Russia has just stepped up its electricity war, via making its biggest use of ballistic missiles in a single night of strikes on the electrical grid, focused on thermal power generation and knocking out all of those stations, plunging all of Ukraine’s major cities into darkness. Russia has also just captured the key city of Pokrovsk a critically important logistical hub. Per some accounts, Putin has ordered the cauldron to be closed, reportedly only the second time since the capture of Mariupol. As a matter of practice, Russia has generally instead created big encirclements but left an avenue out. That has worked particularly well in Ukraine give Zelensky’s predictable orders to hold territory at all cost. Ukraine keeps feeding men and material into a Russian maw.
Pokvrosk has fallen .🇧🇬https://t.co/IqV9Sdknoh
— Sol Feiz (@Feiozol) November 7, 2025
See History Legends from a few days ago for more on the fall of Pokrovsk. Last week, Simplicius gave an overview of the battlefront decay:
The most revealing fact about Russia’s sudden breakthroughs on every front is that these do not appear to be coming at the expense of major mechanized assaults with huge losses as some of Russia’s previous official ‘offensives’ had done. Sure, there have been a string of mechanized assaults we’ve covered in the past couple weeks, but these have mostly come at secondary fronts; for instance, western Zaporozhye, around Orekhove, in Shakhove, north of Pokrovsk, etc.
The main fronts discussed earlier all seem to be collapsing to the same old trickle and ‘thousand cuts’ tactics. Most importantly what this means is that Russia does not appear to be paying an exorbitant cost in casualties and equipment for these recent successes, other than expendables like bikes, civilian cars, bukhankas, etc.
If this is truly the case, this bodes extremely badly for the AFU. It would mean a point of no return has been reached where Russia no longer has to expend outsize resources for these accumulating breakthroughs, which means they will only continue unabated.
We don’t know for certain if this is the case; for instance, the fact that this sudden collapse of the AFU has corresponded precisely to the advent of rasputitsa and other inclement winter-like conditions could mean this has more to do with Russia’s recent surge. But as I’ve stated many times before, Russia has always had its biggest campaigns during the winter, wherein the Bakhmut and Avdeevka operations were carried out.
However, Russia’s trump card has been and remains its ability to destroy or cripple Ukraine’s power supplies. The start of Dima’s video shows the day after impact of the latest electricity attacks….which in a lot of cases will extend beyond that:
The Guardian has a day-later account trying to put a brave face on the power system strikes:
Power will be cut for between eight and 16 hours across most regions of Ukraine on Sunday, state transmission system operator Ukrenergo has said, after Russian attacks targeting energy infrastructure reduced the country’s generating capacity to “zero”….
Ukrenergo has said repairs were carried out and energy sourcing diverted.
While the situation had somewhat stabilised, regions including Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Chernihiv and Sumy could continue to experience regular power cuts, Ukraine’s energy minister said on Saturday night…
Experts have said the strikes on energy infrastructure put Ukraine at risk of heating outages before winter. Russia has targeted the power and heating grid throughout its almost four-year invasion, destroying a large part of the key civilian infrastructure.
This weekend’s attack was the ninth massive attack on gas infrastructure since early October, Ukraine’s energy company Naftogaz said.
Kyiv’s School of Economics estimated in a report that the attacks have shut down half of Ukraine’s natural gas production.
Ukraine’s top energy expert, Oleksandr Kharchenko, told a media briefing Wednesday that if Kyiv’s two power and heating plants went offline for more than three days when temperatures fall below minus 10C, the capital would face a “technological disaster”.
The article did not explain what “technological disaster” would amount to. But our understanding is the municipal water supply depend on electricity both to keep pipes from freezing and for pumping. Knowledgeable readers might also be able to describe the risks to the sewage system.
And Ukraine officials were warning even before this big attack that residents of big cities like Kiev who depend on electric power for heating should make backup plans to decamp to spots with furnaces. From Simpilcius on November 2:
At the same time, Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s power grid have been the most determined they’ve ever been, with many noting ‘unusual’ behavior such as doing double-taps on repair crews and launching giant drone swarms on each facility, rather than simply one or two missiles. Several Ukrainian officials have already called for people to abandon Kiev as they warn it will be without heating for major parts of the coming winter.
Ukraine’s main energy authority Ukrenergo:
These developments suggest a new-found bloody-mindedness on the part of Russia, perhaps reflecting Russia’s recognition that the time is ripe for a decisive push. Another factor may be Trump’s shameless peace theatrics, of embarrassing Putin by calling him and springing the scheme of a “possibly Budapest” summit on the Russians, to which after a short period of regrouping, they agreed, and then going into Emily Litella “Never mind” mode.
But Trump also retraded his earlier commitment, after the Alaska summit, to abandon his “ceasefire first” position. The Russians rejecting that, as they consistently had, was apparently the trigger for Trump scuppering the idea of another summit pronto. In two long interviews, Foreign Minister Lavrov has described how Witkoff came to Moscow for a >3 hour meeting with Putin and set forth a US proposal, which Putin agreed to discuss as the main menu item at the Alaska summit. Putin then in person with Trump went over the Witkoff terms in detail and Trump confirmed that they were indeed acceptable to the US. It is this very own Trump scheme that Trump has now repudiated. This brings the idea of “not agreement capable” to an entirely new level.
Trump also seems to be back to buying Ukraine propaganda intel that Russia’s military and/or economy are gonna fall over soon, yes siree Bob:
TRUMP DROPS C WORD FOR C WORD – Trump has again abandoned immediate CEASEFIRE and now expects CAPITULATION: “Sometimes people have to fight it out a little bit longer” https://t.co/EUoDk7CFp3 pic.twitter.com/KIOWRQN7xz
— Dances_with_Bears (@bears_with) November 7, 2025
Lavrov has ritually said that Russia is still willing to work with the US on the Alaska “understandings”. The kinda-sorta face saver for Trump is that he apparently also represented to Putin that he could make Ukraine to accept this deal. Trump clearly has the means to do so. But he went TACO after press and official hysteria about the mere fact of the summit on US soil, and then meetings with Zelensky and EU officials shortly thereafter. But the message from the US is that it can do what it wants to and the other side should swallow that. So despite making obligatory US friendly-noises, it seems that Putin and others favoring a negotiated settlement can no longer pretend to themselves that there might be a resolution other than Russia imposing a military outcome.
Perhaps things have changed, but Alexander Mercouris reported that Ukraine forces were ordered to move east to Myrnograd, which is rearranging deck chairs on this Titanic and assures their destruction or capture. Even though Western sources are set to minimize it, the capture of Pokrovsk is an inflection point. Russia now has the war for the Donbass in the clean-up phase, even though that will require more expenditure of lives and materiel to complete. Russia could choose to strike West through relatively thinly populated areas to the Dnieper, which would focus a lot of minds. But without knowing the Russia and Ukraine disposition of forces, as we’ll discuss soon, there are reasons for Russia to finish the job in the east and take the last, much less formidable fortified line at Sloviansk and Kramatorsk first.
John Helmer, who has provided far and away the best accounts of the electricity war, confirms that the latest grid salvo reflects a Russian decision to pick up the tempo on this aspect of the war. Helmer’s sources contend that Russia could have ended the war much sooner with a sustained full bore attack on power sources and delivery, but Putin held that back for political reasons. Helmer does not unpack what they are, but we will make a stab at what ones are likely still operative. We’ll see that even with Russia more and more clearly getting the upper hand on the battlefield, that other considerations don’t clearly point all in one direction. We’ll discuss below how despite Russia just having given a stark preview of its ability to bring Ukraine to its knees quickly, Russia still has reasons to keep grinding out the war on the ground.
But first to Helmer on the acceleration of the electricity war:
Over the last three days the General Staff’s electric war strikes have continued to intensify on their targets and extend right across the Ukraine, with local utility companies announcing blackouts from Kharkov in the east to the western regions…
Russian military analysts are well aware and are now reporting that since the electric war campaign first began in October 2022, the number of strikes has been limited in duration, firepower, and damage effected….
But not this time, military sources in Moscow believe.
Some of the sources have claimed the General Staff did not have the capacities to fully implement the electric war in the first two years…
Other sources believe the military resources, logistics pipeline, targeting intelligence, and weapons accuracy and survivability were not as available to the General Staff in October 2022…
One source says that President Vladimir Putin imposed restrictions on the extent and duration of the campaign but gradually he has been persuaded to relax them…
A source in a position to know says the restrictions on the electric war have been political, not military, and for the time being Putin appears to have lifted them.
“I have a tough time believing that the General Staff did not have the intelligence, let alone the weapons accuracy and survivability necessary to prosecute the electric war from the start,” the source comments. “First…Information on the Ukrainian electrical generation, transmission, and distribution network was, and still is, widely available in open source. There is no way that the electrical or civil engineers employed by the General Staff could not know what to target and what firepower was necessary. In terms of weapons, the Russian forces had then, as they do now, stocks of cruise, ballistic, and other air-dropped weapons, not to mention sabotage capabilities, to destroy the critical Ukrainian electrical nodes. There are approximately 35 major Ukrainian substations…Looking at the data provided in these sources, the General Staff have had more than enough ordnance to take them all out. They didn’t. Moving forward from this line of thinking, I am curious to know why Ukrainian electrical laydowns [storage areas] and service vehicles have not been targeted. Are we to assume these could not be seen? This defies rudimentary understanding of enemy logistic and repair capabilities. Quite obviously, the delay to date in achieving the complete collapse of the Ukrainian grid was and is the product of political decision-making, not any lack of capability on the Russian military’s part.”
Let’s go through some of those “political” considerations that still complicate Russia simply turning out the light and heat all over Ukraine:
Not producing a humanitarian crisis. It’s hard to wage war without killing a lot of civilians but Russia has made an earnest attempt so far. The strongest evidence of Russia trying to spare bystanders is that Russia did not take destroy Ukraine internet, television, radio and cell phone facilities as soon as possible. Ukraine has gotten so used to getting easy handling that there was whinging about the loss of Internet services along with the big power outages.
Some of the thorny related problems:
With by some estimates half of the Ukraine population already having left, those that can’t leave (or even get to housing heated by furnace), those who remain will skew to the elderly and infirm. Russia has managed to persuade its economic allies and the Global South that it is keeping to the high ground as much as possible given the givens. That could evaporate rapidly if power outages produce large scale deaths from cold and disease in Ukraine cities.
Is Russia going to be able to provide enough in the way of relief operations quickly enough and on a large enough scale in winter conditions to prevent widespread hardship?
Any of a food, water, or medical supplies crisis in a big Ukraine city could serve as a pretext for sending in troops from EU member states, allegedly to provide relief.
“You broke it, you own it”. It is not clear that the Russian leadership has made a decision on how much of Ukraine, ex the oblasts it deems to be part of Russia, that it will need to occupy or otherwise put under friendlier management. As N/A pointed out:
Also as I've said countless times. These two nations are very well integrated with each other. This isn't Germany or Britain or America. You would see a much more aggressive war against those than on Ukraine or Belarus or countries like that. Moldova as well https://t.co/97T0t8rv8W
— N/A (@xLUHG333) November 8, 2025
I agree with Mark Sleboda’s case as to why Russia controlling all of Ukraine is Russia’s least bad option. But that does not mean Russia officials, who have a much more comprehensive view, will come to that conclusion. But Russian hard-liners favor that outcome, so it will get consideration.
Reality is starting to regime and attitude-change some of Russia’s fierce opponents. Too many European leaders are still determined to Do Something to stop Russia from rolling into Paris. The problem is that even with their limited military means, they could still trigger a hot war, for instance, with their drone and balloon false flags justifying a confrontation, say in the Baltic. Since both the UK and France have nukes, they cannot be completely discounted as powers. Undue belligerence and persistent stupidity could produce very bad outcomes. And the US has not given a firm no to the idea of deploying the nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine either.
But Brussels again nixed seizing Russian frozen assets, since other states are not willing to indemnify its ginormous legal risk. And Slovakia has thrown another spanner, saying it will not back using the funds if they go to war-making.
This row over cash is more central than it might seem, since both Europe and the US both labor under the delusion that if they throw enough money at the problem, weapons can be magicked into existence. But, quelle surprise, they can’t even come up with that! From Euronews:
According to sources close to the discussions there’s growing concern in the Belgian government at the lack of alternative proposals from the European Commission to using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine.
The EU is pushing for a plan to use €140 billion in frozen Russian assets held at Belgian financial repository, Euroclear…
The Commission is looking for ways to maintain Ukraine’s funding stable going into 2026 as the costs associated to the war mount without US support, which has declined since President Donald Trump took office…
“To be frank, we are still waiting for the other options that the European Commission was meant to present, as agreed at the European Council” in October, they [Belgian sources] told Euronews…
“You cannot take the best decision if you don’t have all options with its positive and negative sides”, said the source.
If the plan fails, some options floated in formally include issuing joint debt, bilateral provisions from member states or a short-term bridge loan. Member states privately admit none of them would be as significant or stable as the reparations loan.
But the funding row is intensifying the pressure on European national budgets, where governments are unpopular and falling due to already having made social spending cuts, and it has become all too obvious that supporting Project Ukraine and an open-ended low level war with Russia means even more of the same. How long, for instance, can France effectively have no government as Macron refuses to call Parliamentary elections, which would confirm the popularity of the anti-war left and right?
So since Putin cannot have his long-sought new European security architecture, perhaps a next-best would be a Europe so divided on what to do about Russia so as to be immobilized.
So Russia has finally made clear that it can, quickly and with comparative ease, prostrate all of Ukraine. If anyone in senior positions in Ukraine was still in denial, this demonstration ought to have driven that fact home.
One reason to keep pushing Ukraine to or over the brink is to force the government in Kiev to capitulate. Russia no doubt has a much better handle on the true state of top level cohesiveness than anyone in the chattering classes. But Zelensky may have too many diehard Banderites around him to do anything other than stay his present course or flee with key figures to set up a government in exile.
A possible surgical use of Russia’s electricity war weapon would be to force the surrender of key Ukraine cities. For instance, Russia has yet to capture a city as large as either Dniepro or Zaporzhizhia; it deems the latter to be part of the Russian Federation. Russia could march forces up to the outskirts of one of these cities, and then announce it will deprive them of power unless and until they surrender. It could also have emergency supplies and transport at ready so as to support residents who chose to decamp rather than try to hold out. Russia could hone this approach on these Russia friendly cities, such as Kharkiv, and then if needed keep rolling westward.
Again, this is an overly dynamic situation. Russia still has many, complex choices to make and tradoffs to weigh. But the end game is under way.
I have many years’ experience working in municipal water-wastewater design and operations. Sanitary sewers will not work without water. Think of a sewer system as using water to convey waste to collection and treatment/dispersal sites.
Water systems require pumps to provide water pressure, by either lifting water to an elevated tank or pumping directly into a piping system. Eliminate the water pumps and both the water and sewer systems fail.
Water pipes will freeze, especially where pipes are exposed to cold and the water is not flowing. As water expands when changing to ice, pipes break. The water mains don’t have to break to render the whole system useless. All it takes is some portion of the household water pipes to break and the entire system will not maintain enough pressure to operate. The largest water use a municipal water system will ever have is fire fighting, as was demonstrated in LA last winter. Any fire that breaks out will not have water available for fire suppression.
Tl:dr- no water -> no sanitation -> uncontrollable fires
Yes, water and sewer plants consume ~40% of all urban energy. I’m sure the winter heating consumption of urban energy is also very large. The municipal systems energy usage (water, sewer, heating/cooling) in my small city is over 60% of total public/private power use.
Good luck Kiev.
Also, pipes for central heating (district heating), that those plants provide.
Failure by two opposite but related mechanisms- pipe bursting due to ice and implosion due to vacuum in the pipes.
Ice can clog vacuum relief valves, which causes pipes (or entire water towers!) to implode like a giant beer can as the water below the ice drains away (or steam condenses/thermally contracts) and air can’t get in to break the resulting vacuum.
Probably not what the Guardian was referring to, but indeed a technological disaster: there are reports that due to the strikes on power plants the voltage in Ukrainian grid in many areas fluctuated wildly, reaching 662 volts in Kharkov area.
This alone blew up many smaller transformers, several trams, a lot of home appliances and even several fires started from the domestic wiring burning up.
And yet the Russian media only talks about a “retaliation” strike for Ukrainians targeting the Russian energy system. Nothing more, nothing less.
As a justification, one can view it as special pleading or Israel-like But Russia is still trying to maintain that these energy attacks are proportional.
Amends YS …. yes as it has been said here on NC that the person that can destroy a thingy … controls it. Then it gets very convoluted with present and potential political futures as the US and Anglophone have a bad Dopamine moment.
Heck if this was just an ordinary Geopolitical event post WWII but, its not and contracts are being reorganized at a heady pace. How that effects stocks and flows – ????? – were I was still a betting man.
I think the Ruskies have learned from the communiques issued by Israel and the US and the western press when it comes to punding concreate and flesh to dust in Gaza.
I am reminded of Tolstoy’s account of Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow, where he argues that the Moscow fire was not deliberately set, but was simply the natural consequence of a populated city of that size lacking a fire department (since the firefighters had evacuated along with most of the population).
That account is contested, but I think the key point is valid: modern cities are saved from disaster on an almost-daily basis only by the continuous operation of a variety of essential civic services and infrastructure, the loss of which can have catastrophic consequences.
The recommendation to decamp from big cities and seek shelter in the country or small towns is astonishing. Has anyone run the numbers to see whether this is at all feasible? Is there enough housing to shelter all these people? Will there be enough fuel for ‘traditional heating’ on that scale? How will they all feed themselves? Surely this is not a serious policy option.
That account is contested, but I think the key point is valid: modern cities are saved from disaster on an almost-daily basis only by the continuous operation of a variety of essential civic services and infrastructure, the loss of which can have catastrophic consequences.
just for emphasis, these morans [sic] teaming up with the smart people will be the end of us.
Correction: Dniepro is not (yet) claimed by Russia, altho that can change.
Oh, correct, Dnieprotrosk Obast, duh, not part of the Big Four. Too much talk about it being a potential next object of interest if/when Russia moves to the Dnieper. Will fix.
There must be some politicians in Ukraine who would be more than willing to cut a deal with Russia at this point. Maybe Arestovych, as untrustworthy as he seems? Rather than take the whole of Ukraine and own all the ensuing problems, Russia would be better installing a “friendly” (i.e., puppet) regime in Kiev that can hunt down and terminate the Nazis and keep the Western NGOs out, while the Russians annex the easternmost and southernmost oblasts for the motherland. If drones and missiles are then required to discourage the West from trying to instigate more problems in the rump Ukraine, then they can certainly fly. I also really wonder how attached the rest of Europe is to, NATO member but no longer EU member, the UK. A preemptive strike on the UK destroying its military and intelligence capabilities might be the best way for Russia to warn its other neighbors on the western end of the continent not to FAFO. I’m not sure NATO collective defense articles would get invoked and lead to a larger war if that was done. Cut the weak animal from the herd.
Vladimir Vladimirovich as modern day Alexander Pavlovich, Zelenski (sorry, Macron) as Napoleon reborn, Arestovich as new Talleyrand?
Great survey and assessment of the situation. A lot to consider here, and of course there are no easy answers for Russia. No matter what happens in Ukraine, the empire will not stop its long-term war on Russia
The US looks like it is sacrificing Europe, in a desperate attempt to maintain its dominance. Who would be sacrificed next after Ukraine? Poland, Romania? These are just more pawns in the proverbial chessboard.
As Michael Hudson said from the beginning of the SMO: they are willing to fight until the last Ukrainian (and last Israeli).
Yes, I have heard from several of the analysts mentioned that the Banderite nazi faction would simply kill Zelensky if he does not do as he is told. If he flees, his life would still be in danger, so he might need lots of protection from the puppet-masters. Will they throw him under the bus?
Although the befuddled emperor and the sycophant-stenographer mass media make all sorts of contradictory claims, the US continues to provide weapons, intelligence, logistical support, political support, and financial support, directly or indirectly. There appears to have been a nearly seamless policy between the DT1, Biden and DT2. US (and UK) foreign policy is long term and changes very little. The superficial media distractions and misinformation may change a bit, but the long-term policy continues.
The DT1 regime unilaterally withdrew from the INF treaty. Neither the Biden nor DT2 regimes expressed any interest in new treaty agreements. The DT1 regime escalated the support for Ukraine, and the new regime continues.
As far as the US (puppet?) emperor: some speculate he is compromised and it sure appears that way. We can only speculate if he was serious about ending the Ukraine conflict, especially since in his first term, he escalated. Andrei Martyanov says he voted for him, yet realizes that it was based on lack of choice. He calls DT “a New York real-estate shyster” and that is one of the nicer terms he uses. The combination of possible mental illness, total lack of moral compass, and serial mendacity is not something that engenders confidence or stability. Not to be melodramatic, but it is a wonder we haven’t had a major nuclear war. Thankfully there are some adults and “cool heads” in Russia and China
It occurs to me that the fall of Pokrovsk is tactically the moment to deliver the coup de grace with a big upswing in the electric war. In short, the Russians aren’t more bloody-minded. Ukraine’s government has run out of money, options, and, possibly, support of the citizenry.
I checked the entry at Wikipedia for the Ukrainian railways. These figures concentrate the mind:
Number of locomotives: 1,944
Number of electric locomotives: 1,627
Number of diesel locomotives: 301
Will the idiots running the EU and the US of A notice? (Not if the scandal that just exploded in Torino about Picierno trying to censor Prof. D’Orsi is any indication.)
Yet a collapse of this extent may, may, get some movement toward negotiations. Even Trump, whose idea of military tactics is playing office politics, can understand collapse.
If the Banderites kill Zelensky, they will need a new “Aristocrat fallen on hard times” to go begging from door to door. This is a role Zelensky’s acting skills have proven quite useful for. Or maybe they will be in charge of NATO and won’t need Z anymore.
If my memory serves me well, back when the SMO was heading into its first winter, Putin (or maybe Lavrov), speaking directly to the Ukrainian civilians said something to the tune of “you will be cold, you will be hungry, but you will survive”. This speaks to Russia understanding that personal sacrifice at the Ukrainian civilian level must be kept manageable in order to make the post-SMO occupation/transition feasible.
My black heart has a dark chuckle that, like Ukrainians, there will be many cold and hungry Americans this winter, made this way by the same forces.
Slavic Speliing Police reports for duty! :)
Pokrovsk, not Pokvrosk.
Sorry for double post, no edit option.
The embedded “Pokvrosk tweet” also features the Bulgarian flag instead of Russian one. :)
And the place-names can be challenging: some maps list “Pokrovsk” as “Krasnoarmiisk” or “Krasnoarmeysk”
https://sputnikglobe.com/20251109/russias-special-military-operation-in-ukraine-and-how-it-is-progressing-1105665248.html
Russians have declared all recent changes of names void, and they use older Soviet names, so they call it Krasnoarmeysk (named after Red Army). Same with Mirnograd, and Bakhmut, and other places.
Krasnoarmiisk is ukranianized spelling of Russian/Soviet name, because they have to soil everything they touch (starting from Chicken Kiev). It’s what NATO proxies do.
Real challenge lies in bunch of villages having the same name. :)
We might see in the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk conurbation a tactical approach similar to that described in the paragraph before the last phrase. I believe the Russians are not keen on the destruction of those cities to Bakhmut level (the ground level).
This is needed less and less now. The lack of infantry is really telling for the AFU to the point that the DRG units of the AFRF were entering Pokrovsk and just hunting the drone operators; there was no infantry to stop them roaming around. When they did encounter infantry they has such an amount of massed fires available due to the dearth of hardened defence positions that they could obliterate them and leave the surrounding areas intact.
The conflict is still in a transitional stage of technology as the means of detecting drone operators hasn’t matured at the rate that the drone attack systems have. Frequency-agile transmission coupled with repeating stations using different frequencies makes it harder to find them. Don’t take this as gospel but it seems the AFRF seem to have to find each and every repeater station first and destroy them before they can locate the actual drone operation position. If there are repeater stations well to the rear of the drone operators they may need to push past the drone operator to deal with it. This is why city clearing is such a laborious process for the AFRF. However they’re not just demolishing blocks as they needed to do earlier because the density of defenders is simply not high enough to need it.
Helpful detail. I did notice that Pokrovsk didn’t seem to be in terrible shape based on video clips but had not connected the dots. The repeater station part is fascinating.
Radio repeaters using different frequencies is the default (because of interference). Puting repeater stations well to the rear of the drone operators would defeat the purpose, because of the added obstacles and Earth curvature, unless the position is very high. Repeaters are also put on big(ger) drones, which gives the best vantage point that is also a moving target.
The ebbs and flows notwithstanding, the overall trajectory of the war seems to be a continuation of an intentionally slow war of attrition which was the scenario favoured by many in Russia and their partner, China, from the start of the SMO. To summarize why, as I understand it, this scenario is favoured: maximize destruction of the Ukrainian military, of the Nazi elite, of the Ukrainian state, and of NATO military hardware, weaken NATO states by continuing to force them to spend more and more financial and political capital on the war, and keep the escalation level low enough so as to avoid NATO escalation and to keep the current NATO political elite in power as long as possible so as to maximize their destruction of their own states. The cynicism and ruthlessness does not escape me, but I get the impression that both Russia and China are deathly afraid of the West and the West as perhaps the most ruthless, unrelenting and stubborn empire in history.
I attribute the escalation to Trump having sided with the hardliners.
I think Russia was waiting to see if Trump was serious about ending the war and no he’s not.
He’s back to discussing cease fires and giving more weapons etc.
so I think Russia has finally figured out that they will have to end this on the battlefield as many pundits have predicted.
Given the conditions in Ukraine: winter coming and the ending of gas, water and electricity and the war front’s collapsing, it’s not long before there is a surrender from Ukraine. Where the physical boundaries and other things will be is basically up to Russia.
Russia knew that Trump was not serious (and so did everyone paying attention, like us here), but played the diplomatic game, because that is what diplomats are supposed to do. Once the Russian war machine revs up, it doesn’t stop for the orange man reality TV show, regardless of the ammount of fit that he throws.
The real challenge, it seems to me, is that Trump will need to, assuming he wants to cut a deal, deliver vdL, Starmer, Merz, and Macron’s surrender, and ultimately, NATO’s, not just Zelenski’s. Even if all of Ukraine does get conquered, incidents are practically waiting to happen in the Baltic, or, perhaps around Kaliningrad (I suppose it too is a Baltic port.) So, say, Finland keeps launching “Ukrainian” drones against Murmansk, even if there is no more Ukraine? Or, Estonia openly engages in piracy on international waters? (As the middle of the Baltic cannot be claimed as territorial water by anyone per international treaties, as I understand it.) These countries think that they have NATO’s backing to do whatever they like and as long as clowns like vdL, Starmer, etc are in charge of Europe, they are half right. But the catch is that they think they also own, via NATO, US military power, and some US president should show that US has the right to take our toys home with us if our alleged “allies” are messing with us.
I don’t think Trump is that kind of president: he is, as Mercouris keeps pointing out, too insecure and lacking in confidence on foreign policy matters, regardless of his goals. Heck, that’s been true of too many post World War 2 US foreign policy makers–too many of them have been eager to let foreigners take advantage of their self righteous vanity, from Syngman Rhee to Ahmed Chalabi. (No, I don’t mean to say that they were not nuts to begin with, but foreigners have played bigger role than we tend to give them credit for in States.) Thus, my speculation: to end the whole facade for good, US needs to draw a real line: say, we will have nothing to do with anything east of the Vistula (which, I think, Russians can work with for now), or Russia will have to break NATO by force (or, better yet, NATO will collapse under its own weight.) The second possibility, I think, will work because I dob’t think, in the end, US will risk having, say, Seattle incinerated for sake of Berlin, let alone Vilno, Reval, or Helsinki. But it will set up for a very bad world in the aftermath, though.
A clarification: even if France or Germany falls to political chaos, I don’t see their leaders, whoever they are, wanting to write off the Baltics or Scandanavians. But I see US pulling the rug from under them–like Suez.
@hk what do you think of Lefty godot’s idea above, to strike the military and intelligence capability of the UK. Might the US decide to cut NATO loose then? Or would they be tend to be drawn in by such an action?
How big of a blow would it be to NATO if the intelligence capacity of the UK was compromised?
A house of cards only needs one good push to knock it all over!!
I used to think that Russia ought to make an example of a major but not that important NATO power thst has been particularly obnoxious, so yes, an attack on British military-intel assets would have been exactly that. But then minor NATO powers began acting absurdly brazenly–eg Finland launching “Ukrainian” drone attacks against Russia and Estonians doing the Baltic shnanigans and I began to think a bit differently: UK has not “openly” attacked Russia yet, as in, attack Russia in “British colors,” “from British soil.” It strikes me that, on the other hand, Finland or, especially, Estonia might be dumb enough to openly engage in illegal aggression that would give Russia a justification for a sharp punishment–like Georgia and the shelling of Tsikinvali, except even less legal (at least Georgia could claim sovereignty over South Ossetia.) That would, incidentally, help US draw a line, too: US is not going to get dragged into stupid fights that our alleged allies who don’t contribute anything want to pick with their neighbors.
Back in 2018 there was evidence that Sergei Skripal had continued his activities under UK supervision, but in the Baltics. Perhaps MI6 is behind all the absurdities you mention.
I agree that Trump is “not that kind of President” but disagree that he needs to cut a deal. This is one of those instances where Trump really could bully them into submission. All he would have to do is say “No more intel for Ukraine, and none for you either if you don’t fall in line” and they would crumble.
The obstacle is that Trump (even if he weighted the idea) would have good reason to think he’d be assassinated in short order if he tried to move ahead.
I think the latter is the fundamental problem: Trump is fumbling about for deals not for sake of deals because he’s too fearful and weak to be a real president and actually lead for chrissakes.
Trump worried about getting the 11/22/63 treatment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTjeU5MGSKs
Why do people endlessly over think things e.g. Trump is just a cog in a path dependent market/ideological agenda. He has no bloody clue about anything, monetary finance, basic global macro economics, Polisci anything … he just attempts to make money and be a turnstile political figure.
His evolution from liberal dem hanging with the Clinton’s coat tails and then run for Peznit, on a lark, too fill his tank with minions/money, only to embrace not just the GOP but its far far right religious zealots. Hence his embrace of Zionism = money for me and mine. Was he like this before in life? Classic Flexian tenancies.
Its like watching people logic others without them understanding what they are observing does not adhere too any sort of logic or reason.
It’s not just Trump, but practically any and every president, real or potential, of US. No one seems to think in terms of what US’s place in the world is in realistic terms, which necessarily means defining what the limits of US commitments are. Instead, we get a lot of vague moralistic claptrap, leaving us open for foreign shysters and fanatics working hand in hand with domestic bureaucratic schemers. Trump’s flaws accentuate some of these issues, but they have been there for a long time.
hk
> I dob’t [sic] think, in the end, US will risk having, say, Seattle incinerated for sake of Berlin,
> let alone Vilno, Reval, or Helsinki.
Reval! You antiquarian, you. :-)
In a major way, Trump’s duplicitous nature has made Putin’s job easier now. Since the start of the war Putin has had to have fight it but in a way that kept his allies onside by not being too brutal on the Ukrainians. He could not launch an American-style attack on the Ukraine and knock out the power, water, sewerage, internet and other infrastructure the first week but has had to fight it in a softly-softly-catchee-monkey style and slowly ramp things up. Even then there were problems with Brazil’s Lula saying that there should just be a ceasefire which would have lost the war for Russia. Those days are over. All those allies have seen Trump’s continuous flip-flopping on any peace negotiation. Alaska might have been a breakthrough but after it Trump did nothing. Those Russian allies like China, India and Brazil now understand that there is no-one there for the Russians to negotiate with – not Trump, not the Europeans and especially not Zelensky. In fact, all of allies have had to deal with Trump’s duplicitous and petulant negotiating style themselves so readily understand what Russia is dealing with and at this point, those allies have probably told the Russians to go for it and do what they have to do. They understand now that it will only be a military solution that will end this war. So it may be that this explains the ramping up of military operations along the entire front lines but also the attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as well. The gloves are now off and it is time to wrap this war up. Trump may make the occasional demand for a ceasefire and a Minsk 3 but because of his behaviour, he has removed himself from being able to direct this war to any extent.
Funny, that idea that the west can only see solutions in terms of money echo back to the end of the US involvement in Vietnam (congress cut the funds) and from Matt Stoller’s recent posting that, from the mid aughts, the US doesn’t know how to do any other national industrial plan except by financial underpinning. So the war ends when the money ends.
About the electricity war: one thing that people from the West don´t understand is how centralized heating is in all former Soviet countries. Every big city from Vladivostok to Lviv (Lvov-Lemberg) relies on a small number of huge power plants that provide electricity and – more importantly – piped hot water. Only some post 1990 buildings and some single family homes on the outskirts have their own heat supply. There you might not have water anymore but at least still heat and – if you have a generator – some electricity. Everywhere else you will not only not have water but also no heating of any kind and no electricity.
All the Soviet era high rises where the majority lives are doomed if there is no piped hot water and the temperature is below 10 degrees frost celsius three days in a row. The pipes in all these buildings will burst and flood the apartments with waste water. That is why the head of Ukrenergo called for the evacuation of these buildings if the above occurs. Then you have to empty the pipes of every one of these buildings to be able to make them livable again once the power plants are restored.
One might think that this would be the end of Selensky and the fall of the current regime. That is what I said to a friend in Kiev. He replied: not so fast. First of all in Soviet times practically all families where granted a plot of land to grow veggies as after collectivization Soviet agriculture never managed to supply the cities with the necessary amounts of greenery. On these plots of land people also build little country houses that quite often also have a wood stove. People would flee there.
Of course not the poor people and the pensioners without cars. But they are of no account to the regime anyhow. The base of Selensky is the patriotic upper middle class who usually have quite substantial country houses. They would simply retreat there.
I don´t know how real is this pessimistic take of my Kiev friend who desperately hopes for an end to the war. One should though not discount it.
As to the Europeans: Germany is the linchpin. For now all talk of problems with the energy supply in the winter is still regarded as scare mongering and unpatriotic crazy talk. But already Amplion, one of Germany’s network providers, has warned of brownouts in the winter should it be a severe one. Germany’s gas storage is at an historic low and should there be a cold spell without wind electricity has to be generated with gas. But gas is also the major heat course for German housing. In doubt the authorities would rather cut off electricity than cut off gas to housing. That would be a tremendous shock to Germany’s population who are completely misinformed about the course of the war and the state of energy supplies. I don´t think the current government would survive this unless they declare a state of war and introduce drastic curtailment of civil liberties. They could thereby also postpone elections in two Eastern states where the AFD is poised to win outright majorities.
I still cannot imagine the above but who knows. The alternative is stopping the hugely unpopular support of Ukraine and entering into negotiations with Russia. If German – and then European – support of Selensky would stop I believe that Ukraine would then have no alternative but to capitulate to Russian demands. Let’s see how the winter turns out…
Re. gas vs. electricity cutoffs. AFAIK, most modern (probably those later than ca. 1970) west European single-family and small apartment building gas heating systems (don’t know about east Europe) cannot operate without mains electricity. Some older systems may have non-electric burner control and be able to circulate solely via convection, but otherwise, no electricity means no heat even if gas is available. To compound the problem, upon remodeling our kitchen, I found that even a gas stove doesn’t save us from this dependence. EU regulations require electrically-powered thermal safety cutoff on each burners’ gas feed.
A couple of addenda, I guess.
1. About this new Pokrovsk-Mirnograd (Krasnoarmeysk-Dimitrov in Russian nomenclature) encirclement. And how it smells to be not the same as Mariupol in 2022.
I look at various Russian Telegram channels daily, starting with the official ones – Ministry of Defense, Group of Forces North, and so on. And for some months now – really, starting with L’Affaire Kursk – I’ve noticed something.
The Russians seem to be taking very few prisoners.
Group of Forces North began this trend. It became especially pronounced this year, when they started to roll up and encircle first a company there, then a battalion here, and then the whole Sudzha pipe operation happened. They would report something like – 300 men encircled over in these woods here. And over the next week, when those woods were cleared, they’d report an average of 1-2 prisoners a day…implying that the other 280+ were all killed. Or, at least, all those who could not run away.
And then I began to see similar trends on other directions, as the Russians created more and more mini-encirclements. The Kleban-Byk reservoir south of Konstantinovka, for example. There were supposed to be 1-2 battalion equivalents’ worth of Ukrainians there. I doubt very many managed to flee, particularly once they were penned up against the reservoir. And yet the total number of prisoners reported in the official press releases was…minute.
Ironically, today is George Costanza opposite-day, since a full 25-strong platoon of Ukrainians in the Pokrovsk/Krasnoarmeysk area was reported to have surrendered. But that’s why this news stands out to me quite so much – we haven’t seen this sort of thing. Five guys surrendering somewhere was a big haul…and not for lack of “bodies” trapped in this or that area.
Now. There are multiple possible explanations. Maybe the Russian tactics of leading every assault with drones, artillery and 250-kilo precision bombs leave very few opportunities for taking anyone alive. Maybe the Ukrainians are scattered in disparate small groups; maybe the infantry is a lot more motivated (read – scared, whether of the Russians or of their own officers) than the non-pro-Ukraine commentariat believes. Or…maybe the Ministry of Defense does not mind not it if as many Ukrainian soldiers as possible are removed from the board on a permanent basis. Especially since they still have more than enough Ukrainian PoWs for future exchanges, should that become necessary.
But whatever it is, I am going to guess that in terms of prisoners, Pokrovsk-Krasnoarmeysk is not going to go like Mariupol did. It’s an awful thought, but there you are.
2. Quibble about “mechanized assaults” vs. “trickle tactics”. The Russians still love their mechanized assaults. They’ve just been reserving them for times of either a) bad weather (fog, rain, etc.), when a given lead tank is not smacked by 10-12 Ukrainian FPV drones inside of 20 minutes (the specific tank in the video I am referencing survived, but I suspect the crew was not thrilled by the experience); or b) wintertime, when lack of foliage means fewer opportunities for infantry to trickle forward.
In other words, it’s not an either-or issue, or does not appear to be one. When conditions permit, it’s tanks and IFVs, or, per a video posted yesterday, Mad Max style dirtbikes and doorless passenger cars; when they do not, it’s infantry sneaking forward in groups of 2-4. Either way, the goal is to build up a force of 30-50 men in a location, then “burst” out on the Ukrainian defenders and secure the area.
Now, “classical”, World War 2 style mechanized offensives are out for the time being, that’s clear. There needs to be an anti-drone revolution (AA artillery down to the individual squad and tank level) before that comes up again.
3. About the Russians damaging the infrastructure in areas they ostensibly wish to hold or might end up occupying anyway.
See, at this point, the Russians have built up 1-2-3 years of experience, depending on the specific town or city, of reconstruction. And a lot of it, even in places like Mariupol, was not so much building the place back up from war-related damage, though there certainly was a lot of that sort of thing – but ripping out and replacing wholesale the entire infrastructure that had not been maintained or repaired since pretty much 1991. Remember, prior to 2014 and the ensuing civil war Ukraine was already just a shade above Moldova on most economic indicators among European countries, and its infrastructure was in a massive state of decay. [By “infrastructure” I also mean a lot of projects, including residential buildings, that were just abandoned. At least a portion of Mariupol’s “reconstruction” was basically finishing these abandoned projects.]
So I have to wonder. Is it possible that the Russian government has decided that, well, we’re going to have to rebuild any area we control from scratch anyway, might as well not be especially sparing now? I mean – I have no way of knowing, and maybe I am completely off base here, but…
There can’t be many POWs if there are very few soldiers involved to begin with. Main reason for relatively easy infiltration of Russians into Pokrovsk/Kupiansk/etc is severe lack of those defending. All of their units have been understrength for a while, and “1-2 battalion equivalents’ worth of Ukrainians there” could ammount to one hundred guys, or even less. They are running very low on troops.
The war has changed a lot in just a few years. In Mariupol they had thousands of their best, in a fortress, stocked with everything. They surrendered on their own initiative, and their generals could not stop them. In Pokrovsk/Kupiansk/etc they have small groups of not-their-best, spread out, and left to die. They all want to surrender but can’t, because their own will kill them if they see them try.