2/ When Russia invaded, Lyuba Shipovich left her NYC tech company and returned to Ukraine.
Her mission:
"We must get people out of the trenches and off the front line," she tells war reporter @DVKirichenko at the UK's @LBC.
"Robots can do the dirty, dangerous work." ⤵️
3/ The macabre math: Russia has 3x Ukraine's population + massive oil revenues [ahem, India 👋].
Ukraine can't match the Russian War Machine with human lives. So they're building something else entirely.
A technological force that fights so humans don't have to. ⤵️
4/ Every month, Lyuba travels to brigades across the front, listening to commanders, identifying pain points, finding ways to deploy ground robots.
"The people we work with love us. Some officers hate us because we push them to do more work," she says. ⤵️
5/ At each base, defenders show off their homemade battlefield innovations—robots hacked together in garages and workshops.
Some brigades are better resourced than others. But even units with minimal support are building solutions daily just to stay alive and free. ⤵️
6/ Consider: 99% of ground drones in Ukraine's military are UKRAINIAN-MADE.
"Ukrainian engineers are creating the future of warfare, not just for Ukraine, but for the world," says Lyuba, who pushes the brass to adopt what works. ⤵️
7/ The game-changer: In Kharkiv, Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade successfully attacked Russian positions using ONLY ground robots and FPV drones.
The remaining Russians were directed by drones overhead straight into Ukrainian hands.
Zero Ukrainian infantry.
🖼️Da Vinci⤵️
8/ And so it's no wonder that Zelenskyy today announced a "draft agreement [with the USA] on drones has already been prepared by the Ukrainian side."
"Thank you to every American heart that supports us to protect lives," Zelensky added. "Thank you, President Trump!" ⤵️
9/ Behind many of these breakthroughs—Lyuba's nonprofit @Dignitas_Fund:
"We build and test solutions, prove their value, then advocate for government adoption."
They're the bridge between garage innovators and the General Staff, which, Kirichenko reports, listens to her. ⤵️
10/ The impact: 22 combat units now deploy ground robots. Soldiers evacuated daily. Lives saved. Russians stopped.
As an operator said: "Before robots, we lost 4 vehicles in May alone. Now? Zero driver fatalities."
This is what "stopping the killing" looks like in practice. ⤵️
11/ When asked what she'll do after the war, cheerful Lyuba Shipovich's response hits hard:
"First, I need to survive until it ends."
And maybe Ukrainian tech is about to help America thrive, too.
1/ Ukraine isn't just fighting for its own survival.
It's building the defense tech that could determine whether Taiwan survives a Chinese invasion.
Here's why Washington will want to care—and what the White House still doesn't know 🧵THREAD ⤵️
2/ While the Western defense industry focuses on what SELLS, Ukraine has become the world's leading lab for low-cost, rapidly-developing defense tech THAT WORKS.
No other democracy has anything like it, as I see here every day, and as Daniel Runde writes at @TheNatlInterest ⤵️
3/ Here's what the White House misses:
Ukraine is building the world's only near "CCP-free" drone supply chain.
Neither the United States nor Israel can claim this level of Chinese supply-chain independence.
What if China cut off supplies needed for F35s? ⤵️
Russia is running a jihadi-style recruitment operation inside Europe. Not metaphorically. Structurally.
It's from the Islamist psychological playbook—target the vulnerable, escalate slowly, create dependence.
And it only cost €50 per recruit to destabilize Europe ... 🧵⤵️
2/ This is a structured Russian operational model: civilians recruited to carry out sabotage, arson, and destabilisation as part of a deliberate hybrid warfare campaign inside Europe.
A report by @GLOBSEC has uncovered the sordid details. ⤵️
3/ The recruitment system mirrors the playbook once perfected by jihadi terrorist groups.
Target the vulnerable. Offer meaning or money. Escalate slowly. Create dependence.
Kremlinism and Islamism are indeed close cousins in bed together ⤵️
1/ I am an American in Ukraine. Reporting here every single day of the full-scale invasion, I have seen the heroes of a great resistance.
On this Thanksgiving Day, I want to toast the following groups of humans.
Please add the names of those you wish to thank— 🧵⤵️
2/ To the Ukrainian defender-warriors who hold the line, whether they volunteered freely or dutifully submitted to conscription, whole or wounded.
They face a hell most don't even want to consider. One day, the world will see they held the line for Europe and the USA. ⤵️
3/ To the Ukrainians, civilian and soldier, who resist Russian occupation any way they can.
It's not easy to see, but if Ukrainians had been like, say, Belarusians, they would be fully a part of Russia's expansionist war machine unleashing hell on Europe. Not a chance.⤵️
1/ Russia's strongest weapon against Europeans isn't nukes or gas pipelines.
It's European guilt.
And it's time to stop letting Russians use it, because Europe, when it is true to its soul, is Greater than Russia ever could be.
Here's why— 🧵⤵️
2/ Writing on Substack, Cemil Kerimoglu @cemk_cemil, says that at this dark hour Europe needs MORAL rearmament.
It's time—both internally and externally—for Europe to recall and restore its Greatness, not as a museum-piece of the past but as hard-earned useful virtue. ⤵️
3/ Every time Europe stands up to Russian aggression, Moscow plays the same card:
"You colonized Africa. You were Nazis. Who are you to judge us?"
Europe, though it is the definition of civilization, feels guilty. Russia, which never was great, counts on this. ⤵️