When Winter Calls

The Clock is Running

There is so much taking up our attention.  Just last week we saw the legal battles of Donald Trump, the upcoming elections for control of Congress, and here in Columbus, another police shooting of an unarmed black man.  And, of course, the Queen is dead, long live the new King. 

It’s easy to forget that war still rages in Ukraine.  It started with the incredible Ukrainian resistance to the first Russian assault.  Then there was all of the early media “hype”.  But the battle turned into an ugly artillery duel and World War I type trench warfare along a more than five hundred mile front, and has dragged on for months.  

For Ukraine the clock is running.  They are depending on continued NATO support. They need sophisticated weaponry, but just as much, they need the basics: bullets and artillery shells.  And at least as important, there are looking to the West to continue the economic pressure on Russia with ongoing sanctions.  And, for the moment, everyone and every country is on board.

The Cost of Heat

But winter is coming.  And with winter, the NATO “price” for the sanctions will grow, as Russian natural gas is cut off from flowing to heat European houses.  Folks aren’t going to freeze – but they are going to pay a high price for energy.  Will the NATO governments still be willing to support Ukraine and sanction Russia  as costs go up and the snows blow in from the eastern steppes?

Ukrainians know winter too.  The cold wind will blow there, across the battle ravaged wheat fields in the east.  And while Russia has been embarrassed by the Ukrainian resistance and their own incompetence; in a war of attrition Russia still holds the advantage.  Ukraine needs to do whatever it can now to “close the deal”.

The Change in Strategy

It began a month ago.  Russia was trying to drive to the Ukrainian seaport of Odesa, and close off the last open sea access to export Ukraine’s main product, the wheat harvest.  It looked like Ukrainian forces were simply counter-attacking, trying to cutoff Russian troops on the west side of the Dnieper River from their supplies on the eastern shore.  The Ukrainian Army next upped that attack, driving to  reach the critical city of Kherson near the mouth of the river.  Russia rotated troops from other sections to the southern front.

And then, in a surprise assault, Ukraine struck at the opposite end of the line, in the north near the city of Kharkiv.  That attack, just in the last couple of weeks, regained over a thousand square miles of the Russian occupied eastern provinces.  Video shows Russian forces racing to get away, headed east towards their own border.  And the battle continues around Kherson, with Russians have to decide to hold their ground and get cutoff, or retreat.

No one thinks this is the “end” of the war.  The Russian’s will retreat, but ultimately will regroup closer to their own borders.  And Russian missiles continue to attack Ukrainian civilian targets, anywhere in the country, recently including power generators in Kharkiv, the second largest city in the nation.  

The Ultimate Threat

And there still is the greatest threat to Ukrainian civilians.  The battle line runs directly through the largest nuclear plant in Europe, near the city of  Zaporizhzhia.  All six nuclear reactors are shut down, cutting off a major power source for Ukraine. And even worse, the reactors still require power to maintain cooling of their nuclear cores.  External lines to the plant still function, but should they fail, backup diesel generators only have a ten day supply of fuel.  After that, the cores will overheat, and begin to meltdown.  

Meltdowns have happened before:  at Fukushima, Japan after the tsunami, and at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.  But the worst commercial nuclear disaster was at Chernobyl, in Ukraine just fifty miles north of Kyiv.

The Ukrainian people lived that nuclear disaster.  There is no way or really knowing the death toll of Chernobyl.  The old Soviet Union claimed that only thirty-one died, but more recent estimates are in the tens of thousands or more.  The Ukrainian government recognizes 36,525 women as widows of men who suffered from Chernobyl (BBC).

Autumn Leaves

Chernobyl already was the site of a Russian military encampment, abandoned in the first retreat.  And it only had four reactors. Now the Russians occupy Zaporizhzhia.  It’s a “safe” base for them.  Reasonably, the Ukrainian Army is unlikely to attack there, the risk is too great. And as the war rages, there is an ultimate threat that the Russians could “arrange” for a nuclear “accident”.  

The pressure on Russia is constant, but Putin seems determined to allow his people to absorb any damage.  And with his iron grip on protest and dissent, it’s not likely that they will have much say in the matter.  But the pressure on Ukraine to “stop” and “negotiate” will grow.  Success on the battlefield and recovery of stolen territories help.  And getting all that done now, before the “autumn leaves start to fall” is crucial.  Ukraine don’t know who will still be beside them, “when winter calls”.

Ukraine Crisis

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.