Author: David Kirichenko

Special forces operators (SOF, or SSO in Ukrainian) are regarded as a nation’s elite fighting force. They receive the most training and investment and are often the first to go into battle, including deep behind enemy lines. Throughout the Russia-Ukraine War, SOF operators have frequently conducted raids and missions to probe enemy defensive positions. Examples include Ukraine’s probing operations in Bryansk and Kursk in 2023 and 2024 before launching its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024. At the same time, the drone war in Ukraine was rapidly accelerating. By 2025, Kyiv had established a “drone wall,” with...

The Ukrainian military is steadily replacing dangerous frontline tasks with ground robots. In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the military to field at least 50,000 unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in 2026, calling them “the next big step” in saving soldiers’ lives. Ihor Shmyryov, head of the UGV department at Ukraine’s defense innovation platform Brave1, expects Ukraine to exceed Zelensky’s target once direct brigade purchases are included. “In the first half of 2026, 25,000 UGVs will be contracted for deployment to the front,” he said. “That’s twice the number contracted during all of 2025.” Ukraine’s UGV industry is booming. A...

Sweden’s decision to send 16 Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine is more than another weapons transfer. It is the latest sign of a deeper shift that has emerged during Russia’s full-scale invasion: Ukraine’s growing alignment with the Nordic countries. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, recently posed the question directly. “Is Ukraine becoming a Nordic country?” he wrote following reports of the Gripen deal. Not geographically, Kuleba argued, but strategically. For decades, Ukrainians viewed their place in Europe largely through the lens of Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2022, however, Ukraine’s political and military center of gravity has increasingly...

For much of the war, Mariupol has symbolized both Russia’s brutality and Ukraine’s resistance. The southern port city was reduced to ruins during Russia’s siege in 2022. Tens of thousands are believed to have died. Satellite imagery later revealed mass graves sprawling outside the city. Among the Ukrainian units that fought there was Azov, whose last stand inside the Azovstal steel plant became one of the defining images of the invasion. Now Azov has returned to Mariupol, at least from the air. On May 8, Ukraine’s 1st Azov Corps released footage showing reconnaissance and strike drones flying over the...

In Bellevue, Washington, a grassroots cultural center shows how one immigrant’s determination to teach her children Ukrainian became a community hub for hundreds When Oksana Krivizuk arrived in Washington State in 2015 with two small children, she faced a familiar immigrant dilemma: how to pass on her language and culture in a place where neither seemed to exist outside of church walls. Within a month, she started her own school. “We simply decided we were on our own,” Krivizuk said. Her children were five and three years old. The only Ukrainian-language programs she could find near her home were...