Jahara Matisek, William Reno, and Sam Rosenberg
At this month’s NATO summit in Vilnius, the extensive security assistance that the West is providing Kyiv was brought into sharp focus. At the meeting, the United States and its allies announced a plan to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s—a follow-on to the Biden administration’s May 2023 decision to allow NATO allies to send the fighter jets to Ukraine. The French government announced that it was sending long-range SCALP cruise missiles. These announcements build on other recent pledges, including Germany’s promise in May to provide $3 billion in military aid, including tanks, artillery, and antiaircraft guns. Given the size and military importance of these transfers, it may seem that the West is covering Ukraine’s war needs.
But major weaponry and ammunition are only part of the story. Despite its growing access to advanced Western systems, Ukraine continues to face critical deficiencies in many essential areas, including protective equipment, maintenance and logistics, and spare parts for weapons and vehicles. Combined with shortfalls in various forms of nonlethal aid and equipment, these gaps not only significantly limit Ukrainian performance on the battlefield but also blunt the impact of the Western aid packages. Moreover, Western governments, despite their best efforts, are often not able to respond rapidly to these shifting immediate needs.
To address this problem, a veritable army of private actors and nongovernmental organizations have quietly stepped in. Over the past year, such informal assistance has come to play a crucial role in many aspects of the Ukrainian war effort and counteroffensive. For instance, the Sabre Training Advisory Group, a donor-funded NGO based in Ukraine, recently trained platoon and company level tactics for Ukraine’s 68th Jaeger Brigade, transmitting skills and expertise that helped the unit liberate Blahodatne and Zaporizhzhia in early June. Similarly in June, another Ukraine-based NGO, Anomaly, discovered that Ukraine’s 23rd Mechanized Brigade had been sent to the front without any medical supplies. Within three days, Anomaly was able to provide the unit with medical supplies and training. By operating largely out of public view, such support has significantly enhanced Ukraine’s fighting capacity. Nonetheless, some Western governments, including that of the United States, have hindered this work, whether by blocking the private transfer of some nonlethal equipment or by imposing excessive bureaucratic hurdles for export licenses or for requirements for retired U.S. service members who are seeking to train Ukrainian military personnel.
With the right kind of support, this innovative strategy could provide the edge that Ukraine needs to sustain a grueling ground war that is likely to last for months to come. It could also provide a template for how open societies can respond to future conflicts. But to have this impact, it will require sustained support, including from Western governments themselves. Particularly now that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is at a critical juncture and many daily needs have become acute, the United States and its allies should reevaluate the role of informal assistance and do more to facilitate it—or at a minimum, to not hinder private actors from improving Ukrainian military effectiveness.
COSSACKS AND CYBERPUNKS
Although it has received relatively little scrutiny, informal assistance to Ukraine has already shown several distinct advantages over formal state-based aid. It offers greater flexibility and responsiveness. It can be delivered at low risk to Ukraine’s Western supporters, increasing the lethality of the Ukrainian military in ways that Russia does not perceive as escalatory. And whereas formal state-to-state military assistance tends to be highly centralized, with equipment and weapons delivered from logistical hubs to depots and requiring multiple steps to reach combat zones, informal assistance can often be provided directly. Relying on their own trusted networks and private contacts in the field, volunteers and NGOs—such as Sabre Training Advisory Group and Anomaly—can enable point-to-point delivery of equipment and aid to commanders and units, allowing assistance to be tailored to specific needs, times, and locations. They can also bypass cumbersome bureaucratic processes and limit the diversion of supplies during transit.
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the United States has provided over $41 billion of military assistance, with allies and partners providing an additional $13 billion in security aid. But much of this has been in the form of lethal equipment such as tanks, missile systems, and munitions. Comparatively little aid is directed toward the urgent everyday needs of soldiers. Volunteers, crowdfunding, charitable groups, NGOs, and international corporations step in to address those equally important needs, whether they are feeding troops, giving instruction in combat medicine, demining and defusing Russian munitions, supplying modified commercial drones, or providing helmets, body armor, and basic safety equipment.
Much like the Cossacks’ introduction of irregular tactics and flexible warfighting strategies in the sixteenth century, informal assistance has helped shape and transform the tenacious Ukrainian way of war. Crucial to Ukrainian success has been the ability to fight with minimal resources, integrate weapons and technologies in novel ways, and utilize nonstandard help, including from volunteers, NGOs, donations, and private chat groups with Western military advisers. Taken together, these developments provide an alternative, more agile foundation for Ukraine’s warfighting capacity than Western governments themselves are able to provide. Innovative and evolving, Ukrainian forces have learned to combine the old, the new, and the available to generate the most effective outcomes on the battlefield. One British military trainer we interviewed described Ukrainian artillery tactics as a “cyberpunk approach” to spotting, prioritizing, targeting, and shooting Russian positions as they adapted to the need to conserve ammunition. Novel Cossack-style adaptation has become a crucial way for Ukraine to sustain its counteroffensive and will be vital in its efforts to use attrition and maneuver to recapture Russian-occupied areas over the medium to long term.
Most groups assisting Ukraine provide nonlethal equipment and training.
Informal support is likely to become only more important the longer the war continues. For example, while formal Western training programs generally lack the capacity to rapidly adapt to changing demands, volunteers, NGOs, and private organizations are continually updating and streamlining their instruction programs with Ukrainian forces. Informal assistance networks can be activated to fill crucial gaps in real time to respond to pressures on supply lines and maintenance and to quickly replenish basic equipment, an advantage over slower-moving Western aid packages. Furthermore, if the war becomes protracted, sustaining strong political support in Western capitals could become increasingly challenging. In the event of shifting political winds, informal assistance would offer a modest backstop.
Despite their demonstrable value, many volunteers and groups active in Ukraine have run into bureaucratic roadblocks. In interviews with us, some have suggested that the U.S. State Department is wary of private organizations becoming involved in Ukrainian aid, because of the perceived risk that the government could lose control over the direction and outcomes of assistance efforts and because of concern that it may signal another step of escalation against Russia. Yet most groups assisting Ukraine provide nonlethal equipment and training. These forms of support are defensive and nonescalatory, and they can provide an essential and complementary function to formal Western aid, ensuring that Ukrainian forces remain operational in prolonged combat and helping them outthink and outfight their Russian adversaries.
RIFLE PARTS AND FIREPROOF SUITS
After 16 months of war, examples of the impact of informal assistance on the war are legion. In March, the Ukrainian World Congress, an NGO based in Canada, raised $40 million to purchase 25 armored vehicles for the Ukrainian territorial defense forces. The vehicles have been used to outfit Ukraine’s 127th Brigade of the territorial defense forces of Kharkiv, a unit that fought in Bakhmut in May. Since much of the state-based aid is directed toward Ukraine’s regular army units, this informal support for territorial defense units addresses a critical and often overlooked element of Ukraine’s security, as these units were regularly being rotated through Bakhmut in 2023. Similarly, Atlas Global Aid is a nonprofit that has provided Ukrainian troops with over 10,000 articles of cold-weather gear, 408 sleeping systems, 350 pieces of body armor, 200 medical kits, 93 helmet attachments and adapters, 23 infrared lasers, 20 drones, and other gear and training. Such efforts give Ukrainian soldiers a qualitative edge against the more poorly equipped Russian troops.
Blue/Yellow Ukraine, an NGO based in Lithuania and the United States, has been traveling along the frontlines and distributing a simple $3 part to repair American-made M-4 rifles used by Ukrainian forces. The part breaks easily with heavy use and prevents the weapon from firing. Unfortunately, frontline units do not receive spare parts or kits to fix their M-4 rifles. By addressing this minor issue, the organization has been able to ensure that the Ukrainian forces have fully functional weapons. Or consider the Ukrainian air force. Most units do not have the funds to purchase protective flight equipment, such as aviation helmets and fireproof flight suits and gloves, making them vulnerable to foreseeable hazards in the cockpit during a hard landing or an ejection. To answer this need, in March 2023, Trevor Gersten, a recently retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, started his donation initiative, known as Flight Gear Ukraine, which has provided more than 200 flight suits along with dozens of jackets, gloves, vests, and generators, as well as hundreds of individual first-aid kits.
Sabre Training Advisory Group has received approval from a Ukrainian brigade to purchase and transport supplies. It can do this more quickly and cheaply than Ukraine’s own Ministry of Defense, and can ensure proper tactical training and logistics to sustain long-term combat. For one Ukrainian brigade, the advanced medical training provided by Sabre proved critical during a battle in the Donbas: after the brigade received 40 casualties, Ukrainian soldiers were able to use their training, and all but one survived. Noting how unprepared and untrained Russia’s own units are, the political scientist Tanisha M. Fazal has described Ukraine’s military medicine as a “critical advantage” that has allowed it to avoid Russia’s very high death rate.
Informal security assistance has also been used to address overlooked elements within Ukraine’s security apparatus. For instance, in November 2022, Spirit of America—a U.S.-based organization that is the only NGO operating in Ukraine with the U.S. government’s official support—provided seed funding to establish a captain’s career course within Ukraine’s territorial defense forces to ensure better decision-making in the current counteroffensive. Additionally, Spirit of America has supported a Ukrainian initiative to refurbish thousands of dilapidated military vehicles to augment Ukraine’s logistical ability to transport supplies through rough terrain on the front.
Many groups have leveraged rapid fundraising to meet urgent needs. Saint Javelin, an organization based in Canada and Ukraine, have raised over $2 million through clothing sales and fundraisers to pay for pickup trucks, generators, medical aid kits, and other crucial items for Ukrainian forces. The Ukraine Defense Fund, an NGO based in Ukraine and run by a former Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur, has raised over $6.5 million for a variety of military needs, including commercial drones for intelligence gathering—support that has had a measurable effect on Ukrainian military performance. According to the group’s CEO, the average Ukrainian artillery team needs 60 rounds to a hit a target, whereas an artillery team that is equipped with drone-spotting capabilities needs only five rounds to destroy an enemy target. Given that most Ukrainian units have acquired drones via informal channels, this improvement in performance underscores the stark advantages that informal nonlethal aid can bring.
NIMBLE, CHEAP, EFFECTIVE
In addition to providing kinds of support that states cannot, informal aid can leverage the distinct advantages of the private sector. In the early months of the war, for example, Russian drones used infrared optics to identify Ukrainian special forces on reconnaissance missions. To better conceal these operators, Ukrainian special forces needed infrared blankets to mask their signatures at night. But the U.S. government did not have these blankets in existing stocks and lacked a mechanism for purchasing them. Spirit of America stepped in to help, buying blankets off the shelf and getting them into Ukrainian hands in time to save lives. A senior officer at U.S. Special Operations Command commented that the NGO “provided the lion’s share of nonlethal equipment received by Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, which served as a lifeline to keep them alive and functioning during the earlier period of the war.”
Informal assistance can avoid the bureaucracy and political baggage that usually accompanies formal state-based aid. By connecting Western resources directly to the Ukrainians who need them, private efforts often achieve outsize results from relatively modest investments. Similarly effective are informal exchanges of information, such as secure messaging group chats between Western military personnel and Ukrainian forces. Through these unofficial channels, advice and expertise is rapidly shared, covering topics such as vehicle maintenance and the optimal use of weapons systems. The emergence of this “over the horizon” advising gives Ukrainian forces another way to improve and refine their tactics in real time on the frontlines, far from formal Western-backed training courses.
In some cases, informal assistance extends to new strategies to disrupt or compromise Russian forces. The North Atlantic Fella Organization, a global grassroots movement with more than 20,000 civilian volunteers from various walks of life, works to counter Russian propaganda online and to provide intelligence analysis, vehicles, modified drones for combat use, and supplies to Ukraine. Several members of NAFO’s decentralized hierarchy acknowledge that the group may also support saboteur activities of separatists inside Russia, including the targeting of infrastructure, fuel depots, and railroads, which has further complicated Russian war efforts and logistics.
NEW MODEL ARMY
The West must acknowledge the significant impact that seemingly small actions by nonstate actors have on the war in Ukraine. The United States and its allies can significantly enhance the campaign to defeat Russia and restore Ukraine’s sovereignty through integrating these actors into a more flexible, irregular strategy of statecraft. To achieve this outcome, the United States and its allies and partners should remove obstacles and bureaucratic hurdles to informal assistance.
For starters, policymakers need to modify the State Department’s International Trade in Arms Regulations, which governs the export of defense and military technologies. Although these rules are primarily aimed at sensitive technologies such as night-vision goggles, they impede the export of certain types of body armor and parts for vehicles. By carving out a policy exception for Ukraine, the State Department would make it easier for Ukrainian NGOs to receive nonlethal supplies from private sources. Additionally, the United States should authorize the U.S. embassy in Kiev to coordinate directly with properly vetted NGOs to enhance the impact of private support, expand the lines of communication, and further expedite the provision of assistance in Ukraine. For example, the Weatherman Foundation has relayed to us that they could expedite the evacuation and repatriation of Americans wounded and killed in the war if the embassy formally recognized their humanitarian operations inside of Ukraine.
To fully harness the potential of informal aid, both in Ukraine and in conflicts to come, Western military strategists need to move beyond the familiar cliché of whole-of-society approaches to problems and threats. In a complicated, protracted war involving many different security needs, informal contributions from volunteers and groups that have special military, technological, and medical expertise can add significantly to performance on the battlefield. Moreover, because it relies on grass roots efforts by interconnected civil society around the world, informal assistance confers an advantage that authoritarian adversaries are unable to match. Mobilizing these informal networks will not only help the United States and its allies and partners translate their significant aid packages to Ukraine into lasting success against Russia. It will also establish a template for building a more effective, multipronged response to other would-be aggressors.
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