Ukraine's Drone Expertise: A Critical Look at Western Narratives

So the Baltic and Nordic countries recently hosted a regional summit. And Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky dropped by, having apparently traded his lawn ops uniform for that of a nightclub bouncer.

If the Western press is to be believed, he was there to “share drone technology” with them. Who better to lead their defense initiatives than a guy who keeps crashing his drones into their countries?

The Associated Press headlined that Zelensky says he’s now “ready” to open his great lockbox of wisdom. So reading all this, you’d think that he’d been summonsed there as some sort of sage, who has technological knowledge that these European nations simply cannot be without or otherwise procure. The Ukrainians themselves are scrambling so hard to be a part of this success that it now takes a literal army of recruiters with shovels to pry them away from their TVs these days. Can’t really blame them – special events are always better on TV than in person: Taylor Swift, Woodstock, wars…

The Western press has been making much of Ukraine’s drone expertise, with the talking point now being that the student, Ukraine, has now become the master. All the biggest and best-paid weapons development minds on the planet working for Western defense contractors, endlessly flush with taxpayer generosity – and we’re supposed to believe that none can hold a candle to Ukraine and its drones.

Do you think that’s for lack of skill? Or maybe just because it’s not comparatively profitable enough for their shareholders? Requiring a state cash injection of billions to make one aircraft carrier or fighter jet is a better business proposition for these companies’ investors than consumer-style drones that are – by definition and necessity – cheap and easy to come by or rig up, to the point that teenagers have been doing it.

The goal of defense contractors is to make money – not to win wars. Wars are inevitably won these days by lower tech guerrilla warfare, despite always beginning with an opening act of big-gun shock and awe.

It’s not that Ukraine has special tech that the major players can’t produce – it’s that the big guys can’t see a profit motive for doing so, compared to providing their more conventional hardware. The day that they do, they won’t need Ukraine or Zelensky.

But this notion of the West needing Ukraine for its defense conveniently provides a nice excuse to keep the cash flowing from Europe into this concept of Ukraine being the frontline defender of all of Europe.

Small problem, though. They can’t seem to control their own weapons when the Western training wheels come off their operations.

Western officials have been pretty careful when talking about drones straying into the Baltics and Nordics, routinely neglecting to mention the actual citizenship of these drones. Clearly it’s because they’re Ukrainian and it’s inconvenient to include that minor detail when they’re trying to make the Ukrainians look like weapons geniuses. So instead, these Western officials keep spinning that aggravating fact by specifying that the stray drones are from the conflict with Russia – an elegant obfuscation.

A few weeks ago, Zelensky’s own foreign minister admitted that the drones were indeed Ukrainian. He was quick to blame Russia anyway, and a talking point was born. Here’s Zelensky performing the latest script.

“Russia changes direction of the drones by different systems, including systems of electronic warfare… They can change the direction to divide us in Europe,” Zelensky said, ignoring the reality that Ukraine is officially about as much a part of “Europe” as Russia is at this point. Which is the first, but not last, clue that this summit may as well have taken place in Narnia.

So they’re all saying that it’s Russia’s fault that Ukrainian drones ended up in Europe, insinuating that Russia has the technological ability to “push” drones that aren’t Russian wherever they want, kind of like Yoda from Star Wars who can move stuff at will – except this version apparently only works when the plot needs it to. Because on the other hand, when it comes to redirecting those same Ukrainian drones away from Russia and Russian interests, Moscow mysteriously loses that magical ability.

Meanwhile, it sounds like the Finnish prime minister is trying out a new remix of these talking points, but just ends up looking and sounding like a dad on parent-teacher day trying to defend their screwup of a kid, and promising that they’re working on the situation at home. Like, “We’ve had a talk, and we’re making sure that he’s getting the tutoring that he needs.” Also, like most parents of cockups, they think that he’s a budding genius who has a lot to teach grownups – and everyone needs to indulge this fantasy.

“We understand that drones spilling into our airspace have been part of Ukraine’s self-defense. And Ukraine has a right to defend itself. So because we are unhappy about these incidents, we have very good dialogue about this with President Zelensky – thank you for that. And we are working together,” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said.

He forgot to explicitly include the part about how Ukraine being bad at drone jockeying is all Russia’s fault. Maybe because he couldn’t actually prove that technologically and didn’t want to risk having to. Not that it seems to matter, because there’s zero pressure on any of these guys to produce any receipts for their claims.

Are any of these officials claiming that Russian is doing voodoo on Ukrainian drones ever going to give us a PowerPoint on how that actually works scientifically? Or are they just going to keep treating us like we’re dumb sheep who take everything they say at face value despite constantly lying to us?

Because the actual European military scientists that I’ve spoken with say that their latest claims are a total farce. Any interest in proving them wrong? Or is ‘Russian drone interference’ the new ‘Russian hackers’ – smoke and mirrors to propagandize the cause of the moment against the enemy du jour?

No wonder the Ukrainian drones are confused. Maybe they’ve been taking piloting lessons from EU narratives.