Pivotal winter of the war

UKRAINE - In Brief 28 Jan 2026 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Throughout January, Russia has been bombarding Kyiv with missiles and drones, apparently hoping that Ukrainians—caught between prolonged subzero weather and shattered infrastructure—will lose the will to resist and pressure their leaders to accept surrender, perhaps wrapped in the promise of a “pleasant” Trump peace deal. In these desperate attacks, Russia reportedly destroyed two combined heat and power (CHP) plants that provided district heating to large parts of Kyiv. Heating has been restored in most districts—except for Troyeshchyna, a district of more than 500,000 people. Troyeshchyna was fully dependent on one of the destroyed CHPs and has no alternative heat source. If you’ve seen apocalyptic photos of people freezing in Kyiv, they likely came from Troyeshchyna. The situation there is a genuine humanitarian disaster: thousands of people are on the edge of survival, and the outlook for hundreds of apartment blocks is bleak. Reconfiguring the heating system will take time and significant funding—it cannot be done overnight. Kyiv’s leadership is trying to manage public anger over the utilities collapse by directing blame toward municipal authorities, who are accused of being unprepared for this scenario. I’m not sure how successful this messaging has been, but we are clearly seeing political ping-pong between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Against this backdrop, the key question is whether Russia’s strategy—forcing Ukraine into concessions by destroying civilian infrastructure and exploiting an extreme cold spell—has worked. My sense, even without polling data, is that Moscow will be surprised to learn by the end of winter that Ukra...