The question is not when the Third World War will begin. The question is whether we are capable of recognising its course and structure before it reaches a decisive phase.

For most analytical institutions outside the theatres of war, this phase is still considered to lie ahead. For us, it has been underway for more than three years – and to be frank, its outlines began forming long before that.

The desire of authoritarian bloc states (Russia, Iran, North Korea, China) to achieve their objectives by force is growing in proportion to the chasm revealed in the collective West’s defence capability. The United States attempts to conceal this gap with a sudden shift in course, but this will only lead to worse consequences and increase the likelihood of a force-based resolution of relations between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan.

Following the end of the Cold War, Western states encouraged a programme in Europe that could be described as a moderate but consistent disarmament. This applied not only to Ukraine but to many other Central and Eastern European countries. The rhetoric, supported by funds and symbolic promises, was simple: democracy instead of an army, integration instead of security, soft power instead of military balance. The entire architecture of this strategy was based on the assumption that the world had emerged from the era of major wars, and that the main threat lay in political instability and unreformed regimes. Such a structure was inherently incapable of responding adequately to the 2008 war in Georgia or the onset of the war in Ukraine in 2014. It excluded the very possibility of events that ultimately destroyed it as a model of perception.

In this context, Ukraine was not only led towards the West – it was simultaneously led towards institutional and security toothlessness, as the state elites were oriented towards gaining access to financial assistance rather than developing their own strategic agency.

Disarmament from nuclear weapons, dismantling of Soviet defence infrastructure without proper replacement, reductions in combat-ready units, delegation of security logic to external structures – all this was not betrayal in the classical sense. It was part of a systemic Western strategy based on a flawed worldview in which diplomacy, not coercion, was considered the key resource.

The United States did not “abandon” Ukraine in 2025. They had preserved it in a past logic since the late 1990s, when they actively promoted a simplified formula: if you want to join NATO or the EU, you must be militarily weak, “transparent” to observers, and reformed politically. Political and economic dimensions were given primary importance, while security and geopolitical logic were omitted entirely: wars were no longer planned at all. Security, under such an approach, was viewed more as a conditional bonus – not as strategic infrastructure. This model was extrapolated across nearly all of Europe, where armies were transformed into bureaucratised structures with limited autonomy and entirely dependent logistics. As a result, small bureaucratised armies consumed fewer defence industry products, leading to degradation of the collective West’s defence sector.

The worst part of this situation is not even that the West underestimated the threats. The real problem is that it itself shaped a regional architecture incapable of responding to a large-scale conflict. A geopolitical illusion was created in which democracy was expected to be a shield in and of itself. But democracy is not a weapon. It is a system of organising society that requires armed support if it is to survive in a conflict-ridden world. And when this illusion began to collapse, none of the structures – neither NATO nor the EU – had a ready model for reacting to full-scale war on the continent’s eastern flank.

Ukraine found itself at the centre of this collapse. But unlike most countries still in a state of strategic denial, we are forced to build a new reality with our own hands. And this reality no longer assumes dependence on the traditional model of collective security. Today, Ukraine is not merely a target of attack or a defensive front.

It has become a nodal point of a new-generation hybrid conflict, where not only armies are tested but the very concept of state and military effectiveness. The issue of major war is not about professional armies or rapid precision strikes that end matters in two hours. It is the ability to conduct long, resource-intensive campaigns one after another.

Ukraine must shift from the position of security recipient to that of donor. That is – not only to defend itself, but to export solutions that were not formed in peacetime offices, but on the front lines amid the collapse of old combat regulations. Simply because there is nowhere else in the world to prepare for the war of the future. The West cannot learn the realities of future warfare even with the best military textbooks. Ukraine and its experience are the only chance for the West not to lose the war for the world’s future due to factors unaccounted for by traditional military academy approaches.

The conditions in which Azov was formed excluded comfort and loyalty. Before the full-scale invasion, we had to fight not only the enemy – we constantly had to defend our combat model before commanders who sometimes relied on classical, even outdated, approaches. Lack of resources, constant restrictions on the front line, information attacks, limited foreign support – these were not external circumstances but consistent conditions of existence, to which we developed an effective response. That response lies in the formation of an environment where decisions are made based on horizontal autonomy, and discipline is maintained not through formal hierarchy, but through effectiveness.

The Azov model is an asymmetric institution operating within the regular army while retaining the flexibility inherent only to network structures. This is its strategic value. When we speak of the armies of the future – it is precisely such environments that will form their core. Not catalogue-based NATO corps, but units capable of rapid reaction, transformation, autonomous and uninterrupted action even when cut off from main forces. This is where the example of Azov becomes crucial. Azov not only survived in chaos – it built its own adaptive architecture for warfare.

On a global scale, this means the following: Azov is not a local phenomenon, but a prototype of the army of a new era. An era in which classical states face blurred front lines, where strikes are delivered not only by weapons, but by information, and where managerial culture plays the decisive role. And it is this culture that determines who can survive a great war – and who will be forced to capitulate without a fight.

The war of the future is not an exchange of nuclear strikes. It is a conflict over control of the logic of adaptation, over the ability to remain effective in a crisis-ridden world. Ukraine, as the theatre of this war, has already become a testing ground for such models. And the experience developed here will be applied on other fronts – not only ours. This is already evident in the interest shown by Taiwan’s military, in new military reform concepts in Eastern Europe, and in the growing interest in autonomous combat structures. Our task is not only to survive, but to structure this experience, to transmit it, and to implement it at subsequent levels. And those who have already proven effective in the new war – including structures such as Azov – must become not only operational assets but agents of strategic modelling for the future.

The war continues. And it will be won not by those who launch hundreds of Shaheds nightly at residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. But by those who, in addition to rockets and drones, possess institutions that enable rapid adaptation and development in an environment where others simply disappear. Those who, against all odds, resist and can instantly counter the entropy of the external status quo.

Denys Prokopenko, Commander of the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine “Azov”, Colonel

This opinion piece was first published on Ukrainska Pravda on 14 July 2025.