Good morning. As winter arrives in Ukraine, sleet and snow will become a daily fact of life. Depending on the severity of the weather, the ground will become impassably muddy, or freeze over. Civilians in parts of the country will be left without power, heating or water as a result of Russian attacks on infrastructure, and could face frostbite, hypothermia and pneumonia. Temperatures will get as low as -20C.

While the months ahead look grim, the question of how these drastically changing conditions will impact the progress of the war is more complicated. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Julian Borger, reporting for the Guardian from Kyiv, about how both sides will hope to use the circumstances to their advantage – and how the prospects for diplomacy could be shaped by the facts on the ground. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

1. China | Hundreds of demonstrators and police have clashed in Shanghai as protests over China’s stringent Covid restrictions flared for a third day and spread to several cities. The BBC said its accredited reporter Ed Lawrence was beaten when he was detained by police in Shanghai for several hours.

2. NHS | Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, new research reveals. The NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.

3. Labour | Keir Starmer has categorically ruled out the return of free movement between Britain and the EU if he were to become prime minister, despite supporting the policy three years ago.

4. Transport | One of the north of England’s main railway companies, the TransPennine Express, has been using an “outrageous” legal loophole to significantly underreport cancellations. Trains preemptively cancelled up to 10pm the night before are not included in official statistics, turning a rate of 20-30% to reported figures as low as 5.6%.

5. Television | Former health secretary Matt Hancock finished third on I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!, with retired footballer Jill Scott the eventual winner. Hancock, who lost the Tory whip over his appearance, was left with a toad sitting on his head at the end of the final challenge, “Flood Your Face”.

In depth: ‘Winter will bring fairly heavy attrition with death and illness’

To date, the Pentagon estimates that around 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded during the war, and about the same number of Ukrainian troops. Around 40,000 civilians are also thought to have died. That devastating toll continues to grow, but “there are real stop-go phases to the conflict now”, Julian Borger said.

While Ukrainian troops have been in the ascendancy for some time, “after the Russians made the decision to abandon Kherson and regroup on the left bank of the river Dnipro, we are in a slower phase”.

If Ukraine is to continue its counter-offensive in the south, its forces could attempt to advance in neighbouring Zaporizhzhia oblast, where it already holds the left bank of the Dnipro. “Zaporizhzhia may be the next focus. But the pace of the conflict isn’t by any means uniform,” Julian said. And, as weather worsens, what happens next may be decided in part by forces beyond the control of either side.

The front: will the ground be muddy or frozen?

Biden administration officials expect the winter months to bring “a slowdown in military advances on both sides” that could last as long as six months, the New York Times reported earlier this month – though that is not a universal view. In a 10 November assessment, the respected US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that it “does not assess the fighting in Ukraine will halt or enter a stalemate due to winter weather, despite faulty western assumptions”. The ISW says it expects that “well-supplied Ukrainian forces are unlikely to halt their counteroffensives due to the arrival of winter weather”.

In the short term, the ISW said on Saturday, the pace of operations has slowed in recent days because of bad weather but is likely to accelerate as the ground freezes because of a forecast temperature drop this week. To a large extent, the nature of the conflict on the front lines will continue to depend on the severity of the weather. “If it’s really boggy, you can’t go anywhere with armour,” Julian said. “That was the thinking behind the original invasion – Russia went in February at one of the coldest points because of worries about what muddy terrain would mean north of Kyiv.”

But while frozen ground would make equipment more manoeuvrable for both sides, very cold weather would also be punishing for poorly supplied and inexperienced Russian troops. “Nothing could be worse than being a Russian conscript sent to the front,” Julian said. “We’ve seen footage of them camping outside, in very thin tents – it’s miserable. And you would imagine winter will bring fairly heavy attrition with death and illness.”

Russia’s response: ‘freeze Ukraine to death’

If there is a slowdown at the front, Russia will seek to use the pause to mobilise those 300,000 conscripts, whatever the cost, and hope to bring into play the Iranian missiles that they have ordered to replenish their depleted stocks. “We don’t know if those are in Russia yet,” Julian said.

The other part of their strategy appears to be “to freeze Ukraine to death”, Julian said. Russia is attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure and may intensify its assault on the country’s water supply, with both power and water out in 15 regions including Kyiv last week. Nato countries are stepping up the delivery of power transformers and electricity generators in response.

On Thursday, Julian wrote, 70% of Kyiv was without power, and “there was water everywhere, but very little to drink”. The severity of that approach is also apparent in Kherson, as reported in this piece by Lorenzo Tondo and Isobel Khoshiw: they write that civilians are gathering firewood but have been warned not to head into the woods without consulting the military “because Russian troops may have left behind mines, tripwires and unexploded shells”. But, they add: “With the price of firewood rising, many have no choice but to take the risk. If a mine doesn’t kill them, the cold might.”

Ukraine’s response: press advantage, maintain morale

Ukraine wants to maintain the momentum of its recent battlefield successes for as long as it can. The head of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, Oleksiy Danilov, was “absolutely insistent that the weather isn’t an issue and they will press on”, Julian said of a conversation with the official last week.

Ukraine may be less hampered by the winter because its supply lines are shorter than Russia’s. If there is a pause, “that will arguably allow them to regroup and re-arm faster than the Russians if they can keep the flows of equipment coming from the west”, Julian said – pointing in particular to air defence systems needed to blunt Russian attacks on infrastructure. Western analysts also expect an increase in sabotage operations, and even targeted assassinations, behind Russian lines.

The other key question for Ukrainians is whether widespread opposition to a negotiated peace will persist. “The stories we’re writing are not about smiley, happy people defying Putin,” Julian said. “But it is almost impossible to imagine an upswell in demand for some kind of peace deal with territory given away. The kind of punishment meted out by the Russians will be miserable, but they know who to blame.” As one Kyiv resident told him last week: “Do you remember the siege of Leningrad? They lived through that and we can live through this. We can live through anything.”