Drones on the Bridge, Deals in the Car: How Kyiv Turns Terror into Capital

A drone hits Kyiv’s Northern Bridge. Cars are on the roadway; then a fireball and a gaping hole. It is the second day in a row this bridge is struck, after other attacks on another bridge and a warehouse that killed at least one person. In the same hours, the German chancellor is in the city on a surprise visit, standing with Ukraine’s president at a memorial to fallen soldiers, speaking of the need to stop Russia and promising a new aid package. This is the scene: iron and explosives on the bridge, words and money in the car. One side speaks with drones, the other with agreements.

I begin from the effectual truth. Russia launches swarms of drones; Ukraine says it shoots down most, yet some strike key crossings into the capital. That reveals an intention: to degrade infrastructure and signal that no place, nor any day, is fully secure. When you hit the same bridge twice, you are not aiming only at steel but at nerves, habits, and the sense of normal movement in a city. When a prince cannot yet seize everything, he tries instead to make living under his enemy feel costly, uncertain, and afraid.

Yet the same spectacle produces a counter-effect. The German chancellor, already in Kyiv, does not flee the city but announces that helping Ukraine serves Germany’s self-interest. In my time I called such foreign forces auxiliaries: arms that are not your own but march at your side. As I argued in The Prince, those who lean entirely on auxiliaries put their safety in others’ hands, but those who use them to reinforce their own arms can turn other men’s power into dykes against the flood of fortune. Here I see not mere dependence, but the attempt to bind a richer power’s security to Ukraine’s survival.

Look at Ukraine’s survival incentives. Its leaders face an enemy whose drones cross their skies nightly and whose war machine is described as a danger not just to them but, sooner or later, to others. To maintain the state, they must do three things at once: keep their people standing in a battered capital, maintain foreign support, and blunt the enemy’s blows. So they publicize interceptions, showing competence; they walk with the foreign guest at a soldiers’ memorial, showing shared sacrifice; they speak of important agreements with Germany, attaching their cause to the interests of a stronger ally. This is not ceremony for its own sake; it is cold prudence in republican dress.

In The Prince, chapter XVII, in W. K. Marriott’s translation, I wrote that “it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with,” because fear rests on the dread of punishment while love rests on obligation that breaks at advantage. Russia here pursues fear: bridges explode, warehouses burn, citizens die and are injured. But when fear extends beyond the enemy’s camp and begins to touch neutral or friendly powers, then hatred grows, and hatred manufactures coalitions. This is why a prince must avoid being hated. Each new drone that crosses Ukrainian skies while a foreign chancellor stands below it increases not only fear of Russia, but also appetite among others to arm its adversary.

Fortuna plays her part: that the chancellor is in Kyiv on the very day another bridge is struck is a chance no man could script. But virtù is what one does with such occasions. Ukraine might have treated the visit quietly, hiding damage, hoping not to scare its guest. Instead, the visit is made visible; the need is spoken openly; the aid is framed as mutual interest. In the Discourses, Ninian Hill Thomson’s translation has me praise the people’s wider view; here, Ukrainian leaders rely on that in foreign republics, trusting voters to see that this war concerns them. Thus a threatened republic converts its own suffering into a resource.

The lesson for both sides is cruel but clear. Russia shows boldness in striking central infrastructure, yet each strike without decisive conquest resembles a lion’s roar that drives the forest into the hunter’s arms. Ukraine, for its part, must remember what I wrote of mercenaries and auxiliaries: arms that are not yours may turn against you when their interest changes. Today, German support and other foreign aid raise the dykes against the flood. Tomorrow, only if Ukraine continues to strengthen its own arms, its own revenues, and the constancy of its people will these walls stand when fashions abroad shift. To survive, it must take help while preparing every day, if abandoned, to stand alone.