Failure of NATO vision bolsters a new Ukraine as Europe’s bulwark against Russia

There is “absolutely no evidence” that Russian premier Vladimir Putin wants to negotiate peace in Ukraine, Sir richard Moore, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6 (aka the Secret Intelligence Service) warned in his outgoing speech on 19 September, Friday.

Speaking at the British consulate in Istanbul, on the verge of stepping down (at the end of this month) after five years as head of MI6, Sir Richard added that Putin was “stringing us along”

“He seeks to impose his imperial will by all means at his disposal. But he cannot succeed," Moore said. "Bluntly, Putin has bitten off more than he can chew. He thought he was going to win an easy victory. But he — and many others — underestimated the Ukrainians.”

But Ukraine is under considerable strain after three years of fighting this war, and its own president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will be banking on similar sentiments from his European allies too, as prospects for Ukraine joining NATO now look remote (despite optimism around it early in the year) given recent negative signals from the Trump administration and key European governments.

Kyiv’s Western allies, Zelenskyy hopes, will pivoted to a new approach: investing billions in Ukraine’s arms industry as a long-term strategy to help repel Russian aggression, enhancing national security for Ukraine and building at the same time a European “steel porcupine” capable of deterring future attacks, given Putin’s recent forays into Poland being seen as a testing of EU boundaries and strength.

Shifting focus from a NATO membership bid to defence industry partnerships

While several NATO leaders have reiterated Ukraine’s “irreversible path” towards future membership, immediate accession is not on the agenda due to both the ongoing war and political sensitivities within the alliance.

Instead, the ‘rest of the West’ — while the US under Donald Trump flip-flops freer than a weather vane — is stepping up direct financial and technological support to Ukraine’s defence sector.

While bilateral defence agreements are not new for Zelenskyy, the current shift of strategy — from straightforward weapon donations to local production and industrial partnerships — reflects a desire to strengthen its domestic capability to immediately produce where they are needed the drones, missiles and armoured vehicles adapted to modern battlefields... and in turn have Ukraine stand ready to participate in a wider European response, should that become necessary.

Security guarantees and talk of future deterrence in Ukraine now are being recast, with European governments funding joint ventures, licencing deals with Western arms firms and emergency procurement contracts, rather than through direct military interventions or the Article 5 collective defence principle reserved for NATO members.

Meanwhile, US envoy Keith Kellogg has noted, “We are working with Ukrainians now to make sure we have got this drone technology exchange, which I think is very important.”

Ukraine’s efficient — and crucially, if regrettably, battle-tested — systems and its now-proven capacity for rapid innovation make it an attractive partner for other nations, too. “Ukraine has the advantage of having battle-tested systems, of having quite low production costs and having entities in place capable of producing these systems rapidly,” said Fabien Hinz of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Ukraine’s military innovations and global impact

With Ukraine’s weapons industry now supplying nearly 60 per cent of its army’s needs — up from a mere 10 per cent at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion — and its homegrown FPV (first-person view) drones accounting for 70 per cent of Russian losses close to the front, it just makes more sense for allies to fuel the already up-and-running engine than stoke several separate engines less efficiently.

Ukraine now produces advanced drones capable of evading Russian jamming, striking targets deep inside enemy territory and enabling remote-controlled arms for battlefield operations — technologies that may eventually equip NATO and EU forces as well, but the need and the impetus for development elsewhere is not yet urgent.

Western allies have thus committed over $1.5 billion in direct funding for Ukrainian production of artillery, missiles, drones and anti-tank weapons, partnering with defence firms in Denmark, Germany, Britain and other countries to build joint manufacturing facilities — and yes, some of these will also be sited outside Ukraine, to keep these key manufactories out of Russian strike range.

“Ukraine is capable of producing at least $30 billion of weapons annually,” Zelenskyy has declared, emphasising ambitions to become a self-reliant, export-oriented arms manufacturing hub.

Consequences for European — and global — security

This investment-driven strategy marks a shift on the international stage, as Europe reconsiders its collective security and aims for less dependence on an increasingly unreliable US. Since the Trump administration’s suggestion that Europe “shouldn’t be overly reliant on the US to defend them” — the POTUS has even suggested Europe has taken advantage of his nation — there has been heightened urgency for European nations not only to supply Ukraine but to ensure their own resilience against threats from Russia.

For Ukraine, the pivot away from NATO membership — at least in the short term — means a need for deeper technological and industrial integration with Europe. For the US and European defence sectors, it provides access to tried-and-tested Ukrainian technology, potentially transforming procurement and defence cooperation on a wider scale.

As Arsen Zhumadilov, head of Ukraine's procurement agency, observed, “It’s not just about your ability to feed the stocks... If you want equipment relevant for today’s war conditions, this is the only approach you can take.”

Ultimately, these changes not only strengthen Ukraine’s posture against Russia but could also fundamentally reshape Europe’s security architecture, its military–industrial landscape and technological edge in response to modern warfare — moving from an assistance model toward durable, mutually beneficial partnerships with lasting implications for global defence industries and collective deterrence.

The million-dollar question, though, is is Russia worried yet? Or does it have its own new tricks up its sleeves?