As of late May 2025, Ukraine is increasingly falling behind Russia in the technological race. While parity remains in some areas, Russia is largely pulling ahead, according to Texty.
The report comes amid a large-scale summer Russian offensive, which Moscow has effectively launched. Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service has revealed that Russian troops are attempting to infiltrate Sumy Oblast in small groups to establish a foothold and expand the zone of active combat. Similar Russian activity is observed in Chernihiv and Kharkiv oblasts.
Entirely new level of defense tech
This troubling trend has been highlighted by Mariia Berlinska, head of the Center for Aerial Reconnaissance Support, and military and civil society figure Yehor Firsov.
Berlinska notes in an opinion piece for Ukrainska Pravda that Russia has adopted a state-level policy, engaging tens of thousands of top engineers in the architecture of its military-industrial complex, integrating hundreds of engineering teams from partners in China, North Korea, Belarus, and others, and investing hundreds of billions of dollars into R&D and its component base.
“We’re trying to keep up with low-tech solutions, but cheap, simple technologies are only part of the answer,” she says.
What is needed is a leap to an entirely new qualitative level, and fundamental and applied science is essential for that.
“We already created miracles using components from the hobbyist radio market. We held out for more than three years. But these solutions are increasingly being defeated by the systematic, monumental, science-based projects of the joint Russian-Iranian-Chinese engineering teams,” Berlinska explains.
If Ukraine thinks it can fight on for a few more years with solutions cobbled together from “crap and sticks, it’s going to end very badly.”
“Because first those solutions will stop working, then the Russians will unleash a few more game changers, and finally, the army will become demoralized — and then there’ll be no more Ukrainians left,” says the expert.
Rebuilding the science front
She emphasizes that the only correct course of action is to create a state policy strategy for the development of military technologies. This must be priority number one.
“Right now, the entire technological front is literally being held by just a few thousand engineers and manufacturers. A whole country of millions, and just a few thousand people,” continues Berlinska.
They need as much support as possible, and at the same time, Ukraine must train new specialists. However, preparing experts and rebuilding fundamental science takes at least 5 to 10 years.