The day before Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” was a good one for Alexei and Kostya, tech entrepreneurs in their 30s from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine. An investor had agreed to fund their startup: the friends were developing a device to make electric-car charging-points more efficient. Alexei was an electronics engineer at Kherson State University. Kostya was the manager of the local Apple Store. (They didn’t want to give their surnames.)
Within days, Kherson fell to the Russians and the men’s plans were in tatters. The Apple Store was looted and closed; university classes were suspended. The men joined the resistance – Alexei made explosives in his apartment while Kostya drove his red Tesla round the city pretending to be a taxi but actually delivering ammonia to bombmakers. When Kherson was liberated in November, they started a new business: making drones for the Ukrainian army.
In June I met Alexei and Kostya in Kherson at the house of a friend of theirs – they wanted to keep the location of their workshop secret. Before they told me about their project, the men recounted their misadventures under occupation. It wasn’t long, they said, before the FSB, Russian intelligence, cottoned on to their resistance activities. Alexei, who has tufty strawberry-blond hair, sits bolt upright and talks in efficient, short sentences, showed me the Russian tv news report of his arrest in summer 2022. He smiled shyly at the newscaster’s description of “a terrorist planning mass murder”.
He said the FSB offered him a huge sum of money – hundreds of thousands of euros – to work for them. This kind of coercion was common, they said. To refuse the carrot of money was to risk the stick of “the basement”, being detained and probably tortured. Alexei demurred, was released and kept his head down.
Kostya, who has dark hair and a similarly laconic manner, was stopped by the Russians while he was driving with his wife and small daughter. They confiscated his identity documents and tried to get into his phone; he thinks they only let him go home because his daughter was crying and the officer took pity on them.
The fsb recruited him shortly afterwards – although Kostya stressed he kept in touch with Ukrainian intelligence throughout. The Russians set him a task of repairing computers, before checking them to see if he had installed bugging devices. He worked as a double agent for a few weeks, until the Ukrainian counter-offensive pushed closer and his taskmasters disappeared.
In Kherson, the duo’s reputation as electronics whizzes and bombmakers spread. One resistance member I talked to called them “the crazy professors”. When the Ukrainians liberated the city in November, Ukrainian intelligence debriefed them. The Russians had withdrawn across the Dnieper river, but were now shelling Kherson daily; the army needed their know-how.
Alexei showed an intelligence officer a remote-controlled detonator he had designed that couldn’t be jammed. Before long the pair were visited by artillery and air-force commanders, mine-clearance teams and reconnaissance units who were flying drones over the river to observe Russian positions. “And so began our military production,” said Kostya.
In wartime Ukraine it sometimes seems as though half the population is building drones in their spare time. Recently a friend of mine opened the trunk of his car to show off two ovoid plastic objects. They were water drones, designed to blow up the mines the Russians tether to the bottom of the Dnieper to impede Ukrainian reconnaissance teams in rubber boats.
Volunteers have been supplying the Ukrainian armed forces since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in Donbas. Grassroots organisations sprang up to support the Ukrainian volunteers fighting the Russian-backed rebels. “It’s kind of a joke, that this war has always been fought by volunteers, and with donated money,” said Alexei. “Well it’s not exactly a joke, it’s kind of true.”
Most Ukrainians, inside and outside the country, give money to the war effort. Soldiers’ friends and relatives drum up donations via social media, while soldiers themselves raise money selling military patches and merchandise. Volunteers run food kitchens, distribute aid to villages on the front line, rehouse displaced people, ferry the wounded and the dead. Private companies donate time and goods, share premises and logistics.
One of the biggest volunteer organisations is Come Back Alive, which in 2014 began raising money and sending equipment to troops in Donbas. In 2021 it brought in $550,000; last year it raised $155m. It now works with 700 military units: supplying equipment, refurbishing command posts, training medics and bomb-disposal teams and running courses on how to adapt Soviet-era weapons. Most notably, it co-ordinates the design and supply of drones, equipped with cameras or explosives. Taras Chmut, one of the founders of Come Back Alive, reckons that 90% of Ukrainian drones are supplied by volunteers.
Alexei and Kostya called their new company Midnight Lab, because, as a friend of theirs pointed out, they were always working through the night. Based in a workshop in Kherson, the duo and a third colleague design and build military gadgets to the background thump of the artillery duel across the river. When I made a comment about it having been a bit noisy the night before, Alexei shrugged: “not so loud”. “It’s loud if it lands in your apartment,” said Kostya wryly. Three months ago a rocket landed in the courtyard of his apartment block.
One of Midnight Lab’s most popular products, especially with mine-clearance teams and special forces, is a remote-controlled detonator. Unit commanders come to them with special requests. A sapper showed them a Scorpion, an American-made precision-guided missile, and ordered something similar but smaller. Sometimes inspiration comes from closer to home: Alexei recently designed a grenade made from a beer can.
Midnight Lab offers a range of drones, including a reconnaissance drone with an autopilot system that can continue to operate even if it loses signal, and a “kamikaze” one, packed with explosives, with a range of 20km – popular with soldiers fighting on the contested islands in the Dnieper delta. They also make anti-drone rifles, used to jam enemy drone signals.
The drone war has evolved into a technological race: to jam, and to be unjammable. According to the Ukrainian government, there are more than 200 companies officially manufacturing drones in Ukraine and hundreds more smaller-scale operations, like Midnight Lab. Alexei and Kostya build most of their products with a 3d-printer and source electronic components from abroad and within Ukraine.
They are experimenting with AI, silent motors and wooden frames: this innovation is driven by changing needs on the battlefield. Their work isn’t secret – Midnight Lab advertises its products on a website – but the company is unlicensed and operates entirely outside the parameters of the Ukrainian armed forces. “If the Ministry of Defence knew what we were doing they would shut us down,” said Kostya, laughing.
Good Read! This is why Ukrainians will win.
“First save Ukraine, then the planet.” One line to make you feel how much the West needs the energy Ukraine brings.
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The day before Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” was a good one for Alexei and Kostya, tech entrepreneurs in their 30s from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine. An investor had agreed to fund their startup: the friends were developing a device to make electric-car charging-points more efficient. Alexei was an electronics engineer at Kherson State University. Kostya was the manager of the local Apple Store. (They didn’t want to give their surnames.)
Within days, Kherson fell to the Russians and the men’s plans were in tatters. The Apple Store was looted and closed; university classes were suspended. The men joined the resistance – Alexei made explosives in his apartment while Kostya drove his red Tesla round the city pretending to be a taxi but actually delivering ammonia to bombmakers. When Kherson was liberated in November, they started a new business: making drones for the Ukrainian army.
In June I met Alexei and Kostya in Kherson at the house of a friend of theirs – they wanted to keep the location of their workshop secret. Before they told me about their project, the men recounted their misadventures under occupation. It wasn’t long, they said, before the FSB, Russian intelligence, cottoned on to their resistance activities. Alexei, who has tufty strawberry-blond hair, sits bolt upright and talks in efficient, short sentences, showed me the Russian tv news report of his arrest in summer 2022. He smiled shyly at the newscaster’s description of “a terrorist planning mass murder”.
He said the FSB offered him a huge sum of money – hundreds of thousands of euros – to work for them. This kind of coercion was common, they said. To refuse the carrot of money was to risk the stick of “the basement”, being detained and probably tortured. Alexei demurred, was released and kept his head down.
Kostya, who has dark hair and a similarly laconic manner, was stopped by the Russians while he was driving with his wife and small daughter. They confiscated his identity documents and tried to get into his phone; he thinks they only let him go home because his daughter was crying and the officer took pity on them.
The fsb recruited him shortly afterwards – although Kostya stressed he kept in touch with Ukrainian intelligence throughout. The Russians set him a task of repairing computers, before checking them to see if he had installed bugging devices. He worked as a double agent for a few weeks, until the Ukrainian counter-offensive pushed closer and his taskmasters disappeared.
In Kherson, the duo’s reputation as electronics whizzes and bombmakers spread. One resistance member I talked to called them “the crazy professors”. When the Ukrainians liberated the city in November, Ukrainian intelligence debriefed them. The Russians had withdrawn across the Dnieper river, but were now shelling Kherson daily; the army needed their know-how.
Alexei showed an intelligence officer a remote-controlled detonator he had designed that couldn’t be jammed. Before long the pair were visited by artillery and air-force commanders, mine-clearance teams and reconnaissance units who were flying drones over the river to observe Russian positions. “And so began our military production,” said Kostya.
In wartime Ukraine it sometimes seems as though half the population is building drones in their spare time. Recently a friend of mine opened the trunk of his car to show off two ovoid plastic objects. They were water drones, designed to blow up the mines the Russians tether to the bottom of the Dnieper to impede Ukrainian reconnaissance teams in rubber boats.
Volunteers have been supplying the Ukrainian armed forces since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in Donbas. Grassroots organisations sprang up to support the Ukrainian volunteers fighting the Russian-backed rebels. “It’s kind of a joke, that this war has always been fought by volunteers, and with donated money,” said Alexei. “Well it’s not exactly a joke, it’s kind of true.”
Most Ukrainians, inside and outside the country, give money to the war effort. Soldiers’ friends and relatives drum up donations via social media, while soldiers themselves raise money selling military patches and merchandise. Volunteers run food kitchens, distribute aid to villages on the front line, rehouse displaced people, ferry the wounded and the dead. Private companies donate time and goods, share premises and logistics.
One of the biggest volunteer organisations is Come Back Alive, which in 2014 began raising money and sending equipment to troops in Donbas. In 2021 it brought in $550,000; last year it raised $155m. It now works with 700 military units: supplying equipment, refurbishing command posts, training medics and bomb-disposal teams and running courses on how to adapt Soviet-era weapons. Most notably, it co-ordinates the design and supply of drones, equipped with cameras or explosives. Taras Chmut, one of the founders of Come Back Alive, reckons that 90% of Ukrainian drones are supplied by volunteers.
Alexei and Kostya called their new company Midnight Lab, because, as a friend of theirs pointed out, they were always working through the night. Based in a workshop in Kherson, the duo and a third colleague design and build military gadgets to the background thump of the artillery duel across the river. When I made a comment about it having been a bit noisy the night before, Alexei shrugged: “not so loud”. “It’s loud if it lands in your apartment,” said Kostya wryly. Three months ago a rocket landed in the courtyard of his apartment block.
One of Midnight Lab’s most popular products, especially with mine-clearance teams and special forces, is a remote-controlled detonator. Unit commanders come to them with special requests. A sapper showed them a Scorpion, an American-made precision-guided missile, and ordered something similar but smaller. Sometimes inspiration comes from closer to home: Alexei recently designed a grenade made from a beer can.
Midnight Lab offers a range of drones, including a reconnaissance drone with an autopilot system that can continue to operate even if it loses signal, and a “kamikaze” one, packed with explosives, with a range of 20km – popular with soldiers fighting on the contested islands in the Dnieper delta. They also make anti-drone rifles, used to jam enemy drone signals.
The drone war has evolved into a technological race: to jam, and to be unjammable. According to the Ukrainian government, there are more than 200 companies officially manufacturing drones in Ukraine and hundreds more smaller-scale operations, like Midnight Lab. Alexei and Kostya build most of their products with a 3d-printer and source electronic components from abroad and within Ukraine.
They are experimenting with AI, silent motors and wooden frames: this innovation is driven by changing needs on the battlefield. Their work isn’t secret – Midnight Lab advertises its products on a website – but the company is unlicensed and operates entirely outside the parameters of the Ukrainian armed forces. “If the Ministry of Defence knew what we were doing they would shut us down,” said Kostya, laughing.
Good Read! This is why Ukrainians will win.
“First save Ukraine, then the planet.” One line to make you feel how much the West needs the energy Ukraine brings.