The innovation shown by Zelensky’s regime in the face of Russia’s ongoing bombardment merits more recognition from its allies
Samuel Ramani
25 January 2026
The Telegraph
Volodymyr Zelensky issued a stinging riposte against European complacency at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In a fiery speech, the Ukrainian president condemned Europe’s inability to convert €90bn (£78bn) in Russian frozen assets into a loan to Ukraine and declared that “Putin has managed to stop Europe”.
Zelensky’s frustration with European inaction is exacerbated by Ukraine’s dire humanitarian crisis. Due to Russia’s relentless drone and missile assaults on Ukrainian energy facilities, almost 60 per cent of Kyiv residents lack electricity and 30 per cent lack central heating. More than 600,000 Kyiv residents have fled their homes and the Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament, has gone dark.
In the face of extreme adversity, Ukrainians have displayed remarkable resilience while their Western powers short-sightedly fail to complement these efforts. While Ukraine has traditionally used coal, gas and nuclear power to meet its electricity needs, its wartime energy strategy has placed a greater emphasis on wind power.
This gambit has reaped dividends. While Russian attacks have reduced Ukraine’s grid capacity from 55GW to under 20GW since 2022, Ukrainian wind turbines have been remarkably resilient.
During the first two years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, only 11 out of Ukraine’s 700 wind turbines were damaged or destroyed. While Russian drones have directly targeted wind turbine blades and missiles have been deployed against their engine systems, the decentralised nature of wind farms has limited the scale of destruction.
Ukraine’s innovations in the military technology sphere are even more striking. As Russia has mass produced its Geran-2 analogue to Iranian Shahed drones, the scale and frequency of its strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities have grown exponentially.
The intensity of Russian attacks has depleted Ukraine’s finite air defence missile stocks and increased the financial costs of shooting down Russian drones to unsustainable levels. In response to these financial and war materiel constraints, Ukraine’s indigenous defence industry has invested in the creation of low-cost interceptor drones to neutralise Russia’s arsenal.
In June 2025, Zelensky revealed that four Ukrainian companies had devised functional anti-Shahed interceptor drones and that two of them were “very successful”. As Russia’s winter attacks intensified, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have created an “anti-drone dome” with mobile combat units that use interceptor drones.
This innovation allows Ukraine to nimbly and effectively restrict the damage inflicted by Russian drone swarms.
While this spirit of ingenuity has kept Ukraine in the fight, its creativity and resolve has practical limits. Ukraine’s wartime economy cannot the $20bn costs that are needed to reach its 2030 energy targets and enhance its reliance on wind power.
While the Ukrainian Defence Ministry plans to distribute 40,000 interceptor drones to the military by the end of January, Russia is scaling up its drone production from 404 to 1,000 per day. No matter what Ukraine does in response, its energy crisis will get worse before it gets better.
To reverse this dynamic, some Western multinationals and Nato allies have come to Ukraine’s aid. Earlier this week, Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian defence minister, announced a partnership with US tech giant Palantir to equip interceptor drones with AI capabilities.
Britain has super-charged its production of Octopus unmanned aerial vehicles and intends to manufacture thousands of these drones each month.
On the energy side of the equation, Poland pledged to increase its gas exports to Ukraine from 600,000 cubic meters/hour to 720,000 cubic meters/hour in February.
Zelensky’s pleas convinced Germany to provide Ukraine with €60m in winter readiness assistance this week. This augments the hundreds of millions of euros of emergency air defence assistance that Nato allies offered Ukraine during the second half of 2025.
While these developments are positive, they are half-measures in the midst of the current crisis that Ukraine faces. Political squabbles and operational challenges have diluted the efficacy of air defence assistance to Ukraine.
While Petr Pavel, the Czech president, supports the delivery of drone-busting L-159 jets to Ukraine, his country’s prime minister, Andrej Babis, has iced these shipments. Supply chain issues and inclement weather prevented Britain from meeting its target delivery of 15 Gravehawk air defence units in 2025.
Strategic investments in Ukraine’s battered energy sector have been equally underwhelming. While the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) provided €500m to Naftogaz for emergency gas production and €75m euros to Ukrhydroenergo for emergency grid repairs, large-scale strategic investments in Ukraine’s wind turbines and renewable energy potential have proved elusive.
These band-aid solutions undermine Ukraine’s ability to strengthen its most resilient energy production facilities and embolden Russia to continue striking Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure.
The tragic irony of Europe’s inadequate support for Ukraine is that it hurts the Europeans almost as much as the Ukrainians.
Investing in Ukraine’s cutting-edge indigenous drone interceptor technology would enhance the Nato alliance’s resilience against some of Russia’s most dangerous military innovations.
Supporting Ukraine’s nascent renewable energy sector would allow it to harness its rare earth potential and emerge as a critical long-term contributor to Europe’s divestment from Russian fossil fuels.
Ukraine’s ingenuity in the face of unimaginable hardship is laudable. It is in the strategic interests of its European powers to fully reward this courage.
Dr Samuel Ramani has been an Associate Fellow at RUSI since 2021 and is the CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk (PGR), a London-based consultancy. Before joining RUSI, Samuel completed his MPhil in Russian and East European Studies, and DPhil in International Relations at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Samuel is the author of two recent books on Russian foreign policy for Hurst and Oxford University Press: ‘Putin’s War on Ukraine: Russia’s Campaign for Global Revolution’ (2023) and ‘Russia in Africa: Resurgent Great Power or Bellicose Pretender’. Samuel’s third book ‘Rudderless Superpower: The United States in Africa’ will be published by the same publishers in 2025.