In Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital frozen in its terrible beauty, generators hum without cease. The city's churches no longer shine in the night, conserving a resource more precious than their gilded domes: electricity. Children attend school sporadically, when the power holds. In the apartments, thousands of families endure three hours of electricity in the morning and three in the afternoon—if they are fortunate. The rest is darkness and cold.
Some heat bricks on their gas stoves to radiate a little warmth against the minus-twenty-degree nights. Others pile themselves under duvets. But thanks to the droning generators, the restaurants remain open, and everyone affects normalcy, resilience, and stubbornness. They scroll through Telegram channels between air raid alerts, checking whether the hypersonic missile is actually headed for their neighborhood this time. The Ukrainians have learned to distinguish the drone's buzz from the missile's whistle.
Yet sometimes the pipes give way. This happened at Baba Zhenya's place, a Holocaust survivor who spoke only Yiddish and Russian. Her neighbors, who sometimes delivered groceries despite her bad mood, had heard nothing from her for days. The firefighters found her dead and frozen. She had survived Hitler; she did not survive Putin.
The others promise themselves they will hold out until summer. No one watches them anymore, except sometimes while scrolling through social media to confirm that the world has not entirely forgotten. But the world has grown weary of their suffering. It has become background noise, like the generators.
On February 3rd, another massive strike. Six hundred thirty-five drones and thirty-eight missiles were launched into Ukraine overnight. Infrastructure facilities providing heat to entire districts were heavily damaged. The toll for January alone exceeded the total for all of 2024. This is where Putin likes to strike: to inflict pain, to freeze submission into the bones of a nation. To make them understand that resistance has a price measured in darkness and cold.
Donald Trump, who pretends not to understand this arithmetic of suffering, "personally" asked Putin to ease up "for a week" because of the "exceptional" winter. And Putin, who must have had a good laugh, pretended to agree.
For a few days, the strikes ceased. Then, on January 31st, the entire electrical system cascaded into darkness. Sabotaged or exhausted? For the first time since the war began, the metro stopped. The railways stuttered. Moldova went dark too, caught in Ukraine's technological accident. Kyiv's residents found themselves in apartments of ten to fifteen degrees Celsius while outside temperatures plunged to minus seventeen. The Ukrainians, as always, quickly repaired what could be repaired. But the week-long "truce" had already ended. The Russian army could start again. And Washington barely raised its voice.
Trump had spoken with Putin for two and a half hours before meeting with Zelenskyy. The phone call was "excellent," Trump said. "Friendly, good-natured, and business-like," the Kremlin confirmed, pleased that the American president consulted Moscow before speaking with Ukraine. This sequence revealed everything.
The Alaska summit in August had already shown the world what Trump's "peace" would look like. There, on American soil, Trump welcomed Putin with warmth reserved for friends. There, they discussed demilitarized zones carved from Ukrainian territory, Ukraine's abandonment of NATO aspirations, and the recognition of Russia's illegal annexations. Zelenskyy was not invited. Europe was not consulted. The Kremlin praised the meeting enthusiastically. "The adjustments correspond in many ways to our vision," spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared.
Where does this endless complaisance come from? The question hangs in the frozen air of Kyiv like the breath of its exhausted citizens.
Kompromat has long been suspected. The publication of the Epstein files thickens this scent. Among the false information circulating, wrongly accusing every personality who attended a party at the pedophile billionaire's mansion, certain realities emerge. That of a prostitution network providing girls from the East to men from the West, orchestrated by a man, Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly introduced Melania to her future husband and who had documented connections in Moscow.
At the heart of the investigation, private messages reveal that he regularly met with Putin's associates, asking for favors. In exchange for what? What could the Kremlin have asked of him, knowing that Epstein organized fevered parties filled with girls provided by Russian criminal networks, attended by Trump, Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew? In English, it's called a honey trap. A trap that may have closed around a man who became President of the United States, at the head of a movement that accused his opponents of the very crimes that shadow his own circle.
But perhaps kompromat is too simple an explanation. Perhaps what we witness is something more banal and more terrifying: genuine affinity. Trump admires Putin's strength, his disregard for democratic niceties, and his ability to rule without the tiresome constraints of law or conscience. "Putin is a friend," Trump has said, repeatedly, even as Putin's missiles rain down on apartment buildings in Kyiv.
The Kremlin officials speak openly now. They express their hope, their optimism, and their satisfaction with Trump's victory. They praise his "peace efforts" while launching the largest combined strikes since December. They call him a "genuine peacemaker" while insisting that Ukraine must cede territory, abandon its security guarantees, and accept its role as a buffer state between Western democracy and Russian autocracy.
Trump's national security strategy aligns with the Kremlin's vision, they say, pleased. The deep state might resist, but Trump will prevail. And what is this vision they share? That Ukraine's fate should be decided between Washington and Moscow, without Kyiv's input. That might make it right. That the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Forty-nine percent of Americans believe Trump is sympathetic to Moscow, according to recent polls. His own special envoy for Ukraine was excluded from negotiations because the Kremlin did not want him there, and Trump acquiesced without protest. He meets with Putin's envoys at Mar-a-Lago, consults Moscow before speaking with Kyiv, and echoes Russian talking points about NATO expansion and Ukrainian "provocations."
The Europeans watch with alarm. They issue statements about territorial integrity and security guarantees, about Ukraine's right to determine its own future. But they are spectators now, excised from the negotiations by design. The Kremlin wanted a two-person table—Trump and Putin—and Trump was happy to oblige.
Meanwhile, in Kyiv, the generators continue their monotonous drone. The UN reports that civilian casualties are twenty-seven percent higher than last year. Attacks on energy infrastructure intensify as winter deepens. Older persons, persons with disabilities, and families with young children—they bear the worst of it. Women carry the primary burden of caregiving as essential services collapse around them.
The Ukrainians repair what they can. They dig into survival. They wait for summer with the grim patience of people who have learned that promises are cheap and heating is precious. They know that the world has grown tired of their suffering, that Trump sees their resistance as an obstacle to his détente with Putin, and that Europe's commitments are hollow without American backing.
He still has to prove that he is not in any way held or compromised, this American president who speaks Moscow's language so fluently. Striking the Iranian regime or engineering a surrender masquerading as peace will not be enough to save his honor, if honor concerns him at all. But it would change lives.
For Baba Zhenya, it is too late. For the thousands huddled under duvets in darkened apartments, scrolling through Telegram for news of the next strike, time is running out. The cold does not negotiate. Neither does Putin. And Trump, it seems, negotiates only with the strong.
The frozen capital endures. Its people refuse to break. But resilience has limits, and winter is long, and Washington has chosen its side. Not the side of democracy or justice or international law. The side of power, unencumbered by conscience.
In Kyiv, the generators hum. In Mar-a-Lago, the deals are made. And in Moscow, they watch with satisfaction as their vision becomes reality, one compromised American at a time.