Russia’s Thuggish New Ally? Midwinter

Ukraine is suffering badly, with implications for significant population movement. Western allies can help, if they acknowledge the threat.

Blackout in Kyiv

Cornered by an ever-narrowing range of options to advance his war of aggression, Vladimir Putin is making decisions that worsen his position. The chess term is zugzwang, and it explains why the Kremlin has decided to play one of its few remaining cards. Unable to defeat the Ukrainian army, Putin has declared war on Ukrainian civilians with new tactics targeting heating supplies. 

Allying itself with one of the worst winters of recent years, with temperatures repeatedly dropping below -20°C (-4°F), Russia has initiated a strategy of total thermal terror. 

Other options have so far failed. Russia continues to inch forward in the Eastern Ukrainian area of Donbas, but the casualties are staggeringly high, at many more than a million, and rising — from 31,000 in November to 35,000 in December. Putin’s maximalist demands for Ukrainian concessions have so far stymied US attempts to broker peace, and European funding has replaced the withdrawal of US grants. 

Russia has been attempting to smash Ukraine’s energy system for a long time, but this winter, new tactics are having an effect. 

The enemy no longer chases a spectacular nationwide blackout. The new aim is built on “localized collapse.” The targets of recent mass combined strikes are district heating plants and distribution assets located directly inside major metropolitan areas, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. 

The logic is murderously simple: electricity can be rerouted from another region, but heat cannot. Destroying district heating plants within a target city creates a zone of mass humanitarian catastrophe from which millions of people cannot be evacuated in a matter of days. 

The attack on January 9 was a vivid demonstration of this predatory strategy. A combined strike involving over 300 Shahed-type drones, 24 cruise missiles, and four ballistic missiles targeted the capital’s critical life-support systems. Drones attacked in waves, swamping and exhausting Kyiv’s air defenses, clearing the way for high-precision missiles to exploit the gaps. Direct hits were scored on two key metropolitan combined heat and power (CHP) plants. As a result, approximately 6,000 high-rise buildings, housing hundreds of thousands of residents, lost heat. 

Western people must understand the physics of this process. A modern concrete metropolis without heating at -15°C to -20°C turns into a death trap within 24 to 36 hours. If water is not drained from the heating system within this time, pipes freeze and burst. Radiators in apartments shatter, internal communications fail, and sewage and water supply systems are destroyed. The building becomes technically uninhabitable, and its restoration requires a complete replacement of all engineering networks — a task requiring immense time and funds. 

This is precisely the Kremlin’s goal: to create conditions incompatible with survival in major cities, inducing panic, chaos, and waves of internal migration, thereby forcing society to pressure the government to end the war at any cost. 

Despite the heroic efforts of Ukrainian utility workers, who operate under the threat of “double-tap” strikes and have managed to restore partial heat to most buildings, the situation remains critical. About 400 apartment blocks in Kyiv remain without heat.  

Parallel to the cold, cities face severe electricity shortages. The destruction of local distribution substations has forced draconian emergency blackout schedules (with consequences like this for ordinary families.) In the best-case scenario, residents have power for two to three hours a day; in the worst, they sit in darkness for days. Europe’s largest cities are teetering on the edge of medieval conditions, fighting for survival. 

Moscow has made it abundantly clear that it recognizes no moral boundaries in its quest to subjugate Ukraine. The Kremlin continues to deploy increasingly inhumane tactics, deliberately engineering a humanitarian catastrophe for millions. The historical trajectory of this war — from the systematic torture and execution of civilians in occupied towns like Bucha to the ecocidal destruction of the Kakhovka Dam — demonstrates that Putin is unconstrained by any standard measure of morality.  

The success of recent Russian strikes lies not in tactical genius, but in the cold mathematics of attrition. The Armed Forces of Ukraine face a critical deficit of air defense assets, as the Kremlin’s tactic of massive, concentrated swarm attacks works to deplete Ukraine’s already insufficient defensive umbrella.  

Stocks of interceptors for Patriot, IRIS-T, and NASAMS systems are not infinite, and the current volume of resupply from allies is inadequate to sustain this rate of consumption.  

What can Western allies do? A recalibrated defense strategy is the first priority. To break the cycle of attrition, Ukraine possesses a critical need for low-cost counter-UAV solutions to saturate the skies against drone swarms, preserving high-end interceptors for ballistic threats.  

European allies should address the uncomfortable strategic options: NATO could extend its air defense coverage to protect cities in at least Western Ukraine that lie near the alliance’s borders. While the alliance has historically remained unprepared for such action, this step would allow Kyiv to free up vital air defense systems and redeploy them to protect the besieged cities of the center and east. It is hard to believe this raises the risks of serious Russian retaliation — the humanitarian imperative is clear, and the risks of confrontation with manned systems are extremely low. 

Simultaneously, allies can aid an emergency program to decentralize Ukraine’s energy generation. Supplying thousands of gas-piston mini-power plants and cogeneration units offers the only viable path to long-term resilience.  

By dispersing small-scale generation across basements, hospitals, and schools, the West can create a target set that is practically invulnerable; the economic asymmetry of wasting a multimillion-dollar missile to destroy a generator producing only a few megawatts makes such strikes strategically futile. This technical aid can be paired with a surge in humanitarian support, including rapid-deployment shelters and mobile heating points to protect the displaced. 

Beyond physical aid, an honest re-evaluation of the sanctions regime is overdue. The continued discovery of fresh American and European microchips in the wreckage of Russian missiles fired this January serves as a damning indictment of the current export control system. Intelligence agencies, not just customs officials, must prioritize severing dual-use technology flows through third-party intermediaries. Furthermore, pressure on Russia’s energy exports and its shadow fleet must be intensified to choke the financial engine driving this terror. 

The danger here is clear — that millions of Ukrainians could once again be forced to flee their homes and their country. While allies focus on events elsewhere, the situation in Ukraine is fast-worsening. It may be hard to acknowledge, given other priorities, but this matters in the most immediate sense. 

This winter is now a decisive battlefield, arguably more consequential than the trench lines of the Donbas. The outcome of this confrontation now rests squarely on the speed of decision-making in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and London. Russia must not be allowed to freeze Ukraine. 

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By Sergiy Makogon. Sergiy Makogon is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is a seasoned executive and energy expert with over 20 years of expertise in the Ukrainian and Central and Eastern European (CEE) gas markets, as well as European security.   Article first time published on CEPA web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.