Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, November 30, 2025

Ukraine is about to enter the fourth Winter of the Russian war.

The fleeting hopes for an American-brokered ceasefire and an end to the hostilities in the grinding conflict seemed to have disappeared as the days grow shorter, the nights grow colder, and the shadows grow longer.

Since Vladimir’s Putin’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the war has seen see-saw battles and roller-coaster emotions. The Russians have not won despite their numbers but the Ukrainian defenders, despite their resolve and bravery, are facing the breaking point in sectors of the long and largely static front-line. There’s been more than a million military casualties!

Ukraine’s resilience is being tested each day with withering Russian air raids some which have lethal drones, which are focused on destroying and degrading power plant infrastructures and killing civilians. Kyiv the capital remains a focus but so are countless cities across the Texas-sized Eastern European country.

It’s not a cliche to say that the front-line trenches see two armies facing each other evoking the First World War where the thud of artillery and staccato of gunfire punctures the day. What’s different of course are the drones both sides use to wreak havoc and destruction. During October, Russia launched 268 ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Equally Russia fired 5,300 Iranian-made Shahed bomber drones.

Moscow is targeting electric and gas sites in eastern Ukraine close to the disputed Donbas region blacking out millions.

“As civilians in Ukraine head into another winter, the increase in attacks on energy infrastructure and resulting power outages heightens risks for the population,” said Danielle Bell, head of the United Nations Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Moreover, civilian casualties in Ukraine are 27 percent higher from January to October 2025, compared to last year.

“The number of casualties for the first ten months of 2025 (12,062) has already exceeded the total for all of 2024 (9,112)” said the report. In total there have been 53,006 civilian casualties, including 14,534 deaths, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, state the UN monitors.

This obviously does not include the millions of displaced persons and Ukrainian refugees. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again urged a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire as a first step towards a just and lasting peace which respects Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

Yet, in the midst of this grinding conflict, the number of Ukrainian military-age men leaving for Europe has grown exponentially.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated: “I asked the Ukrainian president to ensure that young men from Ukraine in particular do not come to Germany in ever-increasing numbers but rather serve in their own country.” He called for a stop of nearly 2,000 military age Ukrainians entering Germany per week!

Sadly, even before the war Ukraine was notorious for corruption.

Recently some close associates of President Volodymyr Zelensky were charged with a massive $100 million embezzlement in the energy sector. Unquestionably, corruption is corrosive in any country especially one engaged in a life-or-death struggle.

Huge military losses on BOTH sides have again refocused the Trump Administration at ending the war.

A miasma of misperceptions of “peace proposals” were cleared up when Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his Ukrainian counterpart in Geneva to narrow differences and perceptions. NATO Chief Mark Rutte added “what you’ve seen in the meeting in Geneva that as a basis it helped to bring Ukraine and the U.S. very close on the way forward.”

In terms of military support and economic assistance, the United States leads the way supporting embattled Ukraine exceeding $185 billion; Germany with $25 billion, the UK with $21 billion.

Meanwhile 8 Nordic and Baltic countries have contributed $500 million to an air defense program for Ukraine. The Trump administration has pressed for its NATO partners sharing the risks via the American “Prioritized Ukraine Requirement List” initiative (PURL). Allies purchase U.S. equipment to send on to Ukraine.

“Denmark is helping to ensure that Europe takes even greater responsibility for making critical American weapons capabilities available to Ukraine…Continued support for Ukraine is directly linked to Europe’s security,” says Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen.

Nonetheless American military supplies going to Ukraine have seriously depleted Washington’s weapons stocks for other military contingencies.

Think about it; Ukraine is about to experience its fourth Winter of war. That’s as many as this former region of the Soviet Union faced during the Second World War!

It’s time that the U.S. and the Europeans redouble their efforts for a ceasefire and peace talks, lest we face more candles in the cold.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

  Ukraine’s winter of despair amid ‘corrosive’ corruption scandal in its leadership, WorldTribune.com