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Russian President Vladimir Putin has an unexpected ally in this campaign: a hotter, drier Europe. He cannot command it, and it does not always favor Russia. But the collision is becoming impossible to ignore. Ukraine has survived much of the conflict by building redundancy systems: new export routes when a port closes, electricity imports when power generation is destroyed, irrigation for crops when rain fails. Extreme heat and drought are putting some of those systems under strain just when Russia is forcing Ukraine to depend on them most.<\/p>\n
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The Familiar Story<\/p>\n
The familiar part of this story is what Putin can control. Russia has spent years attacking the infrastructure that allows Ukraine to function as a state and an export economy. The assault on the power system began in the fall of 2022, when missile barrages hit generating plants and substations across the country. In one day alone, Russia fired at least 65 missiles at homes and energy infrastructure<\/a>. It has continued the campaign to include gas production, ports, railways and bridges.<\/p>\n The intensity remains severe. Russia recently launched one of the largest drone barrages of the war<\/a> and Romania has repeatedly scrambled aircraft as drones crossed or approached its territory during bombardments of Ukrainian ports near the Danube, prompting a fresh confrontation between Bucharest and Moscow<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s answer has always been to find another way. When Black Sea shipping becomes too dangerous, grain goes by rail, road and the Danube. When domestic power generation fades, electricity comes from the European grid. When rainfall is low, farms irrigate. That capacity to improvise has been one of Ukraine\u2019s great advantages.<\/p>\n What\u2019s Really Going On<\/p>\n But what happens when the alternatives themselves come under pressure? Moscow has noticed that opportunity, even if it describes it differently.<\/p>\n On August 10, Anatoly Tikhonov, head of the Center for International Agribusiness and Food Security at the Russian Presidential Academy, published an essay through the state news agency TASS. Its title, \u201c\u0417\u043d\u043e\u0439\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0434\u0435\u043b: \u043a\u0442\u043e \u0437\u0430\u043f\u043b\u0430\u0442\u0438\u0442 \u0437\u0430 \u0435\u0432\u0440\u043e\u043f\u0435\u0439\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439 \u043d\u0435\u0443\u0440\u043e\u0436\u0430\u0439\u201d<\/a>, translates roughly as \u201cA Scorching Redistribution: Who Will Pay for Europe\u2019s Failed Harvest?\u201d The piece begins with temperatures reaching 113F in parts of Europe, which Tikhonov calls an \u201ceconomic verdict\u201d on a weakened Europe.<\/p>\n So far, so predictable. The interesting part is what Tikhonov believes Russia should do. He says Europe will need more Ukrainian grain, even as Ukraine\u2019s own export potential is being weakened, as well as food from South America, the United States and Russia. Wealthy European buyers, he says, will then compete for supplies with poorer countries in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. He portrays this as another example of Western \u201ccolonial logic,\u201d while presenting Russia as a noncolonial alternative. Russia, he says, \u201cmust take advantage of the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Ukraine provides an even more immediate demonstration of why the opportunity highlighted by Tikhonov exists.<\/p>\n Grain<\/p>\n When Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022 effectively closed Ukraine\u2019s Black Sea ports, grain moved instead by truck, rail and barge, and Danube ports, such as Izmail and Reni, expanded sharply. After Russia withdrew from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative in 2023, Ukraine eventually established a maritime corridor of its own. The improvised system worked well but did not fully replace what had existed before.<\/p>\n The latest Russian campaign is testing that system again. Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi told Reuters<\/a> that a little over 30 million tons of grain and oilseeds might fail to reach international markets if the disruption was not resolved, while prices have fallen sharply, and transport costs have soared. He said that rail and the Danube together can carry only about a third of Black Sea port capacity.<\/p>\n This summer, the Danube itself began to fail. World Weather Attribution\u2019s analysis of this year\u2019s European drought<\/a> found a complicated rainfall picture in eastern Europe. But it estimated that the highly evaporative conditions experienced between January and June 2026 have become about 40 times more likely because of human-caused warming.<\/p>\n Russia is now attacking the Danube fallback directly as well, including the bridge at Mayaki that is part of the land connection toward the Danube ports, most recently on August 9. Ukraine\u2019s Black Sea route is therefore under attack, its Danube alternative is restricted by drought, and the infrastructure serving that alternative is also under attack.<\/p>\n Power<\/p>\n The same collision has already played out in electricity.<\/p>\n Russia intensified its campaign against Ukraine\u2019s power system dramatically in the spring of 2024. By early June, Ukraine had lost roughly 9 gigawatts of capacity. A month later came an intense heatwave. On July 15, Kyiv reached 94F, a record for that date at the time. Grid operator Ukrenergo imposed emergency cuts in seven regions after an equipment failure increased the deficit during the heat.<\/p>\n Margaryta Zakharchuk, a 43-year-old Kyiv mother, described the resulting routine to Reuters<\/a>. With the elevator to her 12th-floor apartment useless during outages, she sometimes stayed outside with her two children until 10 p.m. rather than carry them upstairs. When the electricity returned, the family rushed to wash, iron, cook and charge devices. She cooled her one-year-old daughter Vasilisa in the sink. Food in local stores spoiled because of the disruption to refrigeration.<\/p>\n Heat raises electricity demand while increasing the importance of everything the missing electricity would have powered: refrigeration, elevators, cooling and machinery. Ukraine\u2019s alternative has been the European grid. The scale of that dependence was clearest this winter, when Ukrainian electricity imports were 41 percent higher in February than January.<\/p>\n Then the direction flipped. By July, Ukraine was again a net electricity exporter, with Hungary the biggest customer. However, that reversal happened while Hungary was discovering its own dependence on the drought-hit Danube. Paks, the nuclear plant that normally provides nearly half the country\u2019s electricity, was forced down to about 10 percent of capacity.<\/p>\n Romania has gone to still greater lengths to keep its reactors operating. Record-low Danube levels forced one of the two units at Cernavod\u0103 offline. Authorities blasted away a rock obstruction, dredged the riverbed and sank four rock-filled barges to form a makeshift barrier redirecting cooling water. On August 11, operator Nuclearelectrica warned that Romania might have to shut its last operating reactor in the coming days despite those emergency measures.<\/p>\n What this shows is that the system providing Ukraine\u2019s redundancy contains weather-sensitive infrastructure of its own. Hungary is now reviewing the Paks 2 expansion, partly because its planned reactors would also depend on the Danube for cooling, while accelerating plans for additional wind capacity.<\/p>\n Fire<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s 2024 fire season offers a more graphic example of weather magnifying damage caused by war.<\/p>\n Satellite data from the European Commission\u2019s Joint Research Centre show that 965,000 hectares burned in Ukraine in 2024, more than twice the area burned across the entire European Union that year. Most major fires occurred during hot, dry summer weather, and their distribution closely followed the front line.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2279859978.jpg\"\/)
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