Ukraine is remaking its air force on NATO’s model, down to the way its squadrons are organized and the aircraft they fly. The reforms are planned to be completed by 2035 and include modernizing its F-16s while pursuing the Swedish Gripen jets, Air Force Spokesperson Yurii Ihnat says, per Tse Baza.

Ukraine’s fighters are working hard against Russia’s air war, and in the previous month alone the Air Force faced around 3,500 jet-powered targets, with F-16s heavily used to intercept Russian drones. The new reform is meant to build an air force that can be sustained over the long term and can contest Russian jets and glide bombs, not only survive the next wave.

Wings and universal air bases

The central change, Ihnat said, is a move to the “wing” units that NATO air forces use. The first steps have already been taken: Ukraine has set up the 107th F-16 wing, which now has its own Facebook page and may publish material about its work.

Ukraine also plans to build universal air bases on the operational airfields it has used through the full-scale war. In the future, Ihnat says, those bases should be able to receive and service different models of combat aircraft, as NATO does.

A worn fleet, and the jets Ukraine wants next

Currently, the F-16s Ukraine flies are older Block 15 jets, used by other countries before they arrived, and intensive combat has left them in need of repairs, service life restoration, and upgrades.

Ukrainian officials discussed modernization with the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin, while Kyiv would prefer the newer Block 70/72 version, which Ihnat says would let its pilots stand up more confidently to Russia’s Su-35 fighters.

Keeping the current fleet flying has been hard: fewer than half of Ukraine’s F-16s may be operational, held back by slow maintenance abroad.

At the same time, Lockheed Martin and Kyiv are discussing a special F-16 variant for Ukraine, with a modern AESA radar, longer range, and a wider choice of weapons, though no firm deal exists yet.

Ukraine is also counting on Swedish Gripen fighters. Ihnat says Ukrainian pilots are drawn to them for their lower operating costs and simpler maintenance, with the country likely to receive older C/D models first, before the newer Gripen E that Saab is developing.

Ukrainian pilots have already begun their training on the Gripen, a jet seen as a counter to the Russian aircraft dropping guided glide bombs on the front, though delivery timing depends on further agreements.

For 14 years, Serbia’s government kept the country close to Moscow. Now, the opposition “Student List” has won the country’s snap parliamentary election, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine is ready to deepen its cooperation with Serbia, welcoming the result as “a new page” in a post on X.

The win could end the 14-year rule of President Aleksandar Vučić’s political force and weaken Moscow’s position in the Balkans. Serbia has remained an important Kremlin partner in Europe since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Belgrade never joined the EU's sanctions against Moscow.

“A new page”

In his post, written in Ukrainian, Zelenskyy said that "changes have taken place in Serbia, the victory of the Student List, and this is clearly a new page in the history of the country and its people."

“We wish Serbia success, real development, and warm relations with the European community,” he wrote.

He said Ukraine was grateful to Serbia “for the respect shown to our people and our state, our independence,” and added: “We are ready to keep increasing our cooperation, and may all the good hopes of the people of Serbia come true.”

But the winners rule out sanctions on Russia

Vučić had earlier predicted that a new government could impose restrictions on Moscow by March or April, according to Novosti. The Student List says otherwise: it has no plans to align with the EU or to sanction Russia over the war in Ukraine, according to Reuters.

Its candidates frame Serbia’s reliance on Russian gas, with Gazprom as the largest supplier at around 2.2 billion cubic meters a year at below-market prices, as an acute economic dependency rather than a geopolitical alignment.

The movement’s top candidates have also said a future government would end all arms exports to war zones, including sales to Western intermediaries who pass weapons to Ukraine. Around €800 million worth of Serbian ammunition has reached Ukraine through that route since 2022.

Ukraine has held its first international course in military surgery and resuscitation, under instructors from the American College of Surgeons and other Western trauma bodies, the Defense Ministry says. “Tryzub”, or Trident, has been conducted for front-line surgeons and anesthesiologists.

The week-long drills put 16 doctors, eight surgeons, and eight anesthesiologists through three standard Western trauma programs: Advanced Trauma Life Support, Definitive Surgical Trauma Care, and Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma. All of them work at stabilization points close to the fighting.

The course has been run with the International Association for Trauma Surgery and Intensive Care and the Global Medical Knowledge Alliance, a non-profit that helps rebuild Ukraine’s healthcare, with support from Razom4Ukraine and Expertise France.

The wounds have changed

The course answers a battlefield that has grown deadlier. Ukrainian combat medics say modern combat trauma has fundamentally changed: drones and shrapnel now cause most of the complex wounds, often tearing through several parts of the body at once.

Bleeding has become the main cause of death on the battlefield, and the window to stop it is measured in minutes. That is the gap a well-drilled surgical team near the line is meant to close.

“People who will do everything to save his life”

Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara has framed the course as a promise to troops at the front.

“When a soldier goes into battle, he must know that if he is wounded, there will be people beside him who will do everything they can to save his life,” Khmara says.

Experience, he added, is a kind of trust that matters enormously at the front.

“That is why we want our medics to have the best knowledge and skills, and to be able to act as one team," he states.

Ukrainian front-line medicine already draws international notice: one Azov brigade medic was named Europe’s best military medic of the year, and off-duty Ukrainian medics recently saved a man’s life at a London crash scene.

Captured Russian soldiers have a rule for one stretch of the Kupiansk front: go anywhere, but not there.

That stretch is the “safety corridor” the “Orion” unit of Ukraine’s Offensive Guard brigade “Pomsta” says it has built for its ground robots. The zone is so lethal that, by the unit’s count, 88% of attacking Russians are killed before they reach their positions, and Russian armor cannot get within 25 kilometers, the military outlet ArmyInform reports.

Behind that shield, the unit says its ground robots have run dozens of fully autonomous missions through the most dangerous ground on the axis, with a success rate of 99.57%. The results made Orion the top-ranked unit for effectiveness on the South-Kupiansk axis in September within Ukraine’s battlefield management system, DELTA.

“You can go anywhere, just not into the Orion zone”

The claim that the Russians now avoid the sector, the unit says, comes from them themselves.

“Prisoners admit in interviews: 'You can go anywhere, just not into the Orion zone.' Eighty-eight percent of the enemy is destroyed before reaching their positions, and Russian equipment cannot approach closer than 25 kilometers,” the unit says.

That is what opens the corridor. Where a human supply run would be a death sentence, a robot can cross, and cross again.

The quiet blood of the front

The point, the unit says, is to take the soldier out of the deadliest job on the front: carrying ammunition and the wounded across open fire.

“We broke the stereotype that supplying the army takes truck convoys and hundreds of soldiers under targeted fire. Our robotic systems are the ‘quiet blood’ of the front,” Vladyslav Zolotarov, an officer in the unit’s staff control group, says.

When Russia thinks our positions are depleted, a tracked platform quietly comes in at night and brings in a ton of ammunition.

In September alone, the unit says, its wheeled and tracked robots ran 85 of the hardest combat missions and hauled more than 30,000 kilograms of cargo. Its evacuation record is the line it is proudest of: four missions pulling wounded soldiers out by robot, all four successful, not one man lost.

Ukraine has bet heavily on this kind of machine, aiming to field 50,000 ground robots to keep its troops out of the drone-ruled kill zone.