in Ukraine or on the front lines and over time that’s just not sustainable.

So number one, we take good care of our people and, number two, we have a no stress policy which means that if we don’t get something done in time for the upcoming humanitarian aid convoy, we just accept that it’s going to have to go in the next one because it’s a long war and we can only be effective if we are not burned out.

4 | How can people support your work?

So we are regularly organizing these humanitarian aid convoys from the UK to Ukraine, which are driven by volunteers. We depart the UK every two weeks, and we’ve been driving every two weeks for four years.

So for any interested people who would like to drive a vehicle from the UK to either Poland where we have a team or all the way to Ukraine, you can submit your interest on our website. For those who are interested to support our work remotely, we also have a pathway on our website for donations.

We are a registered UK charity and a US 501 so there are tax advantages for residents of both countries and all that is found at ukrainianaction.com.

5 | Where can people follow you?

We post as often as we can. Actually we post almost every day on Instagram and you can see all of our activities. So you can see the convoys we drive every two weeks. You can see the deliveries of humanitarian aid every week during the winter and the summer; and you can see our veterans rehabilitation program.

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• Battlefield Proof Gets Nordic Capital—Swedish investment firm Front Ventures has raised €5 million to invest in Ukrainian and Swedish defense-tech startups, with ticket sizes ranging from €200,000 to €2.5 million per company. The firm says the money will let it take larger stakes and support portfolio companies not only with capital, but with production scaling and follow-on fundraising.
  
  Its Ukrainian bets already include Aeromotors, which makes electric motors for drones; Black Forest Systems, a Ukrainian-Estonian UAV developer; and Sky Hunter, which builds an interceptor-drone guidance app. Front Ventures is also tied to Scandinavian X, a Ukrainian-Swedish joint venture producing interceptor drones, and is now looking at payload manufacturing in Sweden for Ukrainian interceptor and strike drones.

• Tehran Still Has Launchers—U.S. intelligence reportedly believes Iran has regained access to a majority of its missile launch sites, complicating Washington’s public claims that Tehran’s arsenal was “depleted and decimated.”
  
  The worrying numbers are blunt: Iran may still have around 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, roughly 70 percent of its mobile launchers, and partially operational access to about 90 percent of its underground missile facilities. Even non-operational sites may still matter if missiles can be moved and fired from mobile launchers, while around 30 active missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz remain a direct threat to U.S. naval forces.

• Ukraine’s Drone Tech Comes to America—Ukraine and the U.S. have drafted a memorandum for a potential new defense agreement that would let Ukrainian military technology be exported to America and open the door for joint drone production with U.S. companies.
  
  The deal is still a first step, not a signed alliance-industrial revolution, but the direction is important: Washington is beginning to treat Ukraine not only as a weapons recipient, but as a source of battlefield-tested systems the U.S. military wants to study, test and potentially buy. The focus is unmanned systems across air, land and sea, with Ukrainian drones feeding into America’s Drone Dominance push, a roughly $1.1 billion effort to find and scale systems for future U.S. military use.

• Students for the Front, Not the Future—Russia’s attempt to recruit university students into its new drone forces has produced its first confirmed dead student: 23-year-old Valery Averin from Buryatia, who signed a Defense Ministry contract in January, trained as a UAV operator, and was killed near Luhansk in early April, only weeks after finishing his training.

  
  The pitch to students was obvious enough: drone units sound cleaner, smarter and safer than trench assaults, a way to serve the war with a controller rather than a shovel. Reality has now answered. In the drone war of the 21st century, operators are valuable targets, and the line between “technical specialist” and disposable manpower is much thinner than Russian recruiters suggest.

• Xi’s Missile Boom—China’s missile buildup is no longer just a Pentagon warning or a parade-day spectacle, it is becoming an industrial ecosystem. Bloomberg identified 81 mainland-listed companies feeding Beijing’s missile program, producing everything from infrared sensors and embedded computers to stealth coatings and 3D-printed metals.
  
  The Pentagon estimates China had at least 3,150 ballistic missiles and 300 ground-launched cruise missiles as of 2024, up 147 percent and 50 percent respectively since 2015, while supplier revenues rose sharply last year, with around 40 percent of the identified firms posting their best year since 2013.

• Interceptor Drones Learn the Last Mile—Brave1 has tested an autonomous terminal-guidance system from Dutch company FDCL on Ukraine’s Wovkulaka Spitfire interceptor drone, pushing one of the hardest parts of drone-on-drone warfare closer to automation. The system uses computer vision to detect, track and guide the interceptor into aerial targets during the final phase of engagement, where human pilots face the worst mix of speed, stress, tiny silhouettes and milliseconds of decision time.
  
  The tests took place under the Test in Ukraine program with Ukrainian manufacturers, military units and counter-UAS specialists present, and FDCL says the system is meant to reduce pilot workload while keeping operators responsible for critical decisions.

• Germany Wants AI, Fears the Server Room—Alex Karp is pushing back against Germany’s suspicion of Palantir, arguing that Berlin’s distrust of battlefield software is badly misplaced at exactly the moment modern war is becoming a contest of data, AI and decision speed.
  
  The Bundeswehr has so far kept Palantir at arm’s length, with its cyber chief saying it is currently “inconceivable” to let outside industry personnel near Germany’s national military database — a classic German concern.
  
  But Ukraine has made the counterargument under fire: Palantir-linked systems are already being used there for air-strike analysis, intelligence management, demining, war-crimes documentation and AI tools aimed at Russian drone threats.

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BRETT HILL—an Ohio musician who has been healing, equipping, and inspiring Ukrainians through song since before the pandemic—needs $10,000 to keep this year’s Carpathian Spring alive.

Donate via our friends at the Ukrainian Freedom Fund (501c3, U.S. tax-deductible)—and dedicate it to “BRETT.” Or write us directly to discuss arrangements.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people. Today is a special edition.

EDITOR’S NOTE. Brett Hill, stage name Brother Hill, is an American musician who, like me, is from Ohio. I met him during the pandemic in Lviv, where he was leading what he called a folk alliance of Ukrainians, Appalachians, and Belarusians. They’d gather on the cobbled streets and in the Café Facet, singing and renewing the old songs and folklore long suppressed by the regimes from Moscow.

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When the full-scale invasion began, Brett held fundraising concerts in the USA. Despite a day job working forests and ranches in North America, he has traveled to Ukraine again and again—bringing supplies, playing at the frontlines and dangerous places like Nikopol to lift spirits. Crucially, he also produces regular retreats for soldiers and volunteers in the mountains: Vidnova (“Restoration”), and his annual Carpathian Spring, which runs again later this month. Many in Ukraine can look back on—and forward to—a Brett concert or retreat as a rare moment of respite and fellowship amid the hell.

“They wanted to hear songs that both reminded them of times before the war—and that had some way of painting the sound of it now.”

I attended Carpathian Spring in 2023, which focused on Crimean culture. It was a necessary respite and a forge: the friendships and understandings created there have helped many of us fight stronger and more cooperatively in all the years since—in ways that many of us can only share publicly after victory. Now Brett needs support to make this year’s a success. Read on about Brett and his work—and, if you can, give or sponsor.

—JP

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

My name is Brett Andrew Fritts Hill. Since 2020 I've been active in Ukraine as a folk musician and cultural activist, and since 2022 as co-founder and producer of two programs in the Carpathian Mountains: the cultural festival Carpathian Spring, and the soldiers' rehabilitation and wellness program Vidnova Spilno (“Restoration by the Community”).

“As with most soldiers of the best battalions, these two are sober and straight as an arrow. No drink, no drugs, just a steady diet of cigarettes, drive, and ambition.”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

The summer of 2025 I visited Izium, in the Kharkiv region just over the border from Donetsk. I went to visit a friend, a soldier, who is a historian and educator for one of the most well-respected brigades in the Ukrainian Army. She connected me with her brother-in-arms, a fellow historian and photographer, callsign “Afrika.” As with most soldiers of the best battalions, these two are sober and straight as an arrow. No drink, no drugs, just a steady diet of cigarettes, drive, and ambition.

Afrika took me to a hospital to perform for wounded soldiers in recovery. He drove me to an ancient place of power overlooking the region, where he told me of standing runestones placed there by the Kyivan Rus, later stolen by the Russians.

He took me to a place in the forest just outside the city, where during six months of Russian occupation in 2022, the Muscovites buried 449 citizens of the town in shallow sandy graves beneath the pines. Ukrainian servicemen were buried there, yes, alongside women, the infirm, the elderly, and children. Some of these graves could’ve only held a couple shoeboxes, and they stood open—gaping holes in the earth. A testament to the savagery of occupation. It was the work of beasts. I will never forget what I saw there.

“He drove me to an ancient place of power with standing runestones placed there by the Kyivan Rus.”

We spent a late night singing ridiculous backyard karaoke to my choppy guitar. Everything from CCR to Eminem to Céline Dion. I told them I don’t know many covers and I don’t usually play these songs—they didn’t give a damn. They wanted to hear songs that both reminded them of times before the war—and that had some way of painting the sound of it now.

Afrika asked for the Buffalo Springfield classic “For What It’s Worth,” with that iconic lead guitar line made so famous in Forrest Gump. I exclaimed there was nothing for it but to put on the original. So we sat miles behind the frontline, blood-filled trenches drawn just to the east, and listened to that song, “there’s something happening here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Drones flew overhead in both directions. Another scene which I will never forget so long as I live.

“I never had the chance to know him better. But I wear his patches on my daily pack, every day.”

We traded patches before I left, with very little sentimentality. This is a soldier from a battalion of prized warfighters, perhaps the Spartans of our age. It was a ‘see you later’ at best, with a handshake.

A month and a half later I was working in New Mexico, pumping gas at 7am—when I saw a notification—“Африка в строю.” “Afrika is in the ranks.” As in: forever in the ranks of glory.

Both he and my friend were in a truck that was hit by an FPV drone. She was knocked unconscious. When she came to, she saw that Afrika was dead. She pulled herself from the vehicle moments before it was hit by a second FPV.

I never had the chance to know him better. But I wear his patches on my daily pack, every day. A man my friends or future children would never have a chance to meet, because the enemy took him from us. He was not only a soldier, but an intellectual—the kind of mind that helps us remember what we’re fighting for, and why it’s worth fighting beyond retaking land.

So, it’s not really related to what I’m doing with Carpathian Spring and Vidnova, but it’s exactly the type of situation that assured me that I will never abandon this fight so long as Afrika’s death is unavenged, and so long as there are more soldiers surviving as my friend has, with the pain and the trauma of so much loss. The best I can do is serve them, and serve the society that will support them.

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3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

Staying in contact with my friends and keeping my eye on the prize: victory over the aggressor. We will struggle, and we will lose friends along the way. But I know their names are written in the stars and their light will not fade so long as we tell their stories, keep their legacy alive, and keep faith that doing what we know to be right is what matters in the end. It may sound as cheesy as it gets, but we are fighting for love of something, not hate. And that is one difference that will always put us a step above our enemies.

4 | How can people support your work?

The humbling reality is I am in desperate need of funding for these projects. This year’s Carpathian Spring, 22-24 May, still needs $10,000 in patronage to sustain more than 100 attendees—dozens of active players in Ukraine’s cultural renaissance, and many soldiers who now use this weekend as their annual chance to take leave with their families in the mountains. In the truest sense, Carpathian Spring 2026 is community.

You can donate to Carpathian Spring here. Please dedicate to BRETT.

As a US-based volunteer who does not receive pay from this program, I still do contract work in the United States—and pay my own way to return to Ukraine three times a year to produce such programming. Keeping these programs—Carpathian Spring and our soldiers’ rehabilitation retreat Vidnova—running for four years has grown harder, all the more so as the world grows distracted.

And we will need to run them for years after the war finally ends.

5 | Where can people follow you?

My instagram

Recovery Project for Defenders

Fourth annual Carpathian Spring Ukrainian Cultural Summit in Slavsko, Ukraine

My music — brotherhill.bandcamp.com

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Moscow wants the world to treat its Red Square ceremony as sacred, while implying that diplomats in Ukraine’s capital could become collateral if Ukrainian drones embarrass Putin’s war mythology.

Kyiv’s response: a ceasefire designed mainly to protect Putin’s parade is not peace. It is blackmail with bunting.

• Under Fire News Hits 100K Followers on Instagram—After months of relentless work and sleepless nights amid air raids, we have reached 100,000 followers on our Instagram page, where we post illuminating videos and condensed versions of all the extensive content you, our loyal subscriber, get to read in full.

  
  Your subscription here fuels this work. We thank you all for your support, as we work every day to increase our ability to break the information barriers between Ukraine, Europe, and the USA. Now on to 1 million—and victory!

• Trump Sees an Exit Ramp?—Washington and Tehran are edging toward a short-term memorandum that would halt the American war versus Iran, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and start a 30-day window for broader talks—which sounds serious until you notice how many explosives are hidden in the footnotes.
  
  Trump says Iran “wants to make a deal” and predicts it could be over quickly, while Tehran is still publicly skeptical and already mocking the proposal as American spin. The draft would reportedly stop the fighting first and leave the hardest issues for later: Iran’s nuclear work, its missile program, its proxy network, and its stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of near-weapons-grade uranium. Still, markets like the sound of even a partial deal, with oil prices falling on hopes that shipping through Hormuz could stabilize.

• France Sends the Big Boat—France is moving the Charles de Gaulle carrier group into the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden as Paris and London prepare a possible multinational mission to secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

• Red Square Needs Airplane Mode—Moscow will reportedly restrict mobile internet and SMS access on 9 May as part of the security clampdown around Putin’s Victory Day parade, turning the Kremlin’s grand but declining ritual of strength into something that now requires digital silence over the capital.
  
  Ukrainian long-range drones have made even Moscow’s propaganda calendar feel vulnerable, with operators already warning residents about disruptions and authorities reportedly tightening measures inside the Moscow Ring Road. This year’s parade is already being scaled back, with no military equipment for the first time in nearly two decades, while Russia continues demanding respect for its own symbolic ceasefire after rejecting Ukraine’s earlier pause and launching major drone attacks.

• Moscow Threatens Embassies for Parade Safety—Russia is now warning foreign embassies to flee Kyiv if Ukraine “disrupts” Moscow’s 9 May Victory Day celebrations. The Russian Defense Ministry pledges retaliation against central Kyiv if Ukraine breaks Putin’s unilateral parade ceasefire. Kyiv, of course, has already survived and endured many brutal Russian bombings.
  
  Moscow wants the world to treat its Red Square ceremony as sacred, while implying that diplomats in Ukraine’s capital could become collateral if Ukrainian drones embarrass Putin’s war mythology. Kyiv’s response is the only serious one: a ceasefire designed mainly to protect Putin’s parade is not peace. It is blackmail with bunting.

• Epstein’s Note Enters the Record—A U.S. federal judge has unsealed an alleged suicide note linked to Jeffrey Epstein, adding a new piece of evidence to a case that has never stopped feeding public suspicion. Epstein’s former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he found the note after Epstein’s failed suicide attempt in July 2019, weeks before Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell.
  
  The note is unsigned, and its authenticity has not been independently verified, but it reportedly refers to investigators finding “nothing” and describes choosing one’s own time to say goodbye. Tartaglione’s lawyers reportedly kept it as potential protection after Epstein had accused him of an attack, and it remained sealed during Tartaglione’s appeal until now.

• Farage Smells Blood, Labour Smells Panic—Britain is voting in local and regional elections that could turn into an ugly midterm verdict on Sir Keir Starmer less than two years after Labour’s landslide win. Almost 5,000 council seats in England are up, alongside elections in Scotland and Wales, with polls pointing to a bruising night for Labour, gains for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, pressure from the Greens in urban Labour territory, and possible nationalist advances outside England.

• Europe Wants Ukraine’s Drone Factory Brain—Ukraine and the European Commission are launching an EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance meant to connect manufacturers, end-users, testing grounds, and government buyers into something more useful than another defense conference with better coffee.
  
  The alliance will focus on drones and counter-drone systems, identify supply-chain vulnerabilities, push joint ventures, speed up production, and work toward interoperability standards and mutual recognition of certification procedures by 2027. Companies from Ukraine, the EU, and the European Economic Area can apply to join the founding council until May 25, provided they are not sanctioned or controlled by third-country actors.

• Abu Dhabi Goes Drone Shopping—The UAE is now considering a new defense-investment vehicle that could put money into Ukrainian and European defense companies, with Ukrainian drone manufacturers reportedly among the targets. UAE-linked EDGE has also pursued a stake in Fire Point, while the Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have signed long-term “Drone Deals” with Ukraine covering weapons exports and production lines.

• Lynx Pro Gets Frontline Wi-Fi—Ukraine’s Roboneers has upgraded its Lynx Pro unmanned ground vehicle, and the changes are exactly the kind that matter once a robot leaves the expo floor and enters a jammed battlefield.
  
  The updated UGV now has a digital communications system with MESH support, Starlink Mini as part of the standard kit, LTE operation, and a short-range infantry control unit, a practical mix for keeping the machine usable when one link fails.
  
  It also gets a rear-view camera, improved mobility, a 40-kilometer range that can be expanded to 80 kilometers with four batteries, and retains a 300-kilogram payload for hauling supplies, mounting EW systems, combat modules, or other equipment.
  
  At UAH 1.4 million (roughly $32,000) and available through Brave1 Market, Lynx Pro shows where Ukrainian ground robotics is heading: not toward glossy “future war” videos, but toward rugged, modular machines that carry weight, survive bad communications, and give soldiers one more way to keep humans out of the most dangerous jobs.

• GEREON Gets a Bigger Ukraine Job—German firm ARX Robotics will deliver several hundred additional GEREON unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine, expanding its deployed fleet fivefold and giving Ukrainian units more robotic muscle for the ugly, essential work of war: hauling cargo, evacuating casualties, resupplying frontline positions, and supporting troops where a human driver would be a gift to Russian drones.
  
  GEREON is a medium-class modular UGV, meaning it can be adapted for different missions rather than locked into one narrow role, and ARX is also expanding training and unit-level technical support so the machines are not just delivered, photographed and abandoned. The contract value has not been disclosed, but reported prices from $35,000 to $175,000 per unit suggest a serious procurement, not a token donation.

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UFN’s founding editor shares insights on American media manipulation, punching back against propaganda, a strange Shire-like day across from Russian lines, and the discipline of pausing—even when you're five hours late.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

This week, as we approach 100,000 followers on Instagram, we are launching a campaign to enlist more paid subscribers so we can grow the work of our Under Fire News team.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

I’m JP Lindsley, founding editor-in-chief of Under Fire News. My mission is to break the information barriers between Ukraine, Europe, and the USA. I’m the only American who has reported daily from Ukraine since 2022, from Bakhmut to Odesa, Kyiv to Kharkiv, etc. Every time I'm about to leave Ukraine for a bit, I find a great reason to stay. And so I'm here, since the pandemic—a story for another time.

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For the first three years of the full-scale war, I reported every single weekday, no days off, live for 10 minutes a day on Chicago’s WGN Radio. Based then in the cellar of an ancient monastery, my team and I were traveling the country, buying and delivering drones and trucks, while giving Americans a daily radio window into Ukraine. On the radio, we proved that Americans were not bored of Ukraine but rather of the way journalists talked about Ukraine.

After the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office disaster in February 2025, I realized we needed an urgent new approach on the information front. First step: bring Ben Shapiro to Ukraine to interview Zelensky in a way that could appeal to MAGA. Second step: Rebrand Ukrainian Freedom News to Under Fire News.

And that’s exactly why today’s email is five hours late. As I was writing these words, I remembered these lessons of the war. And so I closed my laptop and took care of those things first—

Today, our UFN team—Ukrainians and Europeans—has built an information hub, boosting and sharing the stories of mil-tech innovation, Ukrainian virtue, and geopolitics to help those in the frenzied West make sense of reality. One of my mentors, Roger Ailes, the Fox News founder, like Trump, knew how to read the American mood. I escaped that world—as you can see in the Hollywood version of my story—but I held onto the lessons. Those lessons help me today push back against artful Russian propaganda.

If you want to reach people, you first have to understand them. So in our work—both our public journalism and our private consulting—we help people in Ukraine, Europe, and the USA better understand each other so they can work together. Then, together, we can, as our motto says, innovate to be free.

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

Two moments stand out:

A) A terrifying but clarifying moment: Summer 2025, a shelter under my building in Kyiv. Absolute madness: the sound of hypersonic missiles whistling above, the buzzing of drones every which way and then that terrifying squeal as they careen downward, the smell of smoke through the air vent, the look on people's faces.

I've been in so many of these situations, and more dangerous and desperate ones—including in my favorite city Kharkiv—but I can vividly see all the faces from that particular night—especially the change in expressions as the Shahed drones now and then would careen toward us and everyone would sort of duck. What's that gonna do? That sense of helplessness.

Wanting to seize the chance from that bunker I texted and left voicemails for old friends in the White House, anyone influential I could—and with the confidence born from being under fire, I said what needed to be said in clearer ways than ever.

B) A sweeter moment: Summer 2022. HIMARS had arrived and the Russian advance was stalling. Bakhmut, though battered, was holding. With a brave crew of Ukrainian and American volunteers—musicians, chefs, veterans—we traveled to Nikopol, on the banks of the Dnipro reservoir just across from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, then under Russian occupation.

We could see, across the wide water, land held by Russians—and surely they could see us. At the city’s little boat club, we held a Saturday festival for the locals, adults and children, civilians and soldiers—though all Ukrainians are soldiers in a way: pizza, crawfish, fresh produce from the markets, traditional Appalachian and Ukrainian folk dancing.

In a small section of the harbor, protected from river mines, kids practiced sailing in dinghies. The smoke and fires of Mordor were literally visible just across the water—and yet we had this Shire-like day of fellowship and joy. It was to be one of the last such days in Nikopol, whose name means city of victory. A few weeks later, the Russians began striking the city day and night with artillery, and soon thereafter with drones—a campaign that has now lasted for years. That boat club is destroyed. I returned a year later to a near-ruined city. Many lives lost. We were there to bring a bit of hope to what really was a wake for the city. It’s a haunting reminder of what we continue to work and fight to save—and what kind of foe we face.

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3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

When I get discouraged—which happens often enough in war, strangely most of all during the more peaceful interludes—I think of three things.

(1) It could always be worse. I think of those in the ever-expanding red zone at the front line. They can’t tell an incoming drone, “I’m tired, come back later.” With that thought, I find motivation.

(2) Everything before this was preparation. Conversations, inspirations, trials, failures, education, books, narrow escapes—all of it was preparation for this moment. So, recalling those investments of experience and wisdom, I activate and get moving, but with an ever-increasing sense of wonder and focus, even amid the most difficult trials. Through this, I begin to see the shape of a mission.

(3) The need to pause: To reply to a war-wounded friend who needs to talk. To help someone with their project even when it doesn’t fit what I perceive to be my mission. To stop into a church. To breathe the mountain air. To cancel meetings so I can go for a run—without feeling bad about it.

**And No. 3 is exactly why today’s email is five hours late. As I was writing these words, I remembered a few friends who had wanted to meet today, and I also decided I didn’t want to sacrifice my health by not running. And so I closed my laptop and took care of those things first—and also attended a mil-tech conference. Daily life in Kyiv.

4 | How can people support your work?

Under Fire News is a full-time team of three Ukrainians, an Austrian, and me, plus contributors from across Europe and a cohort of volunteer advisors. To sustain the work and expand our reach, we need a secure base of support from you, our audience. We're about to cross 100,000 followers on Instagram, enabling us to bring more people to the cause of Ukrainian victory—and the next chapter depends on readers like you.

Here’s how you can support us:

1. Subscribe here on Substack for $10/month. This is the best option because in return you’ll receive our daily journalism and more.

2. Paypal: one-time or monthly donations

3. Tip on Buy Me a Coffee—support our team with a few coffees a month

4. Tax deductible via our friends at the Ukrainian Freedom Fund.

5 | Where can people follow you?

Instagram: We’re about to hit 100,000 followers. Join in.

X: This is where we engage with the battle of ideas, where we confront Russian propagandists directly, and where we seek to persuade Americans and Europeans to join the side of Ukrainian victory.

LinkedIn: Here we engage with our growing community of mil-tech investors, engineers, and problem solvers.

YouTube [This has been dormant for weeks but we will bring it back, step by step].

Facebook.

Our website, where you can access all of our channels easily.

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• War Powers, Meet Party Discipline—Trump is hitting the May 1 War Powers deadline with no real sign that the U.S.–Iran war is ending, and Washington is already preparing the usual constitutional gymnastics. Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a president is supposed to end military action after 60 days without congressional authorization, seek approval, or justify a short extension for urgent military necessity.
  
  Opting for the latter, the White House might argue that the 7 April “ceasefire” stopped the clock, a convenient theory, since fresh strikes are still being discussed and Iran is threatening “long and painful” retaliation against U.S. positions if attacks resume. Democrats want Congress to reclaim its war-making authority, most Republicans are still shielding Trump, and public support is souring as fuel prices and inflation bite.

• China’s “Stability” Comes With a Threat—China’s foreign minister Wang Yi used a call with Marco Rubio to remind Washington that Taiwan remains the “biggest point of risk” in U.S.–China relations, which is basically diplomatic language for: enjoy the trade talks, but don’t forget the war file sitting on the table.
  
  Trump is expected in Beijing in mid-May, the two sides are trying to preserve a fragile trade truce, and Beijing is now setting the outer limits of what it will tolerate before the summit. Wang called for stability and cooperation, but wrapped it around the usual demand that America make the “right choices” on Taiwan. Taiwan, meanwhile, sees the message for what it is: pressure dressed up as diplomacy, backed by China’s growing military activity and international squeeze campaign against Taipei.

• Assad Is Gone. Russia’s Tankers Stayed—Syria’s new government may be trying to look westward, but its fuel supply still runs through Moscow. Russian oil shipments to Syria have jumped sharply this year to roughly 60,000 barrels per day, making Russia the country’s dominant crude supplier after Iran’s role collapsed with Assad’s fall.
  
  Syria’s own production remains wrecked by war, its economy is barely plugged back into the global financial system, and conventional suppliers are still wary of the commercial and sanctions risk. So Damascus is buying discounted Russian crude moved through sanctioned or high-risk tanker networks, sometimes via ship-to-ship transfers that look designed to blur the trail.

• Tuapse Burns, Again—Ukraine has hit oil infrastructure near Tuapse for the fourth time in roughly two weeks, turning Russia’s Black Sea energy hub from a rear-area asset into a recurring target set. The earlier strikes had already forced the Tuapse refinery offline, sparked major fires, damaged storage capacity and created a toxic local mess of smoke, oil residue and emergency clean-up operations; the latest attack underlines that Kyiv is not just lashing out, but returning to the same node until it becomes unreliable.
  
  Tuapse matters because it links refining, storage and export logistics on the Black Sea—exactly the sort of infrastructure that converts Russian crude into money, fuel and military endurance. Moscow can call this “civilian infrastructure” all it likes, but a state funding a war through oil revenues should not be shocked when its oil machine starts receiving visitors with wings.

• 8,000 Octopuses—Ukraine is preparing to field 8,000 Octopus-100 interceptor drones, a major step toward turning cheap drone-on-drone air defence into an industrial system rather than a boutique battlefield trick. The Octopus is designed specifically to hunt Shahed-type loitering munitions, using automatic guidance to raise the kill rate against the nightly drone swarms Russia keeps throwing at Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
  
  The production base is also widening fast: 29 Ukrainian companies have received licenses, four domestic manufacturers have already signed state contracts, and Britain is tied into the programme as part of the first major Ukraine-UK combat-drone production track. The British side is expected to produce around 2,000 interceptors per month, while Ukrainian manufacturers are working around component bottlenecks to scale faster.
  

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INDIA HICKS—designer, writer, model, mother of five, bridesmaid to Princess Diana, daughter of Lady Pamela Hicks, granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten—spends weeks at a time in Ukraine’s hot zones.

Here she describes a single moment in which the whole war seemed to gather.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for free people.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

I’m India, a designer and storyteller by trade, but more recently someone trying to be useful in places that feel very far from design. I sit on the board of the disaster relief agency Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), and travel on recovery missions with them, not to report in the traditional sense, but to witness, to help where I could, and to carry those stories back out again.

“My mission, if I can call it that, is to connect worlds that don’t often meet, comfort and conflict.”

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My mission, if I can call it that, is to connect worlds that don’t often meet, comfort and conflict, and to make sure one doesn’t forget the other. We have been active in Ukraine since Day 3 of the invasion. I travel to Ukraine twice a year for several weeks at a time deep into red-zone communities with our GEM teams, delivering Family Necessity Kits. Around 90,000 of these are delivered a week by our teams along the active front lines. It’s an impressive program.

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

It wasn’t a dramatic moment, which is perhaps why it lingers. We were unloading aid from the back of a van, boxes of food, blankets, the quiet essentials, and there was a woman standing slightly apart. She wasn’t asking for anything, just waiting. When someone finally handed her a parcel, she held it for a moment before opening it, almost as though she didn’t quite trust that it was hers.

We ended up talking, haltingly through translation, and she told me she had left her home with nothing but a small bag. What struck me wasn’t what she’d lost, but the way she spoke about it. Not with anger, not even with grief, but with a kind of practical acceptance, as though survival had stripped everything back to the essential, keep moving, keep going.

It was so ordinary, and yet it felt like the entire war distilled into one quiet exchange.

“What struck me wasn’t what she’d lost, but the way she spoke about it.”

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3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

Perspective, more than anything. When you’re standing in a place where people have lost homes, routines, sometimes entire futures, your own sense of pressure recalibrates very quickly.

“Do the next useful thing.”

I found that focusing on small, immediate tasks, carry the box, speak to the person in front of you, do the next useful thing, kept everything manageable. There’s a clarity that comes when you stop thinking too far ahead. It’s not bravery, really. It’s just staying present and doing what’s required of you in that moment even as missiles are falling all around.

4 | How can people support your work?

Support organisations like Global Empowerment Mission, who are already on the ground and know exactly what’s needed. It’s not always about grand gestures, consistent, practical support makes the greatest difference. There is the opportunity to help even in the smallest way through this link:
Global Empowerment Mission Fund.

And beyond that, don’t look away. Stay informed, stay engaged. These situations don’t resolve quickly, and attention has a way of drifting. The people living through it don’t have that luxury.

5 | Where can people follow you?

I share what I can, when it feels appropriate, through my Instagram and writing [including on Substack at ]. It’s never about documenting everything, but about offering small, honest glimpses, enough to keep the connection alive between there and here.

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• Another Massive Combined Attack—Russia launched one of its regular large air assaults between Friday and Saturday, firing more than 600 drones and dozens of missiles across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring more than 30.
  
  Dnipro bore the brunt of the air raid: Residential buildings were struck and people remain trapped under rubble, while additional casualties were reported in the Chernihiv region. Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted the vast majority of the hundreds of drones and dozens of cruise missiles—but without a solid supply of Patriots from the US, the interception rate against the 12 ballistic missiles sent by Russia was, reportedly, zero.

• Ukraine’s $500 Answer to Western Overpricing—Ukrainian startup Deftak is moving toward mass production of smart drone munitions that can be dropped from safer altitudes and guide themselves onto targets using machine vision, crucial in a battlefield where GPS dies quickly under Russian electronic warfare.
  
  The concept is simple but strategically devastating: attach a low-cost guided munition to common multirotor or fixed-wing drones, allowing even reconnaissance drones to become strikers. Deftak says its munition is priced roughly like an FPV drone, around $400–600, while the company is also working on laser-guided versions and new warhead designs.

• Ukraine’s Strike Game Evolves—Destinus, a Swiss-based company with locations in several European countries (including Ukraine), has successfully tested the upgraded Ruta Block 2 cruise missile, a system designed not just for range, but for flexibility and scale. With a payload of around 250 kg and a range exceeding 700 km, the missile moves beyond the earlier “missile-drone” concept into a more conventional deep-strike weapon. What matters is the architecture: Folding wings, an in-line booster, and containerized launch mean it can be stored, transported, and fired from mobile ground units, ships, or fixed positions with minimal setup.

• Diplomacy by Detour: Washington Continues Talking to Tehran via Pakistan—The White House is dispatching Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Islamabad in a fresh attempt to revive talks with Iran, but with one major caveat: there may be no actual talks. Tehran is signaling it will refuse direct negotiations, instead using Pakistan as a middleman to pass messages back and forth. The setup says everything about the state of diplomacy: Washington is eager to show momentum after extending a fragile ceasefire, while Iran is playing for leverage, engaging just enough to avoid escalation, but not enough to concede anything meaningful.

• Zelensky Goes to the Gulf Again—Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest trip to Saudi Arabia, his second in weeks, is confirmation of a pattern that has been developing recently: Ukraine is no longer just asking for help, it is offering it. In talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Kyiv pushed deeper cooperation on defense, energy, and infrastructure, building on a recent agreement focused on drone warfare and air defense, areas where Ukraine now has hard-earned battlefield expertise.

• Three-Week Truce, Zero Illusions—Iran-backed Hezbollah has openly dismissed the newly extended Israel–Lebanon ceasefire as “meaningless”—pointing to ongoing Israeli strikes, demolitions, and the killing of its operatives in what Lebanon calls assassinations. The group was never a signatory and reserves the right to retaliate. Israel, for its part, says Hezbollah is sabotaging the truce, citing rockets at Shtula, drones at IDF troops, and two Israeli soldiers killed since April 16. Both sides keep firing. Trump calls it a pause.

• Macron Says “Wake Up,” Europe Hits Snooze—French President Emmanuel Macron is again warning Europe that it can no longer drift between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow as if old assumptions still hold. Speaking in Athens, he argued that the US, China, and Russia are all pursuing hard national interests that increasingly collide with Europe’s—and that the continent must finally build real unity, leverage, and independence.

  
  Macron’s problem is also Europe’s problem: grand speeches about strategic autonomy keep running into weak defense industries, fragmented national interests, and governments that want sovereignty without paying the bill. The takeaway is simple: Europe does not need more poetry about power. It needs power.

• Tehran’s Lifeline Runs Through Moscow and Beijing—Iran may be taking heavy punishment, but Russia and China are helping ensure it does not stay down. Tehran is reportedly receiving the two things modern war demands most: intelligence and industrial depth. Moscow is sharing lessons from Ukraine—drone flocks, targeting methods, satellite imagery, damage assessment—while Russia’s own upgraded production of the Iranian-designed Shahed drones might now feed improvements back to Iran.
  
  China, meanwhile, is playing the cheaper and more cynical game: dual-use components, rocket-fuel ingredients, satellite data, and the chance to study US systems in a live-fire environment without paying the direct price. Ukraine, Iran, the Gulf, Taiwan, and the global drone war are becoming one connected battlefield—and America’s enemies are learning faster than many Western governments are adapting.

• The King Heads to Washington, to Save the Relationship?—King Charles III is heading to the United States for a high-stakes state visit aimed at stabilizing, and maybe even saving, the “special relationship” between the USA and the UK. Officially, the trip is about celebrating shared virtues and America’s 250th anniversary.
  
  London and Washington are at odds over the US-Israel war versus Iran, defense commitments, and trade disputes. PM Sir Keir Starmer is deploying the king to smooth things over; Trump, whose mother was Scottish, holds Charles in high regard. The playbook is familiar: rise above politics, emphasize common ground, remind both sides of deeper ties. When elected leaders clash, can the monarchy, from which the USA separated itself 250 years ago, come to the rescue?

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That clarity is the engine behind Kara Dag, the antidrone company he co-founded to protect people from the Kremlin’s killing machines.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

I’m “John Frankiv,” a Ukrainian. I want to make sure that no one can attack my country and commit atrocities* to our people. Getting to that point requires some work—for example, it takes becoming Europe’s most technologically powerful nation. But all projects have to start somewhere, so we started Kara Dag, an antidrone company, to prevent people dying from drones here and now.

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*Since the 18th century, due to our inability to fight Russia:

—more than 150,000 intellectuals were shot

—more than 4 million died because of the artificial famine

—more than 3 million killed in mobilizations by imperial Russia and the USSR

—about 2 million were forcefully deported

—since 2022, over 1 million Ukrainians passed through Russian concentration camps

—the numbers keep adding up

We started Kara Dag, an antidrone company, to prevent people dying from drones here and now.

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

My team and I went to Kherson to test our new drone detector. It was right on Christmas Eve. We lived in a house with local soldiers, all Kherson citizens. In their past lives—bakers, doctors, delivery guys, scientists. They put on a big table—drinks, salads, and, of course, kutya [a sweet, ceremonial grain porridge] for the Christmas supper. Brought wives and friends.

And we kept singing. During the night, I heard artillery hits.

On the other side of the table we lined up ten or twelve drone detectors, as if the sheer quantity of them would protect us. I had almost forgotten that Russians were just one and a half miles away from us. We started singing kolyadky, the Christmas songs that remind us of childhood and peace. Our detectors would pick up a video signal, every 10 or 20 minutes. And after a routine check, Anna [name changed!], a soldier’s wife, or someone else, would say—“all okay, it’s far from us.”

And we kept singing. During the night, I heard artillery hits. I thought it was us hitting Russians. Wrong. In the morning, Anna casually told me it was “far” from us: “Russian strike, 700m away” [just under half a mile]. The Telegram channel reported four casualties, all women.*

So the holiday was over, and a normal day began.

* I never separate civilian from military casualties, as 1) it devalues the lives of soldiers; 2) creates the wrong impression that soldiers are expected to die; and 3) creates the wrong impression that the military is separate from civilians, while the military is really just civilians who took up arms to defend against massacre.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

I imagine myself as a judge who has to make a decision upon whatever case he’s presented with. Life presents us with cases, we make verdicts. This way, there are no “difficult situations” or “pressure.” What’s most important is making decisions and taking action, one decision at a time. Freezing equals death.

4 | How can people support your work?

People can come to Ukraine and volunteer to fight, that’s the most important part.

5 | Where can people follow you?

I do not have any pages that can be “followed,” but my co-founders and the company have:

Kara Dag company co-founder Andrew P.
Kara Dag company LinkedIn
Kara Dag company Instagram

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Ukrainian soldiers used a drone to fly a cat and a dog from 12 kilometers to safety.

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• Belgian General Warns: Ukraine Is Still Buying Europe Time With Blood
  
  Belgium’s top military officer, General Frederik Vansina, delivered a message many European politicians still seem reluctant to say plainly: Russia remains the primary threat.
  
  Ukraine’s resistance to Russia must not be overshadowed by the Middle East, General Vansina added, and by 2030 Europe must be strong enough to tell Vladimir Putin that even without the Americans he still cannot win a war against Europe.
  
  Vansina warned that Moscow’s war economy, battle-hardened forces, and openly revisionist rhetoric leave no room for complacency, while also admitting that Europe’s defense industry is ramping up far too slowly and that even 2 percent spending will not be enough. Just as striking was his institutional verdict: any real European strategic autonomy must happen inside NATO. Brussels’ fantasies about a separate EU army must be suspended, he said.

• Ukrainian Drones Fly Cats and Dogs to Safety
  
  In a war increasingly defined by machines, Ukraine just offered a reminder that technology reflects the character of the people using it. Soldiers from the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade reportedly used a drone returning from a food delivery mission to evacuate first a cat and then a dog from frontline positions, flying them roughly 12 kilometers to safety. The cat had been cared for by a wounded soldier who was later hospitalized, and his comrades decided not to leave the animal behind; the dog was rescued as well. Both animals are said to be safe.

• Europe Wants Security? Then Build It With Ukraine
  
  Germany and Ukraine signed six new defense partnerships on 14 April under the “Build with Ukraine” model, pairing Ukrainian battlefield know-how with German industrial capacity. Among the deals: 🇩🇪 Helsing and 🇺🇦 Culver Aerospace plan a joint production site in Germany for drone systems, with Berlin expected to finance deep-strike drone production; 🇺🇦 Fire Point entered cooperation with 🇩🇪 Diehl on air-defence technology; 🇺🇦 Thyra and 🇩🇪 TAF Industries signed on interceptor drones; and 🇺🇦 Ukraviasystem reached an agreement with 🇩🇪 POINToX on missile and aviation systems. After years of Europe talking grandly about defence sovereignty, it is Ukraine, under fire and under pressure, that is now teaching Germany how serious military production actually works.

• Germany Imports Urgency From Ukraine
  
  Germany’s Quantum Systems, which already works with Ukraine’s Frontline Robotics, is launching more German-Ukrainian joint ventures under the “Build with Ukraine” model.
  
  One venture with WIY Drones will focus on scaling interceptor drones for air defence after Ukraine’s security forces tasked Quantum Systems with delivering 15,000 Strila interceptors.
  
  The other venture, with Tencore, will expand production of unmanned ground vehicles, bringing combat-tested Ukrainian robotics deeper into Europe’s industrial base. Tencore says it already has more than 3,000 platforms deployed and a monthly production capacity above 300 units, used by over 50 brigades.
  
  When survival is on the line, innovation does not come from glossy strategy papers but from Ukrainians building what works, while richer capitals slowly rediscover that factories, scale, and battlefield realism still matter.

• While Others Preach Values, Ukraine Bleeds for Them
  
  Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people received the International Four Freedoms Award, a legacy of FDR, in Middelburg, Netherlands, on 16 April, with the Roosevelt Foundation explicitly honoring Ukraine’s courage, perseverance, and resilience in resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion.
  
  Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten noted that Zelensky agreed to accept it only on behalf of all Ukrainians, which gives the ceremony its real weight: This was less a tribute to one man than a recognition that, in today’s Europe, the clearest defenders of freedom of speech, worship, and freedom from fear are not the states issuing polished declarations, but the nation still burying its dead while holding the line. In an age of exhausted rhetoric and fashionable moral confusion, the award carried an uncomfortable message for the rest of the continent: Ukraine is not merely asking Europe to defend its values, it is already doing so for them.

• Ukraine’s Next Strike Package Is Heavier, Faster, and Already for Sale
  
  The Ukrainian-Slovak venture Wings&Quadro has put a new heavy medium-strike UAV on the Brave1 defense marketplace, and the numbers show how quickly Ukraine’s drone industry is maturing. The Swan-X 20 is presented as a long-range strike platform for contested environments, with a claimed tactical radius of 250 kilometers, potential extension to 300, a top speed of 160 km/h, endurance of up to 95 minutes, and a 20-kilogram payload.
  
  The company also says a gasoline-engine variant can carry as much as 50 kilograms over more than 300 kilometers, though the system is still being prepared for codification.

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The West is fixated on drones. But Canadian Armed Forces veteran KEVIN LEACH—who's been in Kyiv since 2018—is focused on the infantry: the soldiers who hold the ground, dig in, and dig the Russians out.

He brings ex-NATO instructors to Ukraine to teach the fundamentals that get Ukrainians home alive.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

Kevin Leach, founding director of Sabre Training Advisory Group. From Toronto, Canada. We bring ex-NATO instructors to Ukraine to teach fundamental soldier skills to Ukrainian troops, to help get them home alive.

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The infantry IS the army, and everyone else enables them to do their work.

Working with the infantry, we concentrate on one of the least sexy parts of the military (as compared to drones, the current obsession). We do this because, otherwise, [the infantry] are totally neglected by outside assistance, and stuck with ineffectual soviet doctrine.

Drones are a critical capability, to be sure, but it is the infantry who dig into places to hold them, and dig out the russians from the territory they hold. The infantry IS the army, and everyone else enables them to do their work.

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

When things really clicked for me, [was when I realized] that Sabre had and could continue to make a difference.

Early 2024, when some of our first students began to arrive back from their first rotation to Serebryansky Forest. Finding out how many more of them made it through, compared to their neighbouring companies who didn’t work with us, convinced me that we had to keep going.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

“Remember that the only way out is through.”

Keeping in mind the purpose behind our work, what effect we want to have, and how to get it done.

Slice away anything that doesn’t advance your goals, and remember that the only way out is through.

4 | How can people support your work?

Donate via our website.

5 | Where can people follow you?

www.sabretag.org | X account | Instagram

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• Blowing Up the Oil Dreams of Russia’s War Machine
  Ukraine is executing a campaign that strikes at the financial heart of Russia’s war machine: For three consecutive nights, Ukrainian drones reportedly hit key oil facilities along Russia’s Baltic coast: Primorsk, Ust-Luga, and nearby infrastructure.
  
  With global oil prices surging above $100 amid the Iran war, Moscow was poised to benefit. Those same high prices now magnify the impact of each strike. Russia’s Baltic ports alone had been generating up to $150 million per day in crude exports. Now, repeated Ukrainian attacks, combined with pipeline disruptions and tanker seizures, have reportedly slashed Russia’s export capacity by as much as 40%, or roughly 2 million barrels per day, marking one of the most significant blows to its energy sector in decades.
  
  If Russia profits from global instability, Ukraine is now working to physically erase those profits at the source.

• Hungary’s Pity Ploy Hits a Wall in Washington

  A rare bipartisan push in the U.S. Senate is targeting Hungary for what lawmakers see as actively undermining Ukraine: a new “Block Putin Act” would impose sanctions and visa bans on senior Hungarian officials accused of blocking aid to Kyiv and maintaining deep energy ties with Russia.
  
  The move comes as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, up for election 12 April, continues to stall a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine, while doubling down on Moscow oil imports and openly pressuring Kyiv over pipeline flows from Russia.
  
  For Washington, the issue is no longer just policy divergence but alliance discipline: senators argue that Hungary’s actions effectively help finance Russia’s war machine, even as the West tries to cut those same revenue streams. The Senate bill would leave it to the Trump administration to decide who gets sanctioned, setting up a potentially explosive moment where the U.S. may punish a NATO and EU member, raising an uncomfortable question at the heart of the alliance: How far can internal dissent go before it becomes strategic obstruction?

• Spy Games in Budapest — Or Just Another Election Strategy?

  A new Politico investigation paints a picture of a Hungarian state increasingly blurring the line between national security and political survival, with intelligence services allegedly deployed not just against foreign threats but domestic critics and inconvenient narratives.

  
  The report lands in the home stretch of a heated election campaign, where espionage accusations, surveillance claims, and counter-claims are flying in all directions: Journalists investigating government ties to Russia now face accusations of spying, while EU officials grow uneasy over potential leaks of sensitive information to Moscow.
  
  Intelligence tools once justified under “security” are increasingly seen as instruments of control. In effect, Hungary’s intelligence apparatus is no longer just part of the state; it has become part of the political battlefield, where information is weaponized, loyalty is questioned, and the definition of “espionage” depends heavily on party, not nation.

• Drone Interceptor Allows Operators to Work Hundreds of Miles Away From the Front

  Ukraine’s interceptor drone war is taking another leap forward: the updated F7 LITAVR system now comes with built-in automatic “last-mile” targeting and newly battle-tested remote control, allowing operators to intercept Russian drones from hundreds of kilometers away, a shift that could fundamentally reshape air defense.
  
  The upgrades, already retrofitted to existing units, were proven in combat this week when Ukrainian forces remotely shot down Shahed drones during a mass attack, achieving a perfect interception rate in early reported uses.
  
  What once required skilled pilots near the front can now be executed from safer, centralized locations with minimal additional training, effectively decoupling operators from launch sites. With speeds up to 350 km/h, dual cameras, and a growing track record against Shaheds, the LITAVR is evolving from a tactical tool into a scalable system, one that hints at a new doctrine: distributed launch, centralized control, and a battlefield where geography matters less than bandwidth.

• Zelensky in Riyadh: Oil Money Meets the Drone Innovators

  During a visit to Riyadh, President Zelensky signed a defense cooperation pact with Saudi Arabia that positions Kyiv as a provider of hard-earned expertise in countering Iranian-style drone attacks, the very threat now hitting Gulf infrastructure.
  
  After years of fending off Russian and Iranian-made Shahed drones, Ukraine has developed cheap interceptor drones and tactical know-how that even well-funded Gulf militaries, still reliant on expensive systems like PAC-3 missiles, lack when facing mass, low-cost attacks. Kyiv has already deployed hundreds of specialists across the Middle East and is openly pitching a trade: Ukrainian drone defense experience in exchange for funding and advanced air defense systems.
  
  The deeper shift is strategic: Ukraine is reframing itself from frontline victim to global security exporter, turning its battlefield into a marketplace where survival skills become geopolitical leverage.

• Zelensky’s Qatar Stop Is About More Than Diplomacy

  Volodymyr Zelensky also visited Qatar 28 March. Arriving in Doha for talks with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Zelensky is expected to build on Qatar’s existing role as a mediator—particularly in negotiating the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia—while pushing for deeper cooperation on security, energy, and economic ties. But the timing gives the visit a sharper edge: as Iranian drone attacks destabilize the Gulf, Ukraine is offering exactly the expertise Qatar lacks—how to survive sustained, large-scale drone warfare.

• US Air Superiority Meets Its Weakest Link?

  Iran may have struck one of the U.S. military’s critical assets: the KC-135 refueling tanker, according to Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi, which reports a likely missile hit on an American aircraft at a Saudi airbase. Earlier in March, six US service members died in another KC-135 incident, that one involving neither hostile nor friendly fire.

• The Battlefield Moved On — The Defense Industry Didn’t

  Russia’s war on Ukraine has exposed a brutal mismatch at the heart of Western defense thinking: cheap drones are tearing apart million-dollar tanks, yet the world keeps ordering more of the latter. Reporting at The Atlantic, Simon Shuster describes how Ukrainian forces have turned low-cost, mass-produced drones into a dominant weapon on the battlefield, creating “kill zones” where anything that moves—especially armored vehicles—becomes easy prey.
  
  And yet, inside Europe’s largest defense firms like Rheinmetall, the response borders on denial, with executives dismissing Ukraine’s drone innovation as improvised and unsustainable. The contradiction is structural: NATO budgets are built to absorb massive contracts for “exquisite” systems like tanks and artillery, not thousands of disposable drones that actually shape the fight.
  

• Volkswagen to Move From Cars to Air Defense?
  Volkswagen is in advanced talks with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to convert its struggling Osnabrück plant from car production to manufacturing components for the Iron Dome air defense system, marking a significant shift as parts of Germany’s automotive industry pivot toward the booming defense sector.
  
  The proposed joint venture, backed by the German government, aims to preserve around 2,300 jobs by producing launchers, support vehicles, and power systems (though not missiles themselves), with production potentially starting within 12–18 months. The move reflects broader structural pressures: declining auto profits, rising Chinese competition, and Europe’s accelerating rearmament push following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is driving demand for air defense systems and opening new industrial pathways for legacy manufacturers like Volkswagen.

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He is also the founder of Volya Hub, a cognitive defense agency reprogramming how foreign audiences understand this war.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

I’m Maksym Eristavi, an award-winning writer, cognitive strategist, and russian colonialism storyteller-in-chief.

I grew up in the Zaporizhzhia region, the birthplace of the Ukrainian anti-colonial resistance and part of Ukraine that russian imperialism devastated the most. Raised russian-speaking in a Ukrainian-speaking family, knowing more about russian culture and history than the history of my own village or my family—that’s just a small peek into my own struggle with colonial identity erasure.

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Two decades in journalism and civil society leadership safeguarding democracy across Ukraine and beyond. Then in 2014 russia invaded my home country, and in 2022 russians stole my ancestral home. So all of it stopped being “work” and became a personal mission.

Helping defence-tech builders turn their innovations into russian imperial regret

For the last decade, I’ve been mapping russia’s colonial warfare playbook so the world understands we’re not dealing with one bad ruler or one bad regime—we’re dealing with serial imperial violence, five centuries in the making. That research became the award-winning guidebook Russian Colonialism 101—the first systematic attempt to document this in language that doesn’t require an extra degree to follow. It expanded into Volya Hub, an agency building cognitive defences against imperial narratives. After years of fundraising for Ukrainian defenders, recently I also started helping defencetech builders turn their innovations into russian imperial regret, too.

My mission is to get us all to name the russian threat correctly. Because if you can’t even do that, then how can you design any defence against it? I’m reprogramming how foreign audiences understand this war—not as a regional dispute between neighbours, but as a colonial war between the oldest surviving empire and a people who refused to disappear.

My book opens with “Partitioned, disarmed, and decolonised russia is the only peace plan that works.” That’s not radical thinking. I just learned my imperial history well.

I hoped the war would stop at some invisible line. That russia had taken what it came for and would give it a rest.

I was, of course, wrong. They came for more.

They came for my house.

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

2014. The Maidan Revolution had just ended—the second pro-democratic revolution I’d participated in, after the Orange Revolution in 2004. Because apparently, once wasn’t enough for a lifespan of a Ukrainian. russia had taken Crimea. russian tanks were moving into eastern Ukraine.

Not a fun story over a drink. But as the times are, so are the stories we tell.

I had friends and colleagues—Ukrainians who’d fled the occupation—telling me what they’d seen. I listened. I empathised. I’d go to the frontline and watch russian imperialism in action, myself. And then, privately, I hoped the war would stop at some invisible line. That russia had taken what it came for and would give it a rest.

I was, of course, wrong. They came for more. They came for my house.

Because that’s what empires do. Expansion isn’t a choice for them—it’s a structural necessity. The empire expands, or it dies. And it will keep expanding until someone makes it too expensive to continue.

Always listen to the people closest to the fire.

I spent years after 2014 watching the warnings of fellow Ukrainians I’d dismissed come true, one by one. The full-scale invasion didn’t surprise me intellectually. I’d studied the pattern too many times. What surprised me was how long I’d let fear masquerade as objective analysis.

I don’t make that mistake anymore. And I’d rather the rest of you in the Free World didn’t have to make it at all.

Not a fun story over a drink. But as the times are, so are the stories we tell.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

Always listen to the people closest to the fire.

Here’s what I mean in one example. The Ukrainian defence-tech revolution that everyone abroad is suddenly discovering? It didn’t appear out of nowhere in 2022. Years earlier, Ukrainian civil society volunteers were already fundraising for consumer drones, and Ukrainian tech engineers were spending their days off in fields with servicemen, testing DIY solutions held together with ingenuity and, occasionally, actual duct tape. Mainstream foreign journalists weren’t writing about this. It wasn’t in Western think-tank briefings.

But if you’d listened—and learned Ukrainian history—you’d have expected exactly this kind of innovation to emerge. Not just because of the russian invasion. It happened because of 400 years of Ukrainian anti-colonial resistance that the invasion simply made visible.

Ukrainians have been building parallel survival structures outside imperial control for centuries. Every time russia erased the language, underground publishing networks appeared. Every time it strangled the culture, decentralised preservation filled the gap. The pattern in defence is identical: one where the drone pilot’s feedback reaches the engineer directly, where the person closest to the problem has the power to fix it, and where merit replaces hierarchical patronage.

So the principle isn’t just “listen to lived experience” as a moral signalling. It’s that lived experience under sustained imperial pressure that produces a specific kind of knowledge that nothing outside can engineer. Every time I’ve trusted this operational principle, I’ve been ahead of the story.

Learn from the nations that survived russian imperialism—Ukraine above all, as the most effective ongoing example of pushing back against it. You’ll understand exactly why Ukrainian innovation works. And you’ll understand why extracting the ‘magic tech’ without integrating the people and the culture guarantees you’ll get the hardware without the thing that makes it an imperial regret.

4 | How can people support your work?

Read Russian Colonialism 101, as a physical book and as an accompanying newsletter. Share this work. Seriously. Before I became a bestselling and award-winning author, we had to crowdfund to print the book in wartime Ukraine—no Western publisher wanted to touch it and wouldn’t consider it as a serious topic. I have built my audience outside of mainstream platforms. Against the establishment scepticism. Just because when something landed, people would forward it to someone who needed it.

Above all, support the resistance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces—the only effective opposition to the growing global tide of resurgent imperialism. I am here just because they defend my right to live and speak up.

5 | Where can people follow you?

SUBSTACK: Russian Colonialism 101.

LINKEDIN: where I translate my imperial warfare insights into something useful for the modern defence crowd.

For cognitive battlefield orientation: maksymeristavi.com

INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | X

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UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

• A joint U.S.–Israeli strike has hit Iran’s key Natanz nuclear facility, according to Iran’s atomic energy organization. Officials say there was no radioactive leakage and no immediate danger to the immediate surroundings of the facility.

• Iran has sharply escalated tensions in the widening Middle East conflict by launching two intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward the strategic U.S.-U.K. base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. According to U.S. officials, neither missile hit its target: one failed mid-flight, while a U.S. Navy warship attempted to intercept the other, though the outcome remains unclear. The attempted strike is notable less for its immediate damage than for what it signals, as Diego Garcia lies roughly 4,000 km from Iran, suggesting Tehran’s missile capabilities extend far beyond previously stated limits.
  
  Diego Garcia is part the Chagos Islands British territory that Sir Keir Starmer’s government is willing to cede to an ally of China in a deal that would require the UK then to lease the island back from Mauritius in order to keep its joint US-UK base there.

• In a revealing glimpse into ongoing U.S.–Russia backchannel diplomacy, Moscow reportedly proposed a sweeping quid pro quo: It would halt intelligence-sharing with Iran, including data used to target U.S. assets, if Washington stopped providing intelligence support to Ukraine.
  
  The offer, presented by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev to Trump allies Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, was firmly rejected by the U.S., but its very existence has alarmed European officials, who see it as a ploy to sideline Europe and fracture transatlantic unity at a critical moment.
  
  The episode underscores a broader strategic pattern: Russia leveraging its growing military and intelligence ties with Iran as bargaining chips, while simultaneously testing whether Washington might trade support for Ukraine for concessions elsewhere—fears heightened by Trump’s increasingly hostile rhetoric toward NATO allies and signs of strain in Western coordination over both Ukraine and the Middle East.

• A previously underreported series of drone incursions has raised alarm at one of the United States’ most sensitive military installations, with internal documents revealing that between March 9–15, Barksdale Air Force Base, home to nuclear-capable B-52 bombers, was repeatedly penetrated by coordinated waves of 12–15 unauthorized drones.
  
  Far from a one-off, the drones operated for hours each day, maneuvering deliberately across restricted zones such as flight lines, using non-commercial signals, long-range control links, and even showing resistance to jamming, suggesting advanced, possibly state-level capabilities.
  
  Officials believe the patterns indicate intentional probing of U.S. defenses, with drone lights potentially used to test response times, while the inability to identify operators underscores a growing vulnerability: even the most strategic American bases are increasingly exposed to sophisticated, hard-to-detect unmanned threats.

• Ukraine’s formidable defense tech ecosystem is continuing its rapid international expansion, as Ukrainian integrator Ukrainska Bavovna and Czech firm Pavetra Aerospace have agreed to jointly produce the Shuhay UAV and the LS-T200 interceptor drone through a new venture in the Czech Republic. The companies have already signed a memorandum of understanding and finalized the legal groundwork, with combat trials of both systems expected soon, signaling a swift transition from partnership to battlefield deployment.

  Side note on the firm’s name, Ukrainska Bavovna: Bavovna means “cotton” in Ukrainian — leading to a wartime meme. In Russian, the word khlopok means both “cotton” and “pop”or “clap,” and Kremlin media used khlopok as a euphemism for “explosion.” When machine translation rendered it into Ukrainian, it spat out “bavovna”—and Ukrainians have been using “cotton” as cheery word for successful Ukrainian strikes on Russian invaders ever since, sometimes marking a success by posting nothing more than a photo of a cotton sprig.

• In a striking illustration of Ukraine’s evolving drone warfare, fighters from the 59th Assault Brigade used a fibre-optic FPV drone, General Cherry’s OPTIX, to successfully strike a Russian Ka-52 “Alligator” attack helicopter in the Donetsk region, a platform worth roughly $16 million.
  
  Operated by the “Baltika” crew, the drone leveraged fibre-optic guidance, effectively immune to Russian electronic warfare, to maintain control over distances of up to 35 km, underscoring a growing shift toward hard-to-jam systems.
  
  The incident highlights a defining asymmetry of the war: relatively low-cost, adaptable Ukrainian drones increasingly neutralizing some of Russia’s most advanced and expensive aerial assets, reinforcing how battlefield innovation—not just firepower—is shaping the conflict’s trajectory.

• Ukraine’s Tencore Robotics has presented its TerMIT CASEVAC ground drone, designed to remove wounded soldiers from the battlefield without exposing medics to fire. In its CASEVAC configuration, the platform features enhanced armor protection and expanded cargo capacity to safely transport injured personnel from frontline positions to rear medical points.
  
  Built for rough terrain and active combat zones, the system allows units to maintain evacuation capabilities even under intense fire, addressing one of the most dangerous gaps in frontline operations. More broadly, TerMIT illustrates how Ukraine is extending robotics beyond combat roles into life-saving support functions, reducing casualties not just through firepower, but by fundamentally changing how wounded soldiers are rescued in high-risk environments.

• Russia has significantly increased its offensive efforts across the entire front, signaling that preparations for its anticipated spring–summer 2026 offensive are entering a more active phase, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
  
  Since mid-March, Russian forces have launched a of company- and platoon-level attacks in key areas including Kupyansk, Lyman, Pokrovsk, and the Dnipropetrovsk axis, while simultaneously intensifying artillery strikes, drone operations, and efforts to disrupt Ukrainian logistics by targeting infrastructure such as dams and supply routes.
  
  Analysts believe the Kremlin is likely preparing for a broader campaign focused on heavily fortified cities in Donetsk Oblast, such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, though the offensive is expected to rely less on large armored breakthroughs and more on localized, grinding assaults due to equipment shortages and the pervasive threat of Ukrainian drones.

You might also find this interesting:

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JIM GAMACHE built a successful career in transportation and logistics — then, at an age when most people retire, he traveled to wartime Ukraine to do whatever he could to help.

What started as humanitarian work became something he never planned: co-founding Defendica Systems, a mil-tech startup with a product already on the battlefield, saving Ukrainian lives. From Chicago to Kharkiv, here’s a look at Jim’s story—

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

I’m Jim Gamache. When I am in the US I divide my time between Chicago and Southwest Florida. At a time when most are retired, I am now experiencing the best years of my life in Ukraine. My journey started in 2022, initially doing humanitarian work (still do!).

“‘Malo po malu’—meaning step by step, little by little in Ukrainian: This is the drive to continue on each and every day, never to give into evil, no matter the circumstances in the most difficult times. That phrase means so much to me that I had it tattooed on my arm last year.”

In 2023 serendipity struck when I met a brilliant freelance journalist who allowed me to travel with him throughout the country, introducing me to extraordinary individuals at every turn. From one of those exchanges, I met a passionate Ukrainian in 2023 who had an idea for a military technology company. That idea has since morphed into Defendica Systems Inc / Defendica LLC where I am the president and co-founder with my business partner, Pavlo.

We are proud to say that we have an effective product on the battlefield, saving Ukrainian lives in different ways. After a successful career in transportation and logistics, here I am guiding a military technology company in an unexpected place in the world! Go figure!

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

On a trip with fellow volunteers [including UFN editor JP “Joe” Lindsley] we ended up in Kharkiv [Ukraine’s second biggest city, just 25 miles from Russia] after an all-night train journey. During the day, our UFN team split into two for different missions. One team was going out to deliver drones we’d purchased to a frontline unit. But Joe said, ‘No, hey, we’re gonna do something different. We’re going out with our friend, a humanitarian, Max [founder of the charity Volonterska], and we’re going out through Izium to formerly occupied villages to help folks. It got scary. In fact, our driver even stopped us at one point, said, ‘Hey, I gotta back out of here. I’m concerned about landmines.’

“The missiles continued to hit that night. And yet somehow that day was one of the best of my life.”

We at last found Max Burtsev, a Ukrainian entrepreneur and humanitarian, helping elderly people, people that would not leave their homes, trying to put roofs on their homes, people who had no heat, in small, small villages. Every home had been hit previously by bombs in some form or another. It was extraordinary. We talked to people who had de-mined their own backyards, just so they could plant some vegetables. Max had set up a program for them to sell their produce to restaurants and shops in Kharkiv city.

That evening, both the drone group and the humanitarian group from our team met together for dinner at a great pizza restaurant in Kharkiv. It’s so wild to be near the front and then just a few hours later at an excellent restaurant. We were having pizza, and we were relating our stories, really with some side-splitting laughter. Afterward, we were walking back to our safe house in the dark empty streets when suddenly—boom. Explosions. The Russians were bombing. Conveniently, in those dark streets there was a little green light: a lone Irish pub.

We went in for shelter and a beer. When the all-clear alarm sounded, we walked out of the bar—pitch black, there were no street lights in Kharkiv back then.

Now, walking across the street was an older woman. And here we are in heavily-hit Kharkiv, Ukraine, just after a missile attack, and it was dark, we were quiet, so she couldn’t know we were English-speakers, and she said to us, as she crossed the street, “It’s a wonderful life.”

And then she disappeared. She was no longer there, but we really believe that she had been there. And in this extraordinary place, 25 miles from Russia. We walked back to the safe house, and we were welcomed by the people who own the building.

“Please, we have family outside. Please come outside and have some drink. Have... have some food,” the hostess said. We went outside, and as we were having a nightcap on a patio under an awning, and people were introducing me to salo [salt-cured pork fat, beloved in Ukraine], all of a sudden, an explosion happened nearby. I jumped out of my seat. An older Ukrainian man who spoke English said, “You are safe here,” under the awning. “From what?!” I said, shocked but also laughing. “The rain?”

But we stayed there together, facing the threat with as much joy as we could find. I thought of all the people we had met that day—of the suffering we had tried to alleviate, of the strength we had witnessed, of drones delivered to the military, and of the laughs we had shared through it all.

The missiles continued to hit that night. And yet somehow that day was one of the best of my life. “It is a wonderful life,” indeed.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

With a mil-tech startup, things often swing between euphoria and panic so “malo po malu” helps keep me steady.

By nature, I am a very impatient person, wanting results and conclusions quickly. However, from the example of my Ukrainian friends and acquaintances, I’ve learned the meaning of “malo po malu,” step by step, little by little. The drive and determination to continue on each and every day, no matter the circumstances in the most difficult times. The resolve to never give in to evil. That phrase means so much to me that I had it tattooed on my arm last year. With a mil-tech startup, things often swing between euphoria and panic so “malo po malu” helps keep me steady.

4 | How can people support your work?

People can support our efforts at Defendica in several ways. We are always interested in sharing our story with investors, especially as we look to expand our operations. Beyond our initial successful product, we have several others in development that have tremendous promise. For those not interested in investing we do accept donations which has proven to be of great help. Finally, as the ability to export becomes more widespread we look to develop relationships with government defense agencies to discuss procurement of Defendica products.

We started Defendica with the mission to save Ukrainian lives and employ Ukrainians—all of our employees are Ukrainian including three veterans—who feel a deep passion for doing more for their country. We are doing just that.

5 | Where can people follow you?

Defendica Systems | Linkedin | Facebook

UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

• Overnight, Russia launched another massive attack on the territory of Ukraine. In total, 498 missiles and drones were launched at Ukraine, 92% of which were successfully intercepted by Ukrainian defenders. Russian forces used 430 Shahed/Geran suicide drones, 53 cruise missiles, 13 ballistic missiles and 2 hypersonic missiles to strike at targets throughout Ukraine, with Kyiv being the main strike direction.

• The Russia-Iran axis strikes again: Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission has stated that by “providing drone support to the Israeli regime” Ukraine has “turned its entire territory into a legitimate target for Iran.”

• Ukrainian companies Drone Fight Group, PG Robotics, and the Bat Drones R&D center have launched serial production of a new interceptor drone called “Angel Spire,” designed to counter Iran-designed Shahed-type loitering munitions and other enemy UAVs widely used on the battlefield. The system combines frontline operational experience with new engineering solutions and an integrated operator-training program to improve counter-drone capabilities. The Angel Spire interceptor can reach speeds of 150–290 km/h, has an operational range of up to 20 km, and is equipped with an optical system enabling both day- and night-time engagements, while supporting manual or semi-automatic target acquisition.

• U.S. defense-technology company Shield AI has partnered with a Ukrainian drone manufacturer—name kept secret—to integrate its Hivemind artificial-intelligence autonomy system into Ukrainian-made UAVs, aiming to make them capable of carrying out missions with far less human control. The project is being implemented through Ukraine’s Brave1 defense-innovation cluster, and the Hivemind software is designed to function as an AI “pilot,” enabling drones to perceive their surroundings, make decisions, and adapt to changing battlefield conditions in real time rather than simply following pre-programmed routes. The system can autonomously reroute flights, avoid restricted zones or obstacles, and respond to unexpected threats during a mission.

• European governments are preparing a backup plan to keep Ukraine financially afloat even if Hungary continues blocking a €90 billion EU loan, according to reporting cited by Politico. The loan—intended to help fund Ukraine’s military and government spending during the war with Russia—requires unanimous approval from EU members, but Hungary has refused to support it, linking its veto to a dispute over halted Russian oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline that pass through Ukraine. As a contingency, diplomats say a coalition of EU countries—particularly Baltic and Northern European states—could provide alternative funding directly or through smaller joint arrangements to ensure Kyiv can cover essential expenditures in 2026.

• The United States is deploying an amphibious ready group and a Marine expeditionary unit of potentially up to 5,000 Marines and sailors to the Middle East as tensions escalate in the war involving Iran and attacks threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil transit routes. The deployment includes several warships and an amphibious assault ship, likely the USS Tripoli, along with aircraft and ground forces capable of conducting rapid-response operations ranging from securing maritime routes and protecting embassies to evacuating civilians if the war deepens.

• Our friends at Defender Media are celebrating the first birthday of their online presence! To celebrate, they have launched a fundraising campaign, aiming to collect 500,000 Ukrainian hryvnias (about $13,000) to purchase more than ten SkyFall P1-SUN interceptor drones for the 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Regiment of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. The initiative reflects the outlet’s focus on supporting Ukraine’s frontline defenders while covering the country’s rapidly evolving defense-technology sector. The P1-SUN drones are specifically designed to intercept and destroy enemy UAVs, particularly Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones widely used by Russia, making them an increasingly important and cost-effective element of Ukraine’s air-defense network.
  
  Defender Media, the premier English-language source for in-depth Ukrainian mil-tech news, is “part of the investment portfolio of the Swedish-Ukrainian group of companies Sigma Software Group.”

• Ukraine’s Brave1 Roadshow is bringing an all-star ensemble of Ukrainian mil-tech companies and investment professionals to cities around the US, including New York, Washington, Austin, and San Francisco. Ukrainian founders are, city by city, pitching some of the world’s most interesting mil-tech solutions. And this comes at a time of real validation—just as the Pentagon is turning to Ukraine for assistance in stopping Iran’s insane fury of killer drones. Visit this link to find out when Brave1 is visiting your city and how to register.

You might also find this interesting:

The International Olympic Committee disqualified Ukrainian skeleton athlete VLADYSLAV HERASKEVYCH for wearing a helmet that featured images of Ukrainian athletes killed in Russia's war.

Since then Heraskevych, an Olympian with a master’s degree in physics, has been campaigning against “war fatigue”—reminding the free world of what’s at stake. We spoke in Kyiv:

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

“I’m Vladyslav Heraskevych, Ukrainian skeleton athlete who was wrongfully disqualified from Olympic Games because of my Memory Helmet. My main idea was to honor my fellow athletes who were killed in the last four years of Russia’s war. And now we have pretty big momentum because of this huge scandal. And I want really to share stories of victims. I want to share information about what’s going on in Ukraine. I would say that my adulthood began with this war. So it’s my life now.”

“I would say that my adulthood began with this war. So it’s my life now.”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

“We were in Bucha in the early days [of the full-scale invasion]. We saw people on the street. People were cooking food. It was April. We stopped to talk with them. A house had been hit by a Russian tank. The people were literally on the street … We tried to ask them, how do you feel about this? This one woman, said ‘I am lucky to be alive.’ She had been in Donestk, where she had lost her home. Now she was in Bucha, and the Russians had come again, destroyed her house again. Her son had gone to the war. Now she was on the street. And when we tried to give her and the others gathered some extra food, they said, ‘No, no, we don’t need it. Give it to some people who need it more.’”

Upon telling this to me, Heraskevych simply shook his head in admiration and respect.

“The most pleasant thing in the world when the full-scale war started was to hug your friends, just to be sure they’re alive.”

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

“First of all trust yourself. Never betray your principles. Fight to do your best. I remember the most pleasant thing in the world when the full-scale war started was to hug your friends just to be sure they’re alive. I don’t want to be a multi-millionaire or something like that—It’s not my goal in life. I want happiness for my country and my people. That’s the first thing.”

4 | How can people support your work?

“We have many problems because of the war in our educational system, because of shellings now, and because of blackouts, we had a lot of problems with heating in our universities, in schools.

“You don’t have less war simply because people are tired of it abroad.”

“We have many problems also, of course, in sports because many facilities were destroyed. And of course, what is most important, we have a lot of victims, and it’s important to remember their sacrifice. It’s important to remember their stories because it’s not just the numbers. We can always [make excuses] with war fatigue, but it’s people, it’s lives.

“War fatigue is a [way of] thinking in media. So when we ask the media why don’t you write so much about Ukraine? The answer is ‘because it’s war fatigue.’ People are tired of the war. And in some way, I understand it, but in some way, it’s very painful because you don’t have less scale of war because of war fatigue. You don’t have less war simply because people are tired of it abroad.”

“Sport is important in time of war because we have some voices and we try to share it because we try to show people what’s happening in Ukraine. And we try to, let’s say, beat this war fatigue. We try to beat this thing and we try to show their stories and then stories of our country and then our people who were killed and families who lost their family members.”

And of course, Heraskevych wants people to remember the Ukrainian athletes whom the Russians murdered—the faces portrayed on his Memory Helmet:

1. Volodymyr Androschuk — track and field (decathlon/pentathlon)

2. Karyna Bakhur — kickboxer, 17

3. Karyna Diachenko — rhythmic gymnast, 11

4. Maksym Halinichev — boxer

5. Pavlo Ishchenko — powerlifter/strongman

6. Victoria Ivashko — judo, 9

7. Oleksiy Khabarov — shooting

8. Ivan Kononenko — strongman and actor

9. Mykyta Kozubenko — diver

10. Daria Kurdel — dancer, 20

11. Andriy Kutsenko — cyclist

12. Mariya Lebid — ballroom dancer, 15

13. Oleksiy Lohinov — ice hockey

14. Yevhen Malyshev — biathlete, 19

15. Alina Perehudova — weightlifter, 14

16. Roman Polishchuk — high jump

17. Dmytro Sarpar — figure skater

18. Taras Shpuk — coach (Invictus Games)

19. Kateryna Troyan — track and field/drone operator

20. Andriy Yaremenko — Greco-Roman wrestler

21. Fedir Yepifanov — fencer

22. Nazar Zui — boxer and footballer, 13

5 | Where can people follow you?

Instagram | X

See Heraskevych’s X post about the Paralympics’ decision to permit Russian athletes to participate in the current Games under the Russian flag.

UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

• On the night of 6-7 March, Russia launched another large scale attack on cities across Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kyiv. In total, Russian forces used 480 Shahed/Geran suicide drones (the same that are currently being used by Iran against US forces), 14 Kalibr-type cruise missiles, 13 Iskander ballistic missiles, and 2 Zirkon hypersonic missiles. Ukrainian defenders managed to intercept 92% of all targets launched against Ukraine.

• Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps has developed a new type of automated anti-aircraft turret designed to defend frontline positions against drones and other aerial threats, reflecting the growing shift toward low-cost, decentralized air defense on the battlefield. The system was created by the corps’ “Aquila” anti-aircraft unit and is currently undergoing testing, with the turrets capable of being remotely controlled to detect and destroy targets without exposing soldiers to direct fire. According to unit commander Maksym Zaichenko, the goal is to provide a scalable, easily deployable solution that can protect positions from the constant wave of Russian UAV attacks that dominate the modern battlefield.

• Hungarian authorities detained a cash-in-transit team from Ukraine’s state-owned Oschadbank, including seven officers and two armored vehicles, while they were transporting a large shipment of cash and gold between Austria and Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials. Budapest has since released the Ukrainians, who have crossed the border home, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is increasingly turning the screws on Ukraine, making threats and demanding that Kyiv permit Russia oil to flow through Ukraine into Hungary.

• Iran has reportedly destroyed a key U.S. missile-defense radar in Jordan, dealing a significant blow to the regional air-defense network protecting American forces and Gulf allies. According to satellite imagery and U.S. officials cited by Bloomberg, an AN/TPY-2 radar—worth roughly $300 million and used by the THAAD missile-defense system—was struck at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, reducing the system’s ability to track incoming ballistic missiles and guide interceptor launches across the region.

• At the 1-week mark of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, US President Trump announced Saturday that Iran will be “hit very hard”:

  

• Ukrainian defense tech company The Fourth Law has unveiled a new autonomous interceptor drone called Zerov-8, designed to hunt and destroy hostile UAVs such as Iranian-made Shahed drones increasingly used in modern warfare. The drone’s design enables vertical takeoff and landing.

  
  It reaches speeds of up to 326 km/h, and can intercept targets at about 270 km/h within a 20-kilometer operating radius. A key feature is the company’s AI-powered Anti-Shahed detection module, which automatically identifies and tracks enemy drones by analyzing movement patterns and thermal signatures before guiding the interceptor toward its target. The system is precisely the sort of air defense the Pentagon is now reportedly seeking from Ukraine to assist in the Middle East.

• Ukraine won its first gold at the 2026 Paralympics Saturday in a quite suitable sport: biathlon, which involves skiing and shooting. Taras Rad took first place in the sitting sprint, finishing ahead of two competitors from China.

• Over the next two weeks, Ukraine’s Brave1 Roadshow will bring an all-star ensemble of Ukrainian mil-tech companies and investment professionals to cities around the US, including New York, Washington, Austin, and San Francisco. Ukrainian founders are, city by city, pitching some of the world’s most interesting mil-tech solutions. And this comes at a time of real validation—just as the Pentagon is turning to Ukraine for assistance in stopping Iran’s insane fury of killer drones. Visit this link to find out when Brave1 is visiting your city and how to register.

You might also find this interesting:

JASON JAY SMART has been blacklisted by the Kremlin since 2010. He’s a special correspondent for Kyiv Post with a PhD on the strategies of the Putin regime.

As his 264K YouTube subscribers know, this Kyiv-based American is adept at cutting through the noise of the Russian war machine.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Saturday Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

1 | Who are you, and what’s your mission?

My name is Jason Smart. I am a special correspondent for Kyiv Post though my “day job” is more security focused. Prior to moving to Kyiv, more than a decade ago, I lived and worked in Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and across Latin America. My MA and PhD dissertations relate to the strategies and workings of the Putin Regime, a dictatorship that blacklisted me in 2010 for working with the democratic opposition to Putin.

“Had the West acted under Obama, the world would be a different place today.”

My mission is to help Ukraine win, assist free societies to understand how authoritarian systems operate, and to turn clarity into action, because confusion is how dictators survive.

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war, as you would tell someone over a drink.

In 2015, the West traded reality for a comfortable lie as they branded Russia’s initial invasion as a “frozen conflict” to justify their own inaction. They were dead wrong. Standing at the front lines then, per the invitation of the (now former) Director of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), among men who understood the stakes from the first shot, it was clear that this was never about a “border dispute.” It was an existential war. Moscow wasn’t seeking territory; they were seeking erasure.

Ten years later, this past summer, I realized that things had come full circle: The West’s inaction had led to what I was witnessing: Families emerging from underground bombshelters after a night of Russian bombardment. Little kids, perhaps 4-5 years old, folded up their mats and blankets and rushed home to change clothes for school. This was now “normal” for these children.

“The dichotomy of control is the only rule that matters.”

Had the West acted under Obama, the world would be a different place today. The costs of stopping a dictator only increases. Everyday that we give dictators peace assures that we are one day closer to American children carrying their blankets out a bombshelter.

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

The dichotomy of control is the only rule that matters. I separate every situation into two piles. One pile contains things I can change. The other pile contains things I cannot. I try to ignore the second pile entirely. Pressure is an external event: It only has power if I allow it to have power over me.

My habit is to strip away my own judgment of a situation. I do not call a crisis “bad.” I call it an “event.” Then I ask what would be the best course of action at that point. Nothing more. This keeps the mind clear as you control the controllable and let go of the rest.

4 | How can people support your work?

People who share my long-held belief in the need to defeat the Putin Regime and to stand athwart the aggression of authoritarian regimes can help spread my public work to others.

5 | Where can people follow you?

Substack:

YouTube: @JasonJaySmart

X: @jasonjaysmart

UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

ZELENSKY: ‘Whenever there is American resolve, global criminals weaken.’

• The U.S. and Israel launched major joint strikes on Iran today, hitting military and strategic targets across the country including Tehran, with early strikes seemingly targeting Supreme Leader Khamenei’s compound. President Trump announced “major combat operations” aimed at destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities — and called for Iranian police and military to lay down arms or “face certain death.”

• Iran retaliated with missiles and drones at U.S. bases across the Gulf and toward Israel. At the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, footage shows a drone striking the facility. Ukrainians know the sound and shape of that drone—that of Shahed, which Iran has supplied to Russia to kill Ukrainian civilians nightly.

• In an address released shortly after the strikes began, Trump told the Iranian people: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

• There are reports and videos emerging of Iranian students and others celebrating the US strikes and praising Trump, with the smoke of the strikes in the background; but there’s also distress, fuel queues, etc. Trump urged civilians to take shelter and wait. We’ll remind you that in January Trump encouraged civilians to keep protesting the regime, and that was followed by reports that the Ayatollah’s forces had killed tens of thousands of people. Follow UFN on X and Instagram for breaking developments.

• In response to the US strikes on Iran, President Zelensky posted the following:

“Although Ukrainians never threatened Iran, the Iranian regime chose to become Putin’s accomplice and supplied him with ‘shahed’ drones, and not only the drones themselves, but also the technologies to produce them. Iran also provided other weapons to Russia. …

“Other nations have also suffered from Iranian-backed terror. Therefore, it is fair to give the Iranian people a chance to rid themselves of a terrorist regime and to guarantee security for all nations that have suffered from terror originating in Iran. …

“It is important that the United States is acting decisively. Whenever there is American resolve, global criminals weaken. This understanding must also come to the Russians. …

“Ukraine is ready to help every nation so that security and justice increase, and terrorist regimes decrease.”

• MEANWHILE—Norway has pledged around 85 billion kroner (roughly $9 billion) in support for Ukraine in 2026, with the bulk of funding directed toward military assistance focused on drones, air defense systems, and artillery ammunition.
  
  About 70 billion kroner will go to defense aid and 15 billion to civilian support, while additional funds already allocated in 2025 focus on maritime security, F-16 related assistance and international cooperation projects.

• Why doesn’t Europe make greater use of its economic power—including control over trade routes, infrastructure, and financial systems?
  
  “It’s time for Europe to weaponize its chokepoints,” to strengthen deterrence against rivals such as Russia and China, according to the Financial Times’s Martin Sandbu. Sandbu argues that the EU holds significant strategic leverage through its markets and regulatory influence but has been hesitant to deploy these tools decisively amid rising geopolitical competition.
  
  As global tensions grow, Sandbu suggests Europe might need to treat economic policy more like a strategic instrument, using pressure points in supply chains and access to key hubs to defend its interests alongside traditional military measures.

• Ukrainian firm DevDroid has developed the Droid TW ground robotic strike system, including the TW-7.62 and TW-12.7 variants. It is emerging as a key battlefield innovation: The Droid TW has now destroyed two Russian soldiers from a distance of 300 meters (about three U.S. football fields).

  
  The Droid TW is a family of remotely operated unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) with mounted machine guns (7.62 mm and 12.7 mm Browning) and integrating AI for autonomous target detection and tracking. They provide reconnaissance and fire support while keeping personnel out of harm’s way.

• This morning while Ukrainians were like many others glued to the news of Iran, Russians sent ballistic missiles and drones in a heavy attack upon the city of Kharkiv.

• A common sentiment in Ukraine today has been: “Maybe the USA should ask Ukraine for advice on how to intercept the Shahed drones,” such as those Tehran sent to US bases in the Middle East today.

You might also find this interesting:

From day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion, BOB SIROTT’s show on Chicago WGN Radio featured something no other American program did: a live report from Ukraine every weekday for three years.

I was the reporter on the other end of that line. Ukrainian soldiers listened from the front. Chicago listened during their daily commute.

When other media moved on, Bob Sirott kept a daily focus on Ukraine.

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

From Ukraine to Chicago, a Daily Connection: A Note from JP Lindsley

Four years ago next Tuesday, on February 24, 2022, I had to adjust to two new realities: being in a war—and being on radio.

What started as an ad hoc report in those bewildering, terrifying early days became a staple of the Chicago morning routine. Bob Sirott of Chicago’s WGN Radio gave me 8-10 minutes each weekday to report live from Ukraine, and for three years we never missed a beat.

By June 2022, I realized if I wanted to keep the audience’s attention for the long haul I was going to have to understand their moods and needs. People driving to work, dealing with their own problems, might get tired of hearing “Bakhmut, Bakhmut, Bakhmut” every day.

So, in order to keep Ukraine front and center, and with Bob’s guidance and good humor, I began to design my 10-minute daily reports with the audience supremely in mind. It’s Monday? Maybe today they need stories of inspiration and hope, not grief, from Ukraine. We got hit by drones last night? Let me try to describe the feel of being in a building whose walls were shaken by the air raid. Hamas attacked Israel? Well, Israel’s national anthem was written by a man born in western Ukraine.

I embraced the medium of radio: I couldn’t let a picture tell the story, and this pushed me to describe the scene, the smell, the fear, the sounds, the personalities, everything, in a deeper way.

“It was news that went way beyond the nightly network reports of casualty numbers and descriptions of battle territories.”

Sometimes people would write into WGN saying, “Sounds like things are real tough today. We can hear it in Joseph’s voice.”

And that’s precisely what I wanted: to be a conduit to help people in faraway America feel what it was like to be here in Ukraine. Bob Sirott’s editorial vision made that possible, every single weekday, for three entire years. The segment was ceased at Christmas 2024, but we made a silver lining: the subsequent creation of Under Fire News, which would not have been possible without the WGN years. So, on this fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and of Ukraine’s full-scale resistance, let’s hear from BOB SIROTT—

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Voices of the Fight No. 3—Bob Sirott, American broadcaster

1 | Who are you and what’s your mission?

I’m Bob Sirott. I have been on TV and radio since the early 70s mostly in my hometown of Chicago, but I’ve also been a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and been an anchor/correspondent for a CBS-TV newsmagazine “West 57th” in the 80s.

I currently host the WGN Radio Chicago 6-10am program. We try to serve an audience that’s waking up, driving to work, and anxious to get the information they need first thing. Weather, traffic, and overnight news developments and interviews from Chicago and around the world make up our broadcast.

Also we think at that hour of the morning part of our mission is to inject personality into what we do. Nobody likes to get up early and be in rush hour traffic so our show also includes delivering the information in an engaging and many times humorous manner.

“Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times summed up well what we did in those three years: We offered ‘real, regular humanity’ in our Ukraine reporting.”

2 | Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war—as you would tell someone over a drink.

My mother was born in what is now Ukraine and my father was from an area just outside of Kyiv. I recall being a twelve-year-old during the Cuban missile crisis. I was scared because of the air raid drills we were having in school. I asked my dad what he thought would happen.

He was a stern man even though he had a wonderful silly sense of humor but he wasn’t one to mince words or candy-coat serious topics. He said, “Well I think there’s going to be a war.” I’ll never forget it. Not what I wanted to hear to make me feel unafraid. As news of the crisis played out on TV newscasts every night I remember my father instantly translating Khrushchev’s speeches to me in English.

Given my heritage I took a keen interest in the war in Ukraine from day one. I asked our WGN news department if there was anyone they knew of who could report on the war for us. We were given a list of names that included Joseph Lindsley. Our producer thought he’d be best. Boy was she ever right!

We set up live calls every morning that first week of the war. It became clear that we were getting insight and a first-hand account of what it’s like to be in the middle of a war zone. It was news that went way beyond the nightly network reports of casualty numbers and descriptions of battle territories. And, believe it or not, we were even able to share a laugh from time to time.

“I … talk to thousands of people ... the way I would communicate with a friend on the phone.”

Chicago has one of the largest populations of Ukrainians in the U.S. and listeners were immediately captivated. They became fans of Joe’s! He humanized the war and we were flooded with emails and texts praising the way we were covering the battles like nobody else. Fortunately my superiors at WGN felt the same way, and so for the consequential first three years of the war there was Joseph talking to us on the radio five days a week from bunkers, coffee shops, trains, and even the mountains of Ukraine.

Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times summed up well what we did in those three years: “Lindsley has provided something rare in our world of corporate, automated radio: regular, real humanity.” And that humanity resonated not only with people driving to work on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago but also with Ukrainian soldiers who informed us that they would listen to our daily broadcast from the front lines.

“We have a saying, ‘time is the tyrant.’”

3 | What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

Mine is a deadline profession. We work under the pressure of the clock. We have a saying, “time is the tyrant.” I try to always keep the listener in mind and talk to thousands of people one at a time the way I would communicate with a friend on the phone. Informal. Real. Without pretense. I think that’s been the key to my success over a nearly six decade career in broadcasting.

I take the news seriously but I don’t take myself seriously. Injecting humanity and yes even some humor into my job works. If you sound like you’re having fun then the listener or viewer will too. And that philosophy will get you through the toughest mornings.

4 | How can people support your work?

Our broadcast from 6 to 10am central time weekdays is available live at WGNRadio.com. We get a “report card” every month with our ratings. Lucky for me our audience has been steadily growing for the six years I’ve been doing this show. That’s a terrific vote of confidence and the support that keeps us on the air.

Above: A Ukrainian-produced animated advertisement for the Sirott-Lindsley daily Ukraine report.

5 | Where can people follow you?

I’m on X and Facebook.

Email is Bobshow [at] wgnradio.com.

Sirott show page.

UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

• South Korea is considering joining NATO’s PURL initiative, a financing mechanism that pools international funds to accelerate the purchase of U.S.-made weapons for Ukraine.

• Beetroot Defence—a new division of the Swedish-founded tech services and education firm Beetroot—is building engineering and talent infrastructure for Ukraine’s rapidly scaling mil-tech sector, with ambitions to support broader European defense capabilities as well. As Defender Media reports, courses include Embedded Development and Drone Firmware, alongside advisory support for defense startups.

• Ukrainian Christian leaders warn of systematic religious persecution in Russian-occupied territories. Representatives of the Ukrainian Council of Churches told The Daily Caller that clergy and parishioners face violence, torture, imprisonment, and forced registration under Russian law, while hundreds of churches and religious buildings have been damaged, looted, or destroyed since the full-scale invasion. The documentary A Faith Under Siege: Russia’s Hidden War on Ukraine’s Christians (produced by Americans Steven Moore and Colby Barrett) highlights testimonies from Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox believers.

• TODAY’S NOTION: Isn’t it time for a Coalition of the Doing, rather than simply of the Willing? Read Boris Johnson’s take on this concept in the WSJ.

You might also find this interesting:

Welcome to Voices of the Fight—a Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

JONATHAN FINK’s Silicon Curtain, with nearly 1,000 YouTube episodes, features the largest collection of pro-Ukraine expert voices in English—from warriors to philosophers. We spoke in a blacked-out Kyiv café during one of his frequent trips in-country.

He won’t call himself a journalist. We will.

1. Who are you and what’s your mission?

I’m Jonathan Fink. And I think my name is synonymous with Silicon Curtain, certainly for the audience. I don’t have a team behind me, so it is just me.

I’m not a journalist. I don’t act as a journalist. I don’t think I use the same methodology as journalists. I’m pro-Ukraine. I’m pro-victory in the war.

I set the channel up to help explain Russian propaganda—propaganda narratives, propaganda methodology. That was the original intent behind it, but it’s grown since then.

I loathe the Russian imperial project. I loathe it with every fibre of my being.

I started [Silicon Curtain] literally as the missiles were falling on 24 February 2022. I was up all night, opened an X account, started researching potential guests. I knew this was coming, and if I didn’t set it up at that point, I knew I never would.

I felt I had to do that. And in fact, I knew that if I didn’t, I’d feel pretty shitty with myself if I didn’t finally do something. I try to be authentic to myself as well. I don’t believe there’s an absolute truth, but I do believe we have a responsibility to be objective within our own framework of values, to do extensive research, and to challenge our own opinions by engaging with people who think very differently.

2. Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war—as you would tell someone over a drink.

What’s funny is that people know me through the channel as quite straight— [interviewing] geopolitical analysts, politicians, generals like Ben Hodges. But when you’re here in the field, people are often shocked because I swear a lot and tell quite crude stories.

Of course there’s immense suffering and trauma, and that’s all real. But there are also these absolutely surreal moments.

One moment last year: We’d just had a brilliant panel on propaganda in Odesa with the Cultural Forces of Ukraine. Fantastic event.

And that evening, I found myself paddling in the Black Sea with my trousers rolled up like a Victorian gentleman.

I had a plastic cup of malt whisky in one hand, a cigar in the other, talking about Agatha Christie with Ukraine’s leading literary critic—a giant of a man, literally and figuratively.

In the background, you could hear mines exploding on the horizon. And I thought: that’s a f*cking movie. That’s Apocalypse Now territory.

Ukrainians wouldn’t be offended by that story. They have an extraordinary dark sense of humour, and wartime only intensifies it. It’s levity amid grimness.

You have to retain your human empathy … You have to maintain a moral framework in order to keep the energy and to tell these stories day in, day out.

3. What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

I think there are two things. The first is empathy. You have to retain your human empathy and your sense of outrage at crimes being committed. You have to maintain a moral framework in order to keep the energy and to tell these stories day in, day out.

You have to feel visceral anger every day at what’s happening in order to stay focused and grounded.

Some journalists argue you must detach yourself completely. I don’t believe that. I think you have to feel visceral anger every day at what’s happening in order to stay focused and grounded.

The second thing is purpose. I’m not a rusophobe, although I’m often accused of it. I loathe the Russian imperial project. I loathe it with every fibre of my being.

Late-stage Russian imperialism is metastasized. It’s a cancer. It produces no innovation, no joy. It brings nothing new into the world.

It has to be destroyed for humanity to continue to progress.

The people who do act that way tend to be extraordinary personalities—or people with intelligence-services training, interestingly.

4. How can people support your work?

People support the channel in lots of ways—Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, all of that, which is fantastic.

But one of the most important ways is by recommending people. Sometimes someone reaches out and I think, wow, I absolutely need to speak to this person.

Very few people are entrepreneurial in how they think about amplification. Almost none of my guests ever follow up with introductions or ideas—and that’s not because they’re bad people. It’s just not how people tend to think.

The people who do act that way tend to be extraordinary personalities—or people with intelligence-services training, interestingly.

Late-stage Russian imperialism is metastasised. It’s a cancer. It produces no innovation, no joy. It brings nothing new into the world.

One big way to support my work: We are making a film about the drone war. It’s going to be a big, narrative, cinematic story. This is the moment in history we have to tell it.

It’s important for Ukraine’s victory. It’s important for the defence of Europe. It’s an activist product—absolutely—but one that we want to take around parliaments and show publicly. We want it to be hugely impactful. We want it to go on Netflix, etc.

It’s not cheap. We’re looking for high-end donors and a substantial amount of money to make it. But everything is ready—the scenarios, the people, the permissions.

We just need that injection of cash, and then we’re in action.

5. Where can people follow you?

I have two YouTube channels—Silicon Curtain, which is the main interview channel, and Silicon Wafers, which is the news channel.

I’m also on Spotify, Substack, LinkedIn, and X.

YouTube Interview Channel: Silicon Curtain

YouTube News Channel: Silicon Wafers

X

Linkedin

Spotify:

… and see Jonathan’s latest Silicon Curtain interview with me, from blacked-out Kyiv:

UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

• In his speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 14, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to reassure European allies that Washington remains committed to the transatlantic partnership, stressing that the United States and Europe “belong together” despite recent tensions and policy disagreements.
  
  Rubio framed the moment as a turning point for the Western alliance, urging renewal of cooperation while also criticizing certain European political choices and calling for reforms to global institutions, such as the United Nations.

• U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham used the Munich Security Conference to call for stronger military support for Ukraine and significantly tougher economic pressure on Russia, arguing that previous Western approaches have failed to deter the Kremlin.
  
  He backed legislation proposing tariffs of up to 500% on countries that continue buying Russian energy, stressing that cutting Moscow’s oil-and-gas revenue is key to weakening its war machine, and mentioned the roles of China, India, and Brazil as critical economic enablers for Russia’s war machine.
  
  Graham also urged expanding advanced weapons deliveries—including Tomahawk cruise missiles for long-range strike capabilities—to shift the battlefield balance in Ukraine’s favor, while insisting that any future peace deal must have Kyiv’s approval and pass through the U.S. Congress.

• Ukrainian defence company TAF Industries and German drone manufacturer Wingcopter have signed a memorandum to create a joint venture for reconnaissance UAV production under the “Build with Ukraine” framework, aiming to scale manufacturing in Germany while ensuring stable supply for Ukraine’s defense forces.
  
  The partnership combines TAF’s battlefield-proven drone designs and operational expertise with Wingcopter’s industrial infrastructure and engineering capabilities, allowing production to expand in a safer environment and reduce wartime industrial risks. Beyond current systems, the companies also plan to jointly develop new UAV platforms for European and NATO markets, highlighting a broader push toward long-term Ukrainian-European defence-industrial integration.

• NATO is struggling to adapt to the new realities of modern warfare, as demonstrated during the Hedgehog-2025 NATO exercise. The Wall Street Journal revealed yesterday what happened in the May 2025 event: Attending armies were simulating drone-dominated battlefields inspired by Ukraine’s war experience.
  
  During the exercise it became evident that many allied forces still rely on outdated doctrines and habits—such as large, exposed formations and slow decision-making—leaving them highly vulnerable in an environment where cheap drones, real-time surveillance, and rapid strike cycles make the battlefield increasingly transparent.
  
  While NATO has begun to recognize these lessons, the alliance remains institutionally and technologically behind, and without faster integration of Ukrainian battlefield insights, new tactics, and autonomous systems, Western forces risk being unprepared for future high-intensity conflicts.

You might also find this interesting:

Today we're launching Voices of the Fight—a Q&A series featuring the warriors, innovators, advocates, and volunteers standing under fire for freedom.

Ukrainian linguist ANNA DANYLCHUK, whose YouTube channel has drawn more than 364,000 subscribers, shares the moment she chose the “difficulty of truth over the ease of not knowing.”

1. Who are you and what’s your mission?

My name is Anna Danylchuk, and before the Russian war against Ukraine, I had never considered blogging to be something serious. I’m a PhD in linguistics with more than ten years of work in academia, a researcher, and also an author for a daily Ukrainian newspaper, as well as a co-author of four non-fiction books on history and culture. I also have an NGO that deals with cultural heritage preservation and popularization.

But within the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale war, I started recording videos on YouTube. Over these years, our community grew large and international, and now I feel that it is my main mission to explain Ukraine, to explain this part of the world.

Unfortunately, many decisions are made without proper knowledge of the history of the region or the mindset of Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, or Poland. There is still the smoke of Kremlin propaganda around this topic. So I see my mission in providing an ordinary Ukrainian perspective on these very extraordinary events, and in destroying Russian fakes.

“We got used to these abnormalities, and this is wrong. It helps us survive, but in general, it is wrong.”

2. Tell us one powerful story from your experience in war—as you would tell someone over a drink.

I think it happened during the very first months of the war, when more and more Russian crimes became visible, but at the same time they were still surprising and unbelievable. Unfortunately, what many of us say now is that we got used to these abnormalities, and this is wrong. It helps us survive, but in general, it is wrong.

I remember that after the Bucha massacre, after Mariupol, after so many things happening, watching people, listening to their stories, listening to explosions in my city, which is considered semi-safe, I came to one very unusual conclusion that was difficult to accept: that Russians want to kill us not because of any political or territorial reasons, but because they simply see every Ukrainian as a target. No matter how young or old you are, how talented or beautiful or funny, whether you are a doctor or a writer—they see you as a target, and they want to kill you.

“My task is to survive and tell the story.”

I remember how difficult it was to comprehend such a level of evil, something I had previously only struggled to understand when watching films about the Second World War. And here I was, in a very similar situation. It was a very difficult revelation, but at the same time it gave me an immense feeling of unity with my people, who were going through a very similar path.

So for me, this discovery inside myself—that I am a target simply because I am Ukrainian—also meant that I need to stay strong, because this is deeply wrong, and my task is to survive and tell the story.

3. What decision, habit, or principle has mattered the most for you for surviving or staying effective under pressure?

Well, I’d say that with my experience, with my knowledge of history, and with my knowledge of Moscow and the USSR, first of all there is an understanding that we genuinely do not have a choice. This war is not about Donbas. This war is not about territories. During the first two years of the war, I thought it was about the existence of Ukraine. But now I think it is about the existence of our world—a world that cares about freedom, choice, dignity, and rights.

“Just a war ago, the people who are now on the front lines were not professionally trained military. Now, they are the best of the best.”

It is like an authoritarian Russian–Chinese–Iranian–North Korean horde against the democratic world. And when you realize that there is no escape from this situation, that any concessions to Russia will lead to more tragedies, you understand that you have to be effective in order to win this war.

I’m not on the front lines, I’m not in the trenches. And every day, when I see how cold it is or how hot it is, I think about the people who are now on the front lines. I also know something that many people forget: just a war ago, these people were not professionally trained military. They are the best of the best who chose to defend their motherland, without knowing how long or how difficult it would be. And they continue serving us. This is another motivation for me.

And the desire of people from very different corners of the world to support Ukraine, to know more about Ukraine, is another source of power for me. I am forever grateful for that.

“Russia must be held accountable. Otherwise, this world will move toward another tragic world war.”

4. How can people support your work?

I am always grateful when people want to know more about Ukraine, even if they don’t know some very obvious things. I always say that there are no wrong questions. The very fact that people choose the difficulty of truth over the ease of not knowing makes me feel very grateful.

So if they subscribe, if they follow, if they comment, if they share information they come across on my channel or on other channels that speak about Ukraine—that already matters. We may differ in some opinions, but it is extremely important to understand that Russia is the aggressor. For all the violations and crimes it has committed, for its open genocide against the Ukrainian people, and for the many hybrid attacks it is now carrying out against different countries that live by the rule of law, Russia must be held accountable. Otherwise, this world will move toward another tragic world war.

I also believe it is important to speak about Ukraine in your own countries, with your decision makers. We have seen more than once how public influence has changed the position of decision makers—for example, in the United States. And yes, we always need weapons to defend our homes.

5. Where can people follow you?

My main YouTube channel: Anna from Ukraine

My new YouTube channel: Brave New World—My War Story

Follow me on Instagram

Follow me on X

Follow me on Bluesky

Subscribe to my Substack

UFN Daily Notebook—
What else we’re watching today:

• In the wee hours of February 7, Russia launched another large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine—unusually, the second one in a week. The primary target was the energy sector in western Ukraine and the city of Burshtyn, home to the important Burshtyn Thermal Power Plant.
  
  Tsirkon hypersonic missiles also hit Vinnytsia, while the Iranian-designed Shahed “suicide martyr” drones attacked Kyiv and its suburbs. The Shahed attack began at midnight on most regions of central and western Ukraine.
  
  In the early morning, the Russians launched sea-based attacks with Kalibr and Tsirkon missiles, followed by cruise missile strikes from Tu-95MS bombers.
  
  Much of Ukraine is without power and heat today. But after a week of frigid highs in the single digits Fahrenheit (around −15°C), temperatures have climbed to the balmy 20s (about −5°C).
  

• Those Russian Tu-95 bombers took off around midnight from the Olenya air field in the Arctic Circle about four hours before reaching the point at which they launched missiles into Ukraine.
  
  Notably, Russia’s Olenya air base, a major hub for attacking Ukrainian cities, is EQUIDISTANT between Greenland and Ukraine.
  

• After this latest major Russian attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, nuclear safety is under serious threat: all nuclear power plants in Ukraine have stopped generating electricity after the Russian strikes.
  

• Reuters reports that “Russia’s public deficit could balloon to almost triple the official target by end-2026 as a fall in Indian purchases of oil,” after U.S. pressure on India.

  
  The secretive source cited calculations, not designed for publication, by economists from a government-linked think tank.
  

• The US has given Russia and Ukraine a deadline to end Russia’s war against Ukraine by the beginning of the summer, since later they will have another priority—the US Congressional elections. According to President Zelensky, it is desirable for Ukraine that the US does not withdraw from the negotiations, and the Russians also need the Americans to remain for now.
  

• President Zelensky today said Russia, despite its economic woes, presented the U.S. with a $12 trillion economic proposal—which he jokingly dubbed the “Dmitriev package” after Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
  

• Ukrainian mil-tech firms General Cherry and Ukrainian Defense Drone Tech are among the 25 drone manufacturers selected by the Pentagon to participate in the first phase of the Drone Dominance program, launched on December 17 last year, as reported by Defender Media.

  The U.S. Department of War is prepared to spend more than a billion dollars on this project to arm American troops with inexpensive drones. Based on the results of the first stage, the US wants to order 30,000 drones from the 12 best companies.

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