Svitlana Morenets

Vladimir Putin’s subordinates are bending over backwards to ensure Saturday’s Victory Day parade in Moscow goes ahead smoothly. Mobile internet has been cut off, air defence systems are being redeployed to the capital, and threats to bomb Ukraine if it dares disrupt the celebrations have been issued. Yesterday, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Kremlin had written to foreign governments urging them to evacuate staff from Kyiv. She warned of ‘inevitable’ and ‘massive’ retaliatory strikes on the Ukrainian capital should the ‘terrorist regime’ in Kyiv attack Moscow on Putin’s sacred day. The threats follow Russia’s proposed ‘Victory Day truce’ for 8 and 9 May, which Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have rejected.

When Donald Trump announced yesterday that Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop bombing Ukrainian cities for a week, officials in Kyiv were taken aback. Volodymyr Zelensky said there were no direct agreements between Ukraine and Russia to suspend air strikes on critical infrastructure despite the issue being discussed at last week’s peace talks in Abu Dhabi. The Ukrainian President had no idea when this ceasefire was supposed to begin or end – and he wasn’t the only one. The Kremlin, it quickly turned out, didn’t have any idea either.  The first to start the rumours were outraged pro-Kremlin military bloggers, who began reporting that Moscow had ordered its forces not to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure yesterday morning.

Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t want to go to Davos. Why bother showing up at the World Economic Forum to watch world leaders swarm around Donald Trump and his obsession with Danish-controlled Greenland? The Arctic spectacle has stolen the spotlight from the war in Ukraine, and Zelensky could not bear the thought of returning empty-handed while his country struggled to survive the freezing winter. ‘I choose Ukraine in this case, rather than the economic forum,’ Zelensky said on Tuesday after another Russian attack deepened the country’s energy crisis. That was until Trump announced he wanted to talk to the Ukrainian President one-on-one.  Their one-hour meeting yesterday ended with little to show for it.

Standing outside his presidential office in Kyiv tonight, on the same spot as on the second day of Ukraine's full-scale war with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Ukrainians. He said he hadn't betrayed the country then and wouldn't do so now. Ukraine faces ‘one of the most difficult moments in our history’, he said, while the Trump administration presses it into a deal with Russia. The US, once Ukraine’s biggest ally, has issued an ultimatum: either Zelensky signs the framework of the 28-point peace plan drawn up by Washington and the Kremlin by next Thursday, or Trump will cut intelligence-sharing and weapons supplies for Ukraine.  The pressure on Ukraine right now is among the heaviest.

Vladimir Putin’s hopes of wearing Ukraine down in a war of attrition are no longer far-fetched. The country feels fragile, like it did in February 2022. Back then, Ukrainians rallied behind a president who stayed and shared a conviction that victory was possible. Today many are wondering whether defeat and the end of Ukraine’s statehood are drawing nearer than anyone would like to admit. A corruption scandal is engulfing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. Russia is making gains on the battlefield. Ukraine’s tragedy is not only that Zelensky’s close associates were leeching off 15 per cent from contracts meant to fortify critical energy infrastructure, stealing from the country £76 million at the very least.

Since taking office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s decisions have often been a mix of blatant populism and good intentions. Today, however, a number of his domestic policies are seen in Ukraine less as acts of genuine support for the war-weary public and more as attempts to shore up his approval ratings. This year, just as last, Zelensky has announced a round of ‘winter support’, under which every Ukrainian can receive 1,000 hryvnias – around £18 – from the state. The money can be used to pay utility bills, buy medicine or books, or be donated to the army. The scheme was tested last December, when more than 14 million Ukrainians claimed the payment.

For the fourth winter in a row, Vladimir Putin believes now is the time when Ukrainians will finally break. Russia’s campaign of systematic strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure has begun once again with the first cold winds. Last night, Putin unleashed nearly 500 Shahed drones, decoys and missiles against Ukraine, launched simultaneously at different regions from multiple directions, with energy and gas production sites as prime targets. Only 13 missiles and 60 drones made it through. A child was killed and at least 24 people injured across the country. Eight regions, including Kyiv, were left partially without electricity and water. Ukrainians knew that another winter of blackouts was coming.

Russians living in the Belgorod region of Russia got a taste of what Ukrainians have been enduring for over three years of war last night, after they spent it without power, hot water or internet. Ukrainian forces set the Belgorod power plant ablaze with US-made Himars missiles after the Trump administration reportedly gave Kyiv the green light to target Russia’s energy grid with American weapons during the UN summit last week. With winter closing in, Russians once untouched by the war now dread that they will be forced to live just like Ukrainians, suffering from daily bombardments and power outages. The strike came after Moscow unleashed nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles against Ukraine on Sunday morning.

Until recently, when Russian drones strayed into Nato airspace during mass attacks on Ukraine, fighter jets would scramble, not to shoot them down, but to watch. The allies tracked the drones as they flew across the Nato border, either jammed off course or deliberately redirected to confuse Ukrainian air defences. In both cases, if the drones didn’t crash into a field somewhere in Romania or Poland, they always made it back to bomb Ukrainians, under the close watch of Nato’s best pilots on fully loaded warplanes. Is Nato so terrified of Vladimir Putin that it allows Russian drones to roam its skies freely? For Ukrainians, this was infuriating.

In all the speculation about when Russia might run out of money to fund its war in Ukraine, one fact has gone largely unnoticed: Ukraine’s pockets are emptying first. Kyiv has approved a draft State Budget for next year that devotes record sums for defence with a projected deficit of 18.4 per cent of GDP – some 2.4 trillion hryvnias (£46 billion). The IMF estimates the realistic deficit could be some £20 billion higher. In addition, the government still needs to plug a hole of nearly £6 billion in the current budget. As in previous years, the plan is to turn to allies, cap in hand, hoping that their generosity can keep pace with Ukraine’s mounting needs.

Relations between Ukraine and Hungary have soured once again after Robert Brovdi, the Ukrainian drone commander of Hungarian descent, struck the Druzhba pipeline several times this month. The latest attack on the Unecha pumping station on the pipeline in Russia’s Bryansk region choked off Russian oil supplies to Hungary for several days, until it was repaired this week. Budapest fears that the taps could be turned off again: in response, Hungary accused Ukraine of trying to drag it into the war, banned Brovdi from entering the country and threatened to cut vital electricity exports to Ukraine if the pipeline is hit once more. Kyiv’s reaction, it seems, is: ‘We will do it again.’ Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strikes publicly last weekend.