EditMerry Christmas, war is at your doorstep
This war is now entering its fourth year not because Russia is winning, but because it has correctly identified the limits of Western resolve
Russia escalates militarily to improve its diplomatic position, while the EU and the US reduce military pressure in the hope of enabling diplomacy. These are opposite logics. Only one side understands that, writes Sed Tkachuk.
Volodymyr (Sed) Tkachuk is a communications specialist and free-lance journalist, signing Sed Tkachuk. His other columns can be found here.
On 23 December, as Western officials spoke of “momentum,” “frameworks,” and “quite solid” peace talks, Russia answered with more than 600 drones and dozens of missiles aimed squarely at Ukraine’s energy grid. Entire regions were left without electricity in sub-zero temperatures. Civilians were killed. Children were among them.
Russia is not escalating. It is continuing.
What is unfolding across Ukraine’s energy grid, ports, and residential neighbourhoods is not a spike in violence prompted by failed talks or diplomatic frustration. It is the uninterrupted execution of a doctrine that predates this winter, this year, and even this phase of the war. Ukraine is not the target audience of these strikes. It is the sandbox. The real message is aimed squarely at Brussels, Washington, and every Western capital still clinging to the illusion that restraint buys credibility.
Russia has always used violence as a language of negotiation. When talks appear, bombs follow. When envoys fly, drones launch. When ceasefires are floated, missiles arrive on schedule. The timing is not accidental. It is instructional.
Just as Hanukkah ended and peace talks in Miami wrapped up, Russia returned to what Western officials still insist on calling “pressure.” This is not pressure. It is coercion. And the West keeps misreading it because it refuses to internalise a basic asymmetry: Russia escalates militarily to improve its diplomatic position, while the EU and the US reduce military pressure in the hope of enabling diplomacy. These are opposite logics. Only one side understands that.
Living in a war-ravaged country since 2014 clarifies this faster than any policy memo. Russia does not de-escalate when offered compromise. It escalates to extract it. This is not emotion, not revenge, not improvisation. It is doctrine. Russia is simply that kind of neighbour.
That doctrine is now being applied with seasonal precision. Winter is not incidental. Energy infrastructure is not symbolic. You can hide from bombs; you cannot hide from the cold. A blackout at minus ten degrees is not just an inconvenience — it is a weapon. Russia understands that freezing civilians produces results that diplomacy cannot. It shortens patience, erodes resolve, and manufactures urgency in foreign capitals far more effectively than any communiqué.
These strikes are not meant to break Ukraine militarily. They are meant to weaken Ukraine’s negotiating position. Civilian suffering is being converted into leverage, with the implicit demand that Western partners trade Ukrainian endurance for Western comfort. The calculation is blunt: the colder it gets, the louder the calls for “realism” become.
And those calls already have familiar messengers.
Russia does not need consensus inside the West. It only needs blockers. Leaders who frame capitulation as pragmatism, appeasement as peace, and Ukrainian failure as inevitability perform a vital service. Orbán, Fico, Trump, and others like them do not need to specifically coordinate with Moscow to be useful. Their incentives align naturally. For them, it is far easier to end the war by ending Ukraine than by confronting Russia.
Every uncrossed line reinforces that strategy. This war is now entering its fourth year not because Russia is winning, but because it has correctly identified the limits of Western resolve. Each ceiling on aid, each delayed system, each caveat and qualifier is read in Moscow not as caution, but as instruction. Russia now knows exactly how far it can go — and how much pain it can inflict — without triggering consequences it actually fears.
Europe is trying to reposition itself. That is real. But it is slow, fragmented, and still constrained by habits formed in a different era. Russia has not adjusted its behaviour in response — which is the only metric that matters. Until that changes, declarations of unity remain performative.
The strikes near NATO borders, the drones drifting close or into to EU airspace, the missile trajectories that prompt fighter jets to scramble — none of this is accidental. These are probes. Stress tests. Rehearsals. Russia is checking whether Europe treats proximity as provocation or paperwork. So far, the answer has been administrative.
At the core of this strategy is leverage, stripped of euphemism. Blackouts are bargaining chips. Destroyed ports are negotiating tools. Civilian fear is a resource. Russia does not hide this logic; it simply relies on Western discomfort with naming it.
The line that should have been drawn years ago was not drawn. Now the menu of options has narrowed. At this stage, the only signal Russia reliably understands is force — credible, collective, and immediate. Ground and air. Not declarations. Not frameworks. Not another round of talks conducted under bombardment. Anything less is noise.
Western self-deception remains one of Russia’s most valuable assets. The belief that Moscow can be “managed,” that escalation can be calibrated away, that patience will eventually be rewarded — all of it persists despite a decade of evidence to the contrary. Russia is not rushing. It is waiting. It understands political cycles better than the politicians trapped inside them.
And none of this is unintended. Every missile launch is authorised. Every drone strike is calculated. Chaos is not collateral damage; it is the operating environment Russia prefers.
Which brings us to the only conclusion that matters — and the one too many still resist.
The war is not far.
The war is not on your doorstep.
The war is in your house.
It is raping your neighbour’s wife and kidnapping their children in the light of day.
Pretending otherwise does not make it stop.
Caption: A handout picture made available by the press service of the 24th Mechanized Brigade of Ukrainian Armed Forces on 22 December 2025 shows a local elderly woman walking on a street in the damaged city of Kostiantynivka in Donetsk region, Ukraine, 20 December 2025, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. EPA
Updated: December 23, 2025 - 15:01
