“Wait ‘til it gets cold—really cold, Ukrainian cold,” a friend warned when I arrived in Kyiv in 2022. I didn’t know what he meant until this year—recent winters here, like almost everywhere, have been relatively mild. But 2026 is a throwback: it’s been snowing off and on for weeks, and temperatures, at their lowest in years, are hovering between 5 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and colder at night. Vladimir Putin is trying to weaponize the frigid weather with huge drone and missile strikes every few days, knocking out heat, water, and electricity in Kyiv and other cities. But if his goal is to freeze Ukrainians into submission, breaking their will, it isn’t working. If anything, they are more determined to resist.
Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since winter 2022. But this year is different—not just the weather, but also the scale and ferocity of Putin’s attacks. The bombardments escalated in December, and after nearly two months, they have come to seem a way of life. In Kyiv, there are air alerts virtually every night, punctuated every few days by a particularly savage attack. On January 9, Moscow launched 242 drones and 36 missiles, knocking out electricity across 70 percent of Ukraine’s capital and leaving some 6,000 apartment buildings without heat. The January 20 assault of 339 drones and 34 rockets included a Zircon hypersonic missile designed to destroy a warship. January 23 brought another 375 drones and 21 missiles, including another dreaded Zircon.
Ukrainian energy companies and attacking Russians play a macabre game of cat-and-mouse. After each assault, the companies scramble to repair the damage, often completing the task only to have the enemy strike again. On the morning of January 23, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that two-thirds of the damage from the previous bombardment had been repaired, leaving fewer than 2,000 buildings without heat. By the next morning, the tally again approached 6,000—roughly half the city’s housing stock, in many cases buildings that been without heat the week before.
