Anti-drone net at Brandenburg Gate marks Ukraine independence day with demand for air defence

A steel-mesh anti-drone net rose above Pariser Platz on Sunday morning, suspended between temporary pylons in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate and a few hundred metres from the Bundestag. The installation, organised by the Berlin-based Ukrainian civil society group Vitsche and the German-Ukrainian defence consortium New Age Defense (NAD), was timed for the 35th anniversary of Ukraine's declaration of independence. Its purpose, the organisers said, was to make visible the fragile shield under which Ukrainian civilians live and to press Germany and its European partners into faster, larger deliveries of air-defence interceptors.

A physical metaphor in the government quarter

The net itself is a commercially available drone-catch system, of the sort deployed around critical infrastructure and forward operating bases in Ukraine. Stretched across the square, it caught the late-summer light but not the attention of many tourists, who photographed the Brandenburg Gate through its mesh. For the organisers, the contrast was the point: a European capital where the sky is taken for granted, and a European neighbour where every clear day carries the probability of a Shahed or a Kinzhal.

Vitsche, founded in Berlin after the full-scale invasion in 2022, has staged projections on the Reichstag, readings of names of the dead, and a replica of a destroyed Mariupol apartment block in front of the Chancellery. NAD, registered in 2023, describes itself as a bridge between German industrial capacity and Ukrainian battlefield requirements, focusing on electronic warfare, drone production and interceptor development. The partnership between a campaigning NGO and a for-profit defence venture is unusual in Berlin's civil-society landscape, and it signals a shift from humanitarian advocacy toward industrial and strategic demands.

What the organisers are asking for

The joint statement issued on Sunday lists seven demands. First, accelerated delivery of interception technologies, both missiles and interceptor drones, to Ukraine. Second, the establishment of German-Ukrainian joint defence ventures to ensure long-term production and maintenance inside Europe. Third, the integration of Ukraine's real-world air-defence experience into EU and NATO security strategies. Fourth, Ukrainian membership in the EU and NATO, described as "essential for a secure European future." Fifth, intensified efforts to return Ukrainian children deported to Russia. Sixth, the use of immobilised Russian sovereign assets to finance reconstruction. Seventh, the closure of the Russian House on Friedrichstraße, which the organisers characterise as an instrument of influence operations rather than cultural exchange.

Kateryna Mykhalko, managing director of NAD, put the interception demand in blunt terms: "Every intercepted missile or drone means a life saved. These experiences are invaluable for the security of the whole of Europe." Her argument is that Ukraine has become a live testbed for layered air defence, combining Soviet-era S-300 and Buk systems with Western Patriots, IRIS-T, NASAMS and a growing fleet of interceptor drones, and that the data generated is directly applicable to the defence of NATO's eastern flank.

Germany's delivery record and the gaps that remain

Since February 2022, Germany has supplied four IRIS-T SLM fire units, three IRIS-T SLS short-range launchers, three Patriot launchers (with a fourth pledged), 52 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, and several thousand portable MANPADS. Berlin has also financed the purchase of additional IRIS-T and Patriot missiles through the European Peace Facility and bilateral contracts. Yet Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said the coverage is insufficient for a front line stretching more than 1,000 kilometres and for cities far behind it. The German government's own planning assumes a need for at least twelve IRIS-T SLM batteries to protect major population centres and critical energy infrastructure; four are operational, with four more on order for the Bundeswehr and not yet released for export.

The Taurus cruise missile, which Kyiv has sought since mid-2023 to strike Russian airfields launching glide bombs and missiles, remains undelivered. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has ruled out the transfer, citing the risk of escalation and the inability to control target selection. That refusal is a standing point of friction between Berlin and Kyiv, and it was referenced implicitly in Sunday's call for "interception technologies", a formulation that sidesteps the offensive-weapons debate while pressing for the defensive systems Germany has already accepted in principle.

Joint ventures and the industrial logic

The demand for German-Ukrainian defence joint ventures reflects a calculation that has been gaining traction in Kyiv and among a subset of German manufacturers. Rheinmetall announced a joint venture with Ukrainian state-owned Ukroboronprom in October 2023, focused on Fuchs armoured vehicle maintenance and Lynx infantry fighting vehicle production. KNDS Deutschland (formerly Krauss-Maffei Wegmann) followed with a repair hub for Leopard tanks in western Ukraine. But no large-scale interceptor or missile production partnership has been finalised. NAD itself is a consortium of smaller German and Ukrainian firms attempting to fill that gap, arguing that the bureaucratic hurdles for major primes are too high for the speed the war requires.

The European Defence Industrial Strategy, adopted by the Commission in March 2024, encourages such cross-border partnerships and earmarks €1.5 billion for collaborative capability development through the European Defence Fund. Ukraine, as an associated partner, can access EDF calls from 2025. The practical difficulty is that most EDF projects run on three-to-five-year cycles, while the front line needs interceptors now. NAD's pitch is that its members, mid-sized firms with flexible production lines, can deliver prototypes in months, not years, if German export licensing and Ukrainian procurement rules align.

EU and NATO integration: from rhetoric to doctrine

The call to embed Ukrainian combat experience into EU and NATO strategies is more than symbolic. NATO's Joint Air Power Competence Centre in Kalkar has been analysing Ukrainian air-defence data since 2023, and the alliance's 2024 summit in Washington established a new NATO-Ukraine Analysis, Training and Education Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The EU's Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM) has incorporated lessons from Ukrainian mobile air-defence groups into its training curricula for Ukrainian brigades. But the organisers argue that these are ad hoc arrangements; they want a formal requirement that Ukrainian operational data feed directly into NATO's Capability Targets and the EU's Capability Development Plan.

On membership, the trajectory is divergent. Ukraine received EU candidate status in June 2022 and the Council agreed to open accession negotiations in June 2024, with the first intergovernmental conference held later that month. The process is expected to take years, contingent on reforms in judiciary, anti-corruption and media freedom. NATO's path is less defined. The 2023 Vilnius summit removed the Membership Action Plan requirement but stopped short of an invitation, stating that Ukraine would be invited "when Allies agree and conditions are met." The 2024 Washington summit reaffirmed that Ukraine's future is in NATO but offered no timeline. Sunday's demand for membership as a security guarantee reflects a view in Kyiv that only Article 5 coverage ends the existential threat.

Frozen assets, abducted children, and the Russian House

The demand to use immobilised Russian sovereign assets for reconstruction targets a debate that has moved from legal theory to partial implementation. Approximately €210 billion of Russian central bank reserves are frozen in EU depositories, the majority in Belgium's Euroclear. In May 2024, the Council adopted a regulation to set aside the windfall profits, estimated at €2.5 to €3 billion annually, for the Ukraine Facility and defence procurement. The principal remains untouched, with member states divided on the legality of confiscation under international law. The organisers' position aligns with the European Parliament's repeated resolutions calling for full confiscation, a stance the Commission has so far resisted.

On abducted children, Ukraine's National Information Bureau lists more than 19,500 confirmed cases of deportation or forced transfer since 2022, with fewer than 400 returned through mediated exchanges. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 for the war crime of unlawful deportation. Germany has supported the ICC process and funded NGOs tracing children, but Berlin has not established a dedicated diplomatic channel for returns, leaving the work largely to Qatar-mediated talks.

The Russian House on Friedrichstraße, operated by Rossotrudnichestvo, has been monitored by German intelligence for years. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) describes it as a platform for influence operations, recruitment and narrative control. Calls for its closure have come from across the Bundestag since 2022, but the Foreign Office has maintained that the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations protects cultural institutes unless they are used for acts incompatible with their status, a threshold the government says has not been met. The organisers' inclusion of this demand signals a frustration with the gap between intelligence assessments and diplomatic action.

The evening march and the politics of visibility

At 18:30 local time, a march was due to move from Pariser Platz down Unter den Linden, past the Russian Embassy, and onward to Potsdamer Platz. Vitsche expected several thousand participants, including Ukrainian refugees, German supporters, and representatives of other Eastern European diasporas. The route is deliberate: it passes the embassy that represents the aggressor, the government quarter that decides on weapons deliveries, and the commercial heart of a city that has positioned itself as a hub for Ukrainian civil society. The net will remain in place until Monday morning, when it will be dismantled and transported to a storage facility, a temporary structure for a permanent problem.