KYIV—It’s a bitterly cold Saturday night here, the temperature 10 degrees Fahrenheit and falling, and a few pedestrians are skittering down the icy sidewalks to get inside before the midnight curfew. Because the heat is out in some homes in the wake of savage Russian bombing of power facilities this month, they may have to visit one of the hundreds of warming centers in the city to get through the night.

This grim winter scene is a snapshot of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal strategy for victory. By pounding Ukraine’s sources of power and heat, he hopes to freeze the country into submission. President Donald Trump sometimes talks as if he agrees with Putin that Russian victory in this bloodbath is inevitable—and that Kyiv must give up territory in a peace deal.

KYIV—It’s a bitterly cold Saturday night here, the temperature 10 degrees Fahrenheit and falling, and a few pedestrians are skittering down the icy sidewalks to get inside before the midnight curfew. Because the heat is out in some homes in the wake of savage Russian bombing of power facilities this month, they may have to visit one of the hundreds of warming centers in the city to get through the night.

This grim winter scene is a snapshot of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal strategy for victory. By pounding Ukraine’s sources of power and heat, he hopes to freeze the country into submission. President Donald Trump sometimes talks as if he agrees with Putin that Russian victory in this bloodbath is inevitable—and that Kyiv must give up territory in a peace deal.

But conversations here Sunday with Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and other senior officials convinced me that this bleak picture is misleading. Ukraine will soon deploy a new generation of domestically produced air-defense interceptors, powered by artificial........

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