Ukraine faces bleak winter as Trump presses surrender-style deal

The first Defence Insider virtual event opened with a blunt question: whether this winter will decide the war in Ukraine and what that would mean beyond Ukraine's borders. The discussion was led by military analyst Michael Clarke and Tim Mack, founder and editor of The Arsenal, who joined from Washington after spending about four and a half years in Kyiv. Mack is a former US Army combat medic with a journalistic background. The event took questions from Defence Insiders and from the live audience.

Clarke was asked about Donald Trump effectively breaking his own sanctions on Russia. He said the last few days had become a political crisis for President Zelensky, for Ukraine and for the transatlantic relationship. He argued that the Iran war, rising diesel prices and US midterm elections had left Trump looking for an exit. In Clarke's account, Trump is trying to blame Zelensky for higher diesel prices, rather than his own war in Iran. He said Trump now looks as if he is changing sides again and will lean on Ukraine to accept what Trump calls a peace deal. Clarke said the deal, linked to an April understanding between Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff, is in practice a surrender deal. He said the pressure is on the Ukrainians to give in, while Trump appears to believe that this would bring diesel prices down.

Clarke warned that the war could become much harder for Ukraine over the winter. He said Ukraine had raised the level of the war by hitting Russian refining capacity and Russian retail outlets, and that Moscow had responded. In his view, Vladimir Putin is moving to finish the war this year or this winter at whatever cost, and the world may be reaching a strategic tipping point that would be difficult to live with.

Mack said Ukraine's allies have long argued that Putin cannot be incentivised to negotiate. He said they believe Putin must be forced to the table with disincentives, including economic restrictions and battlefield losses, and that Trump does not understand this. In Kyiv, he said, October has already brought widespread daily power cuts. He said this is the earliest such outages have been seen, because energy infrastructure damaged last winter has not been repaired enough. Mack added that Russia has widened its target list to include civilian bridges and internet service providers. He said Ukraine expects attacks on energy infrastructure and on internet infrastructure, including Wi-Fi, LTE and mobile service, to make the winter as miserable as possible.

Mack argued that Putin cannot achieve his goals on the battlefield. So, he said, Putin is trying to create political pressure for Zelensky at home by making life hard for millions of people.

The event also looked at Western air defence readiness and production, including whether Britain, Canada and Europe could finance and license Ukrainian production to fill a capability gap. Clarke said this is already happening. He pointed to upgraded European systems, including the Franco-Italian SAMP/T, the German IRIS-T and the Norwegian-American NASAMS. He said he puts his faith in Ukraine's FP7 interceptor. According to Clarke, it reaches the same speed and height as Patriot at about a fifth of the cost. A Patriot round costs about 3.5 million, he said, while the FP7 costs about 700,000. He said the FP7's final guidance is not yet as good and uses a heat seeker in the final stage, but it will improve. He said Ukraine has already tested it in battle once or twice and it should work by next year.

Clarke said the missile is not the main problem now. The priority is the ground-based ecosystem needed to target ballistic missiles and very fast drones, and he said Germany, France and Italy are helping with that. He added that he was optimistic Ukraine would develop the system by next year, despite estimates that it could take five to eight years.