Stefaniia Didenko

Speaker of World Woman Forum 2026 in Davos, Ambassador of the Association of Towns of Ukraine, Consular Assistant of Romania, Accreditation Expert for Educational Programs at the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance (Ukraine).

When Security Begins at the Local Level

For decades, international security has been discussed primarily through the language of military alliances, defense budgets, strategic deterrence, and geopolitical competition. National governments, armed forces, and international organizations have traditionally occupied the center of security planning, while municipalities were viewed mainly as providers of local public services or civil protection.

The experience of Ukraine has fundamentally challenged this assumption.

Russia's full-scale invasion demonstrated that the first line of national defense is often not a military headquarters but a local community. When missiles strike cities, infrastructure is destroyed, and millions of civilians are forced to flee, it is mayors, municipal councils, local emergency teams, volunteers, and community leaders who become the first responders. They organize evacuations, maintain water and energy systems, provide shelter for displaced families, restore essential services, and ensure that daily life continues under extraordinary circumstances.

Ukraine has shown the world that resilience is built from the ground up.

The Rise of the "Glocal" Security Model

This transformation can best be understood through the concept of glocalization, introduced by sociologist Roland Robertson in the early 1990s. The idea suggests that global challenges increasingly manifest themselves through local realities.

A missile attack on a small Ukrainian municipality and a NATO strategic planning document may appear to belong to different worlds. In reality, they describe the same security challenge viewed from different scales.

National security today depends upon local capacity.

Hybrid warfare, cyberattacks, energy disruption, mass migration, pandemics, climate disasters, and military aggression all unfold first within communities. The effectiveness of national defense therefore depends not only upon military capability but equally upon the resilience of municipalities.

The war in Ukraine has become perhaps the strongest contemporary demonstration of this principle.

Ukraine's Decentralization Reform Created an Unexpected Security Asset

Ukraine's decentralization reform, launched in 2014, was initially designed to improve public administration and strengthen local democracy.

Thousands of fragmented local councils were consolidated into capable territorial communities (hromadas), receiving significantly greater financial autonomy, administrative authority, and responsibility for local development. Fiscal decentralization increased local government revenues, with municipalities receiving a larger share of personal income tax and gaining the resources necessary to manage schools, healthcare, infrastructure, and social services.

Few anticipated that this governance reform would later become one of Ukraine's most valuable national security investments.

When the full-scale invasion began in 2022, these empowered communities did not wait for centralized instructions.

Instead, they acted immediately.

Local authorities organized humanitarian assistance, coordinated volunteer networks, welcomed millions of internally displaced persons, restored damaged utilities, maintained transportation corridors, secured food distribution, and ensured the continuity of essential public services despite constant attacks.

In many cases, municipalities responded faster than national institutions simply because they possessed local knowledge, operational flexibility, and direct trust from residents.

Their institutional capacity became a strategic defense resource.

Municipalities: The First Responders in National Defense

The modern battlefield extends far beyond military operations.

Electricity networks, water systems, transportation infrastructure, schools, hospitals, communications, and public administration have become critical components of national resilience.

During the first hours of any crisis, whether military or natural, it is rarely the national government that restores these systems.

It is the mayor. It is the municipal engineer. It is the local emergency coordinator. It is the volunteer network built over years of community cooperation. These actors sustain civilian life while national defense structures mobilize. Without functioning municipalities, military operations themselves become significantly more difficult.

International Experience Supports the Same Conclusion

Ukraine's experience is not unique.

Finland's internationally respected Comprehensive Security model, reaffirmed in the 2025 Security Strategy for Society, places municipalities alongside government institutions, businesses, civil society, and the armed forces as equal contributors to national security.

The Finnish approach recognizes that resilient societies cannot rely exclusively on military power. Instead, resilience emerges through the combined preparedness of public institutions and local communities.

NATO has reached similar conclusions. Its resilience framework identifies essential national capabilities including continuity of government, energy security, water supply, food systems, communications, transportation, healthcare capacity, and the management of large-scale population movements.

Every one of these capabilities depends heavily on municipal administration.

Discussions within NATO about strengthening societal resilience further reinforce the growing recognition that citizens and local communities constitute strategic assets rather than passive recipients of security policies.

The lesson is increasingly universal: security begins where people live.

The Challenge of Wartime Centralization

The Ukrainian experience also reveals an important policy dilemma.

War inevitably requires greater centralization.

Rapid military decision-making, emergency legislation, and centralized allocation of resources are often indispensable during active conflict.

However, prolonged wartime centralization may unintentionally weaken the very municipal institutions that sustain national resilience.

If local governments lose financial independence, administrative authority, or decision-making capacity, they become less capable of responding to future crises.

Short-term military efficiency should therefore not come at the expense of long-term societal resilience.

Finding the appropriate balance between centralized defense coordination and empowered local governance represents one of the most important governance challenges for democratic societies facing security threats.

Recovery Must Be Community-Led

Reconstruction is often perceived primarily as rebuilding physical infrastructure.

In reality, successful recovery is fundamentally about rebuilding institutional capacity.

Ukraine's emerging recovery model, developed together with international partners including Sweden, increasingly recognizes that communities themselves should define local investment priorities and lead reconstruction efforts.

Municipalities possess the detailed understanding of local needs that no centralized authority can fully replicate.

When communities determine their own development strategies, investments become more sustainable, more transparent, and more responsive to citizens.

Recovery therefore becomes not merely reconstruction, but an investment in democratic self-government.

This principle has implications far beyond Ukraine.

Countries facing natural disasters, hybrid threats, or future conflicts may benefit from placing municipalities at the center of recovery planning rather than treating them as passive implementers of national policies.

A New Security Architecture

The evidence emerging from Ukraine suggests the need for a broader evolution in international security thinking.

Small municipalities should no longer be viewed solely as administrative units.

They should be recognized as an essential tier of national security governance.

This requires:

clear legal mandates for municipalities during crises;
protected and predictable financial resources;
direct participation in national resilience planning;
integration into defense preparedness frameworks;
stronger cooperation with international partners in reconstruction and capacity-building.

Security is no longer exclusively a military function.

It is a whole-of-society responsibility.

A Message to the World

Across Ukraine, ordinary communities have kept their towns alive under missile attacks, protected vulnerable families, restored essential services, and preserved hope under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

In doing so, they have defended not only their own municipalities but the resilience of an entire nation.

Their experience offers an important lesson for the international community.

Strong local self-government is not merely a democratic principle.

It is a strategic security asset.

Every country seeking greater resilience against war, hybrid threats, climate emergencies, or economic shocks should invest in empowering its municipalities with genuine authority, sustainable financing, and meaningful participation in national security planning.

Peace is protected not only by armies.

It is sustained by resilient communities.

The future of democratic security begins where citizens live, work, and support one another.

The stronger our municipalities become, the stronger our nations—and our shared international security—will be.