It is Christmas time again in Kyiv. And it is not Santa’s sleigh and his eight tiny reindeer that are causing Ukrainian children to look up into the sky.
Rather, it was eight deadly Russian ballistic missiles on Friday that rained down from the skies on Kyiv. Moscow’s barrage on Ukraine’s capital damaged the stained-glass windows in the historic St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church.
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The strike on Kyiv’s city center was intended as messaging by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The attack came after his speech claiming Russia is winning the war – and not only winning it against Ukraine but the West as well.
Of course, in typical Russian fashion, the Kinzhal and Iskander-M missiles were not aimed at military targets, but against civilians and cultural sites.
According to the United Nations in October, nearly 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the start of Putin’s “special military operation”; 622 of them have been children. Over 26,000 people have been injured including some 1,700 minors.
Nearly 1,250 cultural sites have been hit by Russian bombs since Feb. 24, 2022 – and now, foreign missions in Kyiv as well. Heorhiy Tykhy, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the strike damaged the embassies of Albania, Argentina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Palestine, and Portugal.
Putin is not interested in a silent night come Christmas Eve. Only a permanent deadly peace – and the death of Ukraine.
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Retired US Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg gets the intended messaging. Kellogg has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be his special envoy to Ukraine and NATO in search of a lasting peace.
Kellogg likely is already signaling that Putin’s deadly brinkmanship is not going to result in Trump capitulating in Eastern Europe. On Friday, the Financial Times reported that Trump’s closest foreign policy aides are signaling that “he will continue arming Ukraine while pursuing [the] end to the war.”
Putin is beginning to get it too. Especially the reality that a new sheriff is going to be in town come Jan. 20. Consider the squealing he, his Kremlin cronies and his state-controlled media propagandists have been spewing of late.
Moscow knows Kellogg is slated to travel in January to Kyiv and several other European capitals to discuss options to bring an end to the war – and in response, Putin is attempting to set conditions to win the war now.
Vassily Nebenz, Russia’s representative to the UN, fired the first preemptive strike on Kellogg. Nebenz rejected Kellogg’s plan first proffered last April by saying, “No schemes to freeze the [Ukrainian] conflict are agreeable to Russia.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the former President of Russia, said out loud what Putin and his comrades at the Kremlin are thinking: “Today, Ukraine faces a choice to be with Russia or to disappear from the world map altogether.”
Yet, Putin himself is proving once again to be a convenient real-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – or what we first described in May 2022 as the “Strange Case of Dr. Vladimir and Mr. Putin” in The Hill in Washington DC.
During his annual end-of-year press conference Thursday, Putin claimed he was open “anytime” for peace negotiations with Trump. The Russian president told the audience, “that we are ready for negotiations and compromises.”
This briefs well. However, the problem is Putin’s conditions are unrealistic. He has no intention of honoring any terms he might agree to as evidenced by Minsk. And he is accelerating the Russian army’s relentless assaults on Ukrainian defensive positions, energy infrastructure and civilian population centers as we enter winter.
Yet by Friday Dr. Putin was gone again and Mr. Vladimir was back. Now, Putin is psychotically insisting that the world has declared war on Russia, and as a consequence, “the Russian world has declared war.”
Putin’s convenient schizophrenia aside, the reality is that Trump is facing a Russia that continues to posture for war. Not just in the short run, but for the long term.
What is said by Putin before the camera must be balanced with Russian actions on the battlefield. Ahead of Inauguration Day in Washington, Putin is doubling down on a kinetic solution for his Ukrainian land grab.
Moscow’s saber-rattling is also predictably increasing. During his end-of-year conference, Putin highlighted the use of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile in Ukraine, boasting it was unstoppable, while dismissing Western skepticism about the missile.
The nuclear-capable hypersonic ICBM is capable of hitting NATO’s Brussels headquarters in 17 minutes.
Deep in Mr. Vladimir mode, Putin even dared Washington and Brussels to participate in a “hi-tech missile duel” over the skies of Kyiv. His Oreshnik against US Patriots and any other air defense system NATO could muster to stop it.
Never mind that thousands of Ukrainian families would be in harm’s way. Including Kateryna and her two children Ivan and Daryna, whom we have followed and written about since the beginning of the war.
While snowflakes are in the air and carols are everywhere, peace is not save in the hearts of Ukrainians.
The Oreshnik has become Putin’s equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s V2 rocket that terrorized London in the closing months of World War II. Last Monday, Putin heralded that “serial production” of the Oreshnik for use by Russia and its allies, including Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, against Ukraine – and if need be against NATO.
Putin’s use of the word “serial” was appropriate. Especially in the sense that the Russian President has become an indiscriminate serial killer of Ukrainian men, women and children on a scale not seen in Europe outside of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union since the nightmare years of Nazi Germany.
Meanwhile, Putin’s war along the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line in Ukraine is intensifying ahead of Trump taking office. Pokrovsk, a strategic Ukrainian logistical hub in eastern Ukraine is in danger of being overrun – and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are being badly stretched by Moscow’s World War I-like “meat grinder” frontal assaults.
Moscow’s war is gradually becoming global as Christmas nears. Putin is increasingly involving his “arsenals of evil” allies in the kinetic fight itself. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder recently noted that “North Korean troops have entered combat in the Russian region of Kursk and already [are incurring] casualties.”
Last month Ryder had noted that as many as 12,000 North Korean soldiers were deployed to the Kursk Oblast as part of a Russian counteroffensive believed to number 50,000-plus troops. In addition to sending a reported 9 million artillery shells to Russia, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is also sending Putin weapons.
Video posted on X purportedly shows North Korean M-1989 170mm Koksan self-propelled guns in transit via rail in Russia. According to Defense Express, “at least a dozen self-propelled artillery systems are visible in the footage.”
The Koksan gun is a formidable weapon system that has a firing rate of approximately two rounds per minute, and an onboard ammunition storage capacity of 12 rounds. It can range 40 kilometers (25 miles) with conventional high-explosive (HE) rounds; 60 kilometers (37 miles) with rocket-assisted projectiles (RAP).
Bluff or not, Putin has a plan to win the war in Ukraine. The US and NATO still do not. After a bloody 34 months of “just enough” support, the Biden Administration under the guidance of Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, has left Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals in an increasingly precarious and deteriorating position – especially in the Donbas.
Biden’s mismanagement of the war is also leaving Ukraine’s children vulnerable once again at Christmas time. That includes Daryna and Ivan. When we first interviewed them in December 2022, Daryna at the age of 4 learning ballet by candlelight in the dark in Kyiv, and Ivan who was 10 practiced fencing thrusting at imaginary targets.
Last Christmas Eve, Daryna and Ivan camped out on a mattress under the stairs of their home on the outskirts of Kyiv. This year promises to be the same. Putin’s war against Ukraine is now their new normal.
It is an exhausting new normal. As we revisit with Kateryna, Daryna and Ivan there is one word that keeps popping up: exhausting.
Nearly every night Russian-launched Shahed drones supplied by Iran either target or crossover their neighborhood in Kyiv. Kateryna tells us that the “children do not sleep enough, and this affects [their] studying.”
Yet their spirit remains unbroken. Their smiles and dreams remain. Daryna is hopeful of attending her brother’s academically competitive school and Ivan is still fencing. Between school and sports, they spend three hours a day driving.
Mixed into the exhaustion are moments of joy. Ivan proudly shares a picture of him when he met his idol Andriy Shevchenko – a Ukrainian football legend. In the picture, they are standing by a Christmas tree – an evergreen reminder of the future silent nights all Ukrainians are dreaming of this Yuletide.
Then, as we ask Kateryna about her work with the Kyiv-based Children of Heroes charity, the nightmare reality of Christmas presents comes roaring back. Last year, the organization cared for 7,500 Ukrainian children who have either lost one or both parents as a result of Putin’s war and crimes against humanity.
Tragically, that figure is now 11,000. These children are living in a Christmas nightmare of Putin’s making in Ukraine. Kateryna reports that the charity is now averaging 100-plus new children every month. Putin is not merely a fictional Grinch stealing presents – he is a very modern-day monster murdering the parents of Ukrainian kids.
Left unchecked, that number undoubtedly will grow in the coming year. Especially as Putin and his generals continue to target Ukrainian civilians and unleash bloody frontal assaults against AFU defenders on the frontlines.
It is not a Charlie Brown-like Christmastime in Ukraine. While snowflakes are in the air and carols are everywhere including Shchedryk – known as Carol of the Bells in the US – peace is not save in the hearts of Ukrainians.
Trump and Kellogg have it in their power to change this for future generations to come. Not just in Ukraine but in all of Europe.
Demanding European NATO members increase their defense spending to 5% was a good first step. So too backing continued military aid to Ukraine after Trump takes office.
Peace on Putin’s terms will be no peace at all. As we noted Saturday in the New York Post, it would only be fool’s gold – and that Europe would likely again be at war in 5 to 10 years. Don’t take our word for it. Take the word of Andrei Belousov.
Putin’s defense chief warned that Russia must be ready for “a possible military conflict with NATO in the next decade.” Trump and his national security team can prevent that from becoming a reality by ensuring Ukraine wins.
Come Jan. 20, in addition to Kellogg, that team will include Rep. Mike Waltz as his national security advisor, Sen. Marco Rubio as his Secretary of State and former Rep. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick for CIA director. This is their war to collectively win – and World War III in the process.
If so, then Daryna and Ivan and all of the children of Ukraine can once again truly enjoy a Charlie Brown Christmas full of “happiness and cheer” for generations to come – and Santa’s sleigh will reign supreme again over the skies of Kyiv on Christmas Eve.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
Copyright 2024. Mark C. Toth and Jonathan E. Sweet. All rights reserved.
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