As Russia sharpens its push toward Zaporizhzhia, winter is taking a harsh toll on Ukraine’s southern front.
On Ukrainian drone feeds, Russian soldiers appear in white-on-white camouflage, moving quietly through snow-blanketed tree lines. Often advancing in pairs, they look almost benign. But they are not. Sudden fireballs mark a successful Ukrainian drone strike.
It takes major efforts to hold the line. In the apocalyptic cold, subzero temperatures stiffen fingers and drain batteries. Drone pilots power through, flying with gloved hands or under makeshift cloth covers to fend off Russian drone attacks.
Russia and Ukraine might be negotiating elsewhere. But along the battlefront in Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have been advancing under cover of drones and glide bombs, peace talks seem far away.
Below, infantry fighters struggle to stay alive and warm in trenches shaped like Tetris blocks. The zigzagging entrances are meant to block drones and blunt explosions, but the cold still creeps in. Ukrainian fighters are few, emerging only when there is a direct threat from Russian units.
“The most important battles are fought in the sky,” says a deputy commander in the battalion of unmanned aerial vehicles with Ukraine’s 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, who uses the call sign “Hans.” His unit coordinates reconnaissance and strike drones along one stretch of the southern front, where Ukrainian forces rely on drones to offset manpower shortages and target Russian soldiers in snow camouflage.
The fighting around Zaporizhzhia has gained added significance in recent days as Russia and Ukraine prepare to resume talks – mediated by the United States – addressing a possible ceasefire and territorial bargaining. Since fall, Russian forces have made some of their most significant advances in this direction, observers say, pushing more aggressively than in most other sectors as Moscow seeks to boost its bargaining power.
Russia has paid a high cost to advance here, Ukrainian troops and analysts assert, but its campaign has forced Ukrainian units to defend wide and unstable gray zones. At the same time, Russia’s escalating drone and ballistic missile attacks on the energy sector are exacting a toll on both military operations and civilians as Ukraine endures an abnormally cold winter. On Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had fired about 450 drones and 70 missiles overnight. Officials said the strike, which hit several regions, targeted the energy grid and damaged residential buildings.
The Russian pressure comes down to sheer fatigue and numbers, says Hans. “Our people and armed forces are really tired in the fourth year of the war.” Ukraine has “less and less infantry in position” to claim territorial control, while Russian forces have “many times more infantry.” Repeated assaults by small Russian units, carried out in quick succession, have yielded some battlefield success, including the takeover of 15 villages.
“The city is important”
Hans views Russian gains as tactical wins versus strategic game changers. The increased pressure, he adds, is adequately managed through close coordination between drone crews and infantry. Drones spot and attempt to strike advancing Russian units before they reach Ukrainian positions, reducing the need for infantry to engage and expose themselves.
“The main principle is to save the lives of our infantry,” the commander said. The battalion’s social media accounts trumpet daily drone strikes against Russian soldiers traveling alone or in pairs.
Vladyslav Urubkov, a Ukrainian military analyst who regularly travels to Zaporizhzhia, says Russian advances mainly gave the Kremlin a propaganda boon, but he also notes that the danger to the regional capital has intensified. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the front line was pushed roughly 25 to 30 kilometers (15.5 to 18.6 miles) south of the city, still far enough to allow civilian life to continue. That buffer has shrunk since November to “closer to probably 15 kilometers,” he says.
With negotiations underway, Moscow is trying to expand its footprint where it can. Zaporizhzhia is one of four territories it wants to seize from Ukraine, its strategic importance coming from its heavy industry, hydroelectric dam, and nuclear power plant, which is Europe’s largest. Russia captured the nuclear facility early in the war and has since written Zaporizhzhia region into the Russian constitution, effectively promising eventual capture of the full territory to its domestic audience.
“Most of Zaporizhzhia region is under occupation, so the city is important for Russia to complete that claim of control,” Hans says.
Mr. Urubkov accuses Russia of carrying out “nuclear blackmail” by seizing the plant and objects to its inclusion as a bargaining chip in negotiations. He also warns that the hydroelectric dam represents a major vulnerability. The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023, which triggered mass flooding, displacement, and long-term environmental damage in Kherson region, serves as a cautionary precedent.
Despite recent advances, Mr. Urubkov describes Russian progress as slow and costly, driven more by symbolism than by military logic. For Ukrainians, the struggle is “definitely more about manpower than about weapons,” he says. By 2025, the city was within range of bombs dropped from the air using glide kits. The concern is that it could come into artillery range in 2026 if Russia makes additional gains.
Fleeing the front
The expanding threat has pushed authorities to accelerate mandatory evacuations from front-line settlements. In Zaporizhzhia city, a converted assisted living facility now operates as a transit center for the displaced. Since assuming its new role this past November, more than 2,800 people have passed through, including 560 children and 849 people with disabilities.
“A lot of people evacuated on their own,” says Halyna Honcharenko, the facility’s director. “Now, we are dealing with people from vulnerable groups, including poor families with many children. If parents refuse to evacuate, police oblige them to do so.”
“We see that the situation has worsened,” she adds. “It is more dangerous. Five districts around Zaporizhzhia city are under mandatory evacuation. If the situation deteriorates further, we will have to relocate the transit center.”
Any sense of anxiety is masked by high functionality. On display here are the high-efficiency workflows honed over four years of war.
The facility is warm, powered by a generator as the rest of the country endures power shortages and freezing conditions. Tables are carefully arranged to offer displaced individuals an array of services in one centralized location. For instance, some come to replace Soviet-era identification, others to obtain emergency cash assistance.
Some come to replace Soviet-era identification, others to obtain emergency cash assistance. Among them is Svitlana Balyka, a stylish retiree wearing a blue beret to match her piercing blue eyes. She was recently evacuated from the village of Hrodivka. She left, driven not by the brutal cold, which her family endured without heating, water, or electricity, but by the growing danger. Suppliers were no longer making deliveries to the grocery store because of the risk.
The Ukrainian military told her clearly: It is time to go. Part of her journey traced roads shielded by tunnels of netting designed to protect traffic from drone attacks. The measures offered little reassurance. “We passed a whole convoy of burnt cars,” she says. “We were praying over every meter of the road, asking God to keep us safe from the drones.”
In Zaporizhzhia city, safety is far from guaranteed. Shahed drones fly overhead, and glide bombs fall periodically.
“It is getting harder for civilians to live here,” says Nataliia Korniienko, who works at a metallurgical company by day and volunteers at the Soldier’s Rest guesthouse in her spare time. “Ukrainian defenses are preventing the Russians from capturing the city, so they target civilian infrastructure instead.”
Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this article.