How Ukraine Is Running Its War Like a Startup

“Ukraine’s technology sector was booming before the war. It still is. In 2022, despite the bombing and the blackouts, the industry grew 7 percent. That was made possible by a combination of creativity, courage and, at times, luck. And Ukrainian startups are still growing, and still expanding globally, having adapted to the new normal—’war-life balance,’ as Awesomic’s Stacy Pavlyshyna puts it.” -Peter Guest

PG: “One of the first things you notice when working in Ukraine is how everyone knows someone. If you need a ride, a contact, a translator, everyone is one degree of separation from someone who can fix it for you. That horizontal civil society helped keep the country in the war in the early days. Need a truck? A drone? Tourniquets? Someone can get it, and someone else can deliver it. Today, those networks are huge, starting with online fundraisers and ending, via a human chain, at the front lines.”

PG: “In a field a couple of hours’ drive out of Kyiv, through checkpoints and barricades, is a proving ground for Ukraine’s Army of Drones. The drone—not the sleek Predator of the 2000s, but the toylike commercial quadcopter—has become the defining weapon of this war. The drone corps is an innovation launched not by the military, but by the ministry of digital development, under the deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a digital marketer-turned-politician-turned-cyber warrior.”

PG: “At the start of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s health system was facing collapse. For the thousands of people in the country living with HIV, that could have been devastating, as they risked losing access to lifesaving drugs. As Johann Chisholm reports, to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, health professionals and volunteers crossed the country, going right up to the front lines to deliver medicines.”

PG: “Defense companies are flocking to Ukraine, some of them offering Kyiv heavy discounts. They’re there partly to show what their products can do. But they’re also there for the data. As weapons become smarter, getting access to data from a real battlefront becomes critical for companies looking to refine their products. It’s something that Ukraine—which is now trying to build its own defense industry—is acutely aware of.”

PG: “You can still see the scars of the occupation all around Irpin—broken buildings and shell holes where the grass is starting to grow back. But the city is rebuilding. Ukraine isn’t waiting for the war to end before it starts its reconstruction. That effort, which could cost $1 trillion, will rely on the country’s digital infrastructure to build back stronger, more resilient, and more transparent than before.”

See WIRED’s full package marking 500 days of the Ukraine war.

Get to know what’s behind the latest WIRED stories — straight from the reporters.