By Tamar Jacoby

It looked like an ordinary, modest house on the outskirts of Sloviansk, a small city just behind the front line in eastern Ukraine. But the parlor’s heavy furniture had been replaced by folding tables and six big flat-screen TVs. Five men in fatigues monitored the images flashing across the screens: direct feeds from some three dozen first-person-view (FPV) drones hovering above the front line just 15 miles away.

There were no fighters in the images and no weapons or military vehicles. Both Russians and Ukrainians have learned to keep all that hidden from the drones constantly swarming overhead. But the invaders could still advance at any moment, and the soldiers in the command center — members of a new unit called “Heavenly Punishment” — scoured the video feeds, zooming in and out on tree lines and scattered rocks that might disguise foxholes.

A sixth screen integrated the information from the feeds: a giant animated map showing both sides’ positions and assets — a Russian tank here, a Russian surveillance drone loitering there. No one spoke as the men watched and probed, waiting for the opportunity to order a strike, either by an attack drone or one of the unit’s few remaining artillery cannons.

Keep reading in New York Post.

By Tamar Jacoby

Andrii Ryzhov, an assistant chaplain in the Ukrainian army, peers into the back of his battered Volkswagen van on a leafy side street in Kramatorsk, just 15 miles from the front line. These are the tools of his trade: dog-eared cardboard boxes containing packaged food, canned goods, and pocket prayer books, nestled among rolls of camouflage netting and combat gear, including bullet-proof vests.

Ryzhov had telephoned one of his commanders that morning and discovered that the officer was in the hospital—so now he is visiting, unbidden. The chaplain packs a box to take into the clinic across the street: two packages of cookies, a handful of hard candy, dried fruit, and nuts, as well as a copy of the New Testament. “We do whatever we can to support the men, believers, and nonbelievers,” Ryzhov’s fellow chaplain, Serhii Tsoma, explains to me. “And it’s often very simple—cook food, fix cars, tell jokes, whatever makes them feel better.”

I first met Ryzhov in early 2022, not long after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. His hometown, Irpin, a bedroom community outside of Kyiv, had fought off the first wave of Russian invaders, a show of resistance that stunned Moscow at a time when the Ukrainian capital was expected to fall in days. Most able-bodied residents left Irpin during the monthlong battle. But Ryzhov remained, driving into the shelling day after day to evacuate the elderly and provide humanitarian assistance for those who refused to go.

Keep reading in Washington Monthly.

By Tamar Jacoby

I’ve suspected for months that something was changing in Ukraine. Virtually everyone I had asked since the beginning of the war had maintained that Kyiv could win, with the only acceptable outcome being Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbas region controlled by Moscow since 2015. But last winter, you could sense a growing uncertainty, and a few of my friends began to whisper about alternative scenarios.

Two recent polls shed a bright light on these unusually unspoken concerns. One sounding, conducted in May by the Rating Group, found 27 percent of respondents uncertain that Ukraine would succeed in liberating all its lost territory, while 26 percent were willing to negotiate a compromise. Also in May, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found 32 percent—more than triple the number who agreed a year before—willing to give up “some” territory to “achieve peace and preserve [Ukrainian] independence.”

This doesn’t mean Ukrainians are ready to surrender. KIIS project manager Anton Grushetsky cautions against exaggerating his team’s findings. Given the situation on the ground, he argues, Ukrainians remain remarkably resilient. The fighting on the frontline is all but stalemated; Russian missiles bombard Kyiv and other cities every day. More than three-quarters of the country has lost a close friend or relative, and no one is confident of continued Western support. Still, only 32 percent are considering compromise, while more than half—55 percent—are standing firm, insisting that “no circumstances” could justify conceding territory.

Keep reading in Washington Monthly.

By Tamar Jacoby

Vladyslav Ripko’s day job is working for the Ukrainian government as a financial analyst. But in the evenings and on weekends, he and his friends make drones for the army. He calls their group an “enthusiast collective.” All 12 members volunteer their time. They raise money for drone components on a crowdfunding platform. One volunteer with a 3D printer makes small parts they cannot buy. The team assembles the components in a Kyiv workshop and sends the finished product to the front using a commercial package service.

Unlike many larger Ukrainian drone producers, Ripko’s amateur collective receives no direct help from the government. Still, he said, he benefits from the government’s campaign to support private businesses building unmanned autonomous vehicles, or UAVs, for the armed forces.

Some half-dozen government agencies, including the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, have provided tax breaks, start-up grants, and technical support, rolling back the red tape and regulation that hem in much of the rest of the Ukrainian economy. The result is that more than 200 registered companies—some industry insiders count more than 500 producers if you include smaller firms and volunteers in garages—now supply troops with hundreds of thousands of drones a month.

Keep reading in Foreign Policy.