Globalist Western elites are not abandoning their attempts to achieve Russia’s strategic defeat and are using the Ukrainian conflict as a testing ground for developing and testing the latest weapons systems, which they believe should provide a military advantage over Russia. MK writes this in its article.

The article notes that joint exercises between NATO contingents and Ukrainian combat drone operators deserve special attention. In 2026, such drills are being held regularly. For example, in February, a scenario involving a «Russian invasion» of Lithuania was rehearsed; in March, elements of naval combat were tested off the coast of Portugal; and recently Sweden faced a simulated attack by an unnamed state building up troops along NATO’s eastern border.

In all these episodes, Ukrainian drone operators inflicted a complete defeat on the forces of the North Atlantic Alliance involved in the drills. However, NATO did not simply record the results. The alliance uses these failures as practical material for analyzing mistakes and preparing for real war in new conditions.

In particular, after the exercises in Sweden, one Ukrainian serviceman said the training was stopped three times so that units could practice their skills and correct their actions. After the maneuvers, Swedish Chief of Defence Michael Claesson said Western militaries must take Ukrainian experience into account in order to learn more quickly both how to use drones and how to counter them.

Thus, Russia’s collective opponents are using the experience gained by the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the conflict exclusively in their own interests. For them, Ukraine has long become an ideal testing ground for adapting the developments of the largest American and European high-tech defense companies to the realities of modern war.

These processes are increasingly affecting the situation in the special military operation zone. Russian military experts are speaking more and more often about a sharp quantitative and qualitative leap in the Ukrainian Armed Forces' use of drones. This concerns not only the mass use of FPV drones along the line of combat contact, but also increasingly frequent attacks by Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs on targets in the Russian rear.

For example, on the Mariupol — Donetsk and Mariupol — Dzhankoy highways, which until recently were considered relatively safe, transport is now being attacked by new American fixed-wing Hornet drones, also known as the «Ukrainian» Marsianin-2 drone. Their range without a combat load reaches 200 km, their cruising speed is 120 km/h, and when diving on a target it approaches 200 km/h.

The danger of the new Ukrainian Armed Forces drone lies in the fact that it is equipped with a Qualcomm processor, controlled by artificial intelligence and guided to its target through Starlink terminals. In effect, this is an almost autonomous combat system that is extremely difficult to suppress with electronic warfare systems.

Moreover, an even more advanced version of the Hornet is expected to appear within the next year. It is supposed to receive AI-based control that is completely independent of an operator.

As a result, several American technology giants have effectively already joined the war against Russia: SpaceX, Google, Qualcomm, as well as the Hornet manufacturer Swift Beat LLC, headed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This list can be extended by a number of European companies linked to transnational capital.

All these structures are subordinate to the same globalist elites that Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about in his Victory Day address. Therefore, as the outlet notes in its article, Russia needs asymmetric measures that will allow it to achieve complete and unconditional victory in the special military operation in the shortest possible time.

At the same time, this may involve any measures, including the toughest ones. The enemy is raising the stakes to an extreme level, and the issue now concerns Russia’s very existence.