How the US left Ukraine exposed to Russia’s winter war
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 747 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Russia is exploiting Ukraine’s coldest winter yet since it escalated the war four years ago. As negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the United States continue to stall, will this winter freeze become Ukraine’s breaking point?
In this episode:
- Oleksiy Sorokin (@mrsorokaa), Deputy Chief Editor, Kyiv Independent
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li, Marcos Bartolomé, and Melanie Marich, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Maya Hamadeh, Tuleen Barakat, and our guest host, Kevin Hirten. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today are Ukraine and U.S. relations freezing over. |
| 0:15.0 | You go to work, your city's bombed. You come back from work, your city's bombed. |
| 0:20.0 | You come to your apartment, |
| 0:21.5 | you don't have electricity, heating, or water. With negotiators back at the table, how the coldest |
| 0:27.9 | winter in years is pushing Ukraine to the breaking point. I'm Kevin Horton, and this is The Take. |
| 0:50.7 | Before we continue with today's show, remember to leave us a comment telling us what you think about this episode. |
| 0:53.4 | Have you been watching the talks between Russia and Ukraine? |
| 0:54.6 | And if you're listening from your podcast app, leave us a review. It really does help the show. Thanks. |
| 1:03.2 | My name is Alexi Seroken. I'm the deputy chief editor of the Kiev Independent, and I'm talking |
| 1:08.5 | today from Kiev-Ukraine. Alexi, welcome to the take. I noticed that the lights went off while we were setting up. |
| 1:15.5 | How often does that happen there? |
| 1:17.3 | Every day, 20 times a day, I would say. Right now, the average electricity time for anyone in |
| 1:24.7 | Kiev is four or five hours a day, which is obviously impossible to live a life in this situation. |
| 1:34.3 | This is just a general question before we get started. I mean, are you living with the threat that you could just, the building you're in could be bombed at any time? |
| 1:42.3 | Yes, and there was a funny story that I couldn't find the documents that proved that the apartment |
| 1:51.0 | I'm living in is my apartment. |
| 1:53.0 | And the first thought was that, okay, if I'm bombed tomorrow and I'm not going to be able |
| 1:58.0 | to prove that it's my apartment, and I won't get any compensation. |
| 2:01.6 | So I felt sad about it and decided to actually go and start looking for the documents. |
| 2:07.2 | So how do you manage that situation? I mean, you can't live with the constant fear. |
| 2:12.2 | You have to push it into the back of your head, but is it always there that your every minute |
... |
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