Since fall 2023, Ukraine’s supporters have fallen into a pattern: Ukrainians warn that Russia is targeting its energy infrastructure to prevent them from heating their homes, schools, and businesses in the coming winter. Allies provide insufficient support to Ukraine’s efforts to harden its energy grid and other critical infrastructure. Ukrainians devise new ways to stay warm, stretch the aid they do get as far as it can go, and survive the winter without catastrophic collapse. Finally, its supporters applaud their resilience, breathe a sigh of relief at the first signs of spring, and busy themselves with other things until the next fall.
This recursive conversation belies the fact that the West, even Ukraine’s staunchest allies, have a fundamentally short-term view of Russia’s war on Ukraine. We are failing to understand Ukrainian victory as a generational project, one that requires deep, consistent engagement, not flailing, haphazard responses.
The West’s approach to Ukraine often falls into two categories. The first is the crisis response, characterized by the cry, “Something must be done!” This exclamation — while an understandable reaction to Russian forces, say, dropping a bomb on a city bus or kidnapping a Ukrainian journalist and returning her body without organs — is rarely followed by action worthy of the crimes committed. Diplomats and national leaders who exclaim it usually then reach for the nearest salve they can find: often a hastily mixed concoction of strongly worded condemnations and sanctions. And if they are feeling exceptionally enraged, a token contribution of aid. In their haste, they rarely ask questions like, “Why, after 12 years of reacting to the same crimes with the same responses, does Russia continue to commit those crimes, and dream up even more sadistic ways to torture Ukrainians?”
The second could be described as “one weird trick” thinking. It goes something like this: If we just get Ukraine some exquisite weapons system, the war will end. If we just convince Ukraine to give up some chunk of land, the war will end. If we just sanction this Russian official, the war will end. If we just remove sanctions on this Russian official, the war will end. If we just get Ukrainians and Russians into a room together to talk, the war will end. And so on. And so on.
Of course, it is not surprising that these are the options that policymakers reach for. Statements, sanctions, aid packages, organizing meetings — these are all policy levers that one can pull with relative ease. In most cases, they are legal, quick, and relatively uncomplicated. They can be presented to democratic electorates who will give leaders points for caring without risking accusations of overinvestment or entanglement. These levers are historically precedented and, taken on their face, there are even examples of them working to stop conflicts in the past. They are also necessary. No Ukrainian official would ever refuse aid or sanctions packages, nor should they. For better or worse, Ukraine’s armed forces would not be able to put up their heroic stand on the battlefield without capabilities and materiel provided by the West, equipment which Ukrainians have adapted and stretched past its capacity in ways its originators could not have imagined.
However, Russia is prosecuting its war on Ukraine in a way that is antithetical to both “something must be done” and “one weird trick” thinking. Some of the most insidious parts of Russia’s effort to destroy the Ukrainian nation do not happen at one discrete moment, on one particular day. Over the past four winters, while avoiding the complete collapse of their energy grid, Ukrainians have endured the grinding reality of going to school, working, and keeping their lives in order, all while cold. It is true that Ukrainians’ ingenuity extends to finding ways to teach their children and provide them with a semblance of normalcy amid full-scale war. And yet, even the luckiest Ukrainian kids still spend winters learning underground for hours on end or attempting to pay attention in class after cold, sleepless nights.
The West may not recognize Ukraine’s winter experience as a slow-motion travesty, but for Russia, winter attacks have become a key part of its approach to degrading Ukrainian society. Look at some of the targets Russia has hit repeatedly this fall. Warehouses containing more than 8 million children’s books, including textbooks for the coming school year. Data centers and mobile service providers. Trains between Poland and Ukraine. Bridges between Moldova and Ukraine.
In aggregate, what does this all mean? The nearly five million children living in Ukraine have faced chronic disruptions to their school days since the novel coronavirus pandemic, which was winding down as Russia invaded in 2022. When schools close because the power is out or traveling there is too dangerous, parents are left responsible for childcare, pulling them away from their jobs that keep the Ukrainian economy running. Getting an internet connection, especially in Kyiv, to work or go to school remotely is becoming challenging. Many Ukrainian families feel they have no choice but to leave, though they are increasingly trapped.
Liubov Zaliubovska and her colleagues at the Ukrainian educational organization Go Global often talk about Ukraine’s young people as the “generation of victory.” This generation has earned this plaudit and much more. As Zaliubovska reminded us at an event I moderated recently, they are the ones who come up with innovations that give the Ukrainian armed forces their edge. They are the ones inventing new ways for cities to have heat and light through the winter. They are the ones who are rebuilding their nation as Russia attempts to destroy it.
This inspiring description alludes to a different, less comfortable truth. Victory for Ukraine will take a generation. This is not to say, God forbid, that Ukrainians will be fighting in a full-scale war for decades more. Rather, it is to say that victory will be determined by the success or failure of today’s Ukrainian young people over the next decades. They have years ahead of defending Ukraine’s borders, making it livable again, revitalizing its democracy and economy — all of which have just as much to do with victory as the terms of some eventual settlement.
This is an unfair burden to place on them. Ukrainians could be forgiven for reacting to Russia’s depraved targeting of civilians and torturing of prisoners with flashes of white-hot rage followed by hasty responses built around vengeance. They could also be forgiven for falling for snake-oil salesmen who offer them too-good-to-be-true, easy ways out of the misery of this war. And yet, these Ukrainians who have grown up through pandemic and war succeed in recognizing the need for long-term thinking where their allies sitting in capitals across the West have failed.
The good news is that we have a model for what policymaking with an eye towards generational victory could look like for Ukraine, and it comes from the drone and defense technology industries that the generation of victory is best known for building. Ukraine’s ministry of defense has created pathways for European allies, most famously Denmark, to invest in co-production models where they partner with Ukraine’s most innovative and effective firms to produce weapons and other materiel needed on the front lines.
You can read plenty of good analysis about how these deals work and how they are mutually beneficial to investing countries and Ukrainians. However, the operative point here is that countries are taking direct interest in specific Ukrainian industries, firms, and people. They are thinking deeply about both how to leverage their investment into immediate battlefield success and the sustainability of this sector of Ukraine’s economy decades into the future. Identifying firms, working with CEOs, structuring agreements, troubleshooting production delays — none of this is quick and easy. And yet, because these countries recognize the defense technology sector as wrapped up in Ukraine’s long-term security and their own, they are willing to get into it. This attention to detail and committed partnership could be replicated across the sectors essential to Ukraine’s survival.
For every vicious tactic Russia has used to wear down Ukrainian society, there are Ukrainians responding by developing solutions that are innovative, widely applicable, and underfunded — just as the drone and defense tech sectors were in the early years of the full-scale invasion. Take, for example, Mariupol State University, which has been operating in exile in Kyiv since its rector escaped the city during Russia’s siege in late February 2022. The university has developed both high- and low-tech methods of reaching students from Mariupol. They are among Ukrainian educational institutions that are still reaching students in Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine and Crimea where the censorship and surveillance apparatus borders on all-consuming. The university has succeeded at both imparting the skills needed to find jobs in Ukraine’s patchwork, largely remote wartime economy and maintaining a sense of the culture of Mariupol and the university.
Governments or universities that enter long-term partnerships with schools like Mariupol State University could surely benefit from the expertise staff and students have to offer in areas ranging from veteran education to curriculum design for up-and-coming fields like drone design and operation. But more to the point, for those that recognize Ukraine’s success as necessary for transatlantic security or an inherent good, closer attention would reveal that Russia could debilitate the Ukrainian state by placing unbearable strain on its core institutions, even if it cannot wipe it out through gains on the battlefield. Ukrainians are attempting to address massive gaps in elementary and middle school education while nearly 4 million internally displaced people are grasping for ways to remain connected to their hometown cultures. These are problems that require both a deep appreciation of what is happening the ground and a willingness to uncover and implement targeted solutions designed to address particular threats to Ukraine’s survival.
Ukraine’s political leadership recognized the outsized contributions of Mariupol State University when they made the university’s rector, Mykola Trofymenko, deputy minister of education and science in 2025. As much as Ukraine benefits from having Trofymenko’s experience integrated into its education policy, Ukrainian officials simply lack the time and funding to systematically cultivate more nation-sustaining institutions like Mariupol State University or visionaries like Trofymenko. However, they could surely show Western partners where to look. The generation of victory provides a rich base to begin with.
Those of us living far from the daily jet drones and sirens and sprints to subway stations to take cover should not use this distance as an excuse to engage in sloppy, impulsive policymaking. Ukrainians are about to live through a miserable winter. This fact was as plain and clear last fall as it is today. Right now, of course, we should not ignore or exacerbate humanitarian crises emerging or unfolding in cities from Oleshky to Kyiv. But we should respond while thinking about how to avoid this sickening cycle winter after winter.
What programs, technologies, and defenses are Ukrainians developing and deploying right now out of necessity that we can we invest in so that they can be used at scale next winter? What will the people choosing to stick it out through this winter need in terms of healthcare, education, and social support to live, and even thrive, in Ukraine through the next winter and the winter after that? What are Ukrainians’ aspirations for their families and dreams for their country? Foreign ministries and legislators across the Western world should be asking these questions not only of Ukrainian officials who lead ministries, but of Ukrainian members of parliament and local officials, civil society leaders and members of community organizations, the eager and starry-eyed, the disaffected and disappointed.
I have had some of these conversations, and I can tell you a few things about them that may cause trepidation among the garden variety foreign policy professional. They will not feature the slick presentations and neatly packaged policy proposals that we have come to expect, or even demand, from the officials who frequent our capitals. They may revolve around a particular entryway that needs to be fixed in a particular apartment building. They may not be obsequious or fawning. They may come tinged with the anger of a people who bought into the promise of the rules-based world order and Western democracy and feel betrayed. They may be incongruent and ignorant of the so-called geopolitical reality. However, these conversations will imbue the West’s response to Ukraine’s pain and Russia’s aggression with a humanity and a richness that is sorely lacking. They will vest policymakers in the future of Ukrainians, and in the process, Ukraine. They will allow them to see — really see — what it would mean for Ukraine’s young people to grow old in the homeland of their grandparents. And then they can begin the frustrating, slow, deliberate work of realizing this future.
Alanna Novetsky is the communications director at the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, where she covers a policy portfolio that includes the Visegrád 4, media freedom, and technological authoritarianism. This piece is adapted from remarks she delivered at an event titled “Keeping the Lights On: The Human Cost of Russia’s Attacks on Ukraine’s Critical Infrastructure” at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Warsaw Human Dimension Conference. She earned a master’s degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Image: spoilt.exile via Wikimedia Commons