Since the autumn of 2023, Ukraine’s supporters have followed the same pattern in assessing the course of the war: Ukrainians warn that Russia is targeting their energy infrastructure to prevent them from heating their homes, schools and businesses during the coming winter, writes Alanna Novetsky in an analysis of developments from the beginning of the war to the present day
The allies provide insufficient support for Ukraine’s efforts to strengthen its energy grid and other critical infrastructure facilities. Ukrainians find new ways to keep warm, distribute the scarce aid so that it lasts as long as possible, and manage to survive the winter without a catastrophic collapse.
In the end, their supporters praise their resilience, breathe a sigh of relief at the first signs of spring and turn to other matters, until the following autumn. This recurring scenario reveals a very important fact about the course of the war in Ukraine.
The West, including Ukraine’s most loyal allies, views Russia’s war against the Ukrainian state purely in the short term. Achieving a Ukrainian victory is not merely a task that spans an entire generation; it requires deep and sustained commitment, rather than chaotic and inconsistent reactions.
The West’s approach to Ukraine often falls into two categories. The first is crisis response, characterised by the exclamation: “Something must be done!” This exclamation, although understandable when, for example, Russian forces bomb a city bus or abduct a Ukrainian journalist whose body is later returned without its internal organs, is rarely followed by action commensurate with the crimes committed. Diplomats and state leaders who utter these words usually reach for the first “remedy” at hand: often a hasty mixture of strongly worded condemnations and sanctions.
And if they are particularly angry, they add symbolic aid as well. In their haste, they rarely ask themselves questions such as: “Why, after responding to the same crimes in the same way for 12 years, does Russia continue to commit them and devise even more sadistic methods of torturing Ukrainians?”
The second category can be described as “one magic trick” thinking. The logic is as follows: if only we provide Ukraine with some highly advanced weapons system, the war will end. If we persuade Ukraine to give up part of its territory, the war will end. If we impose sanctions on this Russian official, the war will end. If we lift sanctions against that Russian official, the war will end. If we bring Ukrainians and Russians together in one negotiating room, the war will end. And so on, and so on.
Of course, it is not surprising that politicians reach for precisely these options. Statements, sanctions, aid packages and organising meetings are all policy tools that can be activated relatively easily. In most cases, they are legal, quick and relatively simple.
They can be presented to voters in democratic countries, who will appreciate their leaders’ concern without those leaders risking accusations that they have invested too much or become too deeply involved in the conflict. These tools have historical precedents and, at first glance, there even appear to be examples in which they helped end conflicts in the past. Moreover, they are necessary.
No Ukrainian official would refuse aid or sanctions packages, nor should they. For better or worse, Ukraine’s armed forces could not have mounted their heroic resistance on the battlefield without the capabilities and material means provided by the West. This is equipment that Ukrainians have adapted and used beyond the limits of its capacity, in ways its creators could not even have imagined.
Russia, however, is waging its war against Ukraine in a way that is completely opposed both to the attitude that “something must be done” and to the expectation of some kind of “magic solution”. Some of the most insidious aspects of Russia’s efforts to destroy the Ukrainian nation do not occur at one specific moment or on one particular day.
Over the past four winters, while managing to prevent the complete collapse of their energy grid, Ukrainians have lived with the harsh reality of going to school, working and trying to keep their lives in order, all while freezing. It is true that Ukrainians have shown remarkable ingenuity, finding ways to educate their children and provide them with at least a fragment of normality amid a full-scale war.
And yet, even the luckiest Ukrainian children spend winters studying for hours underground or trying to keep up with their schoolwork after cold and sleepless nights. The West may not perceive daily life in Ukraine during winter as a slowly unfolding tragedy, but for Russia, winter attacks are a key element of its strategy to undermine Ukrainian society.
Consider just some of the targets Russia has repeatedly attacked this autumn: warehouses containing more than 8 million children’s books, including textbooks for the coming school year; data centres and mobile operator infrastructure; rail links between Poland and Ukraine; bridges between Moldova and Ukraine. What does all this mean taken together? The nearly five million children living in Ukraine have faced chronic interruptions to their education since the coronavirus pandemic, which was only subsiding when Russia invaded the country in 2022.
When schools close because of a lack of electricity or because the journey to them is too dangerous, parents are forced to take care of their children, pulling them away from their jobs—work on which the functioning of the Ukrainian economy depends. Providing an internet connection, particularly in Kyiv, for remote work or education is becoming increasingly difficult.
Many Ukrainian families feel they have no choice but to leave the country, although their opportunities to do so are becoming increasingly limited. Lyubov Zalyubovska and her colleagues from the Ukrainian educational organisation “Go Global” often call young people in Ukraine “the victory generation”.
This generation has earned that recognition—and much more. As Zalyubovska reminded participants at an event I recently moderated, they are the ones creating the innovations that give Ukraine’s armed forces an advantage. They are the ones devising new ways for cities to have heating and electricity during winter. They are rebuilding their nation while Russia is trying to destroy it.
This inspiring description points to another, less comfortable truth. Achieving victory for Ukraine will require an entire generation. This does not mean, “God forbid!”, that Ukrainians will wage a full-scale war for decades. On the contrary, it means that victory will depend on the success or failure of today’s young Ukrainians over the coming decades.
Young Ukrainians face years in which they will have to defend Ukraine’s borders, turn it once again into a place fit for living, and revive its democracy and economy—tasks that are just as relevant to victory as the terms of any possible future peace agreement.
This is an unfair burden placed on their shoulders. No one could blame Ukrainians if, faced with monstrous Russian attacks on civilians and the torture of prisoners of war, they chose to respond with searing anger that turned into rash actions driven by a thirst for revenge. It would be equally understandable if they were misled by the promises of charlatans offering “easy ways out” of the horror of war—solutions that sound too good to be true.
The good news is that we have a model for what policy aimed at achieving a “generational victory” for Ukraine could look like. This model comes from the drone and defence-technology industries—the fields most closely associated with the development of this very “victory generation”.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence has created opportunities for European allies, the best-known example being Denmark, to invest in joint-production models. Within these partnerships, they cooperate with the most innovative and effective Ukrainian companies to create weapons and other materials needed on the front line.
There are numerous detailed analyses of how these agreements work and how they benefit both the investing countries and Ukraine. The key point, however, is that these countries have a direct interest in specific Ukrainian industries, companies and people.
They carefully consider not only how their investments can contribute to immediate successes on the battlefield, but also how to ensure the long-term sustainability of this sector of the Ukrainian economy for decades to come. Identifying suitable companies, working jointly with their leaders, structuring the agreements and overcoming production delays—none of this is a quick or easy process.
And yet, because these countries recognise that the defence-technology sector is inseparably linked both to Ukraine’s long-term security and to their own, they are prepared to commit to it. This attention to detail and dedication to partnership could also be applied in other sectors vital to Ukraine’s survival.
For every brutal tactic Russia uses to exhaust Ukrainian society, Ukrainians respond by developing innovative and widely applicable solutions. These are solutions that often suffer from a lack of funding. That was precisely the situation in the drone and defence-technology sectors during the first years of the full-scale invasion.
Take, for example, Mariupol State University, which operates in exile in Kyiv after its rector managed to leave the city during the Russian siege in late February 2022. The university has developed methods—both high-tech and simpler ones—for maintaining contact with students from Mariupol.
It is one of Ukraine’s educational institutions that continue to reach students in the Russian-occupied territories of eastern Ukraine and Crimea—places where the apparatus of censorship and surveillance is practically all-encompassing. The university manages both to impart skills needed to find work in Ukraine’s complex, largely remote wartime economy and to preserve the spirit of Mariupol’s culture and of the university itself.
Governments or universities that establish long-term partnerships with higher-education institutions such as Mariupol State University could undoubtedly benefit from the expertise of its lecturers and students—in fields ranging from veteran education to developing curricula for emerging areas such as drone design and management.
More importantly, for those who understand Ukraine’s success as a necessary condition for transatlantic security or as a value in itself, a closer look would reveal the following: Russia can seriously weaken the Ukrainian state by subjecting its key institutions to unbearable pressure—even if it fails to destroy it through military victories on the battlefield.
Ukrainians are trying to fill the enormous gaps in primary and lower-secondary education, while nearly 4 million internally displaced people seek ways to maintain their connection with the culture of their native places. These are problems that require both a deep understanding of the real situation on the ground and a willingness to find and implement targeted solutions aimed at specific threats to Ukraine’s survival.
Ukraine’s political leadership recognised Mariupol State University’s significant contribution by appointing its rector, Mykola Trofimenko, as deputy minister of education and science in 2025. Although Ukraine undoubtedly benefits from integrating Trofimenko’s experience into its education policy, Ukrainian government officials simply do not have the time and resources to systematically develop more state-strengthening institutions like Mariupol State University or support visionaries like Trofimenko. They could, however, direct their Western partners to where they should look.
“The victory generation” provides a solid foundation on which to build. We who live far from the daily drone attacks, sirens and rushes to metro stations for shelter must not use that distance as an excuse for careless and impulsive policy decisions.
A harsh and bleak winter lies ahead for Ukrainians. This fact was just as obvious last autumn as it is today. Of course, we must neither ignore nor deepen the humanitarian crises emerging or expanding in cities from Oleshky to Kyiv. But we must act while also seeking ways to break this oppressive cycle that repeats itself winter after winter.
What programmes, technologies and protective tools are Ukrainians developing and implementing now, driven by necessity—ones in which we could invest so they could be deployed on a larger scale next winter? What will people who have decided to stay and endure this winter need—in healthcare, education and social support—to live, and even thrive, in Ukraine next winter and the winter after that? What are Ukrainians’ aspirations for their families and their dreams for their country?
Foreign ministries and legislators throughout the Western world must ask these questions not only of Ukrainian ministers, but also of members of parliament, local officials, civil-society leaders and members of public organisations—both those filled with enthusiasm and hope and those who are disappointed and dissatisfied. I have held some of these conversations and can share several things that may unsettle the typical foreign-policy expert.
You will not see in them the glossy presentations and neatly packaged policy proposals we have come to expect—or even demand—from officials visiting our capitals. They may revolve around repairing the entrance to a particular apartment building. They may lack deference or flattery. You may sense anger—the anger of people who believed in the promise of a rules-based international order and Western democracy but now feel betrayed. They may seem incoherent or show a lack of familiarity with the so-called “geopolitical reality”.
And yet, these conversations will imbue the West’s response to Ukraine’s suffering and Russian aggression with a humanity and depth that are currently sorely lacking. They will make decision-makers feel personally invested in the future of Ukrainians—and therefore in the future of Ukraine itself.
They will allow them to see—truly see—what it would mean for young people in Ukraine to grow old in the homeland of their grandparents. Only then can the difficult, slow and deliberate work of turning that future into reality begin.
Source: news.bg