Ukraine’s Potential Role in NATO’s Arctic Defense

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Bohdan, a drone pilot with the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade, operates an FPV drone in Donetsk Oblast during active combat operations. Photo: David Kirichenko

Cheap unmanned systems have become a defining feature of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Kyiv has not only built a defensive “drone wall” to hold back Russian advances, but also used long-range drones to strike deep inside Russia. At sea, Ukrainian naval drones helped force the Black Sea Fleet into retreat. Now, as Moscow continues to focus on its race for Arctic resources and continues to harass NATO airspace, Europe should carefully consider how Ukraine’s battlefield innovations can strengthen collective defense in the High North. 

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in 2019, the Arctic “has become an arena of global power and competition.” Washington’s military strategy now calls for “regaining Arctic dominance.” And now, Ukraine and the US are reportedly nearing a landmark arms agreement where Kyiv could supply its drones to the American military.

Political scientist Mikhail Komin argued in a piece for The Economist that Russia’s Arctic strategy is shaped by two deep-seated insecurities: the fear of losing military dominance as melting ice opens the region to NATO expansion, and the fear of losing economic leverage without access to Western technology and markets. These anxieties have only intensified as Finland and Sweden joined NATO and as sanctions have constrained Russia’s energy projects. Those insecurities now manifest in increasingly assertive behavior across the High North.

Western intelligence officials warn that the Arctic is becoming a new theater for Russian pressure. Norway’s intelligence chief, Admiral Nils Andreas Stensonses, noted in June that Moscow has shifted more attention northward as the Baltic Sea grows increasingly hostile. At the same time, GPS and satellite jamming in northern Norway and Finland, drone flights over sensitive areas such as Svalbard. This has included several Russian citizens being arrested for illegally photographing restricted locations by October 2022, pointing to a more aggressive Russia in the region.

Russia has already revived its Cold War–era “Bastion” concept, formally adopted in 1998 and activated in the mid-2010s, to turn the Barents Sea and Kola Peninsula into a layered A2/AD zone protecting its nuclear submarine fleet, while also applying pressure through Svalbard. The Svalbard Treaty’s unique provisions, which grant Russia commercial access but deny it sovereign rights, have repeatedly offered Moscow an opening to test the limits of Western tolerance.

These hybrid pressures have been mirrored by a growing pattern of undersea infrastructure attacks. In January 2022, a fiber-optic cable linking Svalbard to mainland Norway was mysteriously severed, followed by the deliberate cutting of another cable near Norway’s Evenes Air Station in April 2024. And in just the past two years, at least 11 cables, including a gas pipeline, have been cut in the Baltic.

Russia has also intensified its military drills in the Barents Sea. In July 2025, the Northern Fleet launched one of its largest recent drills, mobilizing around 150 warships, 120 aircraft, and long-range missile units across a 94,000 km zone that extended into waters previously disputed with Norway. At the same time, the Kremlin has begun rattling threats to resume nuclear testing in the region.

However, Kyiv has already shown it can reach into Russia’s Arctic frontier. In July 2024, Ukrainian military intelligence claimed that its drones struck the Olenya airfield in Murmansk, targeting a TU-22M3 strategic bomber and destroying several helicopters.

Then in July 2025, Ukraine demonstrated what many military leaders had long worried about, which was the use of remote drones coming from containers to strike deep inside Russia with Operation Spiderweb. Launched from various sites, these drones caused billions of dollars in damage to Russian strategic bombers. “Certain Russian Arctic military locations may be targeted with a ‘Spiderweb’-type attack, with short-range drones brought close to the actual target’s physical location,” said Samuel Bendett in an interview with the author, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Heorhii Volkov, commander of the Yasni Ochi drone unit of the 13th Khartiia Brigade, told me that he believes a complex strike in the Arctic is achievable. He says success depends on studying enemy tactics, gathering intelligence, and adapting drone technology to exploit identified vulnerabilities. Lyuba Shipovich, CEO of Dignitas Ukraine, said the real challenge would be getting permission from allied states to use their territory to conduct strikes against Russia in the Arctic. Naval drones could help strike at Russian ice breaker ships, as Moscow has the largest fleet in the world. 

The psychological factor also matters. The mere possibility that Ukrainian naval drones, launched covertly from civilian vessels or shipping containers, could strike Russian assets in Murmansk would force Moscow to divert resources northward, diluting its focus on Ukraine. Even the perception of such a threat could serve as a deterrent.

Still, operating in the High North presents formidable challenges. Treston Wheat, the chief geopolitical officer at Insight Forward, stated in an interview with the author: “For NATO to operate effectively in the Arctic, modernization must focus on mobility, sensing, undersea dominance, and resilience to extreme environments.” Ukraine’s Black Sea playbook, he cautioned, cannot simply be transplanted to the Arctic. Containerized drones in the Barents Sea would encounter severe hurdles: icing, unreliable navigation signals, satellite blind spots, and the Northern Fleet’s layered defenses.

Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, offered a similar warning. An Operation Spiderweb-style strike in the Arctic, he said, would be “difficult to pull off,” pointing to heavily regulated shipping lanes and the fact that “batteries perform poorly in extreme cold.”

The Arctic is already testing the limits of drone technology. In Greenland, a local startup recently found that a quadcopter’s battery lasted barely three minutes at minus 43 Celsius. “We are all having to catch up with Ukraine and Russia,” admitted Norway’s army chief, Major General Lars Lervik.

Russia has already begun testing this concept closer to Europe. Western intelligence reports suggest Moscow has used naval and repurposed civilian vessels as maritime drone launch platforms, linked to disruptions at airports in Munich, Norway, and Denmark. Around 15 drones were also spotted over Belgium’s Elsenborn military training area, a NATO base near the German border. Operating from international waters allows Russia to blur attribution, creating a gray-zone threat that complicates NATO’s rules of engagement and extends the reach of its hybrid warfare playbook.

Russia has been building a drone fleet for the Arctic since 2014 and now fields Zala models built for sub-zero missions, while boasting that its long-range Okhotnik combat drone can operate at minus 12 Celsius. “We’re moving towards a point where Russia will not only have unarmed surveillance drone systems along the Northern Sea Route, but potentially armed systems constantly patrolling,” said James Patton Rogers, a drone expert who advises NATO. 

Western allies are scrambling to respond. Finland has already bought 2,000 small drones that can fly in minus 36 Celsius. Denmark has earmarked $400 million for long-range Arctic models, Canada is adding winter-capable systems to its navy, and Norway plans to buy weather-resistant drones for a new Arctic base. Even so, NATO officials concede that persistent problems with icing, degraded satellite navigation, and long distances leave their fleets vulnerable. While Russia operates around 50 polar icebreakers, including nuclear-powered ones, the United States has only three, with its next new vessel not expected before 2029.

Yet Ukraine’s experience is still instructive. “Ukraine’s low-signature tactics suggest a model for episodic, deniable effects rather than sustained force projection in the Arctic,” Wheat told me. One potential area is to attack vulnerable ice breaker ships that Moscow deploys. In other words, NATO does not need to copy Ukraine’s campaigns outright, but it can adapt Kyiv’s cheaper, more distributed, and less predictable methods to impose costs on Russia in the High North.

Some of this Ukrainian battlefield tech could be transferable to the Arctic front under the right conditions. Olena Kryzhanivska, a defense analyst, told me in an interview that Ukraine’s battlefield experience gave it a unique value for NATO. With strong engineering schools and a growing startup culture, she argued, Ukraine is well-positioned to supply unmanned technologies and tactical know-how suited for the Arctic’s harsh conditions. That wartime experience reflects not only technical expertise but also a capacity for rapid adaptation.

Deborah Fairlamb, founding partner of Ukraine-focused venture capital firm Green Flag Ventures said, “If and when the Ukrainians turn to that environment, they will be well placed to adapt and build quickly – simply based on the sheer scale and scope of what they have already achieved.”

Indeed, depending on how Russia’s war in Ukraine ends, if Putin is given any concessions, he will be emboldened and seek to be in a constant state of confrontation as the safety of his regime depends on it. Any win for the Kremlin in Ukraine, will give them further motivation to increase aggression on other fronts.

Ultimately, the lesson for NATO is not to replicate Ukraine’s technology wholesale, since Arctic conditions make that impossible, but to adopt Ukraine’s inventive mindset. Kyiv has shown how to turn low-cost, improvised systems into disruptive tools that reshape the battlefield. For NATO, encouraging leaders to think creatively about technology and how it can be applied in unexpected ways to impose costs on adversaries may prove as important as any hardware investment.

David Kirichenko is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His work on warfare has been featured in publications such as the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Modern Warfare Institute, among others. He can be found on X @DVKirichenko.