From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / October 21, 2025
As saboteurs stalk a Ukrainian city and a radar burns in Crimea, Europe reaches for the valves feeding Russia’s war, Kyiv chases twenty-five shields against the sky, and Moscow rehearses a winter of pressure, propaganda, and denial.
The Day’s Reckoning
Morning arrived with a warning that tasted like metal. Ukraine’s military intelligence said Russia was preparing an active winter campaign—no ceasefire, no pause—only harder strikes, deeper infiltrations, and a long season of attrition. By midday, a Ukrainian drone’s camera shook and snowed to black as it rammed a high-end radar at Dzhankoi, blinding a piece of Crimea’s airwatch. In Pokrovsk, a small Russian team slipped past the front and shot civilians near the rail line, only to be hunted down inside the station where they hid. Far east, a single hit on the Orenburg gas complex rippled into Kazakhstan’s output and spooked the region’s energy math. Brussels sharpened sanctions—this time aimed at the “shadow fleet”—while Zelensky pressed for twenty-five Patriot systems and pitched an energy future that starves the Kremlin’s coffers. The day carried the sound of winter coming early: generators coughing to life, transformers thumping awake, and the distant buzz of wings in a cold, unsettled sky.
“Prepare for an Active Winter”
The studio lights were too bright for a man who has spent so much time in rooms without windows. Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy to Kyrylo Budanov, folded his hands and chose plain words. Russia, he said, is building for an active winter campaign. The line landed like a door being bolted. The interviewer nudged for a timeline, a date to circle on a calendar. Skibitskyi refused to turn war into appointment-keeping. “We’ll be looking out for the results of our politicians,” he said—an officer’s way of acknowledging that battlefield tempo and diplomatic theater are now welded together.
Then came the part that quieted the room: Russia is also preparing for possible conflict with Europe, “particularly with NATO.” Not a prediction of tanks crossing borders, but a warning about posture—supply lines, propaganda budgets, the slow lay-up of missiles and glide bombs, power systems mapped as targets. The winter to come would be fought not only in trenches and cities, but across electrical grids, fuel stocks, and the contested air above both.
The Radar That Didn’t See Its Killer (Dzhankoi)
Somewhere over the flat darkness of northern Crimea, a small Ukrainian drone skimmed the horizon. Below, the Dzhankoi airfield sat in its geometry of concrete and light. The radar—a top-shelf anti-UAV system—turned and searched for a threat it has been marketed to defeat. The drone kept coming. In the last seconds, the video frame jittered, the image bloomed, and the world became static.
Voice of Ukraine 