Recent events provide grounds to speak not only about a new escalation in Russian air attacks but also about a gradual shift in the very regime of Russia’s global aggression. While constant danger was previously primarily characteristic of settlements located near the front line, now the use of long-range weapons and mass employment of jet-powered drone systems from the PRC are increasingly turning a significant part of Ukraine’s territory, including the capital region, into a space of prolonged and repetitive direct kinetic attacks, during which civilians are killed and infrastructure and the landscape are destroyed.
This is reported by Hryhorii Liubovets and Valerii Korol, staff members of the NGO Center for Communication and Content Security, exclusively for the Prompolitinform portal.
This fundamental change in pace and scale is significant not only for the direct protection of the civilian population. Constant air alerts, repetitive attacks, and the need to react to them continuously change the very tempo of social life. People are forced to interrupt work, study, rest, mandatory sleep, travel, and economic and social activities. Thus, even in the intervals between direct strikes, an existential environment of constant uncertainty is formed, where the very possibility of normal future planning becomes more complex, and the conditions for raising children are unequivocally paralyzed.
That is why it is appropriate to consider modern air aggression more broadly than as a mere combination of individual missile or drone attacks. Its consequences are simultaneously physical, anthropological, cognitive, and mental. Physical — housing and infrastructure are destroyed, and most tragically, people are killed. Anthropological — the conditions for a full human existence, upbringing, rest, and sleep are ruined. Cognitive — society is forced to constantly switch between activity and the anticipation of danger. Mental — prolonged uncertainty drains the ability to maintain a normal rhythm of life and plan for the future.
The combination of various types of drone systems, missile assets, and other technologies of collective Putinism from the DPRK, Iran, Russia, Belarus, and the PRC creates an increasingly complex environment for counteraction in Ukraine. Therefore, the issue is no longer just about the quantity of weapons used, but the speed at which the aggressor is able to adapt technologies, their usage tactics, and the geography of application.
In this context, the Ukrainian experience is significant far beyond the actual Ukrainian theater of genocidal aggression. Using Ukraine as an example, one can observe how the modern security environment is changing under the influence of massive, technologically adaptive, and multi-domain forms of aggression. What is happening over Ukrainian cities today is not just a Ukrainian problem. It is an experience that directly concerns the future security of the European space and the world at large.
That is why the involvement of European states, primarily EU and NATO members, should be considered not only from the perspective of helping Ukraine. It is about jointly developing an adequate capacity to withstand a rapidly changing environment of direct global threats. Ukraine already has unique practical experience in detecting, repelling, and adapting to such attacks, yet continues to require a qualitative increase in the quantity and variety of assets, technologies, resources, and joint (allied) solutions to protect the population and critical infrastructure across Europe.
This opens up an opportunity for a qualitatively different civilizational model of partnership—not merely providing Ukraine with the necessary response tools in doses, but jointly creating new European and Euro-Atlantic capabilities for direct action. This involves the development of air and missile defense, drone and anti-drone technologies, early warning systems, cyber and information security, the protection of critical infrastructure, as well as the joint study of the modern mosaic of global aggressions.
Illustrative photo: U.S. Army / Capt. Frank Spatt / Public domain
