#damage to ukraine's power grid

[tomorrowusa]

Russia is trying to take advantage of the recent Trump-instigated four month gap in US aid to Ukraine by attacking Ukraine's power grid. Since the belated aid package was passed this month, ammunition and weapons have been moving to Ukraine.

To help make up for recent Russian damage to Ukraine's electricity distribution system, Latvia (population 1,821,750) has donated a high voltage transformer and related equipment to Ukraine.

The Latvian joint-stock energy supply company Latvenergo donated a high-voltage transformer, 60 tons of transformer oil, and an air compressor for the restoration of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, according to Delfi. This spring, Russia intensified its air assaults on the Ukrainian energy grid, causing damage to power plants and power distribution facilities across Ukraine. The donated equipment, which includes a TS-250000/330 transformer with a capacity of 250 MVA previously used at the Riga Hydroelectric Power Plant, a GR110 oil-injected screw air compressor, and 60 tons of transformer oil, is expected to contribute to the critical support that Ukraine’s energy system needs in the wake of the Russian bombing campaign.  Latvenergo’s Administrative Director, Arnis Kurgs, emphasized the impact of this donation, stating that the delivered equipment will assist Ukrainian residents at the household level and ensure the water supply and heating of essential facilities such as hospitals and schools.

Kudos to Latvia and Latvenergo for pushing back against Putin! 🇱🇻

Latvia was a "republic" of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for 51 years after Stalin invaded the country in 1940. Latvians have no illusions about Russia or its intentions. It is now a NATO member and does more than its share in protecting liberal democracy in Europe.

As for the power grid in Ukraine, this war makes a good case for increased use of decentralized solar power. Being highly innovative, Ukrainians are likely to make significant contributions, based on their wartime experience, in the field of solar energy.

[mariacallous]

Ukraine is set to face its toughest winter since the start of the full-scale invasion as Russia eyes cutting off its nuclear power after already bombing out capacity from half of its electricity generation sector in large-scale air strikes.

For now, Russia is not directly striking the plants with missiles and kamikaze drones. But Moscow has increasingly targeted nearby infrastructure, such as substations containing crucial equipment like transformers and power lines connecting nuclear plants to the grid.

“We're in a world where (Ukraine) has a deficit of functioning infrastructure. This is going to be the hardest winter yet,” International Energy Agency (IEA) Chief Economist Tim Gould told the Kyiv Independent.

If Russian attacks successfully disconnect all the power plants from the grid, then Ukraine’s only stable power source is gone, said Warsaw-based energy analyst Wojciech Jakobik.

“(Nuclear power) is a baseload capacity, which is irreplaceable by renewables, other sources, and especially not by energy imports,” he told the Kyiv Independent.

“With a smaller nuclear capacity in place, Ukraine will have less flexibility and less ability to stabilize (energy) generation.”

Ukraine has lost 9 gigawatts of power generation, including eight thermal plants and five hydro plants, due to Russian strikes this year. While companies scramble to repair their damaged assets, Russia is gearing up to attack Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure, the Energy Ministry's press office told the Kyiv Independent, which would freeze out Ukrainians and cause a humanitarian crisis if the country can’t swiftly repair and protect its infrastructure.

After the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in 2022, Ukraine relies heavily on three nuclear plants remaining under government control. They are the lifeline of the country, providing 60% of its power. The last mass attack on Aug. 26 forced Ukraine to disconnect three units at the Rivne and South Ukraine plants, causing weeks of power outages.

The country’s state-owned nuclear company, Energoatom, told the Kyiv Independent that all its power units are ready to operate at “maximum capacity” during the heating season, and the company connected a refurbished one-gigawatt nuclear power unit to the grid on Oct. 1. However, it has only recently announced plans to build additional fortifications to protect power plants from attacks.

Without stable power, Ukrainians will face another round of blackouts similar to the ones in the summer which could last as long as eight hours a day, according to Kyiv-based think tank DiXi Group. Brutally cold winter temperatures during power outages will freeze pipes, cutting off Ukrainians’ access to water and heating, and may lead to another wave of refugees, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) told the Kyiv Independent.

At the same time, attacks on nuclear infrastructure massively heighten the risks of accidents, the Energy Ministry's press office said. While Jakobik believes a Chernobyl-like scenario is unlikely as reactors are well protected, damage to substations could prevent backup supplies of electricity that ensure the safety of reactors, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The EU and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv both told the Kyiv Independent that they are pitching in to bolster the energy sector in time for winter with financial support, backup equipment, and humanitarian aid. But with Russia relentlessly churning out and firing its missiles and drones, the only tangible tool for energy security is stronger air defense, the Energy Ministry's press office said.

Running out of time and options

During the first years of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine relied on different facilities within its massive energy sector to survive the initial attacks on energy infrastructure and even managed to export electricity to the EU. But that changed this year after mass attacks beginning in March wiped out 50% of its energy assets. Now, Ukraine has run out of options and switched from exporting to importing 2 gigawatts of electricity from its European neighbors. Winter power outages appear inevitable. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission (UNHRMM) expects blackouts to last between 4-18 hours a day, depending on attacks and the weather, causing living conditions to crumble for millions of citizens. “The deficit of electricity supply could be up to 6 gigawatts. That's the equivalent of peak demand in Denmark,” Gould said. With nuclear power as the remaining foundation for Ukraine’s energy stability, it is the prime target for Russian strikes, the Energy Ministry's press office said. Ukraine’s government seeks to decentralize the power grid as quickly as possible, but this is unlikely to happen by the winter and private energy companies are desperately restoring their assets to strengthen the grid.

Ukraine hopes to recover 3 gigawatts by the end of the year, said Olena Lapenko, general manager in the Field of Security and Resilience at DiXi Group. But this depends on critical funding, which state electricity grid operator Ukrenergo puts at $1.5 billion for rapid repairs this season. So far, Ukraine has received nearly 700 million euros ($766 million) from its energy support fund in cooperation with the European Commission, and winter is fast approaching.

Part of the fund covers much-needed equipment, such as autotransformers, to patch up facilities damaged by Russian air strikes as fast as possible. Simple repairs around nuclear plants, like power lines, can be fixed within 24 hours, said Jakobik. But specialized equipment depends on deliveries from Western allies, which can take months unless there are readily available stockpiles, he said. “The tough part is, you replace the old infrastructure with new parts and Russia attacks it once again,” he added. DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company owned by its richest man Rinat Akhmetov, has lost 90% of its thermal plants capacity to Russian attacks. By winter, the company hopes to restore 60-65% of its thermal power that was damaged in spring. But even this would not be enough to replace nuclear power if all the plants are disconnected, said Oleksiy Povolotskiy, DTEK’s head of Recovery Office. Another issue, said Povolotskiy, is that the war has bitten a chunk out of Ukraine’s manual workforce while the scale of the damage is massive. DTEK is bringing in workers from other enterprises, like miners, to help clear debris. The company has asked European states to send engineers and machinery for more complex repairs.

The costs of Russian attacks are piling up for Ukraine. DTEK has already funneled $80 million into repairs from its own budget. Instead of relying on equipment that softens the fallout of attacks and power outages, Povolotskiy believes the most efficient solution is for Western allies to provide Ukraine with additional air-defense systems.

“Partners should understand that it is much cheaper and much more efficient to protect (energy facilities) than to repair,” he said.

The U.S. embassy in Ukraine told Kyiv Independent that the Defense Department will provide an additional Patriot battery and missiles but did not specify if this was directly for the protection of energy facilities. For now, this is the only confirmed delivery of an additional air defense battery, although Washington pledged a $2.6 billion aid package on Sept. 26 that includes munitions and support for air defense systems.

Ill prepared and ultra exposed

With no other extra air-defense systems currently in the pipeline, Ukraine’s government is building protective constructions for substations against falling debris and drones. However, not enough constructions have been built in time for winter and contractors have allegedly not been fully paid.

“More concrete constructions must be built as soon as possible,” Povolotskiy said.

Yuliia Kyian, an official at the Energy Ministry, told the Kyiv Independent during a discussion in Kyiv on Oct. 2, that the constructions are expensive and take time to build. They also cannot withstand ballistic missile strikes, she added.

Energoatom has faced criticism. In September and October, the company signed contracts to construct a $12.3 million shield around the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant and a $14.4 million worth of protection around the South Ukraine plant in Mykolaiv Oblast. Ukrainian anti-corruption watchdog Nashi Groshi reported that the contracts were concluded only after President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN Security Council that Russia was preparing an attack on the three operating nuclear plants.

“It is difficult to assess why this was not done earlier,” said DiXi Group’s Lapenko.   “Probably no one could imagine that the Russians would aim directly at the nuclear power sites as this is a serious threat to nuclear safety. But we can’t exclude such a scenario.”

A nuclear disaster would threaten the whole of Europe, the Energy Ministry's press office said, adding that the global community must unite to prevent a catastrophe. Kyiv has reached out to the UN’s nuclear agency (IAEA) to place more observation missions around its power plants, but an agreement has not yet been reached.

International observers will ensure that safety standards are enforced at the plants and combat disinformation, as Moscow frequently denies Ukraine’s accusations of endangering nuclear safety, Jakobik said. Nevertheless, Russia could pummel nuclear facilities to the point that it is dangerous for people to remain and force evacuations.

“Russia is not a responsible stakeholder in the nuclear sector,” he said.

“It's using energy terrorism against Ukraine. You cannot be sure about what Russia is doing,” the energy analyst added.

[darkmaga-returns]

October 23, 2024

Ukraine - Zelenski Begs Russia To Renew Deals He Had Botched

The actor who has been playing the President of Ukraine for a while is getting cold feet. Winter is coming and the energy networks of Ukraine are near to the point of total breakdown.

There could have been agreements in place to prevent that. But the Ukrainian side had botched those deals. Now Zelenski is begging to renew them.

In late 2022 the Russian military launched a bombing campaign against electricity switching stations in Ukraine. A lot of transformers got blown up. The Ukrainian military responded by concentrating its air defenses near electricity stations. That was exactly the effect the Russian's had asked for. The air defense installations, not the electricity stations, had been their real target.

After splitting from the Soviet Union, Ukraine had had the best air defenses money could buy. During the fall and winter of 2022 most of it had been destroyed. The Russian campaign against electricity stations came to a halt.

In 2023/24 the Ukrainian military started its own campaign against infrastructure in Russia. Several refineries were hit by drones and went up into flames. Gasoline production in Russia was falling significantly and export of gasoline had to be stopped for a while.

The Russians retaliated by renewing their campaign against Ukraine's electricity network. But this time the targets were not just switching stations but the generation facility themselves. The non-nuclear electricity production in Ukraine got decimated.

In its daily briefings the Russian Ministry of Defense called the attacks on Ukrainian electricity stations a direct retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian proper. For example:

This morning, in response to the Kiev regime's attempts to damage objects of Russian power infrastructure and economy, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a group strike by long-range precision weaponry at objects of the Ukrainian military-industrial infrastructure and AFU aviation bases.

With their generation capacity in danger and under the threat of blackouts the Ukrainian government got to its senses - at least for a while. Secret negotiations were arranged in Doha, Qatar, to stop the infrastructure attacks on both sides.

In August 2024, shortly after the Ukrainian army had launched an incursion into the Kursk oblast of Russia, the Washington Post reported:

Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries. But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials. ... For more than a year, Russia has pounded Ukraine’s power grid with a barrage of cruise missiles and drone strikes, causing irreparable damage to power stations and rolling blackouts across the country. Meanwhile, Ukraine has struck Russia’s oil facilities with long-range drone attacks that have set ablaze refineries, depots and reservoirs, reducing Moscow’s oil refining by an estimated 15 percent and raising gas prices around the world. ... A diplomat briefed on the talks said Russian officials postponed their meeting with Qatari officials after Ukraine’s incursion into western Russia. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation,” the diplomat said, adding that Kyiv did not warn Doha about its cross-border offensive.

Ukraine had to pay a heavy price for the Kursk incursion. The elite troops it had sent failed to reach their target, a nuclear power station near Kursk, and soon got decimated. The attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure continued with full force.

Three month later, with the Kursk incursion as well as its electricity network near to total failure, the Ukrainian government is again changing course. It is begging to renew the deals it had botched.

[andrewtheprophet]

Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on verge of blackout due to Russian attacks – Ukraine's largest electricity producer: Jeremiah 12

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is again on the verge of a blackout: Russian attacks damaged the external overhead line through which the plant received power from the Ukrainian power grid for its own needs. Source: press service of the National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom Details: “The Russian bombardment on 22 August damaged the external overhead line of 330kV…

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up April 27-May 1, 2023

(Unplanned long weekend break due to inconvenient minor injury. Oops.)

Under the cut:

A Russian mass missile attack against Ukraine killed 25 people, including five children, on April 28, according to the Ukrainian authorities. The Russian overnight attack that hit a nine-story residential building in the city of Uman, Cherkasy Oblast, killed 23 people, including four children, as of 7 p.m., the Interior Ministry reported. (These numbers may continue to change.)

A fire at a fuel storage facility in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, caused by an apparent drone strike, has been extinguished, the Moscow-installed governor has said. Video footage posted on social media earlier on Saturday showed a large waterside area on fire, with a column of black smoke rising from the burning fuel. Other images showed a huge pall of smoke hanging over the area. More than a dozen fuel tanks are situated at the site in Kozacha Bay.

Ukraine’s army stopped 20 attacks by the Russian army in the Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka on Sunday.

Russian missile strikes have injured 34 civilians and apparently damaged railway infrastructure and an ammunition depot in south-eastern Ukraine, hours before an explosion inside Russia derailed a freight train. The attacks on both sides of the border on Monday apparently aimed to disrupt military logistics before a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive against occupying Russian troops, expected to start shortly in the south or the east.

The Ukrainian military says it is locked in a “positional struggle” as fierce fighting continues to rage in Bakhmut, adding it has been able to push back Russian forces after a series of counterattacks.

Four civilians died as a result of Ukrainian shelling on a village just over the border in Russia's Bryansk region on Saturday evening, a local governor said.

A Russian mass missile attack against Ukraine killed 25 people, including five children, on April 28, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

The Russian overnight attack that hit a nine-story residential building in the city of Uman, Cherkasy Oblast, killed 23 people, including four children, as of 7 p.m., the Interior Ministry reported.

The National Police earlier said that at least 18 people had been injured in Uman, nine of whom had been hospitalized.

The number of casualties may grow as the rescue operation continues at the destroyed building.

The attack partially destroyed three upper floors of the apartment building, causing large fires, according to first responders.

Other missiles Russia launched on April 28 targeted Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv oblasts.

A young woman and a two-year-old child were killed, and four other civilians were injured in the city of Dnipro, according to the regional authorities.

Kyiv Oblast Governor Ruslan Kravchenko said that a high-rise building in Ukrainka, some 50 kilometers south of Kyiv, was damaged by the missile debris.

Two people were injured, including a 13-year-old child who was hospitalized in a Kyiv hospital, according to the Interior Ministry.

Ukraine's air defense shot down 21 of the 23 X-101 and X-55 cruise missiles, as well as two drones, that Russia had launched using strategic Tu-95 aircraft from the Caspian Sea, according to Ukraine's Air Force.

Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said the missile attack had not damaged the country's energy infrastructure.

The deliberate killing of civilians at any time and in any place breaches the Geneva Conventions and constitutes a war crime.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, has argued that the April 28 mass missile attack is another proof Ukraine needs to be supplied with American-made F-16 fighter jets.

Ukraine has been asking to receive F-16 warplanes to protect its airspace from Russian attacks and strengthen its upcoming counteroffensive. Yet, many allies, most notably the U.S. and Germany, have not backed the idea.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

A fire at a fuel storage facility in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, caused by an apparent drone strike, has been extinguished, the Moscow-installed governor has said. .

Video footage posted on social media earlier on Saturday showed a large waterside area on fire, with a column of black smoke rising from the burning fuel. Other images showed a huge pall of smoke hanging over the area. More than a dozen fuel tanks are situated at the site in Kozacha Bay.

The strike, reportedly by a “kamikaze” drone, came a day after a wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities killed 26 people, including many in an apartment block in Uman in the Cherkasy region.

After the drone strike at 4.30am, a firefighting train was reportedly brought in to try to extinguish the blaze.

“According to preliminary information, the fire was caused by a drone hit,” the city’s Russia-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, wrote on Telegram.

“The situation is under the control of our firefighters and all operative services,” he said. “Since the volume of fuel is large, it will take time to localise the fire.”

Razvozhayev said the fire was assigned the highest ranking – level four – in terms of how complicated it would be to extinguish. He said it had not caused any casualties and would not hinder fuel supplies in Sevastopol.

Razvozhayev reported earlier this week that the Russian military had destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone that attempted to attack the harbour, and another one had blown up, shattering windows in several apartment buildings but not inflicting any other damage.

Sevastopol has been a regular target of drone attacks, especially in recent weeks. The city, on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has come under repeated air attacks since Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in February last year.

Russian officials have blamed the attacks on Ukraine. The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Kyiv almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

Russia’s missile strikes on Friday killed 26 people, including five children, as Kyiv said preparations for a counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces were nearly complete.

The most serious casualties were caused by a strike on a residential block in Uman that killed 23 people.

Rescue workers in Uman, the site of an annual Hasidic Jewish pilgrimage, pulled the body of another child from under the rubble on Friday evening. Authorities said four children in the city had been killed by the cruise missile strikes.

Earlier in the day, Dmitry, a 33-year-old resident from Luhansk, an eastern city under Russian control, was looking for his children. “I want to see my children. They are under the rubble,” he said.

Rescuers were using cranes to search for survivors among the remains of the multi-storey housing block in the city of 80,000 inhabitants.

“I’ve seen a lot, but I haven’t lost my children before. Now I want to see my children, alive or dead,” Dmitry said.

-via The Guardian

~

Ukraine’s army stopped 20 attacks by the Russian army in the Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka on Sunday.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported it in its daily evening update published on Facebook.

“The Russian Federation continues to use terror tactics. Today, the enemy launched two missile strikes on the cities of Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka. Also, throughout the day, it launched 15 air strikes and mounted about 30 attacks using multiple launch rocket systems on the positions of our troops and settlements,” the update said.

“The threat of missile and airstrikes remains high across Ukraine.

“The enemy continues to focus its main efforts on offensive operations on Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka. During the past day, Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled more than 20 enemy attacks on the specified axes. Bakhmut and Mar’inka remain places of fierce fights.”

-via The Guardian

~

Russian missile strikes have injured 34 civilians and apparently damaged railway infrastructure and an ammunition depot in south-eastern Ukraine, hours before an explosion inside Russia derailed a freight train.

The attacks on both sides of the border on Monday apparently aimed to disrupt military logistics before a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive against occupying Russian troops, expected to start shortly in the south or the east.

The Russian strike in the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad was part of the second wave of missile attacks in just three days; on Friday, 23 people were killed when a missile hit an apartment block in central Uman city, and a woman and her daughter died in Dnipro.

With Kyiv’s allies saying that equipment and newly trained troops promised for the next Ukrainian campaign are in place, Moscow has revived its winter tactics of attempting to orchestrate bombing campaigns far behind Ukrainian frontlines.

It launched 18 cruise missiles in the early hours of Monday morning, although 15 were intercepted by air defences, including the ones aimed at Kyiv. Support from western allies has helped Ukraine improve protection for its cities and the main military sites.

At Pavlohrad, video posted on social media showed a missile strike had caused a significant blaze and secondary detonations.

Among the buildings damaged or destroyed were an industrial zone, 19 apartment buildings and 25 homes, according to Mykola Lukashuk, the head of the Dnipro regional council. Two women were seriously injured.

Russian officials and the Tass state news agency claimed Moscow had hit an ammunition depot and railway infrastructure, hampering military preparations.

“The objectives of the strike were achieved,” the defence ministry said in a statement. “The work of enterprises making ammunition, weapons and military equipment for Ukrainian troops has been disrupted.”

Ukrainian sources said one location hit was a plant that produced solid fuel for Soviet-era rocket motors and had a number of expired solid fuel motors awaiting decommissioning, although that claim could not be immediately verified.

The size of the fire in Pavlohrad suggests Russia may have hit an important arms depot, and the incident comes after Ukraine’s recent attack on an oil storage facility in Sevastopol, Crimea.

“Around 2.30am, the Russian invaders attacked Ukraine from strategic aviation planes,” said a post on the Telegram channel of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Air defence systems were called into action to shield the Kyiv region from Russian missiles, officials said. Ukrainian media reported blasts in the Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions.

Senior Ukrainian officials have suggested in recent days that the counteroffensive may be imminent. It will be a critical test of whether Russia can be dislodged from land it seized in 2014 and last year – nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

“If in a global sense, in a high-percentage mode, we are ready,” Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said during a press conference in Kyiv on Friday. “Then the question [about when to launch] is for the general staff, for the command. As soon as there is God’s will, the weather, and the decision of the commanders – we will do it.”

On Monday an explosion in the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine, derailed a freight train, the local governor said in a social media post.

“An unidentified explosive device went off, as a result of which a locomotive of a freight train derailed,” Alexander Bogomaz said on Telegram, adding that there were no casualties reported.

Local authorities said the train was transporting fuel and building materials. Images shared on social media showed several tank carriages laying on their side and smoke rising into the air.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack, which happened less than 40 miles from the border with Ukraine.

There has been an increase in rail incidents in Russia in the 14 months since Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The authorities in Russia have arrested at least 66 Russians on suspicion of railway sabotage since last autumn, according to the independent Russian website Mediazona.

Separately, the governor of Russia’s Leningrad region near St Petersburg said a power line had been blown up overnight and an explosive device found near a second line.

-via The Guardian

~

The Ukrainian military says it is locked in a “positional struggle” as fierce fighting continues to rage in Bakhmut, adding it has been able to push back Russian forces after a series of counterattacks.

“I can definitely confirm the information that the enemy in Bakhmut left some positions after some of our counterattacks,” Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokesperson for the Eastern Grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told a national broadcaster.

“There is a positional struggle there,” Cherevatyi said, explaining that the frontline was constantly shifting. “Sometimes the enemy has some success after a powerful artillery strike and the destruction of infrastructure, and they can move forward. But we counterattack and often win back our positions after inflicting fire on the enemy.” Cherevatyi added that for all its efforts, Russia still had not been able to “completely” capture Bakhmut.

The spokesperson went on to say that although the Russian military’s airborne units had reinforced positions in Bakhmut, Wagner forces continued to be the ones carrying out the assaults.

“However, due to heavy losses, they have been reinforced by airborne units. In addition, in an effort to capture Bakhmut completely, we also note that the enemy is also using snipers from special units and even special services (counterterrorism, for instance) to hit our positions as much as possible," he said.

Cherevatyi said Russian forces were having to be more mindful of their use of artillery shells and rockets, but rejected claims by Wagner founder and financier Yevgeny Prigozhin that his fighters were being starved of ammunition.

“They have been given a general norm of shells, just like other units of the aggressor,” he said. “Over the past 24 hours, the enemy has fired 304 times at the Lyman-Kupiansk direction with various artillery systems. However, of course, if we take the summer of 2022, they could use an unlimited amount of ammunition along the entire front line non-stop. Now they no longer have this luxury.”

“What Prigozhin is talking about is that they are used to having a lot of ammunition. Now they are forced to limit themselves,” he added.

Cherevatyi concluded by defending Ukraine’s strategy for the region, stating that "the enemy has not been able to take Bakhmut for nine months."

“Thus, we are conducting a successful defense operation and are achieving our main goal: destroying the enemy's military potential, personnel, and equipment to the maximum extent possible," he said. "In particular, Wagner is close to being completely destroyed."

-via CNN

~

Four civilians died as a result of Ukrainian shelling on a village just over the border in Russia's Bryansk region on Saturday evening, a local governor said.

"Four civilians have been killed," Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on the Telegram messaging app. Two other citizens were being treated in hospital, Bogomaz said.

Bogomaz earlier said that one residential building had been completely destroyed and two other houses partially destroyed.

Bogomaz blamed the incident on "Ukrainian nationalists". Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia and on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the 14-month-old Russian invasion on Ukraine.

"Work is continuing at the site of the incident to remove rubble and clear the area," Bogomaz said. "A state of emergency has been introduced in the village."

Russia's Bryansk region borders Ukraine. The village of Suzemka, where the incident occurred, is around 10 kms (6.2 miles) from the border.

-via Reuters

[follow-up-news]

Russian forces unleashed a nighttime barrage of more than 50 cruise missiles and explosive drones at Ukraine’s power grid Wednesday, targeting a wide area in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “massive” attack on the day the country celebrates the defeat of Nazism in World War II. The bombardment blasted targets in seven Ukrainian regions, including the Kyiv area and parts of the south and west, damaging homes and the country’s rail network, authorities said. Three people, including an 8-year-old girl, were injured, according to officials. Russia has repeatedly pounded Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during the war that is stretching into its third year and has claimed thousands of lives. By taking out the power, the Kremlin’s forces aim to rob Ukrainian manufacturing of its energy supply, especially military plants, and crush public morale. Russian attacks have damaged nearly half of Ukraine’s power infrastructure since the start of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, officials say.

[spiritualdirections]

Religious leaders have condemned the Russian attacks on Ukraine's power grid as a war crime. International rules of war try to encourage the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and to limit military targets to combatants. Attacking the power grid in the middle of winter does not serve a military purpose, but is meant to terrorize the civilians, and hence is a violation of the rules of war.

Statement of religious leaders regarding Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid

March 24, 2024

“For you Lord, give light to my lamp, my God brightens my darkness.” [Psalm 18, 29]

"On the night of March 22, Russia launched its largest attack against Ukraine’s energy system, deploying over 60 kamikaze drones and almost 90 missiles. Dozens of power facilities were damaged, including thermal and hydroelectric power stations, high-voltage networks, and regional energy grids.

"Millions of civilians across the Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Khmelnytskyi, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv regions now face massive power outages and crippling energy shortages, endangering the most vulnerable and threatening all life-support systems. Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, is particularly stricken as Russian attacks targeted its main energy facilities, leaving residents without electricity, heat, and hot water on a night when temperatures will plummet below freezing.

"We, leaders of religious organizations in the United States, condemn these Russian attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure as war crimes. We beseech the religious leaders of Russia, especially Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, to stop supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to urge President Putin to halt terror attacks aimed at innocent civilians. We likewise urge our government and civic authorities to utilize all available just means to protect Ukraine and its people from this brutal aggression."

[beardedmrbean]

An attack before dawn Monday damaged a bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea that is a key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine, forcing the span's temporary closure for a second time in less than a year. Two people were killed and their daughter was injured.

Vehicle traffic on the Kerch Bridge came to a standstill, while rail traffic across the 19-kilometer (12-mile) span also was halted for about six hours.

The strike was carried out by two Ukrainian maritime drones, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said.

Ukrainian officials were coy about taking responsibility, as they have been in past strikes. But in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment, Ukrainian Security Service spokesman Artem Degtyarenko said in a statement that his agency would reveal details of how the “bang” was organized after Kyiv has won the war.

The bridge previously was attacked in October, when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repair. Moscow decried that assault as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, targeting the country's power grid over the winter.

In Monday's blast, the Ukrainian news portal RBK-Ukraina cited a security services source as saying it was carried out by what it called floating drones. A deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, later said on the Telegram messaging service that “today, the Crimea bridge was torn apart by sea drones,” but it was not clear if he was making an official confirmation or referring to earlier reports.

Hours after the attack, video from Russian authorities showed crews picking up debris from the deck of the bridge, a section of which appeared to be sloping to one side, and a damaged black sedan with its passenger door open.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said authorities were inspecting the damage before determining how long it will take to repair.

The Kerch Bridge is a conspicuous symbol of Moscow's claims on Crimea and an essential land link to the peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge is the longest in Europe and is crucial for Russia's military operations in southern Ukraine in the nearly 17-month-old war.

Russia has expanded its military forces in Crimea since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Occasional sabotage and other attacks against the Russian military and other facilities on the peninsula have occurred since, with the Kremlin blaming Ukraine.

Those attacks and acts of sabotage haven't discouraged Russians from spending their holidays in Crimea, and as car traffic on the bridge came to a halt, long lines formed at a ferry crossing the Kerch Strait, Russian media reported.

Traffic jams also clogged a highway in the Russian-held part of the Kherson region after Moscow-appointed authorities in Crimea redirected motorists to take the land route to Russia, through the partially occupied regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The bridge attack comes as Ukrainian forces are pressing a counteroffensive in several sections of the front line. It also happened hours before Russia announced, as expected, that it is halting a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that allows the export of Ukrainian grain during the war.

Russian media identified the dead as Alexei and Natalia Kulik, who were traveling to Crimea for a summer vacation. The 40-year-old Kulik was a truck driver and his 36-year-old wife was a municipal education worker. Their 14-year-old daughter suffered chest and brain injuries.

Kyiv didn’t initially acknowledge responsibility for October’s bridge attack either, but Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar acknowledged earlier this month that Ukraine struck it to derail Russian logistics.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, returned to that theme Monday, calling the Ukrainian government a “terrorist organization.”

"We must blow up their houses and houses of their relatives, search and eliminate their accomplices,” he said.

Russian authorities said the attack didn't affect the bridge's piers but damaged the deck on one of two road links. The damage appeared less serious than in October's attack.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence department, declined to comment but said: “The peninsula is used by the Russians as a large logistical hub for moving forces and assets deep into the territory of Ukraine. Of course, any logistical problems are additional complications for the occupiers.”

The Security Service of Ukraine posted a redacted version of a popular lullaby, tweaked to say that the bridge “went to sleep again.”

[opedguy]

Russian Air Strikes Hit Ukraine

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Jan. 1, 2023.--Giving his New Year’s greeting, 44-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told his people that he wished for “victory” in 2023, a new cliché while he watched Russian air strikes decimate Ukraine’s electrical grid.  So, for Zelensky, and his benefactor 80-year-old President Joe Biden, the taste of “victory” is watching Ukraine bombed into the Stone Age, with Kiev hoping to get bailed out by U.S. Patriot Missiles.  Whatever Patriot Missiles do for Ukraine, they won’t stop 70-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin from prosecuting the most wasteful, unnecessary war in modern history.  Zelensky decided early on, back in March, that with U.S. cash-and-weapons, he would take on the Russian Federation.  Putin offered to end the Feb. 24 invasion if Zelensky recognized the independence of Russian-speaking Peoples Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

Zelensky and his closest advisers believed, including Ukraine’s 40-year-old Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, that they could defeat the Russian Federation.  All they needed was more U.S. and NATO weapons to accomplish their goal.  But instead of defeating the Russian Federation, Zelensky has destroyed his own country by continuing to engage the Kremlin in a senseless war.  Kuleba said recently he was open to a U.N. peace summit in Ukraine but only after he received Patriot Missiles.   Kuleba praised 73-year-old U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for having the integrity to recognize Kiev’s 10-point peace plan.  Kiev’s peace plan requires Russia to be prosecuted in the Hague’s International Criminal Court for war crimes.  Guterres told Zelensky that he would not participate in any “peace summit” unless Russia was on an equal footing.in a neutral peace setting.

Kuleba calls Russia’s air assault on Ukraine’s infrastructure “senseless barbarism,” finding nothing wrong with continuing the war, boasting daily of killing endless numbers of Russian “occupiers.” Kiev’s 51-year-old Mayor Vitali Kitschko warned residents to stock up on water and blankets because he couldn’t guarantee how long the electricity could last with damage to Kiev’s electrical grid.  Other Ukrainian cities face the same hardship of damage to essential infrastructure. Russia’s current war strategy to bring Zelensky to the peace table.  Instead of recognizing the war’s hardship on ordinary citizens, Zelensky continues to prosecute his war strategy of killing Russian soldiers and reclaiming lost sovereign territory.  Zelensky and Kuleba have said they won’t stop the war until every Russian soldier leaves Ukraine.  Before the Feb. 24 invasion, Russia had troops in Donetsk and Luhansk and in Crimea.

Zelensky and Kuleba show no signs of wanting a negotiate peace without Russian leaving every inch of Russian territory.  Biden must figure out how long he wants to subsidize the Ukraine War, without telling Kiev that the war must move from the battlefield to the peace table. “There can be no neutrality in the face of such mass war crimes.  Pretending to be ‘neutral’ equals taking Russia’s side,” Kuleba tweeted.  Ukraine’s military claims it shoots down a high percentage of Russian drones and missiles yet Kiev authorities claim that much of the county’s infrastructure has been destroyed. “Russia is trying to deprive Ukrainians of light before the New Year,” said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, acknowledging Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power facilities.  Lviv’s Mayor Adriy Sadovyi said 90% of his city’s electricity has been damaged by Russian attacks.

In the port city of Odesa, regional Gov. Maksym Marchencko said most of the city has been without power, attesting to how Russia air strikes have disabled key infrastructure.  Yet to Zelensky and Kuleba the war must go on until every Russian soldier has been driven from Ukrainian lands.  French President Emmanuel Macron, 44, sees the daily destruction of Ukraine and wants the war to end.  Kuleba says there’s no “neutrality” in the war, accusing anyone that wants a peace settlement as a Russian sympathizer.  Kiev’s officials don’t see how keeping the war going only hurts Ukraine’s chances of an eventually rebuilding, something that would take decades to reverse all the current destruction. Putin has told Kiev that he’s ready to negotiate just not on Ukraine’s terms but on neutral peacemakers.  Zelensky and Kuleba still think they’re heading to “victory” in 2023.

Biden must play a key role in deciding to end the conflict with the Russian Federation.  As it stands now, he’s given Zelensky a blank check to fight the Kremlin, resulting in the destruction of Ukraine’s fragile infrastructure, leaving most big cities without any power or water.  Kuleba says he wants a U.N.-brokered peace summit but won’t concede anything to Russia until Moscow is prosecuted for war crimes, leaves Ukrainian territory and pays Kiev reparations for damage during the 11 months of war.  Kuleba has been told by U.N. officials that they can’t broker any peace summit unless both sides are on an equal footing.  Zelensky and Kuleba want to use the U.N. to push their 10-point peace plan, requiring Russian prosecution in the Hague.  Putin has given Kiev clear conditions for ending the conflict, recognizing the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and sovereignty over Crimea.

About the Author    

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[tomorrowusa]

This may be the latest fad for far right domestic terrorists and their allies: destroying America’s electrical power grid. 

The U.S. power grid is suffering a decade-high surge in attacks as extremists, vandals and cyber criminals increasingly take aim at the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Physical and computerized assaults on the equipment that delivers electricity are at their highest level since at least 2012, including 101 reported this year through the end of August, according to federal records examined by POLITICO. The previous peak was the 97 incidents recorded for all of 2021.

Incidents are way up this year even though official stats currently don’t yet include the period after August of 2022.

And I don’t think those 101 attacks through August cover cyber attacks.

It seems these increased attacks coincide with the rise of the MAGA movement in 2016.

Overall, the past three years have been the most active for reported attacks on the grid in the past decade, after the incidents had dipped to a low of 42 in 2015.

[ ... ]

And signs exist that the grid is becoming a target for at least some domestic extremists. In February, three white supremacists pleaded guilty to a plot to shut down parts of the nation’s power system to sow unrest and cause a “race war.” Four neo-Nazis in North Carolina were charged last year with a similar conspiracy in which authorities said they aimed to take down a critical substation with guns and explosives.

Knocking out power in Ukraine has been a tactic of Trump’s old buddy Vladimir Putin.

Russia carries out more mass strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure

It seems that damaging the power grid is a favorite stratagem of unhinged autocrats and their fans.

In the meantime, keep an eye on local substations and power transmission lines. If you notice suspicious people with guns loitering in such areas then it might be a good idea to contact law enforcement.

[argus-news]

Russia's Biggest Attacks Yet

Three people were killed when an apartment block was hit in central Kryvyi Rih and another died in shelling in Kherson in the south, they said.

Russia fired more than 70 missiles at Ukraine on Friday in one of its biggest attacks since the start of the war, knocking out power in the second-biggest city and forcing Kyiv to implement emergency blackouts nationwide, Ukrainian officials said.

Three people were killed when an apartment block was hit in central Kryvyi Rih and another died in shelling in Kherson in the south, they said. Russian-installed officials in occupied eastern Ukraine said 12 people had died by Ukrainian shelling.

In an evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia still had enough missiles for several more massive strikes and he again urged western allies to supply Kyiv with more and better air defence systems.

Zelensky said Ukraine was strong enough to bounce back. "Whatever the rocket worshippers from Moscow are counting on, it still won't change the balance of power in this war," he said.

Kyiv warned on Thursday that Moscow planned a new all-out offensive early next year, around a year after its Feb. 24 invasion, in which wide areas of Ukraine have been shattered by missiles and artillery but little of it taken by Russian forces.

Russia has rained missiles on Ukrainian energy infrastructure almost weekly since early October after several battlefield defeats, but Friday's attack seemed to inflict more damage than many others, with snow and ice now widespread.

After some repairs, Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo lifted a state of emergency that forced it to impose blackouts. But Ukrenergo also warned that more time would be needed to repair equipment and restore electricity than in previous bombardments.

Russia flew warplanes near Ukraine to try to distract its air defences, Ukraine's air force said. Its army chief said 60 of 76 Russian missiles had been shot down but Energy Minister German Galushchenko said at least nine power-generating facilities had been hit.Read More On..

[mariacallous]

Russia’s renewed and much broader assault on Ukraine’s energy sector this spring, which has now destroyed roughly half of the country’s electricity generation capacity, represents an explosive blow to Kyiv’s resilience, civilian morale, and industrial production. What’s worse, the ongoing Russian attacks on the vulnerable energy system offer few prospects of a quick fix that could right the situation before Ukraine enters its third winter of the war.

Since early this year, Russia has set out to finish the job it failed to complete in early 2023—the destruction of Ukraine’s civilian energy sector, especially the power plants that provide light and heat for millions of Ukrainians.

Beginning in March, Russia has specifically targeted Ukraine’s biggest power plants in six massive waves of missile and drone strikes, wiping out about 9 gigawatts of electricity generation, or half the country’s total. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a reconstruction conference in Berlin on Tuesday that Russian strikes have wiped out 80 percent of Ukraine’s big coal- and gas-fired power plants and one-third of its hydroelectric facilities.

Especially as a result of the last two big attacks, in early May and early June, Ukraine has had to ration electricity for industrial and residential consumers, leaving many with power for only short periods of time; some cities, such as Kharkiv, on the country’s eastern front line are virtually powerless. Russia’s assaults, which the U.K. ambassador to the United Nations has argued are in part an attempt to terrorize civilians, are even a subject for the U.N. Security Council.

As bad as Russia’s attacks have been so far, they could get worse. Russia has already hit some of Ukraine’s natural gas storage facilities—underground bunkers that are used to store fuel both for domestic needs and to backstop European consumption. Further Russian strikes there could expand the pain of energy attacks beyond Ukraine’s borders, right at a time when Europe is scrambling to find a solution for gas transit flows across Ukraine into landlocked Eastern European countries, especially Austria. 

The other big worry is that Russia, after having already destroyed Ukraine’s main sources of baseload power generation, will finally knock its remaining three nuclear power plants off the grid. (Russia has since the early days of the war occupied Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, using it as a shield for its occupation of south-central Ukraine, but the station—Europe’s largest nuclear facility—is in shutdown and not generating power.)

“It sounds mad to attack the nuclear power stations, but Russia could hit the transformers near the nuclear plants. If they did this, the power system will lose its unity, and the country will be split into different energy islands, some with spotty power and some entirely without,” said Andrian Prokip, an energy expert at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute in Kyiv.

The undeniable success of this year’s Russian assault is a sharp contrast to its ultimately failed bid in the first winter of the war to freeze Ukraine into submission. Russia has thrown more ordnance at more vulnerable targets this time around, leading to longer-lasting damage that will be far costlier to repair. Only after the big strikes in early May did Ukraine have to start rationing power to residential and industrial consumers. There is concern among big industry, such as the country’s once-vaunted steel and iron industry, that the power outages could kneecap what appeared to be a miraculous wartime recovery of industrial output.

“The difference is that before they mainly targeted transmission lines and substations and now they are destroying power generation plants,” said Slawomir Matuszak, a Ukraine specialist at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. “The previous attacks were relatively easy to recover from—a question of days or weeks. But you’re looking at one to two years now for a real rebuild, if that even makes sense, because they can simply be attacked again.”

For Ukraine’s leaders, the renewed Russian strikes pose a threat to the country’s already strained ability to sustain years of unremitting bombing assaults, social and economic disruption, and the increased mobilization of service members. The new campaign has redoubled Ukraine’s desperation to bolster its air defenses in order to protect what’s left of its energy system. 

“Russia’s goal hasn’t changed—they seek to destroy our energy system and use it as a weapon against our citizens,” said Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who leads the pro-European party Holos and who described the constant disruptions to daily life from the power outages that come atop Russia’s ceaseless use of stand-off weapons to batter civilian residences across the country, including her own. (Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia had launched 135 glide bombs in just the last day.)

“So we are saying, get us the F-16s, get us the Mirages, get us to this luxury point where we can go to bed and know that we will wake up in the morning,” Rudik said, referring to U.S.- and French-made fighter jets. “In Ukraine, we do not have this luxury.”

The increased pace of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure has also injected fresh urgency into the question of how and when to leverage Moscow’s frozen assets for Ukraine’s assistance. U.S. and European leaders are working on a plan to turn the proceeds of frozen Russian cash into a large loan for Ukraine. For those on the receiving end of Russian attacks, even discussions such as those at the reconstruction conference in Berlin seem too focused on rebuilding Ukraine after the war, rather than reinforcing Ukrainians’ will to resist now.

“We need the money now,” Rudik said. “We have a simple task before us: to survive the summer and get through the winter somehow.”

Some Western countries are heeding Ukraine’s pleas for more air defense, which could help protect both cities and critical infrastructure from Russian attacks, especially after the devastation unleashed in the May and June strikes. Germany is now mulling the dispatch of a fourth Patriot air defense battery, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz urging allies to do more; Italy is preparing to send more air defense systems of its own, while even recalcitrant countries such as Spain are sending more air defense ammunition. Late last week, the Biden administration included more air defense missiles in its latest aid package for Ukraine.

Getting more air defense is a necessary but hardly sufficient condition to begin rebuilding Ukraine’s battered electricity sector. Even at big plants that had an air defense umbrella, such as Kyiv’s critical Trypilla generating station, Ukrainian forces simply ran out of ammo under Russia’s big assault in April; the plant was demolished. But even with better air defenses, energy experts doubt more than 2 to 3 gigawatts of power generation capacity could be rebuilt before winter. That would still leave a big shortfall in power generation, not to mention the ongoing damage to combined heat-and-power plants that provide central heating during Ukraine’s brutal winters.

One short-term, but expensive, fix would be to rely on more electricity imports from Europe. Just before this year’s Russian assault began, Ukraine was actually exporting excess electricity production to Europe—but that was soon reversed. Today, Ukraine can import about 1.7 gigawatts of electricity from Europe and in a pinch can even get more than 2 gigawatts of power. The problem is that imported electricity is more expensive than the subsidized power Ukraine generated at home, exacerbating the country’s already strained finances. 

The other solution, long broached in Ukraine, is to build more small, decentralized power plants, including small gas-fired turbines and renewable sources such as solar and wind power. The push for more renewables has actually increased during the war, and especially in the wake of this spring’s Russian onslaught, as Ukraine seeks new sources of power generation. 

On Tuesday, members of the G-7+ Energy Coordination Group and Ukraine’s government outlined plans to make the electricity sector more resilient, including through more distributed generation. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday at the Berlin conference that Brussels is raising money for urgent power sector repairs as well as a host of small-scale generators. “The aim is to help decentralize the power system and thus increase resilience,” she said.

The biggest advantage of replacing hulking, centralized power plants with a lot of smaller, widely scattered sources of power is that they are a lot harder to blow up with scarce Russian missiles.

“If you have sources of microgeneration, and lots of them, then Russia will not have enough missiles to hit all of them, even if they knew where they were,” Prokip said. “So distributed generation is the right way to go, but the government didn’t take enough steps to do this when it could.”

[darkmaga-returns]

In a huge and surprise development, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has specified and verbalized what could be a first concrete step toward ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

He told journalists in Kiev this week that both sides should mutually agree on halting all aerial attacks on energy targets and cargo ships, and that this could pave the way for negotiations to end the war.

"We saw during the first (peace) summit that there could be a decision on energy security," he explained to reporters. "In other words—we do not attack their energy infrastructures; they don't attack ours. Could this lead to the end of the war's hot phase? I think so."

This marks a first such known overture of this nature, and comes at a crucial moment that the Ukrainian population is bracing for a harsh winter, given especially the rolling blackouts, frequent emergency power outages, and severely damaged power grid.

The last year of war has seen Russian aerial attacks primarily focus on degrading Ukraine's power infrastructure, including knocking offline key thermal power plants, which has resulted in some 60% of Ukraine's power generation being disabled.

This has left the war-ravaged country primarily reliant on nuclear power and imports from European partners.

On the other side of the battle lines, the last several months have seen Russian oil and energy facilities, as well as some military bases and ammo storage depots, get hammered by cross-border drone attacks from Ukraine.

Russia's defense ministry has been reporting almost nightly drone intercepts over Russian territory. Large fires at oil depots in Russia's southern oblasts have now become a monthly reality.

It seems Ukraine may have been engaged in such risky escalations of these cross-border strikes precisely to build leverage at a future negotiating table. But it remains that Russia's vast energy infrastructure has barely been dented, and the situation inside Russia is far from desperate, especially compared to Ukraine's crisis.

As FT wrote, "If Moscow and Kyiv agreed to end strikes on their respective energy infrastructures, it would be a significant step towards de-escalating the conflict, Zelenskyy said in reference to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries."

[andrewtheprophet]

Nuclear Plant in Trouble in Ukraine: Jeremiah 12

Russian attack damages critical power line to Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant After a massive attack involving 83 drones, Russian forces left the Zaporizhzhia plant on the verge of a blackout, with only one power line linking it to Ukraine’s grid. Russian forces have damaged one of the high-voltage lines powering the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant during the latest attack on Ukraine,…

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up January 2, 2023

Under the cut:

In a targeted attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Russian forces launched a mass strike using Iranian-made Shahed-131/136 kamikaze drones overnight on Jan. 2. Ukraine’s air defense successfully shot down all 39 of the attacking drones. In addition, two Orlan-10  reconnaissance drones and an X-59 guided missile were also downed.

Forty percent of territories occupied after Feb. 24 — when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine — were liberated over the past year, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, said Monday.

Russia acknowledged that dozens of its troops were killed in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes, angering Russian nationalists, including lawmakers, and drawing demands for commanders to be punished for housing soldiers alongside an ammunition dump. In a rare disclosure, Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers had died on New Year's Eve in the fiery blast which destroyed a temporary barracks in a former vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military said the number of Russian servicemen killed in Makiivka, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, is “being clarified.” In its latest operational update Monday, the military's General Staff reported that “up to 10 units of enemy military equipment of various types were destroyed and damaged in the area." Earlier, the Ukrainian military claimed that around 400 Russian soldiers were killed and a further 300 were wounded, without directly acknowledging a role. CNN cannot independently confirm those numbers or the weapons used in the strike.

Russia continues to focus its main efforts on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, firing 224 times in this direction over the past 24 hours, according to the spokesperson for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhii Cherevatyi.

A video from Vice News shows the destruction of Bakhmut. "Bakhmut has become a bloody vortex at the center of Ukraine's fight against invading Russian forces. With thousands dead after months of constant Russian attacks, the city is barely standing. VICE News spent two weeks inside the city embedded with soldiers, civilians and frontline workers trying to survive in the face of ceaseless violence." (Warning for graphic content.)

“In a targeted attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Russian forces launched a mass strike using Iranian-made Shahed-131/136 kamikaze drones overnight on Jan. 2.

Ukraine’s air defense successfully shot down all 39 of the attacking drones. In addition, two Orlan-10  reconnaissance drones and an X-59 guided missile were also downed.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that 40 drones were headed for Ukraine’s capital overnight — 22 were neutralized over Kyiv, while three were shot down in the surrounding region and 15 in neighboring provinces.

Still, the attack caused disruptions to the supply of electricity in Kyiv and central Ukraine. According to the state grid operator Ukrenergo, emergency power outages have been introduced as restoration efforts continue.

This drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was just the latest in a series of relentless strikes by Russian forces.

On New Year’s Eve, Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles and then launched drones after midnight. The barrage resulted in two civilian deaths in Kyiv, as a 46-year-old man injured during Dec. 31 attack on Kyiv died in the hospital on Jan. 2, Klitschko said.

Last week, Russia launched a nationwide attack on Ukraine on Dec. 29, targeting multiple regions across the country. The coordinated strike included missile attacks on civilian areas in the center, south, east, and west of Ukraine, resulting in the deaths of at least three people and injuries to more than 30.

Russian troops have repeatedly attacked energy infrastructure across Ukraine since early October, killing dozens of people and causing electricity, water, and heating cut-offs.

Moscow has admitted that Ukraine’s energy system is one of its primary targets. According to the Geneva Conventions, attacking vital public infrastructure constitutes a war crime.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously indicated that Russia will continue launching mass attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”-via Kyiv Independent

~

“Forty percent of territories occupied after Feb. 24 — when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine — were liberated over the past year, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, said Monday.

“The Armed Forces liberated 40 percent of the territories occupied during the full-scale invasion and 28 percent of all territories occupied by Russia since 2014,” he reported in a round-up post of 2022 on the Telegram app.

The current frontline is 1,500 km long, the general said.

According to Zaluzhny, Ukrainian Armed Forces have undergone military training in the territory of 17 European countries.

“Thanks to international partners it was possible to train more than 20,000 soldiers,” he said. “In 2022, more than 600,000 people were evacuated from the areas of hostilities and more than 2 million tonnes of humanitarian goods were brought in.””-via CNN

~

“Russia acknowledged that dozens of its troops were killed in one of the Ukraine war's deadliest strikes, angering Russian nationalists, including lawmakers, and drawing demands for commanders to be punished for housing soldiers alongside an ammunition dump.

In a rare disclosure, Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers had died on New Year's Eve in the fiery blast which destroyed a temporary barracks in a former vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

Four rockets fired from U.S.-made HIMARS launchers hit the site, the defence ministry said. It said two rockets had been shot down. Ukraine said the Russian death toll was in the hundreds, though pro-Russian officials called this an exaggeration.

Russian military bloggers said the huge destruction was a result of storing ammunition in the same building as a barracks, despite commanders knowing it was within range of Ukrainian rockets.

Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not address the Makiivka strike in his nightly speech on Monday.

But the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces on Monday reported the Makiivka attack as "a strike on Russian manpower and military equipment". It did not mention casualties, but said 10 pieces of military equipment were destroyed.”

-via Reuters

“The Ukrainian military said the number of Russian servicemen killed in Makiivka, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, is “being clarified.”

In its latest operational update Monday, the military's General Staff reported that “up to 10 units of enemy military equipment of various types were destroyed and damaged in the area."

Earlier, the Ukrainian military claimed that around 400 Russian soldiers were killed and a further 300 were wounded, without directly acknowledging a role. CNN cannot independently confirm those numbers or the weapons used in the strike.

The Russian Ministry of Defense on Monday acknowledged the attack and claimed that “63 Russian servicemen” died.

According to both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts, the strike took place just after midnight on Sunday, New Year’s Day, on a vocational school housing Russian conscripts in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine shot down 27 Russian-launched Shahed-136 drones targeting civilian infrastructure on Monday, the General Staff said.

“The enemy, losing a lot of manpower, continues to focus on conducting offensive actions in the Bakhmut direction and is trying to improve the tactical situation in the Kupyansk and Avdiivka direction,” the update noted.

“In the Kherson direction, the enemy continues shelling the settlements along the right bank of the Dnipro River. In particular, civilian infrastructure of Kherson, Antonivka and Beryslav suffered from artillery shelling. There are wounded among the civilian population,” the General Staff said.”

-via CNN

~

“Russia continues to focus its main efforts on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, firing 224 times in this direction over the past 24 hours, according to the spokesperson for the Eastern Group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhii Cherevatyi.

“There were 34 fights and one air strike. The enemy lost 213 people killed and 87 wounded there,” Cherevatyi said of the situation in Bakhmut on Ukrainian television on Monday.

“In other directions, such as Kupyansk, Lyman and Avdiivka, it [Russian forces] tried to improve its tactical position, also conducted counter-offensive actions, for example, in the area of Stelmakhivka and Bilohorivka in the Lyman direction. However, in all these directions it failed to achieve its goal, failed to break through our defense and suffered losses,” according to Cherevatyi. Cherevatyi said Russia is currently using 20 thousand shells a day on smaller sections of the front “for example, in Bakhmut or Avdiivka, partially in the Lyman and Kupyansk directions”.

“Before, they could afford to shell our military all over the front - 60 thousand shells per day,” he said.

Cherevatyi reasoned that Russian forces are focusing on specific areas because “they did not count on such a long war, and therefore on such a dynamics of ammunition consumption, which, in fact, is equal to the World War II. Even their seemingly endless ammunition is beginning to run out.””-via CNN

~

CONTENT WARNING: Graphic Content. It’s a war zone. 

"Bakhmut has become a bloody vortex at the center of Ukraine's fight against invading Russian forces. With thousands dead after months of constant Russian attacks, the city is barely standing. VICE News spent two weeks inside the city embedded with soldiers, civilians and frontline workers trying to survive in the face of ceaseless violence."