By Olha Chepil | 2024-08-26

KYIV -- Despite Russia's war in Ukraine and attempts to discredit Ukrainian statehood, the country is demonstrating strength and resilience, and is more confident than ever in its move towards the West.

In facing an enemy with absolute military superiority, such as Moscow, and actually holding it off, Ukrainians are working a miracle, analysts say.

Modernizing the Ukrainian army

The Ukrainian army, considered one of the worst-funded on the continent 10 years ago, today has become one of the most powerful in the world.

The Ukrainian military ranks 18th in the world and 4th in Europe, GlobalFirepower finds.

"In Ukraine, military practice has always been quite competent," said Alexander Kovalenko, Odesa-based military and political correspondent with InfoResist.

"When Ukrainians came together [against Russia], when they showed their solidarity, the enemy encountered serious problems," he told Kontur.

But to achieve this, the Ukrainian army both had to grow and to adapt to 21st century demands.

It now numbers 880,000 troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told German TV channel ARD in January. At the end of 2013, it had only about 120,000 service members.

Along with growing sevenfold, the Ukrainian military has upgraded its arsenal. It used to rely on Soviet and Ukrainian equipment but has begun receiving advanced Western arms.

For example, Ukrainian pilots this year have begun flying F-16 fighter jets in Ukraine.

"Russia had dominance at sea, dominance in the air, tactical missiles, and so on... But we see resilience," said Kovalenko. "Ukrainian military teaching has yielded fruit yet again."

A new type of warfare

Although Ukraine's offensive in 2023 in Donbas and Zaporizhzhia province stalled, its incursion into Kursk province, Russia, demonstrates that the army is still capable of bold strikes.

Two weeks after the army launched its lightning offensive on August 6, the Russians still have not managed to halt it.

Ukrainian troops are expanding Russian territory under their control and bringing up reserves.

"Ukraine is ready to take rather non-trivial steps that the enemy does not expect at all ... and the enemy is incapable of responding to these steps," said Kovalenko.

Ukraine's military has completely transformed itself since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Meanwhile, the invasion bred a new type of conflict -- the drone war, observers say.

Ukrainians have demonstrated mastery of this art, using naval drones to sink or disable a third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Ukraine's quick adaptations to battlefield changes have advantaged it against the hidebound Russian military, analysts say.

"Today, around the world, the Ukrainian army stands alone in waging a full-scale war against an enemy that is far superior to it in all respects," Kovalenko said.

'I defend my country in my language'

The changes in the army are a consequence of deeper transformations in Ukrainian society, analysts say.

Ukrainians have gained a deeper understanding from the war of what it means to be Ukrainian.

In 2023, Ukrainian de-Russification began in earnest. To this day, local governments are renaming streets and volunteers are razing monuments to Soviet soldiers and poets.

Russia's violent attempt to enlarge the "Russian world" is destroying all of its levers of influence and strengthening everything Ukrainian in Ukraine.

Lyudmila Shevchuk, who teaches Ukrainian in Kyiv and belongs to the Association of Ukrainian Editors, has seen enormous demand for Ukrainian language instruction in recent years.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, she said, 80% of her friends switched to using Ukrainian.

"My student Maria shows the profound nature of this process. She participates in conversation clubs and has Down syndrome. ... She said, 'I defend my country in my language,'" Shevchuk told Kontur.

Observers also note increasing interest in Ukrainian history. Over the past few years, Ukraine has seen a large number of history-related YouTube channels emerge, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

"Most people have switched to the Ukrainian language," said Shevchuk. "What next? Next the question is who are you, where are you from, who are your ancestors? Why did they live where they ended up? How was their life there?"

"We can certainly boast that we are the only nation in the world that continues to fight and demonstrate such fortitude in these conditions and in a war such as this."

'Ukraine is going to be part of Europe'

Russia has spent billions of dollars on propaganda over the past decade to prove to the world that Ukraine is a "failed state" that Russia will seize and restore to order, analysts say.

But instead, in its 33rd year of independence, Ukraine's global standing has strengthened substantially.

Kyiv now exerts significant influence on geopolitical alignments, according to Ihor Reiterovych, director of political and legal programs at the Ukrainian Center for Social Development.

"Now it is very difficult to imagine the future of the international system -- the future of geopolitics -- without Ukraine. We are making significant, gradual movement towards the EU [European Union]," he told Kontur.

"Most of the processes are now irreversible," he said. "Ukraine is going to be part of Europe. That's obvious. The key obstacle is ... the war."

During independence, Ukraine did more than preserve democracy -- it expanded it, he said.

"We have established ourselves as a promising nation-state that definitely has a future," said Reiterovych.