Ukrainian-American freelance journalist | Associate Research Fellow, Henry Jackson Society
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Jun 4 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
🧵1/ The Axis of Evil is deepening their technical cooperation.
Western lawmakers need to be more concerned.
Chinese & Iranian engineers are now working side-by-side with Russians to refine drone technologies, which could soon threaten the West. 2/ President Zelenskyy confirmed China has cut drone sales to Ukraine while still supplying Russia.
“There are Chinese representatives on production lines inside Russia,” he said.
Jun 3 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
🧵1/ Ukraine launched one of the boldest drone operations in modern history: a coordinated strike on four Russian airbases using smuggled drones hidden in cargo containers.
Putin is silent. Commentators are in shock.
Russian intel is wondering what's coming next. 2/ Codenamed Operation Spider’s Web, the plan involved moving modified shipping containers and over 100 FPV drones into Russia.
The drones were stored in trucks and remotely activated to strike strategic bombers at multiple airfields.
Jun 3 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
🧵1/ Kyiv bombed the Kerch Bridge for a third time using underwater explosives.
Expect future attacks combining underwater drones, sea drones, and missiles.
Ukraine is transforming warfare faster than anyone can keep up with. 2/ Ukraine’s navy was nearly nonexistent in 2022. Today, it has built a fleet of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) that have forced Russia’s Black Sea fleet to retreat.
Sea drones have become the centerpiece of Ukraine’s naval strategy.
Jun 3 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
🧵1/ On June 1, Ukraine pulled off one of the most devastating drone strikes in modern military history. Kyiv destroyed $7B worth of Russian aircraft in a single day.
Behind it is a story of homegrown tech innovation and battlefield adaptation (+ the genius of UA intel). 2/ The attack, dubbed Operation Spiderweb, used AI-trained drones launched from smuggled trucks to hit four Russian airbases.
41 aircraft — including strategic bombers — were damaged or destroyed. It's the biggest one-day loss for Russia’s air force since WWII.
May 21 • 23 tweets • 8 min read
🧵1/ Ukraine Cites Mossad as Assassinations Multiply
Kyiv’s patiently constructed intelligence services and their assassins have more targets in their sights.
It's a clear message to russian war criminals. 2/ In late April, Ukrainian MP and ex-special forces commander Col. Roman Kostenko publicly stated:
Ukraine would follow Mossad’s example in hunting down those responsible for wartime atrocities for the next 10 to 30 years.
May 19 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
🧵1/ Fiber-optic drones continue to expand on the battlefield.
They're also much harder to stop.
Both Ukraine and Russia are turning to fiber-optic drones that can’t be jammed, as both sides look for an edge.
Let’s break down what’s happening. 👇 2/ Fighting in russia’s Kursk region became a test lab for fiber-optics.
One UA commander reported a surge in Russian drones - especially fiber-optic FPVs - saying “you can’t jam them” and that Ukraine has lost a lot of equipment.
This helped the Russians immensely in Kursk.
May 19 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
🧵1/ Russia’s war against Ukraine isn’t just about territory - it’s also a battle over memory and identity.
Vladimir Putin aims not only to conquer Ukraine but to erase its past and rewrite its history. 2/ Since 2014 and especially after the full-scale invasion in 2022 - Ukraine has worked to remove Soviet-era symbols, including hundreds of Lenin statues.
By 2021, the last Lenin on public land was gone.
In contrast, Russian-occupied areas are seeing Lenins return.
May 17 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
🧵1/ Viktor Orbán’s imperial dreams.
Covert ops in Ukraine to becoming a hub in the EU for China and Putin, Orbán is laying the groundwork for something much bigger - and far more dangerous - for Europe.
Let’s unpack what’s happening. 👇 2/ Ukraine recently exposed a Hungarian military intel network operating in Zakarpattia - a Ukrainian region with a sizable Hungarian minority.
The goal?
Quiet preparation for future territorial claims under the “protecting ethnic minorities” excuse (like russia does).
May 16 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
🧵1/ While Putin parades his power in Moscow, Ukraine is quietly hunting down Russian war criminals.
The Kremlin may act unbothered, but their propagandists are already panicking.
Here’s what Ukraine is up to. 👇 2/ In April, a car bomb in Moscow killed Yaroslav Moskalik, a top Russian general involved in war planning.
He wasn’t the first. Ukraine’s SBU and HUR have been systematically targeting Russian officers linked to war crimes.
May 16 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
🧵1/ Putin is acting tough, but the cracks are showing.
His offensives are costing thousands of lives for inches of land.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is growing stronger technologically as cheap drones inflict up to 80% of russian casualties. 2/ Over 3 years of war, Russia has lost nearly 1 million soldiers killed or wounded.
Putin knows time is running out - he’s in his 70s and desperate to revive a dying empire.
That’s why he's growing increasingly paranoid, even having ceremonial guards searched for weapons.
May 15 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
🧵1/ Moscow is brainwashing Ukrainian children into delivering bombs — without telling them they will die in attacks.
This is the next phase of Moscow’s hybrid war: weaponizing children. 2/ In March, two Ukrainian teenagers were recruited via Telegram to plant a bomb in Ivano-Frankivsk.
Russian agents detonated it remotely.
One boy died instantly. The other survived, badly injured.
May 15 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
🧵1/ Meet the Belarusian Cyber Partisans
The anonymous hackers who disrupted Putin’s war plans, derailed Russian logistics, and exposed the repression machine behind Europe’s last dictatorship.
A thread on a small team (@cpartisans) making a big impact. 👇 2/ When Russia launched its invasion in 2022, it expected to take Kyiv in three days.
But a group of hackers in Belarus quietly disrupted those plans, stalling Russian troop movements by targeting the very railways they depended on.
May 14 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
🧵1/ Ukraine is now a drone superpower.
🇺🇦 Ukrainian wartime innovation offers important lessons. Kyiv is showing us what the future of warfare looks like.
Here’s what Ukraine is teaching NATO. 👇 2/ For years, Ukraine trained under NATO guidance. But today, it’s a two-way street.
NATO instructors still teach - but now they also take notes.
Ukraine is fighting the largest European war since WWII - and doing so with unmatched tech agility.
May 14 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
🧵1/ “Kill a navy for the price of a car.” ⚓
Ukraine’s $250K sea drones are dismantling Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and now their air force — these drones sink warships, shoot down fighter jets and helicopters, and are transforming naval warfare.
Here's how they're doing it.👇 2/ In 2014, Russia stole Crimea and 70% of Ukraine’s navy. Ukraine had no functional navy to challenge russia.
Today? Ukraine’s sea drones have driven that fleet 435 miles back.
The Black Sea is no longer russia’s lake.
May 12 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
🧵1/ How well does the West really understand Ukraine?
For centuries, Ukraine has been viewed as a subcategory of Russia. That misunderstanding helped pave the way for war - and continues to shape how the West deals with both Kyiv and Moscow today.
Let’s break it down.👇 2/ When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, many Western analysts predicted Ukraine would fall in 72 hours.
They didn’t understand the country they were watching.
Ukraine didn’t just survive. It pushed Russia back. Now it's year four of Russia's war.
May 8 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
🧵 1/ Ukraine and Russia’s Decoy Drones
Ukraine and Russia are locked in a new kind of arms race, not just over firepower, but over deception.
Economics of warfare turned on its head.
Both sides are flooding the skies with decoy drones to exhaust & outmaneuver air defenses. 2/ Throughout 2024-2025, Ukraine escalated its deep-strike drone campaign - hitting oil refineries, airfields, and infrastructure inside Russia.
One March attack on Moscow was described as the largest drone assault of the war.
May 6 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
🧵1/ Ukrainian strikes are hitting closer to home for the Putin regime, quite literally.
A wave of assassinations by Ukrainian intelligence services deep inside Russia has Kremlin elites and propagandists looking over their shoulders.
Here’s what’s happening 👇 2/ April 25, Moscow:
A car bomb kills Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik - deputy chief of the General Staff’s operations directorate and a key planner who briefed Putin on Ukraine. The message: nowhere in Russia is safe. The FSB is hopeless in stopping Ukrainian intel services.
May 2 • 34 tweets • 11 min read
🧵1/ Mr. Trump. Ukraine does have cards.
Ukraine’s engineers hit Russia 7,000 times with homegrown tech
While allies debated aid, Ukraine’s defense exploded tenfold—unleashing record‑range drones, budget cruise missiles, and a wartime tech revolution. Here’s how they did it 👇 2/ 700 miles inside Russia, fire rains down on a factory that once built the drones used to kill Ukrainian civilians. In seconds, 264,000 tons of ammunition erupt in a single, deafening blast, derailing Russia’s summer offensive before it begins.
Apr 25 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
🧵1/ Garage Land: How Ukraine’s wartime defense tech startup scene is changing the future of warfare.
The war triggered a mobilization in garages and workshops across Ukraine, spawning cutting-edge innovations and hundreds of defense tech startups. 2/ For Americans Justin Zeefe and Deborah Fairlamb, the war was a wake-up call.
They met in early 2022 and launched Green Flag Ventures (GFV), a VC fund backing Ukraine’s wartime tech startups—and taking them global.
Apr 24 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
🧵1/ Ukraine’s Drone Wall is Ready for Russia’s Spring Offensive
As Russia launches its spring offensive, Ukrainian soldiers are confident their drones will give the invaders hell (including the soldiers on crutches). A new kind of warfare - low-cost, high-impact, a drone wall. 2/ Russia’s spring offensive has already begun, says Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. Under pressure to show gains, the Kremlin is turning again to meatgrinder tactics - sacrificing troops for inches.
But this time, they’re running into a wall of drones.
Apr 21 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
A difficult question that needs to be addressed. What to do with the draft dodgers?
Ukraine Debates the Fate of the Men Who Fled
🧵 A thread on the quiet reckoning beginning to surface 1/ Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men left the country to avoid the draft. Many did so illegally. Meanwhile, soldiers at the front, some fighting for years without rotation, watch them on social media living comfortably abroad.