As European leaders fret over President Donald Trump’s bluster about Greenland, Ukrainians continue to endure one of the toughest stretches since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Spare a thought for a country that has been fighting a brutal war of national survival for nearly four years — and remains uncowed.
The Kremlin is weaponizing winter, trying to freeze its smaller neighbor into submission. Early Tuesday, Russia launched a fresh onslaught of more than 300 drones, as well as significant numbers of cruise and ballistic missiles, with most targeting the capital of Kyiv. Its mayor says more than 5,600 high-rise buildings are now without heat and about half the city of 3 million is without water.
The high Tuesday was 17 degrees Fahrenheit. The low was four. Air raid sirens went off all night. “There is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been attacked,” said Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal.
Worse attacks may be coming. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warns that Russia is looking to knock out more substations connected to nuclear power plants, potentially endangering the operation of the plants themselves. He says Ukraine’s energy generation capacity had been reduced to 11 gigawatts, while the country needs 18 to sustain itself. Ukraine’s maximum import capacity from Europe is around 2.3 gigawatts, and allies such as Italy are rushing emergency assistance to repair parts of a badly damaged electrical grid.
Zelensky said Tuesday that his military intercepted a “significant number” of Russian missiles overnight but they had to use 80 million euros’ worth of munitions to do so. He acknowledges that several systems in his country have run out of missiles. Over the weekend, a Ukrainian delegation pleaded for more during a meeting in Miami with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is not ready for peace. Trump, surprising no one, claimed last week that Zelensky remains intransigent because he won’t surrender unconquered territory to Putin, but Zelensky’s stubbornness is understandable and reflects the will of his people. Has Trump already forgotten about Putin embarrassing him with lies about an alleged Ukrainian attack on the Russian leader’s home?
In another futile attempt at propitiation, Trump invited Putin to sit on the Board of Peace to help oversee the reconstruction of Gaza. While Putin is surely thrilled by that offer, it won’t affect the calculus prompting him to play hardball in Ukraine. Since the front line is not moving despite the countless Russian lives Putin has been willing to sacrifice, he has decided to terrorize Ukraine’s civilian population instead.
Putin thinks he can sap the Ukrainians of their will to fight, but the war looks sure to grind on for quite some time. Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a brilliant technocrat responsible for the country’s embrace of drones at scale, is busy making reforms to the military, both in procurement and recruitment. He has set a goal of killing 50,000 Russians a month. “Last month, 35,000 were killed,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “If we reach 50,000, we will see what happens to the enemy. They view people as a resource, and shortages are already evident.”
The Russian leader only responds to this kind of toughness and resolve, but the American president seems unwilling to learn that lesson. Meanwhile, Ukraine suffers.
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