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The Daily

Inside Putin’s Plan to Cripple Ukraine This Winter

Moscow seems to be seizing an opening to plunge Ukrainian cities into cold and darkness to try to inflict immense human suffering.
Duration
31m
Broadcast on
19 Oct 2026
Audio Format
other

President Trump said he was making an energy deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and waiving new sanctions on Moscow. Now, he’s feuding with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russia is taking advantage of the moment by relentlessly striking Kyiv, killing civilians and cutting off power for more than a million people.

Constant Méheut, who is covering the war for The New York Times, explains why Mr. Putin appears so confident that Russia can bomb Ukraine into submission.

Guest: Constant Méheut, a correspondent covering the war in Ukraine for The New York Times.

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Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

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From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Cutroff. This is The Daily. The last week in Ukraine has been one of the most dire stretches the countries lived through in more than four years before. After making an energy deal with Vladimir Putin, President Trump waived new sanctions on Russia and is now openly feuding with Ukraine's leader. Russia is taking advantage of the moment by relentlessly striking key, killing civilians and cutting off power for more than a million people. Today my colleague, Konstant Meu, on how the U.S.-Ukraine relationship took a turn for the worse and why Putin is now so confident that Russia can bomb Ukraine into submission this winter. It's Monday, October 19th. Konstant, thank you for being here. It's wonderful to have you. Thank you for having me. So last week on the show, we talked about this deal that was struck between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia for the U.S. to buy billions of dollars in diesel from Russia, and we started to think about how that deal might affect the war in Ukraine. It seems as though we have started to see impacts almost immediately in the form of, on the one hand, the rift between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine widening in public and Russia pounding Ukraine more and more aggressively. You're on the ground in Ukraine. So can you just orient us? Well, it's probably been one of the worst weeks in the Ukraine-U.S. relationship since the war began more than four years ago. Since Trump announced that these LDL, the public exchange between him and Zelensky has really turned hot. Zelensky could have settled this war many times, many, many times. Trump has come out publicly and blamed Zelensky for the current state of the war. He blamed him for the diesel crisis, and he said that Ukrainians should vote him out of office. Zelensky, at first, tried to maintain some semblance of calm. But then, soon enough, he said that Trump actually prefers to strike business deals with Moscow, that he has an affinity for autocrats, and that he felt betrayed. Do you feel betrayed by what has been happening? Really yes, really, between us. So pretty strong words and those strong words come right at the time when Russia is actually expanding its bombing campaign on Ukraine, sending salvos of missiles and drones every other night, and using that moment to just pressure Ukraine even more into submission. And as far as I understand it, these have been some of the most severe bombing campaigns in the entire war. Right. Russia is sending dozens of missiles, hundreds of drones in a single attack overnight. They're also targeting Ukraine during the day with plenty of drones. And in terms of civilian deaths, just in the first week of October, they were more than 100 civilians killed in Ukraine. This is a level of civilian casualties that is among the highest that we've seen since the very first month of the war. So with all this escalation, it sounds like really just in the past week, we are seeing

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Moscow seems to be seizing an opening to plunge Ukrainian cities into cold and darkness to try to inflict immense human suffering.