Consider This from NPR - The (Literally) Cold War In Ukraine

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Russian attacks have repeatedly targeted Ukrainian energy and heating infrastructure, threatening to leave millions vulnerable to the approaching bitter cold of winter.Winter will also force both sides to change their tactics on the war's frontlines. NPR's Nathan Rott reports on what leafless trees and frozen fields mean for the battlefield.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu slash forward. One of Russia's most potent weapons in Ukraine isn't a missile or a drone or some battlefield technology. It's the cold. Just ask Ilya Letichenko. When I wake up, it was so cold and I go to work. And it's cold too.

NPR caught up with him last week after Russian attacks on infrastructure took out electricity, heat, and water for large parts of Ukraine. He wore his coat to bed after his apartment building in a suburb of Kyiv lost power. At the restaurant where he worked, he pulled out the gas cooker and his co-workers set candles on customer tables. Buy gas cooker and candle give us a light. Very romantic. He mustered a sense of humor

to try and face the biting temperatures. But the Russian attacks on energy infrastructure are deadly serious. Put simply, this winter will be about survival. That's Hans Kluge, regional director for Europe at the World Health Organization, on a visit to Ukraine this month. The winter will be a threat for millions and millions of Ukrainian people. I have seen it. In fact, now the temperature is hovering around zero degrees Celsius,

but soon it will plummet down to minus 20. That's well under zero degrees Fahrenheit. He warned of the direct risks from cold, frostbite, hypothermia, stroke, heart attack, and also knock-on effects from the power outages. How can a hospital function without electricity? How can maternity wards function without incubators, vaccine storage without fridges? For the last few months, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian energy and infrastructure. Russia claims that infrastructure constitutes military targets.

Ukraine and its allies say that the attacks are meant to punish Ukrainian civilians and break the people's will to fight. Here's Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko talking to NPR in September. It looks like that is a strategy. I mean, that is, of course, not something similar to the war action. That's more close to the terrorism. The country continues to grapple with power outages. Ukraine's power operator said this week that producers were steadily restoring power and were meeting about 80 percent of the country's needs. But rolling blackouts are still in effect to ration energy. And more attacks are surely coming.

On a darkened street in Kyiv, a young man named Vladimir Yanuchuk said Ukrainians are ready. We are not afraid about this. Ukraine is not afraid about this. And winter will be hard. But this winter will be hard not only Ukrainians, for Russian soldiers too. Consider this. Russian attacks are making this a cold, miserable winter in Ukraine. But the winter will have consequences for both sides on the war's front lines. From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

It's Tuesday, November 29th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always always get the real-time, mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. To understand what the winter will mean on the battlefield in Ukraine, you need to understand how this war has been waged so far.

A lot of the fighting has been a sort of deadly game of hide and seek. Troops hide under the cover of trees from reconnaissance drones, which signal to the other side where to fire. Both Ukraine and Russia have conducted the war this way, on the flat terrain throughout the country's south and east. NPR's Nathan Rott has been looking into why both sides will have to change tactics as winter sets in. For most of the last eight months, this is what the fighting has looked like near Ukraine's front lines. A group of Ukrainian soldiers, part of a territorial defense unit that calls itself the Legendary Battalion, gathers at the back of a running pickup in a grove of roadside trees, under the cover of yellowing leaves.

Three long gray rockets rest in the truck bed. Badger, a nickname, screws little silver cones to the top of each. What are these guys? Fire shot. Fire shot? Percussion caps in place, the rockets are lifted and loaded into a launching platform that's been welded to the back of another camouflage pickup nestled even further under the trees.

A soldier using the Namda Gare playboy is directing the strike. What are you guys targeting right now? Right now it's a tree line. We're sitting Russian troops. A tree line with Russian troops about eight kilometers to the south of where we are now. We have guys in this village and they're looking everything and they give us the target. Intelligence eyes and ears on the ground informing the Ukrainians where to attack. Another soldier walks up and explains that we're about to drive even closer to the front line, well within the range of Russian artillery, to fire.

So once they launch these rockets, we need to get back in our car and leave the area immediately before the Russians can fire back. A few minutes later, we park along a narrow two-lane road and get out. Next to a field of dead black sunflowers. Soldiers climb into the bed of the truck 100 yards ahead and adjust the launcher. A pause, and... Songbirds fly away as the rockets jet south in a plume of smoke. All right, we're out of here. We get in our vehicle and drive quickly, out of artillery range to the north.

This long-distance game of cat and mouse could soon shift because winter is starting and the conditions for this kind of fighting are changing. At a military base in the city of Creevy Ree, Playboy explains how winter will make this type of fighting much changing. At a military base in the city of Krivi Rih, Playboy explains how winter will make this type of fighting much more difficult to conduct. Because you don't have nothing to hide and you stay in the open space and it's so much easier to find you. Artillery and vehicle tracks will be easier to see in the snow. Leafless trees will offer less cover.

Effectively work in the winter depends on effective reconnaissance and effective artillery. Who will be more effectively in this part, that one will be much better in the battlefield. This is something leadership of Ukraine's armed forces is stressing as the winter months approach. At a training facility outside of the city of Dnipro in south-central Ukraine, Master Sergeant Oleksandr Honcharuk, a member of Ukraine's infantry, says winter requires much more stealth. You have to move with more secrecy, a bit faster, he says. You have to move with your eyes open, more work with drones, more observing, more planning. Winter warfare is not new to Russia and Ukraine.

They've been fighting in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine since 2014. Frederick Kagan with the Institute for the Study of War, a D.C.-based think tank, says that's important for Ukraine's supporters, namely NATO and the U.S., to remember, especially, he says, as some military analysts predict a slowdown in fighting as temperatures drop. We need to get that model out of our heads because that's not historically the way war in this part of the world works. Winter typically favors the aggressor, and Kagan says right now, that's Ukraine. I do think that there will be another window for Ukrainian mechanized counteroffensive operations if there is a hard freeze that solidifies the ground. Counteroffensives that will continue to be dependent on Western aid, weapons, and cold weather gear. At frontline areas in the country's southeast and windswept north,

Ukrainian soldiers are making their own preparations, stocking up on firewood, to be stored in deep trenches they've carved into the earth. Dmitry, with the Kharkiv Region Territorial Defense, says this is a position they've taken back from Russia. So they're preparing in case they decide to return. So that's the first line of defense. So if any other tries, new attacks here come,

that's the first line that we can spot them and protect. The wind gusts and a soldier beckons us to join him in a nearby trench. Wood planks are laid over the mud to keep feet clean. The wind inside the trench is a little less cutting. Far more so in a hut they've built underground. It's a lot nicer in here. Oleg and Igor, two territorial defenders who up until eight months ago worked as a butcher and an electrician, respectively, welcome us with coffee.

How are you feeling about the upcoming winter? We checked. It's great. Here's the stove, there's the stove, there's the stove. I'll show you how we live. A stove here, a stove there, you know, everywhere is warm. I will show you around and you'll see it's not a problem at all. Oleg shows off cold weather gear. Coveralls and coats, sleeping bags and blankets donated to the territorial defense. A bench in the hut is covered in grapes and pears given to them by local farmers. They both light cigarettes and I ask if they think winter helps them or Russia. It's our land. That's our motherland. It helps us.

At least that's their hope. NPR's Nathan Rod. It's Consider This from NPR's Nathan Rodd. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Somers. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.