The changing face of the battle for Ukraine has taken much of the world by surprise, both in terms of the horrific scale of casualties that Russia is enduring — nearly 40,000 last month, according to Ukrainian officials — and the dynamism and sheer chutzpah that has characterised Ukraine’s war effort.
For the world’s democracies, the most important lesson to draw from Ukraine’s doggedness and brilliant innovations and improvisations may be that we should not be so surprised.
Our lack of confidence in Ukraine, particularly at the start of the war, and our overestimation of Russia’s military might, is closely connected to our weakening faith in democracy as a system. This political alienation is not only wrong, but dangerous. The courage and determination of ordinary Ukrainians in the face of almost immeasurable challenges should give us more confidence in our core values and way of life.
Ukrainians recently demonstrated those values after four and a half years of war. When determined and constructive mass public protests erupted in the wake of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s sacking last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky responded no less constructively to the complaints by replacing the army commander-in-chief who had opposed Fedorov and his focus on high-tech warfare, underscoring the remarkable fact that Ukraine is determined to fight this war as a democracy.
There are several reasons why Ukraine has been able to stymie its much larger neighbour. For starters, Ukraine is not the fractured society Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaims it to be. Archbishop Borys Gudziak, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States and president of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, told me, shortly after the war started, that Zelensky is so effective because he is following the lead of the ordinary people of Ukraine. That much was clear in his response to the countrywide pro-Fedorov demonstrations.
The fundamental importance of unity under fire should be familiar to the West. What we are seeing in Ukraine is a latter-day version of the united, democratic British national spirit we recall so proudly in commemorating the escape from Dunkirk, 86 years ago last month.
Ukraine’s system of decentralised, grassroots military procurement is an example of democratic unity in action. Brigades buy their own weapons, directly from arms-makers. Sometimes, they make their own weapons. That means very close interaction between fighters and weapons makers, with innovation cycles sometimes as truncated as two weeks. The defence ministry rewards the most successful brigades with more money to buy weapons. Civilians can and do make direct contributions to their favourite units.
Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, the giant German defence firm, commented on this very homegrown defence sector at the end of March: “It’s Ukrainian housewives,” he told an interviewer. “They have 3-D printers in the kitchen, and they produce parts for drones. This is not innovation.”
Ukrainians could have been insulted, but they decided to see the comment as a back-handed compliment. A #MadeByHousewives hashtag went viral on Ukrainian social media within 24 hours. My friend Oleksandr Kamyshin replied on X: “Rheinmetall says our #LEGODrones are #MadeByHousewives in their kitchens. Fine. Meanwhile our #LEGODrones already burned more than 11,000 Russian tanks.” Unsurprisingly, Rheinmetall walked back the comment, posting: “We have the utmost respect for the Ukrainian people’s immense efforts in defending themselves... It is to Ukraine’s particular credit that it is fighting highly effectively even with limited resources.”
At the same time, Ukraine has found that its diversity is its strength, something many Western democracies also should remember. In a political environment where inclusiveness is derided as virtue-signalling, if not positively dangerous, and where we are subjected to US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth’s cartoonish cosplay of vitriolic white Christian masculinity in the Pentagon, Ukraine’s lived reality of war — neither macho nor ethnically rooted — is a powerful corrective.
Women are central to Ukraine’s war effort. Consider Iryna Terekh, the CEO of Fire Point, and possibly the very “housewife” who inspired Papperger’s thoughtless comment. She makes the “flamingo” missiles that were used in the strike on Titan-Barrikady, the Volgograd producer of launch systems for ballistic missiles, last month.
Terekh is in her early thirties, a mother of two, and trained as an architect. She decided to become a missile maker after surviving the occupation and massacre of civilians in Bucha at the start of the war.
Ukrainian women are fighting, too, including in combat positions. Some 20 per cent of military cadets are women and an astounding 80 per cent of Ukrainians support women’s inclusion in the military. Ukrainian women soldiers tell me they see fighting as feminine. Ukrainian mothers are especially convinced of this. After all, it is a mother’s job to protect her children. @Project Syndicate, 2026
Chrystia Freeland
The writer is a former foreign minister, finance minister, and deputy prime minister of Canada, is Warden of Rhodes House at the University of Oxford
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
