(KYIV) – As Ukraine approaches its fifth winter of Russia’s full-scale war, the conflict is shaping up in a way completely different from previous years. For the Russian soldier, many of the changes now expected are nothing short of nightmarish.
Typically, winter slows the battlefield. Soldiers cannot make as many advances. Each side tries to advance its own technology, rest, and recover. While things do not remain totally static, for the most part there are no major gains on either side.
This year could be completely different, due to two major trends.
First, Ukraine is getting better and better at striking Russian logistics every day, particularly with mid-range drone strikes. Ukrainian forces are striking Russian trucks all over the roads of the occupied territories. It is getting harder and harder for the Russians to get supplies through to their cities, let alone to their front lines.
This is happening under rather ideal weather conditions, where traditionally the Russians have not struggled very much. It is a massive problem for the Russians because they have always struggled with winter logistics. It is a difficult problem to solve to get supplies to a soldier in conditions of ice and snow, especially if there are no roads going to that position.
General Winter himself is a compelling foe. But now, the Ukrainians, like never before, will be able to continuously disrupt these winter logistics, causing the problems to compound far more than what has already been seen.
In previous years, logistical problems have caused massive shortages of just about everything for Russian soldiers. Everything from food and fuel to stay warm, from jackets and dry clothing to safe drinking water. This is why Russia’s winter assaults have always been hampered and have never been very successful.
But this year, not only will all of that get worse, but the Russians will have another massive problem to contend with.
Traditionally, there have not been many winter offensives on either side because it is very difficult for humans to contend with winter weather. When you already have a drone war where it is difficult even in the summer, assaulting during the winter simply makes no sense.
So, at least for the Russian soldiers, even if they could not get the proper supplies, they have typically had the breathing space in the winter to simply wait things out. Miserable as they might be, this year they might not have even that.
That is due to a massive Ukrainian development in ground robotics. Ukraine’s operation of ground robots is being used in stunning new ways. So effective, in fact, that Ukraine last month took far more territory than the Russians did from Ukraine. This was under ideal conditions where the Russians were on the offensive pretty much everywhere and Ukraine was only on the offensive in a few limited areas.
When winter comes, this ground robotics advantage is only going to grow. Ukraine has proven a number of very important things with ground robots this past year. Last winter, Ukraine proved that the robots could work under winter weather conditions in the snow and ice as they sent tracked robots to rescue wounded soldiers.
Right now, Ukraine is proving how ground robots can be dropped behind enemy lines via aerial drones. This is a big problem for the Russians. It means that this winter, rather than sitting comfortably, they could have a robot coming to flush them out of their position into the cold winter weather. They will not have much of a response to this.
On the Russian side, they do not have anything like this capability. So while the Russians are pausing their offensives, it could be that Ukraine goes on the offensive like never before.
The reason winter weather is so fascinating in this war is because traditionally the Russians have always seen it as a grand partner, one of their greatest allies and weapons. Currently, that trend is potentially being completely reversed.
For the Russians, winter is something uniquely Russian, one of the greatest tools in their entire arsenal. They have referred to it as General Winter. Probably more than any other Russian general, the winter weather has won Russia’s wars for them.
It helped them win their war against Napoleon, when his triumphant armies became overextended within Russia’s massive territory. When winter set in, Napoleon found his supply lines far too long and his troops far too cold to be effective. He tried to flee the country, and as he retreated, his soldiers succumbed mostly to sickness and the cold itself.
The Russians repeated something similar at Stalingrad, one of their most famous victories. Russia has always seen winter as a national advantage. But one thing they failed to realise is that winter is an equal opportunity opponent.
They have simply typically faced winter on their home territory, with enemy armies being the ones that were overextended. Now they find themselves in the opposite position, having to transport men and supplies all the way across Russia’s massive territory, trying to navigate winter logistics to feed their front lines rather than simply outwaiting the enemy.
This is going to be a nightmare for the Russians once it sets in in full force, since Ukraine is currently the only side in this war with sufficient ground robotics capabilities for even small-scale offensives. If they can truly scale this up even just a little bit as the winter months hit, they will have the ability to dominate the battlefield for a season, something not seen since this war began.
That could have a massive impact on both Ukrainian and Russian morale. More importantly, it could open legitimate strategic gaps in the Russian front line, even if they are only small. This is a big deal to get Russians on the back foot and get them wandering in the winter weather rather than, for example, the armies of Napoleon or Hitler.
That is a stunning ironic reversal that is likely to be seen. Whether it happens this year at scale, it will probably happen next year if it does not.
On top of this, things are not exactly going swimmingly on the Russian home front. Numerous videos and pictures have shown fuel queues all across Russia as people wait in line for hours, sometimes days, just to get a tank of gasoline. It is happening even in Moscow and St Petersburg.
While Russia will occasionally get some respite from this, it is clear by now that this trend is always coming back due to Ukraine’s repeated strikes on Russian refineries. This problem is only going to get much worse as Russia enters the winter months.
First, there are the little things. Waiting in a fuel queue in the summer in comfortable weather is a completely different experience than waiting in a fuel queue in the winter. In fact, waiting in the fuel queue in the winter could literally be life-threatening. That entire dynamic is going to get a whole lot more volatile all across Russian cities.
Russia is also about to see what can happen to its society when it faces massively inflated fuel prices for the entire winter, for really one of the first times in history. Massively inflated fuel prices in the summer are one thing. It has a massive impact on the economy and prevents people from getting from point A to point B.
But in the winter, the problem gets even worse. It no longer becomes about whether or not you can drive a car. It now becomes about whether or not you can afford to heat your home in many parts of Russia.
These high fuel prices are not something the Russians are used to. Historically, Russia has been described as a gas station disguised as a country. Cheap fuel has always been something Russians could count on.
To be clear, it is still a lot cheaper in Russia than in many other parts of the world. But in Russia, wages are a lot lower. As they face fuel inflation and now have to pay for fuel, something they never truly had to budget for before, that could become a big impact.
There is also another trend on top of this, a problem Russia already faced last year but that this year is only going to be many times worse. At this time of year, Russian refineries are supposed to be starting to go offline to begin retooling themselves to create winter-grade fuel, which is especially critical in a place as famously cold as Russia.
The problem is that Ukraine has been consistently striking Russian refineries left and right, giving them very little breathing space. Because of this, refineries are running at maximum capacity as it is, and they are not keeping up. They simply do not have the capacity to shut down and create winter-grade fuel.
That means going into the winter, this problem is only guaranteed to get even worse than it already is. If you are a Russian this winter, even if you can get your hands on fuel, it is very likely that fuel will not be the proper winter grade, and that can cause some pretty big problems.
If you are driving a normal petrol vehicle, the problems are not as severe. You will have a little more cranking to get your engine started, but for the most part you should probably be able to get your vehicle to turn on. That is the case if you are driving the types of vehicles most people drive in other countries. If you are in Russia and driving a Lada, that is another question entirely.
When it comes to diesel, the problems are even worse. If you are running summer-grade fuel in the winter, your filter is going to clog up due to waxy elements in that fuel. You will have to stop and replace that filter because otherwise your engine will not run. And you will have to do it in brutal winter conditions.
This will mean a lot fewer cars on the road in practice because people may not want to bother. It might mean some people getting stranded in the middle of nowhere in the harsh Russian winters with nobody around who happens to have a filter on their hands to change it out even if they wanted to.
The problems could stack up really quickly. These problems were already seen last year, but the scale at which Ukraine is taking out Russian refineries is far worse this year.
So Russia is going to be facing some extreme problems this winter, both on the front lines and on the home front, at scales they have simply never had to contend with. It is going to be really, really bad.
All that being said, the winter on the Ukrainian side must also be addressed. Lately, there have been many headlines talking about how bad this winter will be for the Ukrainians. That is true to an extent.
Right now, Ukraine is short on interceptor missiles. They cannot intercept all of Russia’s ballistic missiles that Russia is sending through against their cities. Like Russia has done every winter of this war, Russia is using this time leading up to winter to try to take out Ukrainian infrastructure. They want to take out especially Ukrainian power plants to make sure Ukrainians are as miserable this year as possible.
That being said, there is ultimately less concern about the winter for Ukrainians. There are a couple of specific reasons for that, and it is not just hope. It is facts.
First, there has been a lot of survey data coming out of Ukraine lately talking about how Ukrainians are happy despite the war. This is survey data that came before a lot of Ukraine’s recent groundbreaking successes, both with ground robots and also with their new FP7 ballistic missile.
This is more than just a feel-good data point. It is incredibly important to understanding how resilient Ukrainians actually are and what will actually happen to them if Russia does its worst this winter.
Ukrainians are growing happier and happier. This is the important signal. Everything else is just noise. Every Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure is just an input ultimately in Ukrainian happiness.
The goal of taking out a power plant is to make a Ukrainian cold, to make it so they cannot charge their devices or use electricity so that that Ukrainian becomes unhappy. But if that attack is not actually making the Ukrainian unhappy, it is largely ineffective from a strategic standpoint. It is still effective from a physical standpoint, the power still goes out, but it does not create the effect of causing Ukrainians to want to just lie down and give up in their war against Russia.
This is incredibly important to know. At this point in the war, Ukrainians have learned to adapt to these types of attacks. This is their fifth winter. They have learned how to live without power and how to stay warm. They have learned how to partner together as a community.
The government has learned how to set up resilience stations all across the country where people can go if they are truly desperate to stay warm or to charge their devices. What is fascinating is the usage rate of these resilience centres. It is incredibly low, which means the impression people have of how desperate Ukrainians actually are is far different from the level of resources Ukrainians are actually using when those resources are made available to them for the worst-case scenario.
That worst-case scenario has rarely happened in previous winters, and it is probably not going to happen this winter either. But even if it does, that survey data is still very interesting because it tells us something is happening in Ukraine right now.
Something happened in Great Britain in World War II during the Blitz when Germany was bombing Britain with thousands of bombs every single night. In Britain during the Blitz, something fascinating happened that is now recurring in Ukraine. As the bombings went on longer and longer, people actually had a counterintuitive response.
Having been attacked by an outside nation, they came together in community like they never had before. This would cause a lot of people to look back at this experience as one of the happiest times of their entire life. When you are attacked like this, it gives you an experience you never had before and can never have again except under these types of circumstances. It is a type of camaraderie that humans rarely if ever experience.
It can actually make people happier even as the situation objectively gets worse and worse. It is different for the Ukrainians than for the Russians because they know they are getting attacked. Most average Russians, even if they cannot say it out loud, know they are the aggressors. The sentiment within the countries is going in different directions.
There is also another very important psychological principle at play here. It is the principle of reversion to the mean in terms of psychological happiness. When something terrible happens to us or when something really great happens to us, we tend to think that will last forever. But in reality, in a surprisingly short period of time, we revert to our mean level of happiness.
If we win the lottery, we might think we will be happy forever, but we will come back down. If we lose a limb, we might think our life is over, but we will come back up. Right now, what Ukrainians are doing is coming back up. Their happiness level is currently exactly the same as it was right before Russia invaded them. They have reverted to their mean.
So when we hear all this doom and gloom about what will happen to Ukraine this winter, we have to ask the question not what will this do to Ukrainian infrastructure, but what will this actually do to the spirit of the Ukrainian people. It is unlikely to do much. If anything, even if they are objectively a little colder, maybe even hungrier, a lot of them may actually become happier.
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