Modern war is fought in the air. But the ground decides who holds the line.

Ukraine's 91st Support Brigade builds the infrastructure that makes every drone strike more effective and every Russian infantry assault more costly.
It is called a kill zone.

Here is how it works — and why it matters.
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Russia's current front-line tactic: constant small infantry group infiltration — pairs, threes, probing for gaps in Ukrainian defensive lines.

The engineering response is a layered obstacle system designed not to stop the enemy immediately, but to slow him down long enough for drones to find him.
The system — explained by sapper platoon commander "Sava":

→ Two low-profile barriers (MPP)
→ Four rows of Egoza concertina wire
→ Two more MPP barriers
→ Repeated across the entire defensive line

"This kind of obstacle can stop even a tank. The wire wraps around the tracks and stops it. Infantry gets tangled in it. It is very difficult to pass through. It is a very effective barrier."

The wire runs even through water. At one position, the obstacle system feeds into a natural lake — with an anti-tank ditch on one side and concertina wire on the berm.

One year ago, Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps @ab3army inherited a front line where Russian infiltration was reaching 10 kilometres deep into Ukrainian defences.

Today: not a single metre lost. Enemy casualties up fivefold. 35,000 russian soldiers killed or wounded in their sector alone.

This is what happens when a military organisation is rebuilt from the ground up — under fire, in real time.
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The scale of what the 3rd Corps manages:

→ 150+ kilometres of front line — 12% of Ukraine's entire contact line, the largest sector of any corps in the Armed Forces

→ Three Russian armies opposing them simultaneously on the Lyman-Borova direction: the 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies and the 1st Tank Army

→ Organic brigades plus attached units from the State Border Guard Service, Territorial Defence, National Guard, Special Operations Forces, SBU, and GUR — all operating under unified command

Deputy Chief of Staff Danylo Novytskyi on the transformation:

"Where before our arrival up to 70 square kilometres per month could be lost — today not a single metre is being lost. This is now one of the most stable sectors of the front."

Three villages in Luhansk region — Nadiya, Hrekivka, Novoyehorivka — remain under Ukrainian control despite Russian claims of full regional occupation.

Ukraine shot down Russian Kalibr cruise missiles. Then took them apart — board by board, component by component.

What Ukraine's Ministry of Defence @DefenceU found inside should be uncomfortable reading for Western regulators and sanctions enforcement agencies.

More than 80–90% of the guidance system electronics: foreign-made. Every part marked. Every manufacturer identified. 🧵👇 1/5

The Kalibr 3M14 is Russia's primary long-range cruise missile — subsonic, terrain-following, capable of striking targets 1,500+ km from launch point.

Ukraine's MoD engineers dismantled intercepted missiles to the circuit board level — mapping every component, tracing every supplier, building a complete structural-functional diagram of what kills Ukrainian civilians.

Key findings:
→ 450kg warhead — 3,600 steel fragmentation elements, each capable of penetrating 10cm of concrete
→ Four-channel guidance: GPS satellite navigation, inertial system, radio altimeter, terminal radar homing
→ Flight profile: as low as 20 metres over water, ~150 metres over terrain — minimising radar detection horizon
→ In spring 2026: first confirmed cluster warhead variant — same configuration as the Kh-101, designed to maximise area coverage against dispersed targets

The missile was designed to destroy port infrastructure and open areas.

Russia is using it against apartment buildings.

In one week, they laid 3,000 mines — without a single soldier crossing the contact line.

Every mine was dropped from a drone.
Ukraine's 91st Support Brigade just redefined what military engineering looks like in 2026.

This is the thread based on Ukrainian front line experience every defence planner should read.
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#Ukraine #UAF #ModernWarfare #LearnFromUkraine 1/5

Classic military engineering: fortifications, bridge-laying, obstacle construction. Dangerous. Slow. Human.

The 91st Brigade's drone battalion still does all of that. But now — remotely.

Acting battalion commander Dmytro, callsign "Donbas," explains the origin:

"If drones can bomb effectively or deliver supplies, why not use them for mining?"

They were the first unit in Ukraine to deploy anti-tank mines from Vampire drones — not for bombing, but for precision minelaying. Everyone said it was impossible. That from 40 metres altitude you couldn't place a TM mine precisely on a road.

"We proved it was real. Our record: a TM placed precisely on a road from 80 metres altitude."

Scepticism didn't survive contact with results.

"Truth dies in the trenches if the commander doesn't hear it."

A year ago, Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps @azov_media inherited a sector in critical condition: units losing cohesion, commanders making decisions in the dark, battlefield reality systematically falsified up the chain of command.

Today, the 3rd Corps holds over 12% of Ukraine's entire front line — and has cut friendly casualties by three times while increasing enemy losses fivefold in its sector.

This is what institutional transformation looks like under fire. 🧵👇

#Ukraine #UAF #ModernWarfare #DefenceReform 1/6

When the 3rd Corps took over its sector on June 4, 2025, the situation on paper bore little resemblance to reality on the ground.

Deputy Commander Kyrylo "Kirt" Berkal describes what they actually found:

"The real state of affairs was very different from what had been reported up the chain. We accepted the sector — and it turned out to be in a far worse condition than we were handed on paper."

Three Russian armies were preparing a coordinated offensive on three directions simultaneously. Unit commanders were making decisions based on distorted information. Soldiers had lost trust in their officers. The result: high casualties, uncontrolled units, and a command culture built on telling superiors what they wanted to hear.

The Corps' first mission was not to advance. It was to find out what was actually true.

"I didn't break my oath. I swore to the Soviet Union — and Russia is its successor..."

Male. 59. Kyiv. Distributed Russian propaganda. Active in closed pro-russian online communities. This man lived among Ukrainians in 2024 — and was actively working against them.

Ukraine just presented the most forensically detailed portrait of who collaborators are. Every country bordering Russia needs to read key findings from this study.
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#Ukraine #UAF #HybridWarfare 1/5

"I was well recruited. I only understood what happened when I was already in prison and read my own messages from the outside..."

Female. 37. Saleswoman. Odesa. Chatted in messengers with an FSB officer. Passed data on military movements through the city.

She wasn't a spy. She wasn't ideological. She was recruited so smoothly she didn't notice it happening.
That is precisely the point. Russia doesn't need fanatics. It needs ordinary people with an unguarded moment and an open phone.

#Ukraine #HybridWarfare #Disinformation

🇸🇪🇺🇦 Putin wanted Sweden outside NATO. Today Sweden is sending Ukraine 36 fighter jets. The map keeps changing in the wrong direction for Moscow.

On May 28, leaders Volodymyr Zelensky @ZelenskyyUa and Ulf Kristersson @SwedishPM announced the agreement at Uppsala Air Base.

The terms:
— 16 Gripen C/D fighters transferred as bilateral aid
— Up to 20 Gripen E/F fighters to be purchased by Ukraine for €2.5 billion from the EU's Ukraine Support Loan
— First aircraft to arrive within the next 10 months
— Ukrainian pilots and technicians are already training on the platform

This is a serious combat air force, on a serious timeline.

Former Swedish Air Force pilot Jussi Halmetoja, with over 2,300 flight hours across 25 aircraft types including the Gripen, explained the platform's unique advantages to United24 @United24media.

Here's why Gripen — and why now. 🧵👇 1/5 — The missile that changes the geometry

The Gripen carries the European Meteor air-to-air missile — a weapon with a ramjet engine that keeps burning throughout flight, unlike conventional missiles whose starter engines stop once fuel is exhausted.

"You get significantly higher speed, significantly greater range, and significantly higher probability of interception," Halmetoja explained.

Effective range: 150–200 kilometres. That single capability changes the threat picture for every Russian aircraft operating along Ukraine's border.

The full weapons suite is broader still: the RBS-15 anti-ship missile (300 km range), short-range air-to-air weapons (25–40 km), and air-to-ground precision munitions. One platform. Three combat domains. Switchable in flight with a single button.

The deep rear is gone. The middle is ow Ukraine’s hunting ground.

You've heard about FPV drones hitting Russian trenches. You've heard about deep strikes on Moscow refineries. There's a third category in between that is quietly becoming a game-changer — and it's reshaping how Ukraine dominates the war.

Here's what "middle-strike" means and why it matters. 🧵👇 1/8 — The missing middle of the battlefield

Most coverage of Ukraine's drone war focuses on two extremes.
At the tactical level: FPV drones, which transformed the front line, hunting targets within a few kilometres.
At the strategic level: deep-strike drones and missiles, which hit Russian refineries, airfields, and infrastructure hundreds or thousands of kilometres inside Russia.

Between them sat a gap. Middle-strike fills it — strike drones operating at operational depth, roughly 30 to 200 km from the front line.

This is the depth where Russia keeps much of the critical infrastructure that sustains its offensive: ammunition depots, command posts, supply routes, air defence systems, radars, and drone control points.

Russia turned occupied Starobilsk into a military hub. Now it hides behind the “civilians” it trapped there.

Russia says Ukraine struck “civilian infrastructure” in occupied Starobilsk. The story dominating Russian media this week leaves out one detail: what Starobilsk actually is.

Here is the full picture for anyone trying to understand what really happened.
🧵👇 1/8 — What set off the Russian campaign

For two days, the occupied town of Starobilsk has dominated Russian online media. The trigger: an aggressive Russian effort claiming Ukraine’s Defence Forces struck civilian objects there.

Putin and Russian propagandists revived their oldest refrain — the “Ukraine bombed Donbas for eight years” narrative they’ve recycled since 2014.

But there is a simple fact that has held true since 2014: Ukraine strikes only military infrastructure and objects used for military purposes. The Starobilsk story is no exception — and the details make that clear.

"The main gap Is no longer in ideas — it's in scaling." A Ukrainian DefTech expert explains where the real investment opportunity now lives.

Ukraine's defence-tech sector is the most dynamic in the world. The country has become what insiders call a "living polygon" for innovation. But more than four years into the full-scale war, the critical challenge has shifted — and what comes next determines whether Ukraine's wartime innovation becomes a long-term strategic asset.

Yana Shkvarovska — COO at @defencebuilder, one of Ukraine’s defence startup accelerators — spoke with ArmyInform about the structural state of Ukraine’s DefTech ecosystem.

Her assessment is essential reading for foreign defence specialists, investors and policymakers tracking where Ukraine’s defence innovation sector is heading.

🧵👇 1/8 — The new bottleneck: not ideas, but scaling

The most important insight from Shkvarovska’s interview is also the most counterintuitive for outside observers.

“By the fifth year of the full-scale war, we have to admit that the main gap is no longer a lack of ideas or technologies, but the ability to bring solutions to the level of systemic use.”

Ukraine has no shortage of innovative ideas. What it lacks — and what the international community most needs to help build — is the systemic infrastructure that can turn prototypes into reliably manufactured products that can be procured at scale, integrated into Defence Forces operations and exported to allies.

For investors, this is the inflection point. Ukrainian DefTech is no longer primarily a venture funding problem. It is an institutional infrastructure problem.

The companies that will shape the next decade of European defence are being built right now — and the ecosystem helping them mature is itself strategically important to understand.

A year ago, Electronic Warfare meant jamming devices. Today it is a cloud-updated operating system. Why every Defence Ministry should be watching.

Ukraine’s electronic warfare industry has spent four years building the only system in the world tested against constant mass drone attack. Its CEOs are now describing the result with surprising candour.

Yaroslav Filimonov — CEO of one of Ukraine’s leading EW manufacturers — gave a detailed interview to ArmyInform on May 15. What he describes is not a snapshot of Ukrainian capability. It is the road every NATO defence ministry is about to have to travel — and Ukraine has already walked it. 🧵👇 1/9 — The shift: from devices to ecosystems

In 2022, Ukrainian EW meant individual jamming units distributed across the front. Operators called targets. Operators jammed targets. The system was a collection of tools.

By 2026, that picture has been replaced by something fundamentally different.

“We are now talking about a complex of electronic support that combines electronic intelligence and electronic warfare in a single system. The key achievement is the integration of three functions: detection, identification, and suppression of targets.”

The system intercepts the drone’s video feed during identification — meaning it can determine in seconds whether a UAV in the sky is Russian or Ukrainian before deciding whether to engage. Everything is managed through a centralised situational awareness server, allowing remote control of dozens of installations and over-the-air software updates.

EW has become an operating system. That single conceptual shift defines almost everything else.

He used to fix pipes. Now he reads the Russian army’s mind. Meet the Ukrainian plumber who became an intelligence analyst.

Callsign “Lys” — “Fox” — is a plumber and gas welder by trade. Today he sits in a small room near Ukraine’s front line and listens to Russian radio traffic.

He hears Russian assault troops asking their commanders for water and being told to crawl forward instead. He hears wounded Russian soldiers being abandoned by their own. He predicts Russian assaults before they begin — by listening to the silence between the words.

He works alongside commander “Shonni,” whose unit has suppressed nearly 11,800 Russian drones in a single year with mostly homemade equipment.

ArmyInform spent time with them.
This is what the radio war actually sounds like. 🧵 1/7 — Inside the room where Russian movements are predicted

A small room. Dozens of information streams converging at once. Drone footage. Radio intercepts. Movement reports. Map updates.

Operational analyst “Lys” (“Fox”) and his team assemble the picture of Russian operations — fragment by fragment — every day.

“We collect every type of data, every piece of information we can get about the enemy, and then we analyse it with different resources. We know which enemy unit is where, what tasks they’re performing, through which channels they transmit information.”

Encrypted Russian communications come in as colours, numbers, and code words. Chaos to a civilian. A coherent system to Lys.

“Yesterday we received information about possible enemy movement. I plotted the route, understood where they might emerge, and passed it to the pilots. The Mavics spotted the enemy. The FPV pilots destroyed him.”

This is the Ukrainian intelligence cycle in 2026: prediction, observation, destruction. Minutes apart, sometimes seconds.

A Russian tank is 40 kilometres from the front line. The crew thinks they’re safe.

The crew is wrong.

A Ukrainian fixed-wing reconnaissance drone is already overhead. The tank’s coordinates are already in Delta — Ukraine’s combat coordination system.

The strike drones are already queuing up. The tank has minutes to live, and the soldiers riding past in the truck behind it don’t know they’re about to be a bonus.

Meet “Domakha” — the reconnaissance wing crew of Ukraine’s 42nd Separate Mechanised Brigade.

ArmyInform spent a day with them. This is what modern warfare actually looks like in 2026. 🧵👇 1/7 — The kill zone is now 50 kilometres deep

On the Novopavlivka direction, Ukrainian fixed-wing reconnaissance drones have transformed Russian rear areas into something the Russians cannot escape: a continuous surveillance zone where every movement is observed and almost every movement becomes a target.

Domakha, the crew’s reconnaissance wing UAV, flies up to 50 kilometres deep into Russian-held territory.

Sometimes further. It identifies positions, equipment, and personnel — and feeds that information to strike crews who finish the work.

Senior crew member “Ramiro” explains why the wing matters more than smaller quadcopters like the Mavic:

“The wing, unlike the Mavic, can fly to where the enemy most often hides things. They try to accumulate there before advancing. We fly up to 50 kilometres. Sometimes further. We detect positions, equipment, personnel. We pass it on, and the guys work it from there. It’s very useful to fly there.”

🇩🇪🇺🇦€11.5 Billion. Patriot missiles. Joint drone production. Why Germany's investment in Ukraine is investment in Germany.

Germany is now Ukraine's largest defence partner — providing nearly one-third of all security assistance Ukraine receives. But the relationship is no longer one of donor and recipient. It has become something more strategically consequential: a genuine partnership.

Ukraine brings combat-tested technology, real war data, and operational knowledge that no other country in the world can offer. Germany brings industrial capacity, capital, and the political will to build a European defence architecture that doesn't depend on borrowed time.

Both sides need each other. Both have admitted it. The agreements signed in 2025 and 2026 prove it. 🧵👇 1/7 — The €11.5 billion commitment for 2026

Germany plans to direct at least €11.5 billion to military assistance for Ukraine in 2026. The figure funds both existing contracts and current Defence Forces requirements — and reflects the German government's assessment that sustained, predictable defence investment in Ukraine is more cost-effective than late-stage reaction to Russian escalation.

What that envelope covers spans every category that defines modern war: air defence, drone and missile capabilities, long-range ammunition, joint production, and shared innovation. Not aid. Operational capability.

An old soviet parachute plane. A 3,000-rounds-per-minute American Minigun. A volunteer crew of two pilots — one of them a former world champion. And 213 russian drones marked on the fuselage.

Meet Ukraine’s most unusual air defence unit.

The New York Times @nytimes published footage of one of the most unusual air defence units in this war. It’s Ukrainian. It’s experimental. It’s working.

This is the story. 🧵 1/8 — The aircraft and the weapon

The plane is an An-28 — a Soviet-era short takeoff and landing aircraft, originally used for parachute jumps. Today it’s been converted into something its designers never imagined: an airborne anti-drone platform.

Mounted on board: an 🇺🇸M134 Minigun — American-made, six-barrelled, capable of firing up to 3,000 rounds per minute. Fifty rounds per second.

Below the wings: hardpoints for interceptor drones.
Painted on the fuselage: 213 marks, one for each Russian drone the crew has shot down.

Kharkiv is 30 km from russia. That’s why Ukraine is building AI-enabled air defence that thinks faster than humans can🧵.

Brigadier General Andriy Lebedenko — Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces — at Drone Autonomy 2026 in Lviv made statements that deserve the attention of every defence analyst and policymaker tracking this war.👇 2/ AI command systems are operational now — not a future project.

“Imagine all these processes — enemy assessment, own forces, their numbers, training, supply, weapons — processed by artificial intelligence in seconds, providing an almost instant result. Analysis of data spanning months and years. We no longer spend hours or days — only minutes, receiving our own high-quality, verified information concentrate that can model the future battle and its development scenarios.”

Every headquarters from battalion to corps currently has humans doing this work manually. Lebedenko confirmed that projects integrating AI into Command & Control systems are already running — and that this is an urgent operational need, not a long-term aspiration.

“The integration of modern management systems and AI agents is not a future prospect. It is an urgent need today — and work in this direction is already underway.”

Ukraine cannot afford an Iron Dome. So it is building something more difficult. The man who broke russia's armour for $13.8 billion explains the challenges.

He was a TV producer. Then he built the most lethal drone unit in Ukraine's war. Now he's been handed the hardest job in the country.

Meet Pavlo Yelizarov — callsign "Lasar" — founder of Lasar's Group, now Deputy Commander of Ukraine's Air Forces for small air defence and counter-drone operations.

In a rare, deeply candid interview with Ukrainska Pravda @ukrpravda_news on April 30, he gave the most honest public account of where Ukraine's war actually stands — the achievements, the gaps, and what is being done about them. 🧵👇 2/ Who Lasar's Group is — and why Yelizarov's voice matters

In May 2022, a former TV producer attached a Starlink terminal to a consumer drone in a field — the first time it had ever been done — and bypassed the radio horizon entirely. Suddenly, his unit could fly low, maintain video signal, and strike targets at distances conventional drone operators couldn't reach.

That insight became Lasar's Group. Today it has destroyed over $13.8 billion worth of Russian equipment.

In March 2026, it ranked first in all eight effectiveness categories tracked by Ukraine's eBaly combat performance system.

1,900 people. Three brigades. Built for result, not for size.

When Minister Fedorov @FedorovMykhailo called Yelizarov on vacation and invited him to join the Air Forces leadership, the argument that convinced him was simple: "We can sit by the TV and tell footballers how to play. Or we can go onto the field. I'm inviting you to play."

He flew back that day.

Ukraine Has a Destruction Plan. They’re Exceeding It. Four Months Running. Madyar Just Told BBC How.

@BBC just published a rare interview with the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces @usf_army — “Madyar” — Robert Brovdi.

Art collector. Grain trader. Former Christie’s regular. Now running the most technologically advanced drone warfare operation in history from a secret underground command centre.

This is what he said. 🧵👇 1/

“The territory 1,500–2,000 km inside Russia is no longer a peaceful rear. The freedom-loving Ukrainian ‘bird’ flies there whenever and wherever it wants.”

Nobody Knew Scotland Until Braveheart. Now the World Has 🇺🇦Killhouse.

Ukraine just made the war film that explains everything you didn’t understand about modern warfare.

It’s called Killhouse.

It opens April 23. And you need to see it.

Here are 5 reasons why. 🧵👇 1/ It’s based on a real operation.

And it’s unlike anything you’ve seen on screen.

Two Ukrainian commanders — callsigns Sid and Sova — conducted a real civilian rescue using drones. When director Lyubomyr Levytsky first saw the drone footage, he didn’t believe it was real.

CNN @CNN came to Ukraine, filmed a report, aired it in prime time. The footage got 2 million views and hundreds of thousands of comments.

“I realised this story about drones is something completely new in cinema. It reaches people. It’s understandable. And it needed to be told.”
— Director Levytsky

The film dramatises that operation — and deepens it with one of the most painful realities of this war: children stolen by Russia.

The civilian couple crossing into occupied territory wasn’t retrieving their parents. They were trying to buy back their daughter.

Russia spent decades and billions building a fleet to dominate the Black Sea.

Ukraine dismantled it with drones — sinking 30+ vessels, evicting the fleet from Crimea, and rewriting the rules of maritime warfare without a large navy of its own.

Every navy in the world is taking notes.
This thread is the receipt and must-read. 🧵👇 1/ March 25, 2022 — Saratov (Large landing ship)

A land-based Tochka-U ballistic missile. Fired at a ship. In a port. That had never been done before.

Saratov was destroyed at the dock in occupied Berdiansk. Two more ships fled with fires burning on their decks.

Russia's amphibious landing on southern Ukraine — cancelled.

🇺🇦🇵🇪 Ukrainian Soldiers Pulled a Peruvian Father From a River. His Story Is a Warning to All of Latin America.

His name is Freddy Gomez.

He is 41. He has two sons — one of them seriously ill.
He came from Peru to Russia looking for work. He almost didn't come home.

This is his story — and his warning to every man in Latin America being offered easy money in Russia right now. 🧵👇 2 / Freddy is a technician from Lima, Peru.

Cameras, computers, electronics. Honest work.

A Colombian contact offered him something better: a government job in Moscow, good pay, official contract.

Everything arranged.

He flew to Russia on February 28.
By March 1, he was drugged at a party, thrown into a car, and waking up inside a Russian military facility.

His phone was gone. His documents were gone.

"I saw the contract and it was all in Russian. I didn't sign it. Then I understood — this wasn't a job. It was military service. And I was going to war."