In the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, much that could go wrong did for the Russian military. As one volunteer organization called KatyaValya recalled:
We called all our military friends in (Russian-held) Donetsk, but no one could really explain or say anything. Three or four days later, Katya’s husband (who served with Donetsk militia) disappeared from communications. We searched for him every day through the commandant’s office to make sure everything was alright. Then he finally got in touch: “We need combat boots, sleeping bags, cigarettes, raincoats, and most importantly, Baofeng radios.”
While some elements of Russian civil society protested the invasion, others mobilized to an unprecedented degree to assist the military. This effort eventually came to be known as the “People’s military-industrial complex” or simply “the People’s VPK.”
The need for much of this assistance was linked to the Russian military’s lack of preparedness for the war. According to numerous accounts by Russian citizens who would eventually step into the role of volunteers and technology developers, Russian soldiers rapidly ran out of basic supplies and began reaching out to families and friends with requests for everything from cigarettes to shovels. These requests evolved into a national informal assistance effort, which revealed the deficits within Russian forces, the extent of dependence on Chinese products for the war effort, and the lesser-known story of how Russian society mobilized in support of the war.
Yet, unlike in Ukraine, where civil society continued to expand efforts to compensate for weak state capacity, in the Russian state-dominated system, it was first viewed with suspicion and derision. Russia’s People’s VPK is a phenomenon born of the war, and — despite the innovative approach it took — is unlikely to continue as the state will consume it thereafter. The ecosystem of volunteer groups and smaller tech startups is already being taken over by state capital and is likely to disappear after the war. Yet the story of the People’s VPK offers an interesting window into how informal assistance emerged in a deeply authoritarian state, governed by a system of patronage, where large defense enterprises are state-dependent and controlled. It is also another entry in the longstanding discussion on the extent to which this is President Vladimir Putin’s war, or one supported by the broader Russian public.
The Growth of the People’s VPK
In 2022, to address the needs of the floundering Russian military, numerous Russian individuals, volunteers, and civil society organizations, and eventually small technical teams, took to social media platforms such as the Telegram messaging app to call for assistance, advertise their efforts, or actively fundraise to purchase all manner of supplies and equipment. By fall of 2022, some of these efforts were raising 460 million rubles (approximately $6 million) per month, claiming 182,000 donations. This assistance eventually encompassed items from basic equipment to Chinese-made Da-Jiang Innovations Mavic drones, first-person view drones, counter-drone technology, night vision, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence systems. As the war progressed into 2023, many such efforts started purchasing and refurbishing civilian vehicles and assembling unmanned ground vehicles to send to the front, along with medical equipment and food items — essentially, anything and everything needed by the soldiers on the frontline. By 2023, this effort came to be collectively known as the People’s VPK.
Why the surge of effort? After taking heavy losses in the invasion, in 2022 Russia began standing up regionally organized volunteer units, and then the state ordered a partial mobilization of over 300,000 troops. The system was overwhelmed as it was trying to generate forces from a large, mobilized reserve. Bureaucracy was another problem, and small reconnaissance drones, civilian radios, light pickup trucks, and portable electronic warfare systems were not in the units’ table of organization and equipment. How can you requisition that which you are not supposed to have? Units turned to informal assistance networks for these needs not only because they were much more agile, but also because they didn’t need official requisition orders and multiple approval stamps on the documents. Lastly, informal assistance is often far less corrupt than the exploitative official bureaucracy.
The overall impact of the People’s VPK on the war effort is likely larger, encompassing a host of innovation efforts. By 2023, a number of more specialized Russian technical start-ups were launched, as well as numerous training and education efforts to teach drone and counter-drone operators the basics of maintaining and using such technologies. Russian drones like Upyr were founded by small teams willing to invest their own time and resources and have since morphed into larger production efforts with the help of regional governments and eventual Ministry of Defense support.
The Russian military bureaucracy allowed the flow of civilian-acquired goods and independently developed tech directly to the front, often to specific units and soldiers. Many volunteers can travel to the frontline unimpeded to deliver technology and equipment, sometimes in large quantities. Across dozens of Russian-language Telegram channels, soldiers and units report on such acquisitions, often to express gratitude for items such as quadcopters, first-person view drones, and other supplies. Volunteer organizations have since morphed into influential efforts capable of raising significant funds for occasional large-scale purchases and developed technologies that could be manufactured at scale. Of course, many of the components are imported from China, which is what allowed both Russia and Ukraine to rapidly develop various types of drones and electronic warfare systems. Here, the Russian crowd-sourced effort was much smaller than Ukraine’s, but nonetheless made an impact over the course of the war.
The People’s VPK and the State
The extent of Russian government support for the People’s VPK is not always clear. Some efforts receive Ministry of Defense assistance and facilitation, while others receive assistance from local and regional governments. It certainly didn’t start that way. While individual units sought help, the bureaucracy was far less interested in crowdsourced solutions. These were not tanks, artillery, or aircraft: The value of small uncrewed aircraft systems was not immediately obvious to a military brass used to thinking about traditional weapon systems and the large defense industrial enterprises that provided them. Also, the Russian effort depended on internal capital, which inherently kept it small compared to the large volume of informal assistance that flowed into Ukraine.
Russia’s grassroots effort was probably a hybrid, with some initiatives having cooperated with the Ministry of Defense and the government from the very beginning. Some of the more prominent civil society and volunteer organizations functioning today — such as the People’s Front nationwide effort — have direct ties to the Kremlin. Veche, another national volunteer organization that actively aids the Russian forces, has ties to regional and municipal governments. Others were supported by regional governments or benefited from funding provided by large state-controlled enterprises. There was a tendency for the elite to want to show that they supported the war, much like during earlier times when nobles might fund a regiment for the tsar’s war. Some of course claim that their efforts are supported and facilitated entirely by donations from regular citizens and wealthy individuals, without direct Ministry of Defense involvement or influence. The overall share of technology development and assistance by the People’s VPK compared to the country’s defense-industrial complex remains quite small — the Russian official defense complex comprises thousands of enterprises and millions of workers — but has become impactful because it covers key gaps in state support.
Over time, the Russian government came to recognize these informal networks supporting the military. In late 2024, Putin even ordered the domestic defense industry to work more closely with the People’s VPK. In December 2024, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov noted that the Ministry of Defense’s traditional development and acquisition procedures, which provide for a long, strictly regulated process of weapon and systems development, testing, and production, make it “extremely difficult” to rapidly provide the troops with much-needed technical solutions. Some of the more notable technical developments — such as the use of first-person view drones — were carried out within the framework of projects that combine the efforts of volunteers, wealthy contributors, the People’s VPK, and the Ministry of Defense. Hence, it offered a parallel ecosystem with ties to the state, but was able to iterate and deploy solutions much faster to the Russian military.
Belousov highlighted that between April 2024 and December 2024, more than 65 People’s VPK projects were delivered to the military, comprising 31 types of aerial drones, eight ground robotic systems, two types of electronic reconnaissance equipment, 20 electronic warfare systems, and four types of unmanned surface vessels. He also noted that by December 2024, more than 100,000 products from small domestic design bureaus and civilian manufacturers had been purchased for military needs. This number likely increased through 2025. Putin, in turn, put a fiscal estimate on such assistance in December 2025, pointing out that Russian citizens and entrepreneurs raised 83 billion rubles (approximately $1 billion) “for the development of unmanned technologies”, also promising that the state would continue to support “modern-day Kulibins” — Russian inventors and self-taught developers — through a system of grants and funding. However, other official voices suggested that it is 350 billion rubles.
The truth is that despite conflicting official statements, it is difficult to estimate the actual value of this effort. In a recent study, Mariya Y. Omelicheva noted the range of funds collected by various Russian volunteer efforts, ranging between $41,000 and $1.7 million for fundraising campaigns over several months in 2022, 2024, and 2025. A Russian publication also reported last year that Russian volunteers and activists raised approximately 11.8 billion rubles (approximately $155.5 million) for the military in 2024, three and a half times lower than the total for 2023, 39.1 billion rubles ($515 million).
Lacking significant resources, many startups and volunteers built technical solutions on a small scale that could not be properly tested and evaluated the same way as military technologies via official certification processes to enable top performance. That had the advantage of allowing for quick iteration, but without quality control or the ability to scale production serially. As a result, a hodgepodge of provided solutions were deployed across the Russian force. As of early 2026, the Russian Ministry of Defense has launched accelerator platforms as a bridge between developers and end-users — in some ways, this is an attempt to imitate Ukraine’s Brave1 platform. Despite such initial steps, it is still unclear how many Russian developers trust or engage with such official outlets — or even know about them to begin with — instead preferring to work directly with specific commanders and units. The reason for this is not only because it is easier, but it also avoids the corruption of the state.
As of early 2026, some technical startups rely on their regional administrators and politicians to raise awareness of their products with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, in order “for folk inventors to be able to bring their ideas to complex machines and technologies and bring their products to at least an official test batch level.” The traditional Russian defense industry still maintains a monopoly over technology development and fielding, but the impact of so many volunteer organizations and their success have not gone unnoticed in the Russian government. Russia is a state-capitalist system, but the war had led to the emergence of a small-scale and very active private sector military industry outside of the state-controlled military-industrial complex. Naturally, some Russian government officials called for the state to take control of this wider civil society initiative to “prevent the spread of technology that could fall into the hands of terrorists,” arguing it is “abnormal that some private parties are involved in the production of first-person view drones, something that could not be imagined in Soviet times.” This is where private or crowd-sourced efforts inevitably run afoul of the Russian system, which is fundamentally predatory, and will try to dispossess owners of anything that appears profitable under the guise of state interest.
There was also tension evident between the People’s VPK efforts and major defense enterprises. During Army-2024, Russia’s largest annual defense forum, representatives of the People’s VPK were allowed to exhibit alongside the country’s defense enterprises, in a small corner of the Patriot Park outside Moscow where the event took place. According to Aleksei Chadaev — a key volunteer figure and the co-organizer of the annual Dronnitsa event — who described this participation on his Telegram channel, the traditional vendors showcased their technologies in the main pavilion exhibits, while volunteers and small startup enterprises were relegated to the “fringes” of the event. Specifically:
You can almost feel the disgust with which the bigwigs of the “anti-people’s” military-industrial complex, located in the main pavilions, look in the direction of “People’s VPK” exhibits. As if People’s VPK is some kind of “pimple,” and homeless garage dwellers with their handicrafts made from shit and sticks, are riding the administrative-political trend, and think that they are now the center of the universe. And accordingly, these homeless garage dwellers look in the direction of the sparkling defense pavilions with approximately the same feelings.
To alleviate such tensions and to build bridges between the larger People’s VPK community and the Russian government, some volunteer efforts have organized specialized events and meet-ups. The largest of these is the Dronnitsa meetup taking place in the Novgorod region, hosted by the Coordination Centre for Assistance to Novorossiya and the Ushkuynik Research and Production Center with the assistance of the Novgorod region government, which brought together over 2,000 attendees and 100 technology companies in September 2025. Ushkuynik was initially launched by Chadaev and other volunteers as an accelerator to assist small technical startups find ways to cooperate with the Ministry of Defense and the Russian government. Smaller People’s VPK technology showcases and meet-ups also take place regularly across the country to enable volunteers to network and learn what works and what doesn’t in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and how to cooperate with the government and the military.
The People’s VPK and the Actual VPK
Russian military bloggers and commentators actively comment on the state of the People’s VPK, noting that this ecosystem is relatively small. At the same time, they point out that a part of the Russian population has self-organized without state support and was able to develop and deliver the necessary supplies to the military. This society “has emerged from below, without orders from the authorities, and today, it is entering an evolutionary stage.” Prominent volunteers like Chadaev — a key personality behind the effort to set up the Ushkuynik enterprise that assembles fiber-optic, multirotor, and fixed-wing drones — admit that significant issues still need to be addressed:
I’ll give you an example of some of my friends who, at their own expense, were able to develop and build a kamikaze unmanned surface vessel, 10 times cheaper than the enemy’s Magura. Over the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense, they even managed to test it in action — thanks to the special forces. So now what? If we follow the official Russian Ministry of Defense procedure, they must (at their own expense!) build a prototype of the technology and present it to a ministerial commission. The commission must agree to conduct initial tests. After these (if successful), the commission must assign the new technology a special designation and provide a list of necessary improvements, as well as deficiencies to be addressed (all of this is done at the innovator’s own expense). Then they must review the new prototype and send it for comprehensive testing (in conjunction with existing prototypes). Afterwards, they must study the results and make a decision. Under this procedure, tech enthusiast inventors must spend considerable sums of their own money. And it can take many years. Ultimately, the state will adopt the volunteers’ invention when the war ends.
In June 2025, Chadaev commented that it is still difficult to get initiatives to cooperate horizontally or pool resources, with each inventor being concerned about their own product. He further pointed out that some Russian startups and volunteers would likely prefer a “historically, morally and socio-culturally” familiar vertical approach, with a designated leadership administering directives, resources and key decisions that will also act as a conduit between civil society and the Ministry of Defense. Other tech volunteers writing in the “UAV Developer” Telegram channel openly comment that:
Private companies (i.e., People’s VPK) are getting in the way (of large enterprises), preventing profits from being made in still-vacant niches. Private companies demonstrate the inefficiency and sluggishness of state-run developments, and their solutions are 10 times cheaper — who would like that, honestly? And these volunteers are preoccupied with victory, pride, the glory of their ancestors, and other such “nonsense.” They’re inconvenient people … Elevators (efforts) that allow private companies to easily interact with the state on favorable terms are not being created for these very reasons. More precisely, they are being created, but they’re like sex with a condom — there’s movement, but no progress.
For Russia, the People’s VPK provides obvious advantages. Not over Ukraine, whose crowdsourced and defense startup ecosystem is much larger, but over Russia’s own stifling state-controlled system. The state defense order requires two years of research and development, two years of design and refinement, followed by testing and eventually acceptance into service, resulting in at least a six-year product development cycle that starkly contrasts with a three-month weapons update cycle in Ukraine. Small development teams that have proliferated in Russia since 2022 can provide rapid product development or a fast technology update, since they are more mobile and flexible than large defense enterprises. Typical large VPK enterprises suffer from product development inertia and the need to satisfy state requirements. Some of these issues were resolved by Russia’s defense enterprises as the war enters its fifth year, with rapidly innovating drone technology companies like Kalashnikov and others offering upgrades and improvements to drones used in combat. Russian volunteers also acknowledge that small enterprises lack mass production abilities found in the traditional defense sector. Moreover, some Russian volunteers admit the inherent flaws, “meagre entry control for volunteer tech access to the front … what the Russian military eventually gets is often clumsy, useless crap made by these disparate volunteer efforts that continue to exist and promote themselves.”
The challenge for these startup efforts is that Russian military acquisition remains geared towards dealing with established enterprises, not with small, relatively new technology startups. That’s not unusual in state-driven defense acquisition systems where contracts are dominated by majors and low-cost efforts are viewed with skepticism. In turn, many People’s VPK members often do not understand what the larger military needs, and the majority of People’s VPK cannot scale their technologies to the point where they can be properly evaluated and produced in large enough numbers to have a major impact. Therefore, the Russian government directed established defense companies to cooperate with the People’s VPK members to select the most relevant technologies and solutions.
Kalashnikov, the manufacturer of Russian assault rifles, already owns ZALA Aero Group, which manufactured the Russian one-way attack munition Lancet, along with the Kub-BLA and Zala 421 reconnaissance drones. In June 2025, Ushkuynik signed a strategic agreement to establish a joint venture with Kalashnikov. In August 2025, Kalashnikov signed another agreement with Project Archangel, one of the largest national volunteer efforts that trains drone operators for the military. Under this agreement, Kalashnikov accepts aerial drones and related technologies selected by Project Archangel for eventual mass production.
Russia also established elite drone formations with their own technology development branches — mirroring Ukraine’s approach — with the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies and the BARS-SARMAT (Boevoy Armeisky Reserv Strany, or Country’s Combat Army Reserve) formation becoming technical centers that officially deal with the People’s VPK in order to test and select the best solutions. In this manner, the state has steadily been integrating these various startups into official efforts in support of the war.
A short-lived ecosystem
Eventually, the People’s VPK ran into the dual challenge of sustaining funding over the course of the war and surviving in an environment that is ultimately hostile to bottom-up defense tech innovation. Over time, the funding began drying up. Enthusiastic support for the military eventually turned to fatigue, forcing high-profile Russian volunteers and regime figures — such as Dmitry Rogozin, who heads the BARS-SARMAT formation — to call for continued assistance of the Russian military. Despite government statements of support for this ecosystem, many feel they can no longer carry such a burden. The Russian government is not exactly helping either: Its February 2026 decision to start limiting access to the Telegram messaging app was met with shock, anger, and disbelief by many in the People’s VPK who depend on this app for fundraising, communication, and the overall connection to the front and to fellow volunteer efforts. Moscow seems to be going through with its intended decision to force Russian Telegram users off the app and into the state-sponsored Max messaging platform.
Many volunteers fear their years of efforts and support will be lost, severing the link between the community and the soldiers it assists. As of mid-April 2026, some Russian volunteer organizations have already reported a sharp decline in donation volumes following the official blocking of Telegram starting April 1. According to these activists, a significant portion of their audience failed to migrate to alternative platforms —including the Max messenger — which has severely complicated fundraising efforts and operational coordination. Volunteers and participants in humanitarian initiatives note that since the restrictions were imposed, Telegram channel reach has plummeted several-fold in many cases, and a number of projects have effectively been suspended due to a lack of funding. Other Russian volunteer projects, such as the KatyaValya effort mentioned earlier, continue their fundraising and donation activities on both Telegram and Max apps.
At this stage of the war, it’s also not clear how relevant the People’s VPK truly is, as the Russian government ramped up state-funded drone production. Russian forces now have relative parity when it comes to most types of drones, while funding for volunteer efforts continues to dry up. The logical conclusion is that — as far as drone acquisition goes — this is now almost entirely state-funded and organized, and the People’s VPK has largely become part of the larger state effort. This remains a community vested in developing drones and other unmanned systems: For example, Dronnitsa organizers are gearing up for the fifth event later in 2026, while Putin indicated that mechanisms for supporting domestic startups will be strengthened. Hence, Russia will retain the motivated people who are vested in developing drones for its forces.
However, after the war, most of these so-called people’s efforts will likely close or be bought out. In the Russian system, that which is successful and profitable is usually consumed by a larger and better-connected entity. This was the case in September 2023, when a volunteer drone assembly effort in Crimea was subject of an attempted “raider takeover” — a practice common in Russia in the 1990s to early 2000s, when criminal enterprises and unscrupulous government officials forcibly took over fledgling and established businesses. Hence, those who started these initiatives can eventually expect that elites with the right ties within Russian patronage networks will simply use the system to dispossess them of their creations after the war. Many will try to sell their products to established defense enterprises or offer them for export to Russia’s traditional arms clients.
The Russian People’s VPK is an unusual moment in the country’s defense and military history. Although much of this has been taken over by the state, in 2026 the Russian military still depends on volunteer and start-up efforts for key technologies, systems, and supplies. Russian military commentators mention the prevalence of some commercial technologies on the frontlines — such as radios and related communications equipment — procured by soldiers with the help of Russian volunteers. The rise of the People’s VPK is an interesting case of defense innovation in an authoritarian system and demonstrates that the war was not just a state-run effort. A number of volunteer organizations sprung up in support of the war and continue operating to this day.
While the impact of the People’s VPK remains difficult to measure, the Russo-Ukrainian War demonstrates that policymakers continue to underestimate the importance of informal assistance efforts and bottom-up innovation. The United States has long been looking at how Ukraine’s defense industry turned into an ecosystem of defense tech startups. It is also worth examining how adversaries approached the same problems. Even if the People’s VPK ends up being consumed by the system at home, some of these individuals and startups may seek to export their wares elsewhere to adversaries like Iran and non-state actors abroad.
Samuel Bendett is an adviser with the CNA Russia Studies Program and an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. He is also a nonresident senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program, and a strategic adviser to the U.S. National Drone Association.
Michael Kofman is the host of The Russia Contingency, a members-only War on the Rocks podcast. He is also a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on the Russian military, Ukrainian armed forces, and Eurasian security issues. Prior to joining Carnegie in 2023, he served as director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses.
Image: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation via Wikimedia Commons
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