At first glance, Ukraine has little to do with Greenland. One is fighting a grinding land war in Eastern Europe; the other is a remote territory on NATO’s northern flank. Yet the two are becoming strategically linked. As Russia and increasingly China push further into the Arctic, Ukraine’s hard-won experience with cheap, lethal unmanned systems may prove unexpectedly relevant to the defense of the High North, writes David Kirichenko.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made the connection explicit. If Russian warships were allowed to roam freely around Greenland, he said, Ukraine knew how to deal with them, just as it had driven Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from Crimea using naval drones. The caveat was political rather than technical as Ukraine is not yet a member of NATO. Still, given the needed access and the proper intelligence, Kyiv could impose significant costs on the Russians.

The remark reflected more than mere rhetoric. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has transformed naval warfare, illustrating the growing asymmetric capabilities of smaller states. 

Lacking a conventional navy, it turned instead to small, expendable naval drones, forcing Russia’s much larger fleet to withdraw from occupied Crimea and operate at arm’s length. “Naval drones are now a crucial component of the Ukrainian navy and the primary strike weapon at sea,” said Serhii Kuzan, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center and former Ministry of Defense adviser. 

That logic extends northward, as Russia sees the Arctic as a strategic prize, rich in resources and newly accessible as ice retreats. It has invested accordingly, fielding the world’s largest icebreaker fleet and expanding military infrastructure along the Northern Sea Route. Expanding Arctic shipping is likely to strengthen Russia’s strained economy and support China’s efforts to diversify resource supplies. 

However, Russia’s Arctic position is vulnerable. Sanctions and the loss of foreign contractors have left Moscow struggling to maintain basic port infrastructure along the Northern Sea Route, from dredging to maintenance. 

This infrastructure would make for ideal targets for Ukraine to strike, while also forcing Russia to redeploy assets from its ongoing war in Ukraine. Just as important, it would offer Ukraine an opportunity to deploy drones in extreme conditions, gather operational data and help advance autonomous sensing and targeting techniques that Western militaries are likely to need in a future Arctic battlefield.

For now, however, physical proximity remains deceptive. As Ulrik Pram Gad of the Danish Institute for International Studies noted in a report last year, “there are indeed Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic, but these vessels are too far away to see from Greenland with or without binoculars.” Still, Russia is likely gearing up to ramp up hybrid warfare in the Arctic. Norwegian intelligence agencies have warned of a significant increase in Russian espionage and sabotage activity targeting Norway and the wider Arctic region.

Ukrainian intelligence has already shown it can reach into this region. In 2024, drones reportedly struck the Olenya airbase in Murmansk, damaging strategic bombers and helicopters. By June 2025, “Operation Spiderweb” demonstrated an even more unsettling idea: short-range drones launched from concealed containers deep inside Russian territory, destroying or damaging high-value aircraft at a fraction of their cost.

Such methods could translate well to the Arctic. Remote or containerized drones, launched from civilian vessels or forward-deployed platforms, could threaten Russian naval assets and logistics hubs while blurring attribution. Even if never used, their mere plausibility would force Moscow to disperse air defenses, patrols and counter-drone systems across vast distances.

As Ukraine extended the reach of its drones deep into Russia’s rear, Moscow was forced to redeploy air defense systems to protect sites once considered beyond range. Satellite imagery has since shown such systems repositioned hundreds of kilometers from the front. 

Much of the value of uncrewed systems lies not in striking power but in what strategists call “deterrence by detection.” Persistent drones complicate covert movement, expose gray-zone activity and narrow an adversary’s room for ambiguity. In the Arctic, where distances are vast and response times long, early visibility may matter more than firepower.

Still, technology is not without limits. Arctic conditions punish batteries, sensors and navigation systems. Tests in Greenland have shown quadcopters lasting only minutes at extreme temperatures. Satellite navigation degrades at high latitudes; icing remains a persistent problem. 

Design trade-offs compound the problem. Features that improve efficiency in milder climates can prove liabilities in dense, icy air, forcing operators to accept shorter endurance or higher attrition. Field experience suggests such conditions typically shorten operational cycles by roughly a fifth, enough to complicate planning, but rarely enough to negate capability altogether.

As a recent report in the Wall Street Journal noted: “Sending drones and robots into battle, rather than humans, has become a tenet of modern warfare. Nowhere does that make more sense than in the frozen expanses of the Arctic.”

Experience from Ukraine suggests those limits are real but rarely decisive. Early versions of Russia’s Shahed strike drones struggled in freezing conditions, suffering from icing and component failure. Moscow responded by winterizing key elements such as sealing control surfaces, adding localized heating and adjusting flight profiles. Cold weather reduced reliability and sortie rates, but it did not ground the systems altogether.

Winter has imposed similar pressures on Ukrainian forces. Severe cold shortens drone range and raises failure rates, increasing the cost of each strike. Higher attrition has brought rapid learning, as operators adapt flight profiles and gain experience operating at the limits of drone warfare. 

The same pattern is emerging more broadly. Manufacturers have moved from improvised insulation toward active thermal management, using heated enclosures and controlled storage to keep electronics and power systems within narrow temperature bands. 

These constraints apply to everyone. Russia itself has been experimenting with cold-weather drones since 2014, including models designed for sub-zero operations and long-range surveillance along Arctic sea lanes. Western militaries are racing to catch up, buying winterized systems and planning new Arctic bases, but progress is slow and costly.

Still, the problem is not simply one of spending. Across NATO, procurement of Arctic-capable drones remains fragmented, slow and risk-averse. Most systems are designed for temperate climates and only later adapted for cold weather, leaving few platforms genuinely fit for sustained operations in the High North. Ukraine’s approach of rapid iteration, field-driven design and acceptance of attrition, has been the opposite.

That combination of experience and industrial culture is difficult to replicate quickly. As Olena Kryzhanivska, a defense analyst, put it, “Ukraine is the only country with experience in countering Russian aggression, so everything from technologies to tactics, intelligence, and a general understanding of Russia’s behavior in armed conflict is what Ukraine can offer its allies.” 

Kryzhanivska added that “with its strong engineering schools, sense of urgency, and numerous startups hungry for innovation, Ukraine can provide unmanned technologies and technical solutions suited for the harsh conditions of the Arctic region. This way, any Russian provocation in the Arctic would not cost Ukraine’s partners millions of dollars.”

That assessment is also shared by investors backing Ukraine’s defense-technology ecosystem. As Deborah Fairlamb, a founding partner of Green Flag Ventures, told me, “If and when 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.”

Political obstacles, however, loom larger than technical ones. Any Ukrainian role in Arctic defense would raise sensitive questions about escalation, basing and the use of allied territory. Yet with sufficient political will, Kyiv has already demonstrated both reach and restraint. Ukrainian drones have imposed significant costs on Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea and have reportedly operated as far afield as the Mediterranean and off the coast of Africa.

If Donald Trump proves serious about Greenland’s security and the use of asymmetric tools to counter Russian and Chinese pressure, Ukraine’s role may be larger than first appears.

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. Follow him on X: @DVKirichenko.