Putin’s winter campaign will hit hard – but won’t decide the war

Russia has started what looks to be its worst winter campaign on Ukraine yet. In this video, I look at what's happening and discuss what the consequences will be.

Watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

One of the biggest and most common mistakes I see people making about the war in Ukraine is that they underestimate Russia. They assume that Russia is weak because Russia is unable to make progress on the front line and because people like myself talk about how the overall trends are bad for Russia and how the Russian war economy is struggling. But the reality is that the Russian military is very strong and they still have the ability to develop new weapons and to expand their capabilities. So even if they’re not winning the war, they’re also not exactly losing it at the moment, and they still have the capacity to cause horrific damage to Ukraine. And right now we’re standing on the verge of what looks to be the worst winter of the war yet for Ukraine. So let’s talk about it.

It has become something of an annual tradition that Russia tries to use the winter period to put maximum pressure on Ukraine and to force the Ukrainians into capitulation by maximizing civilian suffering. They didn’t do it that much the first year of the war. But since then, there’s been a winter campaign every year where they target Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure with long-range strikes. Every winter has been worse than the previous one. And last winter was absolutely horrific for Ukraine. It was very difficult for the Ukrainian civilian population to get through those dark and cold months. And judging by where we are today, it seems likely that the coming winter will be even worse.

There are essentially two reasons for this. The first one is that Ukrainian air defenses are relatively weaker now than they were last winter. This is both because the Americans have started a war in Iran and have used so many Patriot missiles that there’s a general shortage of them in the world, and that means Ukraine has access to fewer missiles. But it’s also because the air defense systems that Ukraine has developed to take out Russian drones have become less effective, because Russia has been able to develop new types of drones and to make them more resistant against air defenses.

And that improved Russian production is actually the second reason why things look bad for the coming winter. Russia has been able to develop new types of drones and missiles, and they are also still able to scale their production. So both the quality and the quantity of Russian drones and missiles keep increasing.

For example, many people still have the idea that Russia is using Iranian Shahed drones to hit Ukraine. But the reality is that Russia has iterated on the design of these drones. In Russian, they’re not called Shaheds. They’re called Gerans. At first, Russia acquired two types of Shahed drones from Iran, and they were designated the Geran-1 and the Geran-2. But by now, we’re up to the Geran-5. So there have been multiple generations of these drones, and with each one, they’ve become more sophisticated and more dangerous. The newest ones carry a warhead that is about twice as big as the first ones. And it also has a jet-powered engine instead of the propeller engine, which means that it’s much faster and very difficult for the Ukrainian air defense units to shoot down.

Another example is the jet-powered Banderol missile-drone hybrid that Russia has introduced, which carries a warhead of about 150 kilograms. So that’s about three times the size of the first Shahed drones. And it’s also very difficult to shoot down.

So Russia is developing new types of drones and missiles, but they’re also increasing production, and the number of strikes is going up. For example, in 2025, Russia launched somewhere around 56,000–57,000 drones and missiles against civilian targets in Ukraine. That is more than four times as many as they did in 2024, when it was only about 13,000. So that’s about a 300% increase from 2024 to 2025. And judging by the numbers we have for 2026, this trend continues. Russia is still able to output more and more drones and missiles.

We can also see that in how Russia is conducting its strikes on Ukrainian cities, and especially Kyiv. It used to be that Russia would have to accumulate large numbers of drones and missiles and then overwhelm the Ukrainian air defenses. So we would have these extraordinarily large attacks every other week or so. And the attacks would also typically happen during the night, because that would make it extra difficult to shoot down the drones and missiles. So there would be a bigger chance of success for the Russian strikes if they were big and if they happened during nighttime.

Over the last month and a half, that pattern has changed. Now there are almost constant airstrikes on Kyiv. It happens around the clock almost every day. And this is something Russia can do because they have more drones at their disposal and because they have the jet-powered drones that are more difficult to shoot down. And this makes life much more stressful for the citizens of Kyiv, because they never get a break. It’s not just their sleep that is disturbed, but also their ability to live their lives during the day.

And we see the Russians deliberately targeting things that make life possible in the Ukrainian capital. For example, they hit the bridges, so it’s more difficult to cross the river, and that separates the city. It makes public transportation more difficult — all kinds of things that make life hard for the citizens in the Ukrainian capital.

Recently, we’ve seen Russia launch a new type of drone that is designed to cut the pylons that carry the power lines. This appears to be a weapon that is specifically intended to cut power deliveries to large cities or to take Ukraine’s nuclear power plants offline without actually hitting the nuclear power plants. So we are essentially seeing Russia make preparations for what looks to be a campaign to make Ukrainian cities uninhabitable, or at least cut off from essential supplies over the winter.

And Ukraine would be in a bad position to handle that situation, both because of the shortage of air defense weapons that they have, but also because Ukraine’s infrastructure is already strained from the damage that it has suffered in previous years. So what I’m talking about here is essentially cities with millions of people operating over the winter without electricity, without heating, without water supplies, and without sanitation.

So I think, unfortunately, we need to prepare for the possibility that Ukraine could be facing something that will resemble a humanitarian catastrophe over the winter. And the rest of Europe needs to be able to support Ukraine, both directly in terms of supplying Ukraine with what they need to handle that situation, but also in the sense that there could be a new influx of refugees if things get really bad. So I think the situation is very serious, and it’s important that we are aware of what might happen this winter.

Before I finish, I also want to add a few comments about the bigger picture. The first one is that one of the most important factors that will decide how bad the situation will get is one that Russia cannot control, and that is the weather. One of the reasons why it was so bad last winter was that it was a really cold winter. If we get a very warm winter, then the humanitarian consequences would just be much smaller. So fingers crossed that this will be a mild winter.

The second comment is that the reason I bring up this topic in this video is that I think it’s extremely important from a humanitarian point of view, and I think it’s important that people know what Ukrainians are facing. But I don’t think it will be decisive for the war. Russia is still facing a crisis at the front line, where they are unable to make significant progress right now. Ukraine is militarily in a stronger position than they have been at any point since at least 2023. So even if Russia manages to create a huge crisis in Ukraine’s largest cities, the consequences for Ukraine’s warfighting ability will be quite limited. And I definitely don’t foresee that Ukraine will suddenly decide to give up and stop fighting because Russia has caused a humanitarian disaster. On the contrary, it would probably rather strengthen their resolve and make them even more determined to keep fighting for Ukraine’s future independent of Russia. In fact, an opinion poll came out just the other day that showed that the determination of Ukrainians to keep fighting is still very high.

The last thing I think it’s important to be aware of is that this winter will be different from previous ones in that Ukraine now has weapons that they can respond with. Ukraine has developed very strong capabilities in long-range drones and missiles that they can use to also inflict pain on Russian society. I don’t think it will be on a similar scale to what Russia will be doing to Ukraine, but it will be significant. Ukraine is already targeting Russian fuel supplies, and I think that will be one of the most important aspects of Ukraine’s response. Russians should probably prepare to go through winter with significant fuel shortages. But there might also be other elements in the campaign, at least in the regions that are bordering Ukraine. I think we’re going to see Ukraine also targeting things like power production and other essential infrastructure.

Last year, I made a video about how Ukraine’s Flamingo missile could give Ukraine a deterrence by punishment capability that could perhaps provide some protection against Russian attacks. It didn’t exactly turn out that way, both because the Flamingo missiles got delayed and Ukraine never really got that capability until after the winter, but also because it has turned out that Putin is not really prepared to be deterred by the thought of Ukraine having the capability to hit targets deep into Russia. But this year, Ukraine actually has the capability, and we are going to see it used in this new way. So even though Russia is preparing to make this the worst winter yet for Ukrainians during the war, I think it’s fair to say that this is also going to be the worst winter yet for Russians.

So the winter campaigns that we are about to witness from both Russia and Ukraine will be a reminder of two important things. The first is that it’s a mistake to underestimate Russia, and that even under its current conditions, Russia is still able to expand its weapons production and to produce both more and better weapons. In the beginning of the war, a lot of people were making fun of the quality of the Russian military and all their shortcomings and mistakes. But the reality is that the Russian military is constantly learning. They are developing new types of weapons, and they are constantly becoming a more and more dangerous adversary. And that can still be the case, even though they’re not currently winning the war.

The second thing is that it will be a reminder that the war is in no sense under control or constrained, and that we’re still witnessing a constant spiral of escalation where every year things are worse than they were the year before. I think it’s actually somewhat dangerous when the war in Ukraine sometimes fades from mainstream media coverage in Western Europe, because it gives the wrong impression that the war is under control when that is absolutely not the case. On the contrary, things seem to get worse and worse and more and more dangerous.