Can Ukraine Force Russia Into a Peace This Winter?

For a few months each year, the nation of Ukraine is forced to fight two enemies at once, the invading forces of Russia and the brutal, unforgiving Eastern European winter. When the winter months arrive, Ukraine is given practically no choice except to hunker down, defend its airspace as best as possible, and try to make it through.

For Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, winter is a weapon.

His forces destroy power plants and electrical infrastructure and try to starve Ukraine of any other sources of fuel or heat, even if it means that civilians will freeze to death in their homes.

Unfortunately, recent history has shown that it's all too easy for Russia to engage in its winter campaign and condemn ordinary Ukrainians to months spent shivering in their blankets. This year, however, Ukraine might finally have bought itself a critical opportunity, a window to turn the tables on the Kremlin and bring the pain home to Moscow.

From the Russian capital to the shining city of St. Petersburg, from its oil terminals to its e-commerce warehouses, Kyiv has shown an unprecedented ability to strike deep into the Russian heartland, even uncomfortably close to Putin himself.

Russian air defenses are failing, the Russian chain of command seems unable to properly respond, and Russia has reason to fear that its citizens simply cannot take the pain. Ukrainians are facing all-out invasion, their very survival is on the line, and after too many tough winters, the population may be tired, but it remains unbroken.

Russia, however, has spent the last several years trying to insulate its population from even the slightest hardship coming from its special military operation on the edge of Europe. In the winter of 2026, Ukraine finally has the chance to break the Kremlin's spell and give Vladimir Putin a taste of his own medicine.

So, it's time that we try and figure out what Putin would do to avoid the retribution he seems to fear most of all.

A Childish Delusion So, all the way back in 1942, the head of Britain's Strategic Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, came over the airwaves to explain his nation's new policy against Nazi Germany.

In the process, he provided one of the more memorable quotes of the entire war, and one that happens to rhyme with the situation in Ukraine and Russia today, to quote, The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish assumption that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.

They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

It is a lesson that quite a few nations have had to learn the hard way, both before and since, and it's a lesson that we see other nations learning even today, like the United States has had to do as it deals with unexpectedly strong resistance from the nation of Iran.

It's a very bad idea to attack an adversary if you can't possibly conceive of the idea that your adversary could attack you. In the days before the start of this war, Russia was expected to treat Ukraine in the way that, say, a world champion boxer treats a heavy bag.

Relentless one-way punishment until the guy doing the hitting decides that he's had his fill for the day. Of course, Russia forgot the cardinal rule of modern ground invasions, bringing enough fuel for the tanks, and was very quickly reminded of the war. that the Ukrainians did, in fact, also have guns.

The early years of Russia's invasion were grinding brutal one-way traffic against Kiev.

Russia was gaining ground incredibly slowly and at unbelievable human cost, but it was still gaining ground and it had seemingly limitless troops and munitions to get the job done.

But nowhere has Moscow taken the approach that Sir Arthur Harris called out, operating on the assumption that Russia would bomb everybody else and nobody would bomb Russia, than in its long-ranged missile and drone campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure and population centers. Russia came into the war with some very clear advantages in this area.

A massive arsenal of weapons that could reach deep into Ukrainian territory, its own fleets of satellite targeting data and heavy launch aircraft, and the fact that it had already been subjected to the crush of Western sanctions and thus had nothing to lose. Ukraine, meanwhile, didn't have the long-range weapons it needed to actually reach into Russia.

Even if it did, it had neither the targeting data it needed nor the ability to bypass Russia's supposedly robust air defenses.

Then, even if Ukraine fixed those problems, its international allies would never allow long-range strikes into Russia using their military hardware, lest Putin use the strikes as an excuse to escalate into a much wider war.

Finally, even if Ukraine did overcome the fears of its allies, it certainly couldn't attack energy infrastructure or population centers in the way Russia did.

After all, Ukraine's support from the US and Europe remains highly contingent on their ability to portray Ukraine as a good guy both for diplomatic and political reasons, and bombing civilian targets just isn't a thing that the good guys do in the global public's imagination of the way the wars are fought.

So Russia took full advantage of its edge in long-range strike capability and began a policy of all-out devastation of Ukraine's power grid. In the winter of 2022 into 2023, Russia crippled Ukraine's power supply and created near-constant rolling blackouts, including in Kyiv and other major cities.

In the winter of 2023, Russia introduced larger drone swarms and focused on the destruction of regional support infrastructure and supply chains to systematically destroy Ukraine's ability to generate energy.

In the winter of 2024, Russia's attacks multiplied in both size and frequency while advancing its drone swarm tactics to intrude from all directions.

The winter of 2025 was the worst one yet, with Russia deliberately targeting large apartment blocks, water supply networks, and heat generators that were meant to support the civilian population during the hardest Ukrainian winter of the year thus far.

While the strikes weren't enough to force Ukraine to surrender, they did have a devastating effect on military and civilian morale.

All the while, Russia continued to operate on the assumption that Ukraine couldn't strike back, wouldn't strike back, and had no right to strike back. When Ukraine occasionally used western-made missiles to strike a few hundred kilometers into Russian territory, Russia vowed fire and brimstone against the entire western world.

When Ukraine occasionally engaged in larger counter-offensive actions, like the Kursk offensive it started in August of 2024, Russia responded as if Ukraine had sunk to some barbaric new low, conveniently failing to mention any of its own conduct throughout the war.

But, across 2026 thus far… But, across 2026 thus far… far, Ukraine has demonstrated that its own long-range strike capabilities are evolving rapidly. After several years of war, Ukraine has developed substantial intelligence-gathering capabilities and an arsenal of Ukrainian-designed, Ukrainian-made missiles and drones.

It's degraded Russia's air defenses and given them a rather Swiss-cheese-like quality, with massive coverage gaps and holes for Ukrainian projectiles to fly through.

Because it's making most of its own long-range kit in-house, Ukraine isn't subject to Western restrictions on the ways that it uses those weapons. And after Russia spent years demonstrating that it will gleefully target cities and civilians at will, Ukrainian strikes against, say, oil infrastructure or dual-use facilities just don't seem that terrible.

Across the year, Ukraine has produced some fantastically meme-worthy results with its long-range weapons, from the blast of the Moscow oil refinery that sent the roof of a storage tank flying through the air, to the strikes against St. Petersburg during its International Economic Forum while Putin was present in the city, to the fact that Ukraine's almost

Completely shut down the Sea of Azov, a body of water completely encircled by territory that Russia controls.

Russia's response has been comical at times, from drunken foot soldiers sent to shoot machine guns from fully extended bucket lifts, to the fact that the aforementioned storage tank roof in Moscow was sent flying, not by a Ukrainian strike, but by a Russian air defense interceptor that feared off course.

And as the summer months start to wane, Putin and his Kremlin advisors would be wise to start thinking about what Ukraine could accomplish in a few months' time. To this point in the conflict, Ukraine hasn't had the means to destroy Russian energy infrastructure in the same way that Russia's done to Ukraine.

Now, however, Ukraine has achieved such immense long-range success that Russia can't hide its vulnerability. Most of Russia's territory is only covered by relatively sparse air defenses, with the best remaining systems being pulled back to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other key centers of Russian commerce and political power.

Even the Crimean Peninsula, the crown jewel of Russia's invasion, has still been left without adequate air defenses, and the peninsula has paid dearly as a result.

Quite frankly, even without an opportunity to test this statement against operational reality, we are at war fronts comfortable making a bold claim. Ukraine's ability to target power stations across Russia this winter should not be in question.

Ukraine might not be able to hit every target with every projectile, but it can break through Russian defenses consistently and with devastating effect.

That's going to be especially important for Kyiv this winter, because even though Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have been effective, there's reason to believe that Ukraine's impact on Russia could be even greater.

As we mentioned in the introduction, wealthy Russian civilians have enjoyed a life of relative luxury across most of this war.

Most of the war's forced conscripts have been recruited from poor areas or from third countries, and while Putin has toyed with the idea of a larger mobilization, he's been able to avoid mass mobilization from Russia's richest population centers.

For most of the war, Russian's lights have stayed on, the skies have stayed clear, and even if they might have privately disagreed with Putin's so-called special military operation, they had no reason to think about the war as it released. plates to their day-to-day lives.

Unlike Western democracies, Russia is a pretty thoroughly repressed place, historically and currently. But history shows that when public discontent does boil over in Russia, the results are usually pretty damn catastrophic for whoever's in charge.

So Russian leaders have been working overtime to ensure that ordinary people never need to feel upset or vulnerable because of the war, and that they aren't inconvenienced in any major way. Putin would certainly like to have the people's support, but he'll happily accept the people's apathy.

This year, however, the costs of war are finally coming home to the Russian people.

The impact has been felt most acutely in places like Crimea, the occupied Ukrainian East, and the Russian areas closest to the border, but the effects are spreading rapidly across the country. Much of Russia has been struggling with fuel shortages for months after a Ukrainian campaign against oil infrastructure that really picked up in the late spring.

Residents in Moscow and St Petersburg have had to get used to the clouds of toxic smoke that rise over their cities every few weeks, and the sight of Ukrainian drones and missiles streaking overhead.

On our Warfronts team's news feed, we've been treated to constant videos from ordinary Russian civilians tearfully lamenting attacks and inconveniences that are really rather minor compared to what Ukrainians have experienced for years on end. And unfortunately for Russia, Ukraine knows that this pressure point exists.

In fact, in a move fitting for a nation led by a former professional comedian, Ukraine has made good old-fashioned trolling into a core part of its long-range strike strategy.

Sometimes the trolling comes by way of rhetoric, Ukraine granting Vladimir Putin permission to hold his victory day parade this May without Ukrainian interference, and then confirming through drone strikes a few days later that Ukraine could have hit the parade all along. Sometimes the trolling is more kinetic in nature.

Although Ukraine has emphasized that the Russian e-commerce distributor Walburys, basically Putin's equivalent of Amazon, ship's key weapons components to support the Russian war effort, it's also a major part of ordinary life for Russians.

Ukraine's constant strikes against Walburys logistics and distribution centers may be a setback for the war effort, but the real objective is almost certainly to spread war fatigue and disillusionment among Russian civilians.

As journalist Alexei Kovalev explained in a recent analysis for foreign policy, Ukraine's quote, Walburys theory of Russian defeat means that, quoting again, Putin has been unable to protect his key clientele, the populations of Moscow and St Petersburg, which he has tried to insulate from the war.

Wind the clock forward to wintertime, and Ukraine's next move seems rather obvious.

During the summer, Kyiv has been able to hurt the Russian consumer at the pump and prevent packages from arriving at their doorstep. But in the winter months, Ukraine can finally deliver some real payback.

In essence, Ukraine would be trying to force a battle of sheer pain tolerance, trying to push Russians to their limits while Ukrainians are able to grit their teeth and endure.

Ukraine has a good reason to believe that it could win a pain-tolerance battle, especially when the cold is involved. At this point, most people currently living in Ukraine have been through several harsh winters, and they know what's coming. The odds are, this won't stop.

The other one is the worst, but I think it might use my defense. winter won't even be as bad as last year, not because there's any expectation that Ukraine will be warm, but because last year was unusually harsh, even by Ukrainian standards.

Russians meanwhile could be headed into their first winter of rolling blackouts at a time when fuel is already scarce and expensive.

And if Russians are already churning out vlogs about how miserable they are because of this war, then Ukraine has reason to believe that pessimism and fear could soon evolve into nationwide dread and resentment against Moscow's war effort.

Like we've already said, when the Russian public does occasionally fight back against its government, it tends to fight hard and produce results. So can a Ukrainian winter campaign push Russians past their limit? That's hard to know for sure.

But if they do, then Vladimir Putin could be in serious trouble. The Pessimists' Argument Now, we'd be remiss to leave our dear Warfronts viewers, that's you, with the impression that Ukraine is barreling toward an outright victory this winter.

For one thing, we don't actually know whether Ukraine would authorize a campaign against Russian energy infrastructure like the ones Ukraine has experienced.

And it's possible that international pressure, diverging war priorities, or the preferences of Ukrainian leadership could cause Kyiv to go down a different path. But the more important problem with all of this is that we haven't yet talked about the other side of the coming winter.

Because although Ukraine has reason to believe that a strong winter campaign could be the straw that broke the Siberian tiger's back, Russia can also make the case that it could turn this winter to its advantage.

The core problem for Kyiv comes down to air defenses, where at this point in the war, Ukraine has fewer air defenses interceptors available than ever. Kyiv is especially short on the expensive, primarily American-made PAC-3 interceptor which powers the Patriot missile defense system.

While Ukraine has plenty of other options to bring down slow-flying kamikaze drones and some of Russia's less advanced cruise missiles, it relies on the Patriot to stop Russia's ballistic missiles and its fastest cruise missiles.

Those projectiles launch and arrive so quickly and travel at such high speeds that no other air defense system in Ukraine's arsenal can deal with them at scale. Those Russian weapons include missiles like the Iskander-M, the Kinzhal, and the Zircon. Right now, however, Ukraine's Patriot interceptor stockpiles appear to be facing critical shortages.

Nor is that a unique problem for Ukraine. Because of the United States' ongoing war with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, Washington is burning through Patriot interceptors much faster than they could be replenished. According to some estimates, the US has barely a third of its pre-war Patriot stockpiles left.

Close American allies aren't even receiving interceptor orders as expected, let alone a country like Ukraine, which the current US administration considers a relatively unimportant ally of convenience. The results for Ukraine have been devastating.

Now that Russia is aware of the critical shortfalls, Moscow's forces have been hammering Ukrainian population centers, where the number of casualties per strike is rising sharply.

On the day this episode was written, the 5th of August, 2026, Ukrainian officials were reported an overnight wave of 115 Russian drones and 24 ballistic missiles, with Ukraine unable to shoot down even a single one of them. 21 people were killed across the country in that single wave, with dozens more injured.

Nor does Ukraine have the ability to close the gap anytime soon, and certainly not by itself. While the US is working to expand Patriot Interceptor production capacity, its new assembly lines won't reach full capacity for months or even years.

When they do, the US is likely to replenish its own stockpiles first, and then top up the stockpiles of key allies before Ukraine is even a part of the conversation. Despite an announcement that Ukraine would be allowed to start its own Patriot production line, those plants have since started to come apart.

And even if Ukraine does get permission, it'll take just as long to open a new facility there as in the United States.

Ukraine is working hard on a substitute, the Freya, with the help of its European allies. But even on Kyiv's ambitious timeline, the first prototype won't be operational until mid-2027. Those shortages mean that Ukraine will be at Russia's mercy across the coming winter.

Already, Russia's shifting tactics suggest that the nation's military leaders understand the opportunity in front of them, and realize that they can devastate targets that would usually have been protected. Ukraine's Energy Minister, Denis Shmihal, has been working to warn the world of what's coming.

To quote him, Russia's goal now is to destroy our water supplies.

Last winter, they targeted electricity and heating, but you could still survive if you had gas and water during electricity shutdowns. It's difficult to survive for more than three days without water. Russia was already planning to hammer Ukraine especially hard this winter, even before the developments of the last few months.

One analysis, published in March by the Center for European Policy Analysis, explained that Russia had calibrated its planned summer offensive to force Ukraine to choose between protecting its energy system and industrial base, and defending its soldiers on the front lines.

Luckily for Ukraine, separate advances in mid-range strike capability meant that Russia's spring offensive fell flat on its face. But now, it seems that Moscow is preparing for a renewed push across the late summer and autumn.

In Ukraine's eastern fortress belt, it's only a matter of time before the embattled city of Kostyantinivka falls, probably at incredibly high cost to Russia, but it seems destined to fall nonetheless.

Russia is also working to capture relative highland areas which would allow to fire down on the key city of Slovyansk, the valley of which we explained in a dedicated episode back in June, if you'd like to check that out. And it may attempt to escalate pressure against the northern city of Sumy.

So, Ukraine does have the option to try and engage Russia this winter in a knockdown, drag-out contest of sheer pain tolerance. Ukraine can attack Russian energy infrastructure, Russia can attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and both nations can find out who breaks first.

But if Ukraine wants to play that game, then it simply can't expect to suffer the same level of consequences as in 2024 or 2025.

Russia's impact on Ukraine this year will be worse, especially if Russia starts going after water infrastructure regularly. So, Ukraine has to do its moral calculus, too.

Perhaps if it's a milder win- In winter, Ukrainians will be willing to suffer through, but Ukrainians may also have to endure blackouts that go on longer, happen more frequently, and coincide with water shortages that pose a much more imminent threat.

And that's to say nothing of the growing civilian casualties from Russian strikes now that missiles are getting through without much trouble. Ukraine can make the bet that ultimately the Russian public will break first, but that's far from a guarantee. We'll draw upon the words of Denis Shmiel, Ukraine's energy minister, once again.

Putin hopes, in winter, our society will break from exhaustion and pressure leadership to sign the surrender. It's like the 12th round, and each boxer hopes their rival will fall first.

In that scenario, where Russia and Ukraine are both gasping for breath, Putin will have a much easier time justifying the choice that he seems primed to make – to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, no matter the cost.

If Ukraine could reliably destroy Russian energy targets and suffer only some very bearable pain in return, then perhaps Russia's leaders would look at the specter of winter and decide not to even try pushing through. But Russia knows damn well that it's got its own advantages in the months ahead.

And at this point in the war, Putin's routinely sacrificed more to gain less.

There is, however, one final factor we've got to consider. One critical misstep that could shift the wintertime balance back in Ukraine's favor. We've mentioned Putin's long-running efforts to avoid conscripting soldiers from Russia's wealthier areas in a mass mobilization that could send hundreds of thousands of new troops to the frontlines.

Recently, however, the situation has changed. Quoting from the Institute for the Study of War, the Kremlin appears to be setting conditions for potential mobilization and is preparing for possible civil unrest in Russia resulting from mobilization.

There are no guarantees yet, but outside experts increasingly agree that Russia is preparing for mass conscriptions in the very near future, in a move that would almost certainly spike public discontent and frustration to new heights.

As the ISW evaluates, quote, mobilization remains a very personal decision for Putin and is ultimately contingent on Putin's personal perception of the battlefield situation and the Kremlin's stability, meaning that if Putin doesn't believe that the Russian public would tolerate mass mobilization, then he probably won't try it.

But as we've seen many times throughout this war, Putin has a tendency to overestimate his strength and ignore his vulnerabilities until it's too late. If the Kremlin did miscalculate and chose to start an immensely unpopular mass mobilization as the winter months begin, then he may overplay his hand at precisely the wrong moment.

Most likely, Putin doesn't take the risk. But it's late in the 12th, and both sides are exhausted. If there were any moment for one of these two fighters to make a fatal mistake, it's now.

Well, thank you for watching.