Ukraine has issued new guidance intended to make it easier for foreign nationals and stateless people serving under contract to obtain temporary residence permits, with military units taking on more of the administrative work involved in preparing applications, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
The guidance sets out how commanders and designated officers should manage the process, from checking how long an individual is legally entitled to remain in Ukraine to preparing documents, arranging appointments with the State Migration Service and collecting completed permits. The intention is to reduce the amount of time foreign service members spend away from duty dealing with paperwork themselves.
Deputy Defence Minister Liubov Halan said: “The guidelines draw on the best practices of units that have already set up the processing of temporary residence permits this way. The unit organises the preparation of the documents and the appointment, while the service member provides the documents that only they hold and goes through the necessary procedures in person. This cuts the administrative burden on the individual and the time they have to be taken away from duty.”
Under the process, a designated officer within each unit will maintain a list of foreign service members, check when contracts were signed and whether the individual already holds documentation confirming lawful residence, then identify which cases need to be handled first. The unit prepares the documents it can issue itself, checks the wider application package with the migration authorities and arranges the in-person appointment. Service members need attend only where their presence is required, including for photographs, biometric data and signatures.
The guidance also covers cases where normal travel is difficult. If a service member is in hospital and cannot attend a State Migration Service office, the unit can arrange for a mobile team to visit. Where combat tasks or the security situation prevent travel, the designated officer can apply for an extension to the individual’s lawful stay and arrange submission once movement can be undertaken safely.
The rules implement Law No. 4730-IX, which came into force on 10 May 2026 and requires foreign nationals and stateless persons serving under contract in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, National Guard or State Special Transport Service to obtain a temporary residence permit. The permit is valid for the duration of the service contract and, in most cases, for a further six months after it ends.
Those who signed contracts before 10 May 2026 and do not yet have a permit or other document confirming lawful residence must apply by 10 November 2026. Until then, their military registration document or service ID is sufficient to confirm lawful stay. For those who joined on or after 10 May, the filing deadline depends on when they entered Ukraine and how long they are otherwise entitled to remain in the country.
The State Migration Service is expected to issue a permit within 15 working days after accepting the documents, with the completed document collected in person by the service member. The new guidance follows earlier Ukrainian measures intended to standardise support for foreign volunteers serving in the country’s defence forces.
The drone war between Ukraine and Russia has transformed into a high-speed, technologically sophisticated race for air superiority, where precise electronic tracking systems dictate success.
To bypass dense Russian airspace and strike targets like the Moscow Oil Refinery in Kapotnya or logistics hubs along the Novorossiya Highway, Ukraine uses a coordinated “blinding” cycle.
Armed Forces of Ukraine operators launch low-cost, 3D-printed decoys to intentionally flood Russian airspaces
This forces Russia’s heavy air-defence units to activate their high-powered tracking systems – specifically the 92N6E “Grave Stone” engagement radar (used by the S-400 Triumf) and the dual-band tracking radars used by the Pantsir-S1/S1M. While Russia’s wartime economic footing pumps out 40–50 new S-400 interceptor missiles monthly to outpace launcher destruction, Ukraine is successfully winning the sensor war by blinding the critical, chip-dependent radar units required to guide them
Once these sensors emit a tracking signal, Ukrainian fighter jets deploy western-supplied AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles, which follow the radar’s own energy beam directly to the source. Kinetic SEAD strikes do the damage. Concurrently, Special Operations Forces guide loitering munitions to attack the vulnerable 1RL123 target acquisition radars and command vans. This creates temporary radar blind spots, allowing deep-penetration drone swarms to slip through untouched
Russia has heavily upgraded its offensive posture by replacing its slow, piston-engine Geran-2 (Shahed-136) platforms with jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 variants. Geran-4 features an aerodynamic delta wing configuration and a Chinese turbojet engine, raising its cruising speed to ~500 km/h with a 50kg warhead. The Geran-5 utilises a cigar-shaped cruise-missile design powered by a Telefly TF-TJ2000A engine, reaching ~600 km/h. These jet variants bypass Ukraine’s manual mobile machine-gun trucks and fly with passive, electronic anti-jamming subsystems that circumvent standard GPS spoofing.
The response to these evolving threats highlights a sharp strategic divide between Russia and Ukraine
Pokrova is Ukraine’s highly secretive, nationwide strategic electronic warfare (EW) ecosystem designed to defeat incoming Russian assets without firing a single missile. Rather than relying on traditional brute-force jamming – which merely blasts radio noise – Pokrova utilizes a sophisticated network of perfectly synchronized transmitters that operate on the principle of advanced GNSS spoofing. The system broadcasts subtle, fake binary satellite signals that quietly override the GPS and GLONASS navigation systems of incoming Russian assets, including Shahed-136/131 loitering munitions, Kalibr cruise missiles, and UMPK glide bombs. Because Pokrova feeds the weapons false coordinates that are only slightly different from reality, the automated flight systems do not detect the interference; instead, the drones gradually drift off-course, fly harmlessly into empty fields until they run out of fuel, or loop backwards entirely to their point of launch.
Widely recognized as a major innovation in non-kinetic defence, the Pokrova system – which integrates closely with Ukraine’s specialized “Lima” digital suppression stations – allows Ukraine to neutralize mass drone swarms for cents on the dollar while conserving its high-end Patriot and NASAMS air defence missiles
To counter high-speed jet drones without burning valuable Patriot interceptors, Ukraine has deployed new specialized FPV interceptor drones (Alexa Spatium, Sting, Zirka) These platforms use automated optical tracking and terminal thermal guidance to actively chase down, ram, and detonate against fast-moving Russian targets in mid-air.
For it’s part Russia is upgrading it’s Kometa anti-jamming antennas from four-element arrays to advanced 12, 16, and 20-element CRPA modules to bypass Ukraine’s Pokrova electronic jamming system. Additionally, Russian engineers are integrating these navigation modules with inertial and electro-optical sensors to maintain target trajectories via terrain cross-referencing if satellite spoofing occurs. Their problem is they need vast amounts of US and German electronic components to build out a working system
Russia’s relies on a layered defence system and is heavily reliant on the Pantsir-S1M, often modified with containerized “mini-missiles” specifically designed to counter drone swarms. It acts as a close-in safeguard for the longer-range S-400 launchers, relying on an electro-optical tracking system to manually catch low-flying, carbon-fibre Ukrainian drones that try to duck underneath the 92N6E radar’s main horizon.
Ukraine has maintained it’s edge in the electronic warfare battle by shifting from localized jamming to a highly integrated, nationwide cognitive network. By combining the Pokrova network with a vast array of low-cost, tactical interceptor drones, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have successfully neutralized up to 80% of Russia’s legacy reconnaissance drones, such as the Orlan-10 and Zala, stripping Russian artillery units of their frontline vision. Furthermore, Ukraine has rapidly adapted it’s software to execute automated, real-time frequency-hopping algorithms across own drone fleets. This rapid digital agility allows Ukraine FPV operators to outpace Russia’s rigid, factory pre-set electronic jamming systems, ensuring their strike assets continue to penetrate deep into Russian rear positions, even through heavily contested airspace