Thanks for the excellent update on what is a difficult issue to get a handle on.
The real issue is what happens when the deep freeze hits and all the water pipes servicing all the buildings are in danger of bursting when impacted by hours long blackouts at irregular intervals.
I know from experience on the receiving end that shutting down and then restarting the urban central heating system in place in Ukraine is a complicated big deal. I can't imagine how it can be done every few hours and still deliver necessary heat to protect all the buildings from degradation.
In warmer weather you can protect people by installing large diesel generators in designated locations. However, that won't do anything to protect buildings against a hostile environment.
This is something people often miss, these strikes don’t just impact heating and electricity. With multi-day outages the water treatment and sanitization systems will start to break down too.
This is where you start investing in a private diesel generator... or wood-fired generator. You don't plan your business around scheduled blackouts throughout the day, especially because it never goes according to plan. You can't run a european city like africa, and this doesn't work in Africa either. It's just not worth it.
I wonder what effect of the corruption has had on this degradation. After all the latest corruption scandal occurred after this attack and centered initially on those currently and formerly in charge of the power grid. How much more survivable or resilient would the power grid have been if the corruption not occurred?
Oh man. Is this going to become another thing Russian general staff is gonna try to carefully tune to a happy medium? If it works I'll be most impressed. Everyone knows how it's gonna end - Kiev will just blindly keep pushing the provocation button until all the people are gone. If Zelensky should end up on a lamppost, or fck off to London or Dubai or Tel Aviv, won't change that pattern.
Yes, the Russians are clearly trying to degrade the rail network because they're prioritizing strikes on locomotives and rail stations too. Full grid collapse would mean a surge the in the use of generators for command and communications, charging batteries for drones, etc. But the Ukrainians are already having issues with diesel availability after strikes on their refineries over the past few months and a deliberate decision to halt diesel imports from India. In short, it'll make everything more difficult for the AFU, especially in the rear.
The humanitarian crisis will be a major concern. Sanitation, heating, and water supply will stop functioning, and Ukraine's population will have no choice but to move out of the cities. This will put a severe strain the Ukrainian government. I'm skeptical of the idea that this will cause the population to force the government to sue for peace or something along those lines, but I suppose it's possible.
The main thing it would do is make conscripting additional troops into the AFU vastly harder. I also doubt that the goal would be to force Ukraine to sue for peace, more likely it would be to accelerate the military collapse of the AFU from some nebulous point in 2027 or 2028 to something much closer to now, like summer 2026.
That Ukraine has any functioning port facilities at all is a true testament to Russian indecision.
The Russians are living in fantasy land if they think that any kind of humanitarian crisis will move the Ukrainian government, and as long as they have the guns and can dole out food, heat, etc., they don't need to worry about popular unrest.
All that Putin achieved by starting the energy grid strike campaign back in 2022 was to provide justification for reciprocal strikes on the Russian grid.
But for three years there was a veto on doing real damage to the Ukrianian grid that would actually collapse it.
Has there ever been more idiotic mismanagement of a war?
I recall that Ukraine targeted Donetsk electric infrastructure in the most immediate and proximate cause of the invasion, mid February 2022. Apart from that it's most doubtful we are talking about a matter of justification - consider the regular strikes vs purely civilian targets that Ukrainian special services have done and periodically try to do? These are neither morally nor strategically justified, and their PR value is negative. Ukrainians strike firstly with the goal of provocation rather than deterrence, and secondly they pick targets based on where they are able. Their orders are to keep the conflict going. Should RF have turned off the lights long ago? Yes.
Thanks for the excellent update on what is a difficult issue to get a handle on.
The real issue is what happens when the deep freeze hits and all the water pipes servicing all the buildings are in danger of bursting when impacted by hours long blackouts at irregular intervals.
I know from experience on the receiving end that shutting down and then restarting the urban central heating system in place in Ukraine is a complicated big deal. I can't imagine how it can be done every few hours and still deliver necessary heat to protect all the buildings from degradation.
In warmer weather you can protect people by installing large diesel generators in designated locations. However, that won't do anything to protect buildings against a hostile environment.
This is something people often miss, these strikes don’t just impact heating and electricity. With multi-day outages the water treatment and sanitization systems will start to break down too.
This is where you start investing in a private diesel generator... or wood-fired generator. You don't plan your business around scheduled blackouts throughout the day, especially because it never goes according to plan. You can't run a european city like africa, and this doesn't work in Africa either. It's just not worth it.
Someone has leaked the so-called peace plan , if true the first point declares Ukraine to be sovereign....
This is a fine declaration, from on high...
The ukranian state stays in twilight until Russia repairs what America has broken,....when it is Russia , again....
Another fine report Sir...spaceba Bolshoi
I wonder what effect of the corruption has had on this degradation. After all the latest corruption scandal occurred after this attack and centered initially on those currently and formerly in charge of the power grid. How much more survivable or resilient would the power grid have been if the corruption not occurred?
Planning around regular scheduled blackouts requires tremendous state-capacity in the first place.
Oh man. Is this going to become another thing Russian general staff is gonna try to carefully tune to a happy medium? If it works I'll be most impressed. Everyone knows how it's gonna end - Kiev will just blindly keep pushing the provocation button until all the people are gone. If Zelensky should end up on a lamppost, or fck off to London or Dubai or Tel Aviv, won't change that pattern.
There's no happy medium when it comes to blackouts. The grid will either go back up, or go down. Not forever, but it will be fundamentally unreliable.
Suppose all the lights were to go out across Ukraine, completely.
What difference would it make, since Ukraine supplies nothing other than warm live bodies and nobody cares whether Ukrainians freeze or starve?
I suppose there is transport, since Ukrainian rail is mostly electric.
Yes, the Russians are clearly trying to degrade the rail network because they're prioritizing strikes on locomotives and rail stations too. Full grid collapse would mean a surge the in the use of generators for command and communications, charging batteries for drones, etc. But the Ukrainians are already having issues with diesel availability after strikes on their refineries over the past few months and a deliberate decision to halt diesel imports from India. In short, it'll make everything more difficult for the AFU, especially in the rear.
The humanitarian crisis will be a major concern. Sanitation, heating, and water supply will stop functioning, and Ukraine's population will have no choice but to move out of the cities. This will put a severe strain the Ukrainian government. I'm skeptical of the idea that this will cause the population to force the government to sue for peace or something along those lines, but I suppose it's possible.
The main thing it would do is make conscripting additional troops into the AFU vastly harder. I also doubt that the goal would be to force Ukraine to sue for peace, more likely it would be to accelerate the military collapse of the AFU from some nebulous point in 2027 or 2028 to something much closer to now, like summer 2026.
That Ukraine has any functioning port facilities at all is a true testament to Russian indecision.
The Russians are living in fantasy land if they think that any kind of humanitarian crisis will move the Ukrainian government, and as long as they have the guns and can dole out food, heat, etc., they don't need to worry about popular unrest.
All that Putin achieved by starting the energy grid strike campaign back in 2022 was to provide justification for reciprocal strikes on the Russian grid.
But for three years there was a veto on doing real damage to the Ukrianian grid that would actually collapse it.
Has there ever been more idiotic mismanagement of a war?
I recall that Ukraine targeted Donetsk electric infrastructure in the most immediate and proximate cause of the invasion, mid February 2022. Apart from that it's most doubtful we are talking about a matter of justification - consider the regular strikes vs purely civilian targets that Ukrainian special services have done and periodically try to do? These are neither morally nor strategically justified, and their PR value is negative. Ukrainians strike firstly with the goal of provocation rather than deterrence, and secondly they pick targets based on where they are able. Their orders are to keep the conflict going. Should RF have turned off the lights long ago? Yes.