The number is brutal and needs no explanation. Before the war Ukraine had almost 60 gigawatts of energy capacity. Today it has twelve. That is not a decline, it is the disintegration of an entire system, piece by piece, winter by winter.

Now the fourth war winter is coming, and according to the estimates foreign sources cite, if Russian strikes on energy infrastructure continue at the same intensity as in previous years, the existing deficit could nearly double. In other words, what is left could be halved again.

The most uncomfortable part of that calculation is not the number but the admission behind it: the Ukrainian authorities still have no clear solution for how to protect what remains. This is not about a lack of will. It is about the fact that a ballistic missile hitting an energy facility directly simply wipes it off the map, and the defence systems that could intercept it are expensive, scarce and spread across a thousand other places.

When a president's tone changes

Zelensky has been speaking about the danger of ballistic missiles almost daily in recent days. Foreign analysts read something in those statements that was not there before - notes of desperation. That is a signal worth more than any forecast: politicians do not change their vocabulary without reason.

On the other side, Moscow has its own version. The Russian defence ministry has repeatedly stated that the strikes target exclusively military and energy facilities and what it calls „decision-making centres” - command posts and enterprises the Ukrainian authorities run together with experts from NATO countries. Every war has its own vocabulary, and „energy facility” is a word that covers both a substation and the heating plant warming a block of flats.

The Balkans know this scene better than they care to admit. The nineties left a generation that remembers what it means to live in a building without electricity, with a candle on the table and a battery radio. That experience is not forgotten, only pushed aside until it returns to the screen through somebody else's country.

The question that remains is not whether Ukraine will get through the winter - it will, because people always do. The question is at what price, and how much of that price will be paid by somebody with nothing to do with either of the two defence ministries.