As the presidents of Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare to hold their first trilateral meeting to end Russia’s war in Ukraine this weekend, almost half of Ukraine is without electricity and heat in sub-zero temperatures, following repeated Russian drone strikes targeting energy infrastructure.
The strikes appeared designed to break Ukrainian resistance at the negotiating table on territorial concessions to Russia – the one issue Ukraine and the US said remained unresolved at the end of talks in Davos, Switzerland, between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump this week.
Following those talks on Thursday, Zelenskyy said security guarantees had been agreed, and the next step would be the trilateral meeting starting today in Abu Dhabi and including Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said negotiations have so far resolved all but one issue, without specifying what that was. But Zelenskyy told reporters in Davos it was the territorial issue.
The question of territory
Russia wants Ukraine to cede the one-fifth of the eastern Donetsk region that it has not already seized. A poll this week by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found that 54 percent of Ukrainians agreed with Zelenskyy in steadfastly refusing to do this, while another 39 percent reluctantly backed the concession in return for very strong security guarantees.
Russia has attempted to present its eventual victory as inevitable, touting the capture of minor settlements as strategic achievements, claiming to have conquered cities it doesn’t control, and exaggerating its square footage.
Last week, Russian commander-in-chief Valery Gerasimov claimed his forces had seized 300sq km (116sq miles) of Ukraine this year. An estimate based on geolocated footage suggested the truth was closer to 74sq km (29sq miles), according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
Without any significant battlefield successes, the energy crisis now appears to be Moscow’s desperate bid for leverage to win territories it may be unable to conquer even over the longer term.
Almost 60 percent of Kyiv remained without electricity on January 21, 12 days after devastating Russian strikes on January 9 and 13, and again on Tuesday this week, badly damaged its electricity infrastructure.
“As of this morning, about 4,000 buildings in Kyiv are still without heat, and nearly 60 percent of the capital is without electricity,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.
Zelenskyy said that reflected the situation across the country, where only 60 percent of electricity needs were being met.
The children’s welfare organisation, UNICEF, said the energy crisis was exposing Ukrainian children to the risks of hypothermia and pneumonia.
“Practically around the clock, and in repair crews only, nearly 58,000 people are working on power grids and generation facilities, as well as on heating networks,” said Zelenskyy in a Sunday evening address.
“If the Russians seriously wanted to end the war, they’d focus on diplomacy – not on missile strikes, blackouts, and even attempts to damage our nuclear power plants,” he said.
Adapting to Russian weapons
On Tuesday, January 20, Russia severed all electricity supply to the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said.
Nuclear power plants need electrical connections even when they are not generating power to keep reactor cooling systems working, the IAEA says. On the same day, Russia unleashed 339 attack drones and 34 missiles across Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
Ukraine intercepted 27 of the missiles and 315 drones, but Zelenskyy said, “the performance of the air force against the ‘Shaheds’ is unsatisfactory”, referring to the Iranian-designed, propeller-powered drones Russia builds.
Zelenskyy had already announced major changes on Monday. “There will be a new approach to the use of air defence by the air force, specifically regarding mobile fire groups, interceptor drones and other means of short-range air defence. This system will be transformed,” he said in an evening video address.
Russia has also attacked Kyiv with Shahed drones fitted with jet engines, giving them greater speed and making them difficult to intercept, the Ukrainian Air Force has said.
Ukraine has been adapting. Its air force posted a video on January 15 showing a Sting drone successfully intercepting a jet-powered Shahed. The Sting was developed by Wild Hornets, a Ukrainian charitable fundraising money for air defences, and was designed to kill Shaheds.
Zelenskyy wants to speed up innovation to counter Russian adaptations to its defences, as well. As part of this effort, he appointed Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister on January 2 to oversee faster drone production, and on Tuesday announced Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov as deputy head of the air force.
“With the participation of Pavlo Yelizarov, taking into account his experience and innovative approaches, the “small air defense” system will be improved,” wrote Oleksandr Syrskii, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy has long warned Ukrainians to expect worse. On Sunday, he said it again. “Russia has prepared for a strike – a massive strike – and is waiting for the moment to carry it out,” he said.
Syrskii told Ukrainian news outlet Ib.ua that Russia planned to increase daily Shahed production from 404 to 1,000.
By the time Zelenskyy went to Switzerland to meet Trump this week, the situation in Ukraine was dire.
“Today in Ukraine was the most difficult day for the power system since the blackout of November 2022,” wrote energy minister Denys Shmyhal on Thursday. “The situation is extremely difficult. Crews have been obliged to keep resorting to emergency shutdowns.”
Fiasco follows fracas
The Trump-Zelenskyy meeting took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where European leaders had originally hoped to support the announcement of an $800bn reconstruction plan for Ukraine.
That was derailed by Trump’s launch of his Board of Peace and his bid to acquire Greenland from Denmark. His failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize last year also seemed to be on his mind.
“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store on Sunday, adding he sought “Complete and Total Control of Greenland”.
That prompted eight Baltic and North Sea states to send military reinforcements to the island, which is self-governing but part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
On Wednesday, Trump performed an about-turn, saying he wouldn’t fight NATO allies for Greenland in a rambling 71-minute speech in Davos, but the diplomatic damage had been done. “Nobody is in any mood to stage a grand spectacle around an agreement with Trump right now,” one official told The Financial Times.
At Davos, European officials remained largely deferential to the US, but there were statements which demonstrated a different mood under the surface.
European diplomats said Brussels was floating the idea of giving Ukraine preliminary EU membership in 2027 as part of its security guarantees. Full membership would follow later.
This idea goes against the EU’s usual merit-based accession process, but diplomats said Ukraine’s security should be prioritised over that process. “We have to recognise that we are in a very different reality than when the (accession) rules were first drawn up,” one EU official was quoted as saying.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Europe could “unequivocally” defend itself without the United States, in a discussion about security. He also said Russia was not winning its war, saying it had taken “at most” 1 percent of Ukraine’s territory in the past 1,000 days, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
On January 15, Macron reminded the French military that a coalition of 35 countries, not including the US, is now providing all of Ukraine’s military and financial support, after Washington adopted neutrality in the war under Trump.
“Where Ukraine was extremely dependent on American intelligence capacity, huge majority [of it] a year ago, in [the space of] a year, two-thirds is today provided by France,” Macron said.
In Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was even clearer about the need for Europe to decouple from US foreign and defence policy.
“The shift in the international order is not only seismic, but it is permanent,” she told the European Parliament on Wednesday, adding that it is “imperative for Europe … to speed up our push for independence … Europe needs its own levers of power … above all with a real capacity to defend ourselves.”
