In a secret location in Ukraine, more than half a dozen drone companies test their latest models across the full-spectrum of roles and technology: rotary, seven-inch, nine-inch, 10-inch, four-rotor to six-rotor, catapult, and rocket launchers as well as short take-off and landing, fixed-wing, and bullet interceptor variants among them.

Ukrainian drone types come thick and fast: the Sting, Merops, Hornet, Lyutyy (“Fierce”), Scythe, Morok, Skyline, FP-1, Leleka-100, Shark, PD-2, Furia, Punisher, Shark, Raybird-3, Furia (or “Fury”), UJ-25 Skyline, GOR, Molfar and Bober (“Beaver”), Wild Hornet, and Kolibri.

This is little more than a smattering of the smorgasbord of offerings, as there are more than one hundred types in circulation. Then there are strategic weapons such as the Flamingo cruise-missile, locally built by Fire Point and initially developed around Soviet-era jet engines taken from ubiquitous training aircraft.

And the confusion of types and roles and technology of the air domain is only amplified by delving into unmanned ground systems (UGVs) along with naval unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The former has taken on offensive and logistical roles; the USVs such as SeaBaby have become the scourge of Russia’s Black Sea and Shadow Fleet.

The names are almost as difficult to keep up with as the labelling of companies, which seems incomprehensibly random, from General Cherry to Swift Beat, Ukrspecsystems, Vyriy, Athlon Avia, TAF Drones and, more predictably perhaps, Skyeton, Terminal Autonomy, Airlogix, Wild Hornets, UkrJet, and Skyfall.

Crowdfunding

Swift Beat, the company that produces the Merops interceptor responsible for 90% of Shahed kills as well as the Hornet, a $7 000, 150km-range strike drone, is backed by the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. But many others have been crowdfunded or staked by local entrepreneurs successful in other areas.

There are more than 450 manufacturers, from entities producing 100 000s of drones monthly to garage start-ups. They all share several traits, not least the application of technology in clever ways along with a big dollop of pragmatism in finding a solution to an otherwise deadly combination of Ukraine’s economic and demographic plight and Russia’s military heft and geopolitical ambition.

Drones are Ukraine’s answer to having their back to the wall, lacking people and money, but damned if they are going to surrender to the Russians. What started off as a tactical copter reconnaissance tool with the fixed-wing platform used to launch missiles quickly morphed into a race to build volumes of kamikaze weapons using racing drone technology.

Then, as the number and sophistication of drones increased, along with the use of loitering munitions, so too did the range, accuracy, and roles of these copters. To their tactical use was increasingly added a strategic role as a relatively cost-effective means of taking the fight to Russia absent manned aerial platforms and given Western caveats on the supply or use of sophisticated long-range missile types.

The same week as our visit to the test site, protests erupted across Ukraine’s cities in support of the defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the man who is synonymous with the digital transformation of the country and its military. While some people might see these protests as a weakness, it’s a strength, whatever the interpretation by Russian bots and bloggers.

Bigger Choice

This is bigger than a choice between Fedorov or the man that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy backed over Fedorov, the Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrskyi.

It is viewed as a battle between Ukraine’s future and its Soviet past: innovation versus fear, top-down state versus a bottom-up transformation, accountability versus manipulation, data-driven-decision making versus ineffectiveness.

The Economist reported that the real reason for Fedorov’s dismissal was not simply his conflict with Syrskyi, but his attempts to implement anti-corruption reforms. An audit of the Ministry of Defence reportedly uncovered $6.5 billion in excessive spending. Fedorov also required officials to undergo polygraph tests, and many were dismissed, either because they refused to take the test or because of the results.

There were vested interests in steering contracts in the old way. This explains why the introduction of open tenders cut an estimated 20% from the defence bill.

The paradox is that corruption is precisely the manner in which Russia was able to maintain its control over Ukraine for so long. If Ukraine had been more corrupt, then invasion would not have been necessary, and Kyiv would have continued in subservience.

For this reason, governance and democracy go hand in hand, just as corruption and authoritarianism go together. This intersection between elite power and money is a lesson for others beyond Ukraine.

Viktor Yushchenko, the former Ukrainian president, scrolls his iPad for the image by the Ukrainian painter Ivan Izhakevych of eight Ukrainian peasants being sold into slavery in exchange for two dogs.

"We are fighting the last quasi-empire on the European continent," says the man who led the 2003-04 Orange Revolution. “It is in some way a ceremonial funeral of the evil that has confronted humanity for 300 years.”

For Ukrainians this is an existential struggle, the difference between a life of freedom and choices and a slow, suffocating death. The history of Ukraine, Yushchenko reminds, is a grim testament to the cost of peace on Russian terms. He cites the words of Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister who was born in Kyiv: “To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.”

Existential Threat for Centuries

Russia has been an existential threat to Ukraine for more than four centuries. In 1709, the joint forces of Ukraine and Sweden suffered a bitter defeat from Russian forces in the Battle of Poltava. Thereafter followed a bitter history of the suppression of the Ukrainian language and serfdom, as depicted in Izhakevych’s painting, a practice that was only lifted in 1861, four years before slavery was abolished in the United States. Just as in America, it has left scars on Ukrainian society.

Ukraine gained independence in 1918 at the end of the First World War, only to lose as the Soviet empire bloodily followed the Russian empire, similarly denying Ukrainians their language, their culture, and their freedom. The Holodomor famine of 1932–33 (recognised as an act of genocide) cost the lives of millions of Ukrainian peasants.

More was to follow in the Great Purge of 1937, targeting prominent writers and artists among its victims, who became collectively known as the Executed Renaissance. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians were deported for alleged collaboration with the Nazis. Despite this resistance, Vladimir Putin believes that history is his destiny.

This offers a perspective why, just like others in Africa and Asia fighting for self-determination, Ukrainians are willing to fight for their freedom in an anti-colonial struggle.

Resilience

“We will never defeat Russia by treating our army like Russia treats theirs,” says Daria Kaleniuk. “The reason why Ukraine is still able to sustain this war and keep fighting is because of grassroots innovation, this drive coming to the people of Ukraine… When we didn’t have ammunition to fight, we invented drones.”

The protests were not because Ukrainians wanted the country to fail; to the contrary. “We will never win … if we treat our army like the Russian are treating theirs.”

Ukraine’s resilience is impressive because they have kept up with comparatively few resources and also because Russia is relatively so inefficient. It reflects the difference between Ukraine’s horizontal society, where people just get on with things, and Russia, where orders are given and expected to be obeyed. This, too, is about a war of the future – citizens are clear in Ukraine about which one they would prefer, and have voted that way since Yushchenko’s Orange Revolution in 2004.

The technocratic, modernising, and more individualistic class have rejected the alignment of Russian identity with suffering, no longer being willing to have young men sent to their deaths in the protection of random bits of territory.

In South African terms, Ukraine is like having 40 million Afrikaners, all running about, horizontally networked, making a plan, and resisting authority every step of the way.

An admirable people.

Dr Mills is in Ukraine writing a book, and is with the Platform for African Democrats.