World War III is on our doorstep – Ukraine is already inside
The question is not when World War III will start. The question is whether we are capable of recognising its course and structure before it reaches its decisive phase. Most think tanks beyond the theatres of war still believe that phase is in the future. For us, it has been the reality for more than three years – and to be frank, its outlines began to take shape long before that.
The desire of states within the authoritarian bloc (Russia, Iran, North Korea, China) to pursue their interests by force is growing in direct proportion to the gap revealed in the defence capabilities of the collective West. The United States is attempting to mask this gap through abrupt policy shifts, yet this will only lead to worse consequences and increase the likelihood of a military scenario emerging in the standoff between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan.
After the end of the Cold War, Western countries promoted a programme in Europe that could be described as one of moderate yet consistent disarmament. This applied not only to Ukraine, but also to many other Central and Eastern European countries. The rhetoric – backed by funding and symbolic promises – was simple: democracy instead of armies, integration instead of security, soft power instead of military balance. The entire architecture of this strategy was built on the assumption that the world had moved beyond the era of large-scale wars and the main threat lay in political instability and unreformed regimes. This structure was simply incapable of delivering an adequate response to the 2008 war in Georgia or the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2014. It had ruled out the very possibility of the events that ultimately shattered it as a model of perception.
In this context, Ukraine was not only being steered towards the West – it was simultaneously being led into toothlessness, institutionally and in terms of security, where government elites were focused on gaining access to financial aid rather than on developing an independent strategic course as a sovereign actor.
Nuclear disarmament, the dismantling of Soviet-era defence infrastructure without an adequate replacement, the downsizing of combat-ready units, the outsourcing of security logic to external structures – none of this was a betrayal in the classical sense. It was part of a systemic Western strategy based on a flawed model of the world, where diplomacy, not coercion, was seen as the key resource.
It wasn’t in 2025 that the United States "abandoned" Ukraine. The US had been preserving Ukraine in the logic of the past since the late 90s, when they actively promoted a simplified formula: if you want to join NATO or the EU, you must be militarily weak, "transparent" to observers, and politically reformed.
The main focus was on the political and economic components. Security and geopolitical logic were simply left out of the equation: wars were no longer anticipated at all. In this approach, security was treated more like a nominal bonus than a strategic infrastructure. The model was extrapolated across almost the whole of Europe, where armed forces were transformed into bureaucratised structures with limited autonomy and entirely dependent logistics. As a result, these small, bureaucratised defence forces consumed fewer defence industry products, which in turn led to the decline of the defence industry throughout the collective West.
The worst part is not even that the West underestimated the threats. The real problem was that it actively shaped a regional architecture that lacked the capacity to withstand a large-scale conflict. A geopolitical illusion was created in which democracy itself was expected to serve as a shield. But democracy is not a weapon. It is a way of organising society that requires armed support if it wants to survive in a world of conflict. And when that illusion began to collapse, none of the structures – neither NATO nor the EU – had a model ready to respond to a full-scale war in Europe’s east.
Ukraine has found itself at the centre of this collapse. But unlike most countries, which are still in a state of strategic denial, we are being forced to rapidly construct a new reality with our own hands. And this reality no longer assumes dependence on the traditional model of collective security. Today, Ukraine is not merely a target of attack or a line of defence.
Ukraine has become a pivotal point in a new-generation hybrid conflict where not only the armed forces, but the very concept of military and state effectiveness are being tested for resilience. Large-scale war is not about professional armed forces and precision strikes that end it in two hours. It’s about the capacity to wage long and resource-intensive campaigns, one after another.
Ukraine must move away from being a security recipient and become a security contributor. In other words, Ukraine must not only defend itself, but export solutions that were developed not in peaceful offices, but on the front line amid the complete collapse of the old combat regulations – simply because there is nowhere else in the world to prepare for the war of the future. The West will not be able to grasp the realities of future war, even with the best military textbooks at its disposal. Ukraine and its experience are the West’s only chance of not losing the war for the world’s future because of factors that the classical approach taught in military academies overlooked.
The conditions in which the Azov unit was formed left no room for comfort or loyalty. Prior to the full-scale invasion, we not only had to fight the enemy, but were also constantly forced to defend our model of warfare to commanders who at times relied on classical – even outdated – approaches. The lack of resources, constant restrictions on the front line, propaganda and misinformation, limited support from abroad – these were not external circumstances but the permanent conditions of existence, and an effective response to them was developed. That response was to create an environment where decision-making is based on horizontal autonomy, and discipline is upheld not through a formal hierarchy, but through effectiveness.
The Azov model is an asymmetric institution that operates within the framework of the regular army while retaining the flexibility unique to network-based structures. This is where its strategic value lies. When it comes to the armies of the future, environments like this will form their core. Not corps built according to the NATO handbook, but units capable of responding rapidly, of adapting, of acting autonomously and without interruption even when completely cut off from the main forces. This is where the example of Azov becomes critically important. Amid the chaos, Azov did not merely survive – it built its own adaptive architecture of warfare.
What this means on a global scale is this: Azov is not a local phenomenon – it’s a prototype for the army of a new era. An era in which the classical nation-states face the blurring of the front lines, where a blow can be struck not only by weaponry but by information, where the key role is played not by military hardware but by the culture of management. And it’s this culture that determines who will survive in a great war – and who will be forced to surrender without a fight.
The war of the future is not an exchange of nuclear strikes. It is a conflict over control of adaptation logic, over the ability to remain effective in a world of crisis. Ukraine, as the theatre of this war, has already become a testing ground for such models. And the experience gained here will be applied on other fronts as well as ours. This is already evident in the interest shown by Taiwan’s military; in the new concepts of military reform in Eastern Europe; and in the growing attention being paid to autonomous combat structures. Our task is not only to hold the line. We must structure this experience, transmit it, and implement it at the next levels. And those who have already demonstrated their effectiveness in this new kind of war – particularly structures like Azov – must become not merely an operational resource, but also a strategic actor in shaping the future.
The war grinds on. And it will not be won by those who every night launch hundreds of Shahed drones on apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure. It will be won by those who, in addition to missiles and drones, possess institutions that create the conditions for rapid adaptation and development in environments where others simply disappear. Those who, despite everything, resist, and are capable of instantly countering the entropy of the external status quo.
Colonel Denys Prokopenko, Commander of Azov, the First Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine
Translation: Anastasiia Yankina
Editing: Teresa Pearce