It might be comforting, to the distracted populaces of rich and free countries, to think of the war in Ukraine as a regional war. A small war. One pitting just two countries against each other. 

That was never the case. Not since the first days of the war in early 2022, when an alliance of free countries swiftly came together to supply Ukraine with the intelligence, weapons and money it needed to defend and sustain itself as Russian regiments poured over the border and across the frontier in Russian-occupied Donbas.

And then Russia mobilized its own allies. First Iran, which supplied Russia with Russia’s first effective drone design, the explosive Shahed, starting in the fall of 2022. Each 400-pound drone hauls a 100-pound warhead as far as 1,500 miles – and does it cheaply, at just $50,000 a copy. 

In first buying Shaheds, and then building them under license at a factory in Russian Tatarstan, the Russians gained an inexpensive deep-strike munition: something they didn’t have before. 

In March alone, according to Ukrainian president Zelensky, the Russians launched 600 Shaheds at Ukraine.

“This campaign of terror affects numerous cities and villages throughout Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted. 

Next, late last year, North Korea stepped up to solve one of Russia’s most serious problems: a shortage of artillery shells. Russians batteries fired tens of thousands of shells a day in the early weeks of the war – a rate of fire that steadily decreased as the war dragged on and munitions stockpiles ran low.

By mid-2023, Ukrainian forces actually enjoyed a firepower advantage over Russian forces – and for one simple reason. “The West provided more artillery ammunition to Ukraine than Russia received from its partners,” according to Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group.