Five Lessons From Ukraine for Resilience Amid Instability

This week in Gdańsk, Poland, representatives from the public, private and third sectors across Europe will gather for the Ukraine Recovery Conference. As its name suggests, the conference’s focus will be largely on areas where Ukraine is struggling the most, where the need for reform is greatest and where support from international partners is most urgently required. But while Ukraine’s challenges are indeed great, so are the lessons to be learned from its successes.

Over more than a decade, and especially since the full-scale invasion, Russia’s war of aggression has forced Ukraine to operate amid sustained and overlapping threats, including attacks on civilian infrastructure, energy disruption, population displacement and political interference. Yet rather than collapse, both the public and private sectors have shown extraordinary resilience.

The pressures facing Ukraine make it in many ways a microcosm of Europe. The spectre of wider conflict also haunts Europe’s eastern flank, with fears that President Vladimir Putin could attempt to test NATO’s resolve by attacking one of its European members. Conflict in the Middle East has once again exposed Europe’s vulnerability to energy shocks. Myriad other crises, from chokepoints in supply chains to climate-driven migration, loom on the horizon.

Against this backdrop there are lessons to be learned from Ukraine’s resilience. In this commentary we draw on five, one from each of the dimensions of the Ukraine Recovery Conference:

1. Business: Broker strategic investment through government-to-government partnerships that align capital with geopolitical priorities.

2. Human: Build resilient digital public services that combine smart technical design with clear leadership and strong citizen buy-in.

3. Local and regional: Empower local governments with the authority and capability to respond rapidly within a national framework.

4. EU: Use regional integration pragmatically to secure trade, infrastructure and economic resilience.

5. Security and defence: Combine central defence coordination with decentralised innovation and mass production at speed.

Lesson 1: Broker Strategic Investment Through Government-to-Government Partnerships That Align Capital With Geopolitical Priorities

A key area of focus at the Ukraine Recovery Conference will be the critical raw materials sector, following the successful closure of the US-Ukraine Minerals Deal in April 2025. Ukraine has made the brokering of such “megadeals” a core part of its investment-attraction strategy, and the buzz around its minerals underscores the virtue of this approach.

Ukraine holds reserves of roughly two-thirds of the 34 raw materials classified as critical by the European Union, and already plays an important role in regional supply of several strategic materials. In 2021, Ukraine accounted for nearly all combined EU and Ukrainian production of manganese ore, titanium minerals and gallium, as well as a substantial share of iron ore and a smaller share of graphite (Figure 1). These materials are important for steelmaking, battery supply chains, semiconductors, aerospace and the wider clean-energy transition. Ukraine also has undeveloped lithium deposits, essential for electric-vehicle, energy-storage and clean-industrial supply chains. ^[_]

This resource base is of high strategic importance given the current concentration of global supply in a small number of countries. China accounts for around 90 per cent of rare-earth processing and a large share of global refining capacity, while Europe remains heavily dependent on imports for key inputs.^[_]

It is therefore not difficult to see why the United States was so interested in Ukraine’s vast mineral endowment. Earlier drafts heavily favoured the US and were framed by President Donald Trump as payment for historical US support to Ukraine, but the parties ultimately settled on a joint investment fund with contributions from Ukraine, the US and the private sector. It established a framework for cooperation across exploration, extraction and processing.

Securing highly strategic government-to-government partnerships had been part of Ukraine’s investment-attraction strategy long before President Trump brought attention to the topic. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 2024 “Victory Plan” floated the idea of giving allies access to Ukraine’s strategic resources as part of a broader security and investment bargain, and even before that Ukraine had signed a strategic partnership with the EU on raw materials in 2021.

The approach also reflects a wider change in global investment patterns. Since 2022, three-quarters of global foreign direct investment has flowed into a narrow set of future industries, while investments above $1 billion account for just 1 per cent of deals but around 50 per cent of total value. Even the World Bank, in its latest report on industrial policy, now recognises the important role governments play in directing investment.^[_]

An emphasis on large-scale investment is particularly necessary in the extractives industry, where capital-expenditure costs run into the billions. Being too large for any one single institution, this requires complex consortia of partners to be assembled, which in turn requires deals that are brokered at the national or multinational level instead of by individual firms.

Another way to maximise available capital is to leverage both public- and private-sector involvement. Ukraine and the US have adopted a blended-finance approach, using their initial $150 million collective investment to attract additional private-sector interest. Tying US development financing directly to a commercial opportunity for US businesses is also sensible given the Trump administration’s shift away from purely humanitarian aid.

Finally, the deal also served a broader strategic purpose for both parties. For the US, it was an opportunity to reduce supply-chain vulnerability and dependency on China. For Ukraine, tying potential US commercial endeavours to a successful and fair peace for Ukraine was a way to reinforce US support for the country at a moment of heightened geopolitical tension. While the lead-up to the deal was complicated by public tensions between the two sides, not least the Oval Office meeting in February 2025, it is notable that relations stabilised somewhat following the eventual signing of the deal.

Globally, capital flows within aligned blocs are three times higher than between non-aligned partners.^[_] With capital increasingly following geopolitical alignment, the lesson from Ukraine is clear: investment is increasingly brokered rather than attracted. For Europe, this means doubling down on its own government-to-government “megadeals” to maximise large-scale investment, diversify critical supply chains and reduce exposure to shocks.

Lesson 2: Build Resilient Digital Public Services That Combine Smart Technical Design With Clear Leadership and Strong Citizen Buy-in

Ukraine has demonstrated extraordinary success at building resilience into its public services through digitalisation. Whether it is eHealth records, a national digital platform for schools or an AI-enabled job-matching platform, these digital services are critical to nurturing the human-capital stock that will be essential for Ukraine’s recovery. The country’s digital ecosystem now serves as an exportable model from which valuable lessons can be learned in technical design, leadership and citizen engagement.

Ukraine’s rise in digital government has been meteoric. In the UN’s e-Government indices between 2014 and 2024, Ukraine improved from 122nd to 5th place in Online Services and went from 87th to claim the top spot in E-Participation (see Figure 2).^[_] Diia, Ukraine’s “state in a smartphone”, was launched in 2020, allowing citizens to access benefits, pay taxes and fines and even get married, all through one app.

Digitalisation of public services may not be an obvious priority for a government facing existential security threats, but it played a crucial role in Ukraine’s resilience following the full-scale invasion.

Shifting services online enabled administrative continuity when physical state infrastructure was damaged. Ukrainians who had to flee from their homes could use Diia to prove their identity and apply for compensation. At the same time, the app was used to mobilise fundraising for the armed forces, raising UAH 300 million (about $10 million at the time) from 280,000 individual donors in the first few weeks of the war.^[_]

The system’s design is secure, replicable and underpinned by public–private partnerships. A digital ID, stored in the app, enables secure verification and grants remote access to services. Ukraine became the first country in the world to fully recognise digital ID in law in 2021. A data-exchange system, Trembita, connects different existing government registries, preventing the need to construct a single centralised database and reducing vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Trembita was built by Cybernetica, a private Estonian company, one of many successful public–private partnerships involved in the design of Ukraine’s digital ecosystem.

There is also a strong commitment to open source, with Diia’s source code publicly available online. This means that other governments can easily use Diia as a blueprint for their own digital states, but also that citizens can inspect the software and suggest new features and improvements. This additional scrutiny improves security and allows developers to build on top of the platform, accelerating digital innovation across the wider economy.

Building such a successful system at pace would not have been possible without strong leadership across government. The ambition came from the very top, with President Zelensky announcing the development of Diia as a presidential priority soon after taking office. In Mykhailo Fedorov, he found a highly capable principal to operationalise his vision. Fedorov, the founder of a successful digital-marketing agency, was appointed minister of digital transformation at the age of 28 and brought a startup culture to the ministry.

Equally as important is the leadership within the political hierarchy. A chief digital transformation officer (CDTO) is embedded in each ministry and executive body with a second reporting line to the minister of digital transformation. A dedicated CDTO campus provides training to ensure they are equipped with the right skills to drive innovation in government.

Finally, a commitment to transparency has been essential to winning public trust in the technology. This extends beyond open source. In Prozorro, Ukraine has built a public procurement platform based on radical transparency, where all tenders and awards are fully available for public scrutiny. This theme of bringing citizens in as active participants in digital government was also visible following the full-scale invasion as Diia was used to crowdsource intelligence on enemy movements.

Of course, Ukraine’s success cannot be viewed in isolation. It has stood on the shoulders of digital-government giants such as Estonia, who not only provided the conceptual inspiration but also contributed direct advisory support. There is now a firm commitment from the Ukrainian government to paying that support forward, and other European countries should welcome this. If they build on solid technical foundations, exhibit strong political leadership and commit to transparent delivery, there is no reason these countries cannot emulate Ukraine’s success.

Lesson 3: Empower Local Governments With the Authority and Capability to Respond Rapidly Within a National Framework

Ukraine has demonstrated how resilience is strengthened when decision-making authority, resources and capability are distributed rather than concentrated.

For the decade preceding the full-scale invasion, Ukraine undertook one of Europe’s most ambitious decentralisation reforms, transferring significant political and fiscal power to around 1,500 “hromada” local governments. This shift was accompanied by a substantial increase in local financial autonomy: local budget resourcing more than doubled between 2013 and 2016 and continued to grow thereafter, reflecting a structural redistribution of state capacity to the local level (see Figure 3).

This reform was not intentionally designed for wartime conditions. But it proved decisive once those conditions emerged. In the early months of the full-scale invasion, local governments effectively organised evacuations, maintained utilities, coordinated humanitarian assistance and supported internally displaced populations. These actions were often taken independently, in rapidly changing conditions, without waiting for central approval. As such, basic government services continued to function even as national systems came under extreme pressure. This contrasts sharply, for example, with Russia’s more centralised model, where a lack of autonomy for local officials has contributed to administrative inertia and delay.

The same principle applies to infrastructure resilience. Ukraine has adopted a model of decentralised execution in which local technical teams are empowered to repair energy, heating and communications systems immediately after attacks. This approach has allowed for rapid, repeated restoration of critical services across the country. Rather than relying on a single, centralised response mechanism, the system operates through dispersed local interventions, reducing recovery times and limiting systemic failure.

Crucially, this decentralised model is not unstructured. It combines distributed delivery with clear central direction. National authorities define priorities, while local actors retain the flexibility to implement solutions based on real-time conditions. This has enabled Ukraine to maintain coordination without sacrificing speed.

At the same time, the war has exposed the limits of decentralisation where institutional capacity is weak. Not all local governments have been equally able to manage the demands placed upon them, particularly in areas with fewer resources or weaker administrative capability. This underlines a critical point: decentralisation is not simply about shifting power, but about building capability at the local level.

The lesson is not that decentralised systems are inherently superior to centralised ones. Different crises place different demands on the state. Most pertinently, the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the value of central coordination, pooled procurement and system-wide resource management.

Ukraine’s experience underscores a different requirement: in fast-moving, territorially uneven crises, performance depends on whether capable local institutions can act quickly within a clear national framework. The most effective systems therefore combine strategic direction from the centre with sufficient authority, capability and fiscal flexibility at the local level.

This aligns closely with the EU’s principle of subsidiarity, which holds that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to citizens, while maintaining coordination where collective action is required. But while strengthening subnational capability sounds appealing, it is often difficult to persuade those at the centre to relinquish their political and fiscal power. It requires strong political leadership, but will be essential to improving Europe’s ability to respond to future shocks.

Lesson 4: Use Regional Integration Pragmatically to Secure Trade, Infrastructure and Economic Resilience

Faced with the disruption of traditional trade routes and destruction of critical infrastructure, Ukraine is using integration with the EU as a practical tool to bolster resilience during a period of severe social and economic crisis. This pragmatic, issue-specific approach to drawing closer to the EU has yielded immediate dividends, ensuring that Ukraine has been better able to cope with the disruption caused by the full-scale invasion.

The most visible example is trade. Following the blockade of Black Sea ports in 2022, Ukraine rapidly reoriented its export model towards the EU (see Figure 4). In response, the EU – working with Ukraine and Moldova – established “Solidarity Lanes”: a network of rail, road and inland-waterway corridors designed to maintain the flow of goods. Since their launch, these routes have facilitated the export of more than 200 million tonnes of Ukrainian goods and supported total trade worth approximately €270 billion.^[_]

These corridors have become a critical economic lifeline. By March 2026, they were carrying around 70 per cent of Ukraine’s imports and 60 per cent of its non-agricultural exports, as well as a significant share of agricultural trade.^[_] At various points in 2022, they were the only viable export route available. Without them, Ukraine’s ability to raise vital tax revenues would have been severely constrained.

Energy integration has followed a similar pattern. Within weeks of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine synchronised its electricity grid with the Continental European Synchronous Area, ensuring immediate system stability and enabling cross-border electricity flows. This was not a gradual alignment process, but a rapid operational decision taken under extreme conditions. In this instance, alignment with European standards was not solely a box-ticking exercise for the sake of gaining EU member status, it was part of a strategy to ensure the resilience of Ukrainian infrastructure.

These examples reflect a broader shift in how Ukraine approaches EU accession. Rather than treating integration as a linear, regulatory process, Ukraine has prioritised sector-specific alignment that solves immediate economic problems. Trade routes were rebuilt through cooperation with EU partners, energy systems were stabilised through rapid synchronisation and market access has been maintained through negotiated, flexible arrangements.

This approach has led to a more comprehensive reshaping of Ukraine’s economic orientation. The EU is now Ukraine’s largest trading partner, accounting for a substantial share of its exports and assimilating its economy within European value chains. What Ukraine has managed to do is anchor its future in the European family in the present day.

For the EU itself, this is an important lesson in how it should frame the path to EU accession. It should be clear with candidates that integration is not just a long-term political objective or institutional endpoint. It is also a practical mechanism for managing more immediate sources of disruption and bolstering economic resilience.

Lesson 5: Combine Central Defence Coordination With Decentralised Innovation and Mass Production at Speed

Wars are won on the factory floor where innovation meets mass production. Ukraine has turned this into a working model for high-intensity warfare, with clear implications for how Europe thinks about defence.

The defining feature of Ukraine’s approach is not just speed or scale, but how the two are combined. It has built a system that is fast at the edge and deep at the base. New technologies are adopted quickly, while production capacity is expanded to sustain operations under constant attrition. In this kind of conflict, the binding constraint is not ideas but output. It takes longer to build systems than to train people, and the side that can replace losses fastest sets the pace.

This starts with procurement. Ukraine has moved away from a purely centralised model and created a more flexible system that combines central direction with decentralised execution. Platforms such as Brave1 provide a direct interface between frontline units and private-sector developers. Often described by officials as an “Amazon for war”, the platform allows units to identify requirements, test solutions and order equipment in near real time. In one six-month period alone, Ukrainian forces ordered around 240,000 drones through this system, with delivery times measured in days rather than months.

The impact is most visible in the drone sector. Ukraine produced more than 1.5 million drones in 2024, with domestically manufactured systems accounting for over 95 per cent of those deployed (see Figure 5). These range from low-cost first-person-view drones to more complex strike platforms.

What matters is not just volume, but the speed of iteration. Battlefield feedback is fed directly into design changes, with new versions deployed within weeks. As Mykhailo Fedorov, who in January was named minister of defence, put it, “asymmetrical warfare means using technologies that the enemy doesn’t expect”. That principle is now embedded in how Ukrainian forces operate.

These dynamics extend beyond drones. Electronic warfare has become a core capability, used down to the tactical level and shaping the effectiveness of other systems. Drones and electronic warfare together have altered how traditional capabilities function. Artillery, for example, is now far more precise and responsive when paired with real-time aerial reconnaissance and targeting. The result is a battlefield defined by short feedback loops and continuous adaptation.

At the same time, Ukraine has maintained a clear focus on mass production. This is not only a story of innovation. It is about sustaining combat over time. Ukraine has prioritised the production of affordable, expendable systems and ensured access to large volumes of ammunition and basic equipment. Losses are expected and planned for. The system is designed to absorb them and regenerate combat power quickly. Resilience comes from volume and redundancy as much as from technological sophistication.

What emerges is a differentiated, hybrid procurement model. Central institutions set priorities, allocate funding and secure supply chains for critical materiel. Around that, a decentralised ecosystem of military units, startups, engineers and volunteers drives experimentation and rapid adoption. President Zelensky has described this as the foundation of a “virtually new defence industry”, one that is built around speed, scale and continuous innovation.

This stands in contrast to most European procurement systems, which remain geared towards long timelines, rigid requirements and a small number of high-end platforms. That model struggles when technology evolves quickly and when equipment must be replaced at scale.

For Europe, the implication is clear. Procurement systems need to support both innovation and mass production. That requires a stronger central capacity to deliver production at scale and build industrial resilience, alongside controlled decentralisation that shortens feedback loops and allows frontline users to shape what is developed and bought. Ukraine is operating under the conditions Europe is moving towards. Its experience shows that adapting these systems now is not optional but necessary.

Conclusion: A Model for Resilience

The focus at the Ukraine Recovery Conference will understandably be on what Ukraine needs. Its challenges remain formidable and its international partners are rightly looking for ways to offer support.

At the same time, Europe cannot afford to ignore the valuable lessons Ukraine can provide. Whether it is the decentralisation of political authority, the broad public and private involvement in its digital ecosystem, or the leveraging of disparate innovation in defence tech, Ukraine offers a blueprint for resilience under the most extreme pressures.

Amid geopolitical shifts and growing technological disruption, countries will have to rethink their approach to governance. Ukraine has been subjected to these pressures earlier than most – and Europe would do well to learn from its experiences.