Russia begins its winter missile campaign on Ukraine
And, Ukrainians debate Trump's controversial government nominees.
Good morning, and welcome to your weekly briefing on Ukraine.
I am writing this in the chair of a hair salon, with my wet hair pinned up and soaked in a hair treatement mask. A bit over an hour ago, my daughter and I were hiding in an underground shelter from Russian missiles that were attacking Kyiv and its energy grid. Yet now, in the salon, my coffee is hot and the staff is smiling, acting as if it’s business as usual.
It’s a typical Ukrainian scene: the war-time resilience which may make it seem like life is normal here. Yet our life is anything but normal. Just this morning, two women were injured in Kyiv, two people were killed and six were injured in Mykolayiv, two people were killed on Odesa, two people were killed and one was injured in Dnipro. A school, apartment buildings, cars, railways, thermal power plants — civillian infrustracture all across the country was hit either by Russian missiles or its debris.
It’s been months since Russia launched such mass missile attacks on Ukraine, and especially Kyiv. The common uderstanding was that it was stockpiling missiles for winter, to knock out Ukraine’s energy grid when temperatures plunge. Today’s attack was, undoubtedly, the first one in a larger Russian campaign to make our winter miserable.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a call with Vladimir Putin — the first conversation between Putin and a pro-Ukrainian European leader since Feb. 24, 2022. Chancellor’s spokesperson said Scholz “insisted that Russia must be ready to negotiate with Ukraine to achieve a just and lasting peace, emphasising Germany's unwavering determination to support Ukraine in the peace process”.
Kyiv’s wasn’t thrilled. Zelensky was warned about the call beforehand, but nevertheless called it a “Pandora’s box”.
“This is exactly what Putin has been wanting for a long time: it is extremely important for him to weaken his isolation, Russia’s isolation,” the President said in a statement.
Boris Johnson also spoke out against Germany’s move as well, saying that Europe was risking “drifting back to the ghastly Franco-German Normandy format which treated Russia and Ukraine as equally valid interlocutors in a domestic squabble." The Normandy contact group that Johnson referenced was an effort by Germany and France to mediate negotiatons over Russia’s war in Donbas since after 2014. Leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France held several negotiations, which resulted in Minsk I and Minsk II agreements — the ceasefire deals that were meant to end the war but failed completely, mainly because Russia broke the terms over and over.
According to the Washington Post’s anonymous sources, Donald Trump also had a call with Putin, in which he warned the Russian soon-counterpart against escalating his war. The Kremlin denied the call ever happened. But if it did, it’s clear from today’s morning that Putin couldn’t care less about anyone’s warnings.
As I wrote in my previous briefing, the end of America’s electoral cycle did little to calm Ukrainian anxieties. Everyone is now watching Trump nominate the craziest people to his White House: one man accused of sexual assault, another man accused of sex trafficking a minor, a women that believes Ukraine hosts US-funded bio-labs…the list of treasures grows by the day.
There are two Trump nominees that Ukrainians are happy about: Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, and Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor. Both are China hawks that have critisized Biden’s weak response to Russia’s war. Waltz has hammered Biden administration over slow and incremental weapons deliveries, winning points from Kyiv. Rubio has said he would be comfortable “with a deal that ends [the war] and that I think is favorable to Ukraine, meaning that [Ukrainians] have their own sovereignty, that they don’t become a satellite state or a puppet state that is constantly held hostage by the Russians”.
It’s an open question if any of these appointments will matter, or even make it to the administration at all.
Some knowledgeable people have told me that Trump does whatever he personally thinks is in his interest, and that no advisor has sway over him. Other knowledgeable people said that Trump is a blank slate who can be easily swayed one way or the other, which is why he was finally persuaded to let Republicans vote for supplemental funding for Ukraine in April.
Your guess about the future might be as good as mine here. What do you think? Let’s discuss in the comments!
I’ll be back next week.
Cheers, and Glory to Ukraine
— Yours UKrainian
Yesterday I had dinner with two Russians, both intellectuals, living in the US. They defended Russia's war. They told me the entire propaganda, Zelensky this way, his wife that way, and Crimea, and Ukraine was "attacking" Russia and that's why they got the war... And the Soviet Union was good, all successor states owe their economy to them, they built it for them, and how ungrateful they are now... To this day, they still have this Soviet imperial mentality. They are young intellectuals aged between 35 and 40. Russia is hopeless, there will be no change at all. Young people are like that too. Isolate them completely, exclude them from any civilized system and that's it. Those who live in the West are also full Putin-friendly real Russians. Hopeless.
"...Trump does whatever he personally thinks is in his interest, and that no advisor has sway over him. Other knowledgeable people said that Trump is a blank slate who can be easily swayed one way or the other..." Both of these statements are true. The other truth is that there will be constant political sabotage, backstabbing and press leaks among Congressional Republicans. They will be constantly pushing back against Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy who have no authority to make anything other than recommendations. Soon after the Inauguration, Trump will go back to playing golf, holding his rallies and grifting, while we see more signs of his mental and physical decline. Regardless of what the US media says, Trump won a very slight margin of victory and along with economic issues, too many voters hold racist and misogynistic beliefs. It's going to be a mess, but not as bad as what you live with every day. However, I did read that Biden wants to authorize large sums of money for Ukraine before he leaves office.