A society at war - Ukraine's real secret weapon

"Wars are won by societies." Few phrases are repeated more often in Kyiv today. Yet outside Ukraine, the meaning behind those words remains poorly understood.

In the fifth year of Russia's full-scale invasion, western experts focus on Ukraine's resilience through battlefield innovation and the ingenuity of its drone industry. While these factors are decisive, Ukraine's strength lies in something more difficult to replicate: the fusion of civil society, business, government and the military into a single ecosystem of national defence.

The country's ability to withstand an overpowering adversary has emerged not from centralized planning, but from an extraordinary process of societal mobilization. In the fight for national survival, volunteers, software developers, entrepreneurs, local officials, military officers and civic activists have built a unique system of diverse, interwoven networks. Working bottom-up, they often operate faster than state institutions, adapting more flexibly than established military bureaucracies.

Throughout Ukraine, soldiers and experts speak of “Total Defence”, echoing a blueprint developed by Nordic countries. Yet unlike Finland or Sweden, Ukraine did not build its system through institutional planning. Instead, state institutions have fused with the creativity of society in a fast, organic process in which classical boundaries between state, military, business and civil society have become increasingly blurred. Soldiers build software. Entrepreneurs equip frontline units. NGOs shape security policy. Marketing agencies support defence-tech firms. Normal citizens raise money for drones, vehicles and communications equipment.

The result is not militarization in an authoritarian sense. Rather, it is a democratic defence ecosystem in which societal participation is felt as a civic responsibility and adaptation as a survival mechanism.

The key features of this ecosystem are speed and flexibility. In a war where swift adaptation often matters more than scale, Ukraine has repeatedly compensated for material disadvantages through organizational creativity.

No example illustrates this better than Delta, the digital battlefield management system that has become central to Ukrainian military operations. The system emerged through swift and informal cooperation among volunteers, software engineers and military personnel in the wake of Russia’s invasion in 2022. Adopted by the Ministry of Defence, Delta integrates information from drones, reconnaissance units and frontline formations into a shared real-time operational picture. Ukrainian officers often describe it as a "Google Maps for war".

“On Delta and tech-enabled warfighting, Ukraine is undisputed world leader,“ says Issac Flanagan, an international IT-expert supporting Ukrainian defence programmes. “No one else has anything like it. Certainly not Russia, but not Ukraine’s allies either, and it’s time we start catching up.”

The same pattern can be seen inside Ukraine's Armed Forces. The 47th Mechanized “Magura” Brigade is a prime example, having developed into one of Ukraine’s most influential centres of military innovation. Around the brigade has emerged an ecosystem linking active duty soldiers, veterans, software developers, engineers and volunteers. Initially also a loose network, the Magura NGO now develops new processes, supports digital transformation, and serves as a model for military modernization across the Armed Forces.

“The state is still too slow in procurement,” says Maksym Kuzmenko, a former lawyer and platoon commander, now active in the NGO. Digitalization and “new thinking” have deeply transformed Ukraine’s military, underlines his colleague Vla­dys­lav Chernetskyi, an IT specialist who returned from Silicon Valley in 2022. With other Magura members, he developed the Army+ app, which is now used by almost all Ukrainian soldiers. Through a range of modules, it connects troops with their commanders and automates internal processes.

“The leap from a digital stone age to big-data systems was enormous,” Chernetsky says. Today, many procedures, including leave requests, can be done with two clicks, even during a military operation, Kuzmenko adds. “Digital systems help to save lives and also boost the morale of our soldiers.” Ultimately, a new culture has developed in the Armed Forces, with soldiers noting that “Instead of shouting, orders are now delivered by data.“

Beyond the frontline, the transformation runs through all of Ukrainian civil society. The Sahaidachnyi Security Center, a think tank now cooperating with the Reforms Support Office of the Defence Ministry, has documented the landscape of what it calls Ukraine's “Citizen Soldiers” – a wide network of organizations operating at the intersection of defence, policy and civic activism. Beyond providing support to the military, they increasingly also shape strategic thinking and innovation. Challenging conventional assumptions that defence policy is a preserve of governments and security institutions, Ukrainian society has become both an actor and driver of security.

The social dynamic begins with organizations such as Brave to Rebuild, which has been omnipresent, providing instant, hands-on support after missile attacks, power outages and infrastructure failures since 2022. “Where the state has gaps, we step in,” says Kateryna Raputa, head of the emergency response team. Together with colleagues, she built a well-organized network of 800 volunteers, advises municipal administrations, and develops handbooks to help authorities and residents prepare more effectively for crises. The organization has begun to attract international recognition. In April, Rebuild’s director, Alona Krytsuk, was invited to speak at a “Blackout Conference” hosted by the city of Prague.

On an equally important defence line, NGOs like Ukraine2Power work to ensure energy resilience against Russia’s massive attacks on Ukraine's energy grid. During the winter energy crisis in Kyiv, Ukraine2Power delivered some 6,000 emergency kits to residents without heat and electricity, most notably to vulnerable households. Beyond emergency relief, the NGO is focused on sustainable energy projects, supplying schools, kindergartens and hospitals with solar power systems and battery storage units. In a war targeting society as much as armies, such initiatives are central in Ukraine’s “Total Defence”.

Nowhere is Ukraine more ahead than in strategic communication. Leading experts, such as Liubov Tsybulska, have focused on hybrid warfare as an essential part of national security since 2014. Long before concepts such as FIMI and cognitive warfare became fashionable in Brussels, Ukrainian practitioners were combatting Russian information attacks on a daily basis.

As the first head of Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security, Tsybulska helped Ukraine move from a post-Soviet state-propaganda model to a sophisticated communications system. A sleek social media campaign run for the Ministry of Defence attracted millions of followers after 2022. Today, Tsybulska leads her own NGO called Join Ukraine, which advises western institutions on hybrid warfare. Her latest initiative is a“Total Defence” certificate course at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University. “Security is built not only by institutions,” she noted at the launch, “but through the shared responsibility of individuals, communities, and every sector of society“.

OpenMinds, a former NGO specialized on active countermeasures against disinformation, is a case in point. Founded by data specialists, behavioural researchers and tech experts in 2022, the organization has grown into a defence-tech company registered in London, working with 30 governments and institutions around the world, including eight NATO member states.

OpenMinds also highlights how the boundaries between national security, civil society and the private sector are dissolving. Almost every Ukrainian company is directly or indirectly involved in the country's defence. The marketing and IT firm Figmatica, for example, helps defence-tech startups and army units present their projects professionally to attract investors. “Marketing can also be a way to support our army,” says Mykhailo Yemchura, head of Figmatica’s marketing department

The leading defence tech investor Eveline Buchatskiy puts it similarly. “Every company we invest in produces something that contributes to our national defence,” says Buchatskiy, who had also built her career in the United States before returning to Ukraine in 2022. Her defence-tech fund, D3, whose backers include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, invests in Ukrainian and European military and security technologies. This includes everything from drones and AI to sensing systems and demining solutions. D3 serves as “a bridge between Ukraine’s innovation ecosystem, western capital, and NATO partners,” Buchatskiy underlines.

To western partners, Ukraine offers a system in which security innovation is driven by networks linking entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, soldiers and public institutions. The system emerged from necessity rather than design, but provides reassurance on something many Europeans are increasingly doubting – that democratic societies are capable of coordinated and effective action on a national scale.

While Europe is focused on Ukraine's battlefield innovations, it should pay equal attention to the social infrastructure that makes progress in asymmetrical warfare possible. Often described as a laboratory of military technology, Ukraine also presents a testcase of democratic resilience. Perhaps this is what Europeans can learn most from Ukraine.

Barbara von Ow-Freytag is a journalist, political scientist and expert on civil society in the Eastern Partnership region and Russia. She is Member of the Board at the Prague Civil Society Centre, which supports civic activism and independent media in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.