I'm John Batsar. I welcome John Hardy, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

helping me to understand the Ukraine conflict, which has turned into a winter war.

And winter wars depend upon heat in order to keep everyone moving and confident.

That is what the Russians have determined.

They've been through winter wars,

and they're now targeting consistently Ukraine and Keefe in particular. We have a report

from Reuters in these last hours. Russians strike on Ukraine's Keefe leaves 1,30 buildings without

heat. John, a very good evening to you. This is a campaign and has been

going on for some time. And the winter war is meant as strictly terror. This is nothing tactical

about it. That's very far away. Is it working? What sense do we have about the Ukrainian resistance at this point? Good evening to you, John. Hi, John. Thanks for having me back on the show. Yeah, I think this is without question the toughest winner, Ukrainians, especially Ukrainian civilians, have faced since the war began. As of this morning, Ukrainian media reported that over

1,200 apartment blocks in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine are still without heat. This is as

temperatures are plunging well, well below freezing. Here in the U.S., we have a major winter

storm underway, but in Ukraine they've been dealing with that sort of thing for quite a while and without heat.

So just imagine how difficult that is for civilians. And I think what's striking is you mentioned the most recent Russian strike, the biggest so far of 2026, happened just hours after Ukrainian and Russian and U.S. officials were meeting for trilateral talks

in Abu Dhabi. So that probably tells you something about Putin's strategic intentions and

his continued intransigence and unwillingness to engage in, I think, real compromise to end the war.

Tass is reporting, and that means it's not reliable, that the Kremlin continues to demand

all of the Donbass, despite the fact that they haven't dominated all of the Donbass in combat operations.

That's the same thing they said when it first started, right?

There's been no wiggle room whatsoever in that

demand. Yeah. In this case, that task report is accurate reflects what the Kremlin has said

publicly, including in the readout after the most recent visit on Thursday to Moscow by U.S.

...