Lights Out for the Kiev Regime

Russia Dismembers Ukrainian Electrical Infrastructure

For the first seven months of the Russian intervention or “Special Military Operation” the Russian military, strangely to US defense officials, avoided any systemic attack on Ukrainian infrastructure.

After repeated Kiev regime attacks on electrical infrastructure in the Donbass (where it had been a regular target for 8 years of civil conflict), as well as Crimea, and Belgorod in Russia, and the suicide bombing of the Kerch Bridge to Crimea, this changed starting October 10th.

 Since then - the new overall commander of the Russian SMO, General “Armageddon” Surovikin, has launched a sustained and systemic air campaign, using cruise missiles and kamikaze drones, to cripple Ukrainian electrical infrastructure.

After the most recent large Russian salvo of over a hundred missiles in mid-November, Kiev regime officials report that over 50% of Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure is out of order and they may not be able to repair and recover after any further such strikes.

This has resulted in much of the country left without electricity or water for days at a time (you need electricity to pump water), regular rolling blackouts, and calls by Kiev regime officials for the potential evacuation of the capital Kiev, and even for all Ukrainians who can, to leave the country, to reduce electrical demand on the heavily damaged system.

Western governments and media ubiquitously refer to the attacks on Ukrainian electrical infrastructures by Russia as “barbaric”, hypocritically & selectively forgetting or ignoring every war they have fought in the modern era.

Indeed, the United States Air Force has long favored destroying opponent’s electrical power systems and “dual-use” infrastructure as among the first priorities in any conflict. Electric power has been considered a critical target for the US in every war since targeting infrastructure in Germany and Japan in WW2 – in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Serbia, and Libya.

The US Department of Defense’s Law of War manual declares, “Electric power stations are generally recognized to be of sufficient importance to a State’s capacity to meet its wartime needs of communication, transport, and industry so as usually to qualify as legitimate military objectives during armed conflicts.”

But you know, as usual, its different when we do it.

And despite Western media’s bleating, crocodile tears and obfuscation, the principle stated Russian rationale in attacking Ukrainian electrical infrastructure is actually inhibiting the logistics and communications of the Kiev regime’s military.

Since NATO opened the flood valves of weapons, money, intelligence and training the conflict in Ukraine has become a proxy conflict of attrition and logistics. Moving troop and military equipment quickly across large fronts, and transporting massive quantities of the shells, ammunition, fuel, and other supplies they need is paramount.

The rail network in Ukraine is the principle means of doing this. Roads are not sufficient for anything more than local troops movement and the fuel costs are enormous.

The majority of the trains in Ukraine are powered by electricity. You take out the electricity; you take out the trains and thus the entire military logistics chain. Troops cannot move, can’t get the fuel or ammunition, or supplies they need to function and fight.

The Russian Ministry of Defense described the results of the most recent Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian electrical infrastructure,
“Ukraine’s military has suffered a serious degradation of capabilities.
Transportation of manpower and material towards the frontlines via railroads has been hampered to a large degree. Production at Ukrainian military industrial facilities has also been disrupted.”

Now – the Ukrainian electrical generation and distribution network is Soviet legacy – ie node-centric and robust with massive redundancies and channels for rerouting power.

But Russian forces are not resorting to mass carpet bombing to take it out.
 They know this system, Soviet engineers built it, after all -  and Ukrainian officials report that electrical experts are guiding Russian strikes to clinically achieve the desired result with minimal casualties, as has been obvious from media reports that a salvo of a hundred missiles at a time results in only a handful of civilian deaths and injuries.

According to Ukrainian energy officials, Russia’s “strikes are not aimed at generating facilities to prevent us from producing electricity but at connection systems tied to the Ukrainian energy system…they are aimed at “open switchgears, transformers, switches, so that a station that can produce electricity cannot be connected to the unified power system.”

 So -the Russian military doesn’t aim to permanently destroy the Ukrainian electrical infrastructure but to systemically dissect it for the desired result, with Ukrainian electrical workers eventually running out of transformers and supplies (mostly built by Russia) capable of performing the needed repairs for the course of the conflict.

Now obviously there is a substantial secondary effect on the civilian population as well with knocking out the electrical power needed to support modern life.
I refer once again to the US Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual which points out that “attacks that are otherwise lawful are “not rendered unlawful if they happen to result in diminished civilian morale.”  It then cites with approval a 2002 commentary about NATO’s war on Serbia from a former DoD General Counsel regarding the strikes on Serbian electrical infrastructure:

“I will readily admit that, aside from directly damaging the military electrical power infrastructure, NATO wanted the civilian population to experience discomfort, so that the population would pressure Milosevic and the Serbian leadership to accede to UN Security Council Resolution 1244, but the intended effects on the civilian population were secondary to the military advantage gained by attacking the electrical power infrastructure.”

NATO Spokesman James Shea justifying NATO’s systemic attacks on Serbian electrical and water infrastructure: “Yes, I'm afraid electricity also drives command and control systems. If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO's five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he doesn't do so we will continue to attack those targets which provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it's for him to deal with…”

The effect on Ukrainian civilians here is also directly analogous to the Western existential economic war of sanctions they are waging on Russia with the intent of making the Russian people suffer so much that they rise up in the streets to pressure their own government to change policy or to overthrow it to alleviate the economic misery.

Perhaps after being left without electricity, water and normal modern life, the Ukrainian people will at last be inspired and motivated to rise up and overthrow the West-backed Putsch regime which seized power in Kiev in 2014.

 Or if not, maybe millions more Ukrainians fleeing as refugees to Western states will destabilize them and cost them so much economically and politically, that their ruling elite will change foreign policy course and end the flow of arms and financial aid to their client regime in Kiev and return to diplomatic negotiations.

With this new Russian strategy of clinically targeting Ukrainian electrical infrastructure – whether militarily, economically or politically – its lights out for the Kiev regime.