Editor's note: This article was updated on March 5 to include a statement from the U.S. European Command. President Donald Trump’s freeze on weapons is alarming Ukrainians, who look to U.S. air defense to stave off the worst of Russia's missile attacks. A White House representative on
One Ukrainian startup has rebuilt the humble walkie-talkie to weather the waves of modern electronic war with Russia. With thousands of Ukrainian soldiers already using their handheld comms devices, NATO is tuning in. Himera, the walkie-talkie startup in question is about to get a new layer of encryption that founder
A looming dropoff in U.S. weapons deliveries is threatening to strain Ukraine’s budding domestic arms production to the breaking point. As U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration prepares negotiations with their Russian counterparts, Ukrainians fear being cut out of negotiations — and cut off from future U.S.
Ukrainian weapons startups are finally seeing an inflow of funds from Western investors who have long been intrigued by the Ukraine's defense tech sector but have so far kept their money out of the war-torn country. Financial analysis firm Pitchbook provided the Kyiv Independent with data showing a four-fold rise
There will be no joint European Union army to counter Russian aggression and compensate any withdrawal in U.S. support, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said to local television late on Feb. 15, Reuters reported.
Russia attacked Ukraine’s decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear power plant on Feb. 14 just as world leaders gathered for the Munich Security Conference — in Moscow’s latest nuclear threat against Kyiv. Videos shared by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky show a drone breaking through Chornobyl’s “sarcophagus,” an international project to cover
In the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has almost certainly become the largest producer of drones in the Western-aligned world. Early workshop tinkering on mainly commercial Chinese drones evolved into steadily more professional and massive production of domestic unmanned aerial systems (UAVs). The industry’s rapid
Funds that Congress approved for weapons packages to Ukraine during the Biden administration are nearly empty, with most weapons already in Ukraine. A Dec. 30 package from former U.S. President Joe Biden used up the last of the funding from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which since 2022 has
At the start of December, Ukrainians suddenly found themselves unable to sell cars, file legal claims, or register marriages through the state's recently digitized government registries. Cybersecurity specialist and frequent coordinator of Ukrainian hackers, Karla Wagner, noticed when she went to register an NGO through Ukraine's Justice Ministry. “I was
The Ukrainian government in recent months has been aggressively touting fresh developments in its missile-making. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the country had built 100 of its own missiles in 2024 as of November. He called for 3,000 “cruise missiles or missile-drones” to be manufactured in 2025. Traditional missiles
Ukraine has turbo-charged its long-distance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), making “rocket-drones” to compete with cruise missiles or save the trouble of asking for more Western-made ranged weapons. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has been showing off the latest results, with videos of the Peklo and Palianytsia missile-drones, which Ukrainian soldiers
The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers discreetly dethroned the former czar of drone purchases — Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov — as the result of a one-sided power struggle from the Head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak, allege observers. A new decree shifted a key office in the drone purchasing process
The Kremlin confirmed on Dec. 11 that longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had fled to Moscow after rebels took the capital city of Damascus in a lightning offensive that shocked the world. Assad’s exile in Russia comes as little surprise. The Kremlin had invested heavily in propping up the
Some 25 miles south of Ukraine's border with Russia, explosions rumble off in the distance more or less continuously. “We don’t even hear them anymore,” Zhenya chuckles from under first-person-view (FPV) goggles branded with the U.S. company “Fat Shark.” Zhenya and his co-developer for DragoDrones, or DCU, Maksym,
The day Russia invaded Ukraine, Ivan Kaunov watched from his 23rd-floor Kyiv apartment in disbelief as rockets came down on his city. He was 30, married, and running a fintech startup that was seeing remarkable traction. The scion of a Kyivan family that had gotten wealthy on construction and IT,
The biggest weapons makers in the world convened in Washington, D.C. for the 70th meeting of the Association of the United States Army in early October. It was the third year in a row where Ukraine remained at the center of the event's enormous buzz. Synchronized press releases ensued.
U.S. government legal actions targeting a network of Russian influence last week have exposed shortcomings in the country's laws designed to tackle the malign influence of foreign agents, experts told the Kyiv Independent. Treasury sanctions targeted leaders of Russian state-owned news outlet RT, formerly Russia Today, a media organization
Ukraine’s low-budget tech wizardry has stunned Western audiences since the war’s outset. Soldiers operating out of front-line garages have modified donated artillery, rehabbed captured weapons, amped up off-the-shelf drones, and coded software to streamline it all. Given all the attention, a number of enterprising Ukrainians have turned their
It was the night before Alyona Mysko’s birthday when she got the word from her financial manager. The founder of software company Fuel that provides financial planning for startups, Mysko was, she says, still working at home in Kyiv well into the night of July 22 when she learned
