Even though the intensifying Russian grid strikes on Ukraine are getting some mainstream media coverage, there has been a bizarre reluctance, approaching the level of self-censorship, to depict the human cost of these attacks. As we’ll explain, the flip from waging a heretofore fairly successful PR war on Russia’s alleged misdeeds to silence is not just noteworthy, as evidence of Ukraine and Western reluctance to admit how badly the conflict is going. It also seems to reflect a resulting paralysis, as in not having any good cards to play and being unwilling to consider the only sensible option, of ending the war on the best obtainable terms for Ukraine.
The lack of Collective West media noise also gives Russia more freedom of action. Recall that a big reason for Russia to conduct the war in such a cautious manner was to keep the good will of its economic allies, most important China and India. They were uncomfortable with Russia gobbling up a neighboring state. Russia needed to act as if it was doing only as much as necessary, and not more than that, to check what it has (correctly) insisted is an existential threat.
Mind you, I am no fan of the regime in Kiev. I think it is entirely reasonable to take the position that the considerable pain inflicted on ordinary Ukrainians, those not rich or connected enough to have fled already, is due entirely to Zelensky and his European backers (and earlier the US under Biden) to refuse to come to terms with the Russians and end the conflict. But given the importance of describing things with their proper names, the impact of power outages in major Ukraine cities, not just Kiev but Kharvik, Kryvyi Rih, and others, is indeed a humanitarian crisis. It is rendering them uninhabitable.
We’ll discuss how the official Ukraine and resulting allied media tongue-tiedness about how bad conditions in the big cities are becoming means that Russia may wind up implementing an end-state in big sections of the country that we had mentioned as an effective, if also (as of then) extreme and therefore unlikely-seeming solution, that of turning much of Western Ukraine into a de-electrified zone. That would make it resemble the Unorganized Territory of Maine, thinly populated with hardy survivalists. This idea was a logical extension of a scenario described by John Helmer early in the electric war. He had pointed out that the General Staff was highlighting the need for buffer zones to stymie what were then assumed to be rump Ukraine to prevent missile strikes on Russian territory. Lavrov even took up that theme, observing that the depth of the protective area would depend on the longest-range missiles the West was using against Russia.1 Helmer showed an indicative map with de-electrified DMZs. We pointed out that Russia could take that further with our Unorganized Territory variant, since that would considerably reduce the ability to organize resistance and launch terrorist attacks into Russia.. That is where things may wind up for much more of Ukraine than we had seriously thought possible if Ukraine continues to prosecute the war to the last Ukrainian.
Heretofore, the Western press has excoriated Russia for its (until recent) limited harm inflicted on civilians, regularly exaggerating its importance in the overall scheme of things and depicting it as malicious, as opposed to “shit happens”. In fact, the low level of civilian death reported for various missile attacks, most often in the single digits, is evidence that Russia has been trying to spare non-combatants and generally has been pretty successful. Some of the instances of claims of heinous Russian conduct have been misrepresentations, such as charging Russia with targeting a mall as if that meant they were terrorizing the population, when that “mall” was a former mall now in military use, or hospitals being hit by shells.2 ‘
By contrast, Ukraine has been given a free pass for its regular shelling of civilians in Donetsk, including with petal mines, whose use is considered a war crime, along with terrorism, such as the attack on Crocus City Hall and assassinations of journalists.
The growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is the result of Russia’s Clausewitzian practice, of achieving victory by destroying the enemy’s military, meeting the reality of a Ukraine government bent on its own survival (and perhaps continued looting), seemingly unconcerned about whether its citizens or any sort of country are left standing. We’ve seen that tendency with the many videos of men being tackled and tossed into vans to impress them into service, and worse, of them being sent to the front lines with virtually no training. In 2023, when conditions were less dire than now, a US Marine estimated that the life expectancy of a new Ukraine arrival on the front lines was a mere four hours. A quick look at search results says survival might be three to four days in less high-intensity settings.
Kiev’s Mayor Klitschko has defied President Zelensky in calling the impact of the electrical grid attack as having created a humanitarian crisis. He has also said that more than 600,000 residents have left out of an estimated population of 3 million. Klitschko also urged everyone who could relocate temporarily to a location with heat and water to do so. He later issued a second appeal for those who could to leave.
The press did report the Klitschko dire warning but has said perilous little since then, even with Russia making what is reported as its most severe grid strikes on Kiev right after its meetings working group meetings with the US and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi. Note the dates on these press sightings:
Recall also that Zelensky just gave a highly publicized speech at Davos. Not once in it did he mention the grid strikes. His European interlocutors had to bring it up in the Q&A afterwards, which was before time of the screenshots above:
Børge Brende, President and CEO of the World Economic Forum: What is now the most difficult part for Ukraine. We know it’s an attack on your whole energy system and electricity, but then there are also the casualties on the borders. So the humanitarian situation is more challenging now than a year ago?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine: Yes, Russia attacks energy, and this is what they are focusing on, and this is not a secret. This is not a mistake. This is their goal to cause blackouts in Ukraine. And they attack mostly civilians. They don’t use a lot of missiles, these expensive missiles, what I spoke about before, they don’t use them on the front, they use it against civilians, infrastructure, critical infrastructure. It’s about everything, hospitals, kindergartens, schools, but mostly it’s about the tactical things, which they are focusing on destroying, electricity, heating systems, water supplies, everything.
Yes, this is the face of Russia. And really, this is the face of this war. We have defending systems. We have really created, I think, great ideas with drone interceptors that we produce 1000s of per day, but it’s still not enough. Russia has about 500 drones, Iranian drones each day and dozens of missiles, ballistic missiles, and even those systems that our partners gave us and of course, they could give us more, yes, and I spoke with President Trump today about it again and again, and I hope it was my last words, you know in Ukraine, we say, everybody remembers the last words. So my last words to President Trump were, don’t forget about air defence, don’t forget about Patriots. So this is very important for us during this winter. So, I think that all these attacks. I can’t say that these attacks make us stronger, because it’s about our people, the people I mean this, they are surviving, but they’re heroic people, civilians and soldiers, because they are not losers of this war and this is important.
Consider further that the Military Summary channel has just reported that only one out of five thermal power stations in Kiev are working.
Simplicius’ latest post discusses whether Russia is “disconnecting” Ukraine’s remaining substantial power production, from two nuclear plants, by targeting their electrical substations. The short answer seems to be yes, but not yet by taking the decisive but high-risk move of trying to strike the ones hard by, but those further downstream.
The post and comments also address a topic we have raised before, of the difficultly of replacing critical parts of damaged and destroyed Ukraine grid infrastructure due to it being at the old Soviet standard of 750kV. Quite a few readers rejected our thesis, that much of this kit was not only not manufactured in the West, but would be too costly and specialized for US and European firms to want to do that. That would mean, as we have said, that Russia controls Ukraine’s future if it is the only party both willing and able to rebuild/replace these high-capacity transformers.3
Simplicius has apparently voiced this issue before too, albeit perhaps not as pointedly as we have. His cautious take:
One last important thing that needs repeating though is the fact that 750 kV equipment is said to be much more difficult and expensive to source and replace, compared to 110/330 kV substation transformers, etc. I am not an expert on this particular matter, so those with specific knowledge can chime in in the comments, but as I understand it the 750 kV standard is a Soviet-specific legacy high-voltage transmission standard which is not compatible with most European countries, which run 300-500 kV max. On the contrary, 330 kV appears to be a standard voltage range that can be easily sourced and replaced from a variety of Western countries.
Hie readers agreed:
Insider
Yes. I worked for a german transformer company several years. The pre-order time(“Bestellvorlauf”) for special insulation parts is 51 weeks(a year has 52 weeks) and there are 2 companys in europe who make these things. About voltage: in europe we had 110/220/380kV in the past, now ist mostly 120/(230)/400kV. highest voltage we had in the company was 550kV for the US/Canadian Grid. 750kV is a completely different design, its not “just 250kV more…”Aleksandar Dimitrovski
330kV level gear is difficult enough to source, but 750kV is an order of magnitude more so. There is only a handful of factories with extremely long lead times.Shaunak Agarkhedkar
Also, sourcing 330kV transformers in the west is anything but easy. The lead time measures in years, and inventories are now tapped out.
One suggested the ability to get the needed transformers was bad but not quite as dire as other suggested:
Married with Bears
Components for EHV (Extra-High Voltage, 330 kV) and UHV (Ultra-High Voltage, greater than 330 kV) are completely bespoke manufactured products. Not only are transformers for EHV and UHV different between electrical networks and countries – they’re different from each other on the same distribution network, and engineered specifically for a particular node on the network. There is a great deal of hand work involved in making them. There are a few countries that produce them – Germany, Russia, the U.S., China, probably more…
Long lead times for replacement equipment (transformers, switching stations) is because of the high manufacturing tolerances required, and that each component is custom engineered and matched to other parts of the grid that it is being placed into. Ukraine’s system is Soviet period in origin, but that has nothing to do with why order times are six to nine years out (and demands from AI for expanding the power grid will push it even longer).
A standard 110 kV transformer can use commodity copper; a 745 kV transformer requires not only copper completely clean of impurities, but that has certain magnetic properties that are difficult to manufacture. It is an enormous engineering challenge to make those bespoke components, and the engineering base to do so is constrained.
And in case you doubted that the prospective rebuild requirements are large, from the body of Simplicius’ article:
In the latest piece, head of Ukraine’s largest energy company DTEK says that up to 70% of total capacity is lost and Ukraine’s entire grid would have to be rebuilt from the ground up, rather than simply repaired, such is the totality of its destruction:
“We are close to a humanitarian catastrophe,” Timchenko said. “People get power for 3-4 hours, then a 10- to 15-hour break. We have apartment blocks without heat for weeks already.”
DTEK has lost 60–70% of its generating capacity and suffered damage worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.
Timchenko said rebuilding the energy sector would cost $65–70 billion, citing World Bank estimates, and in many cases would require entirely new assets.
“We are talking rather about building a new energy system in Ukraine rather than just reconstruction,” he said.
Even with conditions looking so dire in Ukraine, Simplicius cautioned against making “The end is nigh” forecasts, since among other things, Ukraine officials have sometimes made urgent pleas so as to elicit more arms and money. But DTEK does not have those incentives. The implication is even if the war were shut down now, Ukraine faces a protracted and costly rebuilding process that will only get worse with every Russian grid strike. Given deteriorating economic conditions in the West and the priority newly assigned to building up armed forces, it seems that what the US regime change for Russia scheme for Russia will instead produce is yet another failed state. But the difference here is that it will be populated by white people and in Europe.
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1 Forgive me for not running down this detail but I believe Lavrov’s remarks came when there were threats to deploy German Taurus missiles, which are longer-range than any others made by the coalition, that if they were given to Ukraine, one consequence would be that the buffer zone would need to be even larger.
2 Without litigating each case, at least one was Ukraine using a hospital as a site for missile launchers; others were mainly shells falling on hospitals, most often Ukraine air defense missiles that had not hit their target or debris from successful Ukraine interception of Russian missiles.
3 Capitalist firms are not going to want to invest for what amounts to a huge but comparatively short-run order. Russia’s military complex, by contrast, does not run on commercial profit lines. Russia is far more able to finesse the cost and profit dynamics than Western concerns.
The growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is the result of Russia’s Clausewitzian practice, of achieving victory by destroying the enemy’s military, meeting the reality of a Ukraine government bent on its own survival (and perhaps continued looting), seemingly unconcerned about whether its citizens or any sort of country are left standing
I might not be understanding this right, as english is not my first language, but if Israel were persuing this tactic in Gaza, it would be, I think, interpreted as the deliberate targeting of civilians, and a war crime. When discussing economic sanctions, the fact is often pointed out that the point of emisserating the populace into revolt is cynical and cruel neo-con interventionism. I think the same goes for Russia here. Though the civilan death toll previously has been remarkably low given the type of war that has been waging, it seems that this strategy is purely meant for the emisseration of the civilan populace. What military purpose does this servce, besides the one often toted by neocons, that they intend for the populace to rise up, or the governing institutions to buckle under the pressure of civilian suffering?
Furthermore, arguing that targeting of hospitals and civilian infrastructure is justified based on the claim that it has been transferred to military use, also seems very reminiscent of the hasbara of the last few years no?
I have difficulty understanding this analysis, and would welcome any corrections or counterpoints. I hope my comment makes it through, so I can hear any opposing points.
That is correct. Alexander Mercuris on a recent show said explicitly that attacking infrastructure with the aim of depopulating cities is a war crime.
Attacking civilian infrastructure, however, is not the same as directly targeting civilians themselves, which is what makes this different than what Israel has been doing.
The US has also frequently attacked civilian infrastructure and not just “dual use” infrastructure, which is easier to justify. The fact that tge US does not make it right. The legal standard is that such acts must have a strategic purpose and harm to civilians must be “proportionate” to that purpose, which is unfortnuately a very flexible standard.
English may not be your first language, but you have a very conversational writing style that implies a competent grasp of english so… As to israel they have bombed gaza into the stone age and if RU did that there would not simply be buildings sans electricity there would buildings that look like stacks of pancakes certainly with bodies inside that the compliant western media would be ignoring that indeed have no electricity. See this google search
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/gaza-power-plant-on-track-to-resume-operations-after-2-year-plus-shutdown-administrator/3809551
The subheading
“Lack of power in war-battered enclave has had catastrophic repercussions in all areas of life”
Furthermore, RU is not targeting hospitals and civilian infrastructure, in fact is studiously avoiding it based on the substantiated claim that they were in military use. By far the most war crimes on civilians were ukrainian attacks as noted above by petal mines and the long term indiscriminate shelling of separatist oblasts by the nazis in the azov brigades.
Surrender. There is not enough money or weapons in the world to achieve any other outcome and this has been true since day 1, see brian berletic videos from the beginning of the war where he says in summary RU makes weapons, NATO makes money so I guess it comes down to what is ones idea of winning is and theres more than one ukie oligarch who has skated away with billions so theres that kind of winning. Not so much for the poor souls rounded up by the press gangs who may not share your humanitarian concern for the prosecutors of this misadventure.
It’s the same pour souls on the receiving end of those tactics, you know. I’m pretty sure their oligarchs aren’t having any problems with electricity and sewage. This isn’t a “war against palaces”, the palaces are safe.
Without litigating specific instances, which is completely beyond my ability, the comparison of the numbers of civilian casualties should underscore the point. Israelis have inflicted as many as 300k dead or (possibly much) more out of a Gazan population around 3 million. Ukrainian civilian dead number in tens of thousands, out of a population up to 10 times as many, over a longer period of time with far greater amounts of ordinances expended. Western press reports incidents involving a couple of civilian dead in Ukraine as if they were repeats of Dresden bombing, yet treat those involving dozens of civilian dead in Gaza as non events. And, finally, Israeli leadership, both military and civilian, have been not only open but downright boastful that they are waging a war specifically against the civilian population from the beginning.
I am personally deeply skeptical about “war crimes,” or at least they get bandied about. The over-litigious could go overboard and insist that the use if firearm counts as a heinous act of war crime (I’d be joking, but this is in fact a charge against Maduro as I understand, even if not exactly a “war crime.”) This has the unfortunate effect if equating deaths of ten with deaths of thousands. Yes, deaths of ten are tragic. But, in context of a big war, the former belongs to the category of tragic accidents or, possibly, “small” (in the grand scheme of things) mistakes. The latter implies intent or, at best, criminal degree of negligence.
Maduro is not charged with a “war crime”. US criminal law provides a separate charge of using certain firearms in commission of other felonies. Separate laws claim extra-territorial jurisdiction allowing Maduro to be charged under that law.
Well, the point I’m making is that “war crimes” charges are often downright “forced,” as much as the silly charges thrown at Maduro, not that Maduro is accused of “war crimes.”
For most part Russia is targeting the Ukrainian power plants and the grid as a response to Ukrainian (and western) attacks on Russian oil refineries and tankers. It’s not really reciprocal action, though, as Russia is way more powerful and Ukraine is way more stubborn.
It seems that even the Ukrainians on the street understand that they are on the receiving end of the “energy war” Kiev insisted on continuing while Russia offered a truce.
Russia is not seeking a regime change as such, they just need someone to accept their terms: neutrality, limited size of armed forces, language and religious rights respected (basically the Ukrainian constitution of 1994) plus ceding the regions that joined Russia.
Other than that, post-war Ukraine can join EU for all Russia cares.
“It seems that even the Ukrainians on the street understand that they are on the receiving end of the “energy war” Kiev insisted on continuing while Russia offered a truce.”
Of course they understand, but I don’t know of an instance when attacking people in this or any other way made them more likely to support the attacker. I don’t see a fundamental difference between this “deheating” and the American approach to breaking countries either.
Nobody in the Kremlin is in the least bit interested in whether the residents of these big Ukrainian cities are going “to support the attacker”.
It seems to me that the current destruction of the grid is just another step up the escalation ladder by Russia in response to ongoing UKR attacks on Russian’s shipping and refining sectors and RF civilians in recent months. The destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is an ongoing military operation and has now been escalated to not only break down the Ukrainian MIC and degrade its ability to continue armed resistance but possibly also to impose the buffer zones outlined by Lavrov in the article.
The UKR civilian pop in those areas can stay or go. Their daily comfort and convenience (including what appears to be an active nightlife scene in Kiev) is of little to no concern to a Kremlin leadership prosecuting a conflict aka SMO to ensure Russia’s own national security interests.
The rationale I see there is that the Ukrainian nationalists are too entrenched, and their backers can keep their influence anyway, so the goal isn’t to make the populace do a regime change for the Russians but to make Ukraine as a nation be materially unfeasible to be a military spearhead against Russia by the West. Part of that also involves creating a humanitarian crisis to depopulate certain parts of the country the Russians won’t occupy or cannot put enough friendly people and governors.
Such model of demilitarization and enmiseration would make it so Ukrainian nationalist remnants and the West cannot effectively do terrorism or insurgency that can keep poking and degrading Russia or the annexed territories.
The West similarly had a “give up the military if you don’t want to keep your civilians suffering” model done against Serbia, and Russia loves rubbing in precedents.
Difference between Russia and hasbarra is that the events are the opposite. Israel claims that X infrastructure is terrorist or serves khamas/Hezbollah, evidence is shaky and they latter on they gloat what they said is fake.
Russia claims something is dual use, and the video and photo material reveals secondary explosions.
To make a better analysis. Russia is a state vs state, except adversarial political movement is very entrenched by force and Westerner presence ensure that a decapitation and/or regime change won’t be an easy fix. Furthermore, friendliness/hostility varies from region. The eastern parts are more ethnic Russian and friendly, not to mention geographically closer and richer, parts of middle Ukraine are a middle ground, and the Western part are the most hostile and Galician and far away.
Hence, the Russian strategy is to grab chunks of Ukraine for Russia , not be too abusive to the populace that can be assimilated in the future to minimize how many of them can be purposed by the West to hurt Russia in the future, and punch down as much as possible the spots they cannot control so in the short, medium and short term such territories would be impractical to be used by hostile enemy nations to harm Russia in the future .
In contrast, Israel doesn’t recognize their opponents or the entire Palestine as a state by itself, or even proper people. Just like the Ukrainian nationalists perceive ethnic Russians as an enemy, the Israeli Jews have Palestinians Arabs and anything that is not Jew in general as an enemy to be wiped. The rationale of destroying infraestructure isn’t to beat a enemy government to put a different policy aligned with another state, but to destroy the enemy populace from existence to neutralize them in the medium and long term, and the people they don’t kill will be traumatized to resist on future events. Every Palestinian is Hamas.
So, the way I see it is this: Russia will cause humanitarian suffering in the short term to create the Ukrainian state material difficulties to keep resisting regardless of how much care their populace, annex and assimilate what they can without complications and make inhabitated any spot they can’t control. It’s harder for a three letter agency to mount operations in a spot that is mostly inhabitated, industrialized, landlocked and without essential utilities.
Israel isn’t about imposing a specific political orientation or government, but destroying the populace itself and the means of sustaining it and their memories, to annex the lands but with the natives not be recognized as citizens or proper human beings.
So: If you are Ukrainian, Russia will impose by force a specific non hostile political orientation and be integrated. If not, then said spot will be a no man’s land for anyone anyway. If you are Palestinian, your only choice is to stop existing, be dumped in an African shit hole or temporarily serve as a cheap labor ethnicity until you get replaced. It’s a shame that Jews don’t do conversions anymore.
Again. There are material constraints and motives for both approaches. Russia is the David in the Goliath perspective of information operation, so they cannot just go Iraq mode and pretend everything will be ok for them like the US always does when they do some raping. Furthermore, as Yves said, Russia is at the will of having economic cooperation from some trade countries like India and China, so they cannot afford to alienate them. Ideologically and practically speaking, Russia held back for a long time because they don’t want to hurt the “misled little Russians”, and it would be maladaptive to make hate you a neighboring populace you want to integrate in the medium and long term.
By contrasting, Israel has total control of the media and unconditional backing of the West and the world outside of it, so the penalties of going Nazi mode and turning the remains into a free economic zone are lower that it should conventionally. They also are an ethnostate, so there isn’t much incentive to not wipe out the enemy races if the costs from that are low and the rewards and incentives are quite high.
great comment, thank you!
Mr. Moshe, israel has flattened not just the energy infrastructure, the building, but also the civilians themselves in Gaza. that makes it not just a war crime but a blatant genocide. and your attempt to connect the two is not genuine. From the river to the sea.
For 8+ years, and even before, Putin was the only person trying to peacefully resolve the civil war in Ukraine that began in earnest with the Maidan coup. Unfortunately, a cabal of CIA, MI6, Ukrainian Banderites and the EU political elite fought and are still fighting tooth and nail against any prospect for a peace in Ukraine. The current catastrophe is the horrific outcome of the self-interested war mongers who pushed Biden’s (and the EU leader’s) Ukrainian vanity project for their own personal benefit. They could have stopped it at any time. Every attempt by Russia to bring this war to a peaceful resolution from Istanbul in 2022 until today has been rebuffed and sabotaged by these self-serving monsters. Of course, they don’t pay the price. Only ordinary people pay. Slap a pair of boots on every one of these psychotic war enablers and send them directly to the front lines. That would be effective justice. Otherwise, it’s just rinse and repeat. No doubt they are already looking for their next get rich or get revenge scheme that someone else will pay for. I am sick to tears.
The electrical reconstruction is going to be easier for residential and commercial areas, perhaps, than the lead times suggest because the Ukraine could build a distributed grid, with solar power and battery storage to supply each tower block’s direct electrical needs.
The problem is the district heating system. The electrical needs of winter heating would overwhelm any solar solution. District heating presupposes a dispatchable thermal power source. Either the combined cycle gas turbines get rebuilt and connected – but this requires grid restoration – or they don’t but then how to heat the city?
Apparently the Ukraine is insisting apartment buildings reconfigure to have independent heating per apartment but this is so wasteful (system inefficiency, capex, lifetime cost of ownership of hundreds of shitty pressed steel consumer boilers and short-life pumps versus one industrial one). The stupid, it burns!
Industrial and transport uses require at least a minimal grid to be stood up but it could be restored at 330kV until the 750kV spines can be put in. The Ukrainian is so depopulated it was an electricity exporter but that excess capacity is unlikely to be restored….
Finally, unlivability due to cold is a lot more livable than a city without running water, sewerage, refrigeration or transit in high summer. These problems are going to get worse, not better, with the end of winter.
On the other hand, Russia could announce the intention to take Kiev and only pro-Russians would stay behind…
An additional thought: the Ukrainian oligarchs, such as Akhmetov of DTEK, are all parasites that reinvest nothing in Ukraine. I am sure that this energy-parasite has not invested anything in the energy production system so the whole system must be fragile already before the electric warfare started.
Wouldn’t it be remarkable if the Russians directly targeted all these oligarchs. Just lobbed a drone or missile to where they lived. Come to think of it, in Tom Clancy’s novel “Debt of Honour”, that is exactly what the US did to Japan’s elite that was pushing Japan into a war with the US.
if only they had lobbed one nuclear-tipped missile into the sea near St Barth’s on NYE, but Russia is not going to save us
It’s hard to predict what Ukraine will be until the war is over. Few countries suffered more than Japan in WW2. Its cities were fire bombed, massive death and destruction, two cities attacked with atomic bombs. At the end, some Japanese leaders were executed yet, a US occupation government under General Douglas MacArthur from 1945-1951 guided its remarkable recovery.
I guess it will depend on what Russia insists will be its role in Ukraine. Will it install military bases in Ukraine like the US did in Japan and which it still maintains. No doubt, Russia will dispatch Ukraine’s leadership and be involved choosing new leaders but will that involve a Russian version of MacArthur running the show.
It’s not likely Putin wants a failed state on Russia’s border or, like Iran, a country where the West can foment chaos and regime change protests. Moreover, Ukraine can’t recover by itself.
Thus, will Russia insist on managing Ukraine’s economic recovery with, perhaps the involvement of China, India, and possibly the US and Western Europe countries participating. Meanwhile, what can Ukraine offer Russia and/or the West to make a reasonable post-war peace possible?
Good accounts of post WW2 economic and social recovery in USSR that anyone can recommend? This seems to be especially relevant–one should think the destruction in Ukraine during the War has to be at least as great as that in Japan (the types of war waged were different, and the really destructive bombing of Japan, with incendiaries, was fairly short in duration).
I have not yet managed to completely read these trough, but:
– Elena Zubkova’s “Russia After War” is a Russian history of the years after the war, claiming a new social contract and the seeds of the collapse of the Soviet Union
– Stephen Lovell’s “The Shadow of War – Russia and USSR 1941 to Present” cover a longer period and claims that Soviet Union’s collapse was not preordained (I think he blames Gorbachev)
Ultimately you don’t want Ukraine to collapse into a failed state. You end up with riots, violence, crime, and mass migration that destabilizes border countries. Also, it’s in Russia’s interest not to completely demolish Ukraine’s army because it might need that army, or what’s left of it, to help civilians and maintain order.
The USSR seized capital equipment from Reich territories (and I think to some extent from Reich conquered territories like Poland etc) to replace its own losses to the Reich invasion of western USSR. This was a major task of the Red Army during the occupation of Central and Eastern Europe.
Rebound growth and central planning accounted for a lot of growth, as did exports to the Allies of coal and steel and foodstuffs etc before the Cold War set in but the seizure of German factories was a major leg up in recovery.
The Allies were unconcerned in the immediate aftermath because the Morgenthau Plan imagined deindustrialising Germany to an agrarian society – the plan was only abandoned when the Cold War loomed.
It is not well publicized in the West that the two years after the end of World War II were called “the starving times” in Japan.
True but, I assume, if there was TikTok back then we would know better. Still, the difference between then and now is that every country was wrecked after WW2 and could barely feed their own people. Today, depending on the post war settlement, and even without luxury condos on the Mediterranean, most countries can participate in Ukraine’s recovery.
Not every country. Why do you think the US became the sole dominant power after WWII?
The demographics aren’t there.
I don’t think any country can recover from war as well as any country managed post ww2 simply because the populations are shrinking and increasing resources are going to have to be invested into sustaining that.
Re “failed state”–so I guess the Ukrainian population already present in my US county will soar. But will ICE then come and throw them in the back of a van?
Russia was prodded by Biden and Nato into turning Ukraine into a failed state and Trump is doing the same for the US. What a world.
For what it’s worth, this was in one of the main Dutch newspapers this morning:
Lights off in Kyiv
https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2026/oekraine-rusland-oorlog-luchtaanval-kyiv-stroomuitval~v2569234/
Paywalled, but the non-paywalled initial photos are impressive
Thanks for the link, great photos. I learned Dutch when I lived in NL, I am pleasantly surprised that de Volkskrant published this. The photos speak volumes, the text is predictably biased.
The problem Russia has now is, is it possible to trust anything Trump does?
Trump has continued most if not all the same weapons and intelligence for targeting to Ukraine. He could stop all of that today or last month or a year ago. The war wouldn’t continue much longer if Trump did that.
zelinski is just the puppet of the US. He survives at our expense of which we can turn it off at any point. So he’s serving a purpose for the US but at this point what?
The Europeans can bitch loudly but what can they actually do if the US pulls out? The majority of Ukrainians want the war to end and I think the polls in Europe say the same.
As many commentators have pointed out, the physical war and who’s won has been written long ago. Only when it will stop and how much territory has been taken is yet for the history books.
The war on the electric grid has been something the Russians didn’t really do for years because they believed/hoped they could get an actual settlement.
This destruction of the grid is on Trump for continuing the war.
As to transformers, from what I read of China they have capacity to make whatever you need in a timely manner.
And they are the source of a lot of the specialized materials in transformers. Copper and steel being the main two.
John Helmer reports that the US (in other words, the Trump team) still thinks it has escalation dominance.
That explains the idiotic fantasy-land negotiating proposals coming from Witkoff/Trump, like a free-trade zone in the Donbas, or the US somehow guaranteeing Ukraine’s security outside of NATO. The Russians must be wise enough not to trust Trump or his crazy advisers like Witkoff. Assume some sort of peace deal is reached – what is to stop the US from using proxies to continue terror attacks inside of Russia? Or continuing the regime change nonsense?
I would go so far as to say that the US, as a party to the conflict, cannot be a mediator.
I presume that the electric war’s real target is Europe, as they are the main patrons propping up the Zelensky regime. As Ukrainian organic GDP approaches zero, more and more fiat will need to be pumped in just to keep the regime from collapsing. That comes straight out of the EU budget.
The problem Russia has now is, is it possible to trust anything Trump does?
More generally, the problem everyone else has, including wide swaths of the US population, can anyone anything Trust does? I suspect the Canadian Gov’t feels that Trump will double-cross them every other day and twice on Sundays.
Hopefully Trump will not try no assassinate Prime Minister Carney in the middle of negotiations.
This is a bit tangential to the question of transformers and infrastructure, but one side effect following the sustained loss of electricity to a building is black mold. It begins to grow quite quickly — 24 to 48 hours — and can thrive in winter, especially where there is moisture.
This stuff is very nasty, toxic, and can be difficult to eradicate. I read that a “radiotrophic” type was found at Chernobyl, and that it can actually survive gamma radiation.
A friend who lived in Alaska inhaled some black mold while cleaning up a building that has not been heated for a while. He had to abandon the clean-up job, was bedridden for a time, and said it took him two years(!) to completely recover.
If this is any sort of issue in cities like Kiev, it could take more than just restoring power to make some buildings habitable again.
There is a very dark, bloody scandal behind this industrialised meat grinding of 100,000s of men. Of all that’s hidden about this war, the method and means of driving, supposedly armed, untrained, unwillingly conscripted men onwards into certain death is the best kept secret of all. What percentage of the Ukrainian drone forces are used to coral and herd their own men? How many bombs and remote gadgets and psychological manuals does Nato supply to keep them in line? How much evidence has ISR recorded about their treatment? What’s going to happen to the whipmasters after this war is over?
I hate the way Russia is fighting this war. They are destroying Ukraine from the bottom up. Officially, they don’t target civilians, but over a millian civilian men taken by force to the battlefront have been killed.
The US, although it delights in carnage, isn’t shy about targeting the leadership. Russia could have likely ended the war by now if it had made continuing it too costly for the ukrainian leadership.
Are we blaming Russia for this? The so-called leadership in Ukraine clearly does not care about the Ukrainian people, they are illegitimate puppets of the US and vassals. This is a proxy war between the US and Russia. The US could have stopped the war a long time ago if it withdrew all logistical, intelligence and other support. The US could have genuinely pressured the UK/EU/NATO vassals to back off. The US could have dropped sanctions, instead of increasing them. The US could have made overtures to re-establish normal diplomatic relations with Russia. The US could have offered to renew START and negotiate other treaties. But no, the US and vassals have done nothing but provoke, insult and escalate. I
I agree with vidimi. Yes, the Russians were provoked by US and its vassals in Europe and there are many arguments to justify of its war with NATO. However, I am surprised that the Russians did not make more of an effort to destroy the Kiev regime from the top down – even before Feb. 2022. A program of assassination of the despicable US-linked Nazi political leadership as well as the elimination of the neonazi infested military command structure would have helped spare the mass carnage of Ukrainian men at the front as well as sowing chaos and paranoia among the Ukie nationalists that would have destabilized and demoralized the ruling clique and could have lead to an earlier peace.
So much for the “Slavic Brotherhood” idea that the Russian leadership trots out occasionally. If the Ukrainians were truly their “brothers”, Russian leadership IMHO would have strived to minimize the slaughter on the battlefield by cutting the head off the Ukrainian Nationalist snake. A million Ukrainian dead is probably a gross underestimate. Two million or more is probably more realistic – an ungodly number! We also must not forget that Russian families are grieving the loss of their children and fathers as well. How many of them have been sacrificed? The longer this goes on, the harder it becomes to say it was all worth it.
When we all hear the talk of a “war of attrition”, we must not forget what that means in terms of human cost and its legacy when it is all over.
When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. Sun Tzu, Art of War, L. Giles Translation.
No one is disputing the suffering and horrific outcomes of war, my point is that the US is clearly to blame, blaming Russia for the deaths is not helpful. We arm-chair generals can speculate on how the casualties could have been minimized all day long. We can disagree with the Russian military. However…
A few rhetorical questions:
How effective are decapitation strikes in achieving regime change in general? (Iran for a recent example)
Would another set of puppets take the place of the current Kiev regime if they were taken out?
Would the US and vassals simply give up if Russia took out the Kiev regime? Would the war end?
If the Ukr military is not destroyed, would Russia have to deal with them later?
Would that minimize the bloodshed over the longer term?
Would a decapitation strike on Ukr alter the security framework of Europe or solve the underlying issues that the Russians have pointed out?
The situation might be a bit more complex than we realize.
If Russia had done that, they would have killed the very people with whom they could have negotiated an end to the conflict. The assassinated leadership would have been replaced, of course, but the replacements would be expected to double-down on victory, not negotiate and. inevitably, make concessions with Russia, because that’s what negotiation involves. It would have only dragged out the whole conflict further.
Russia is likely to turn out to be the exception to Sun Tzu. Since the summer of 2023, I’ve assumed that it is in Russia’s interest to keep the war going until it has a well-bloodied Reserve of 1,200,000 – 1,500,000 in addition to a contract and conscript army with a creative and high productivity MIC – just on the off-chance, like.
Sure, Europe and the US are to blame for the war, but Russia has agency and it fights the way it chooses. On the one hand, they rightly don’t care at all about propaganda efforts to promote their message in the west, but on the other, they are so careful to follow rules that the west does not apply to itself.
As long as Zelenski and other western puppets are in power, they will never accept peace. Russia should have decapitated them a long time ago such that anyone brave enough to step in would have quickly sued for peace. When Ukrainians no longer want to fight, then it wouldn’t matter how many weapons and how much money the US wants to send them.
The Ukraine is run from Washington, London and Brussels. Decapitation strikes would simply result in fresh dummies being placed in the shop window while the West armed and trained and fortified the Ukrainian army poised in the Donbas like an arrow at Moscow….
I am afraid that reducing the army to bones and ash on the battlefield is Russia’s only option. Either the Ukrainian proxy government surrenders or is overthrown or the Ukrainian army is destroyed. The proxy refuses to surrender, the people – so far – shrink from revolt and therefore only the meatgrinder remains.
Remember that Uncle Sam would have destroyed industrial civilian life on Day One (as in Iraq and Serbia; not Afghanistan or Yemen because those countries were largely preindustrial), not Year Four!
Sure, you betcha. Decap strike, regime change, war ends, treaty and viola! A comprehensive security architecture in Europe for our time.
If only it were that simple, and you ignored my questions and points above. Perhaps you haven’t been following events closely. In addition, assassinating the leader of a foreign country would likely violate more than one international treaty that Russia is signatory, and not likely to please allies in BRICS
Russia has already pointed out many times that they don’t recognize the Zelensky regime, their mandate ran out long ago. In order to have any semblance of a binding written agreement or treaty, there needs to be elections in order to have a legitimate government.
If regime change were that simple and easy, I’m sure it would have been done. Do we assume the senior members of the Russian government are stupid?
so they want to negotiate with people they don’t recognise as legitimate. make it make sense.
if you eliminate the puppets run out of brussels and washington, the country is no longer run out of those places.
again, russia is steadfastly applying rules to itself that the west refuses to apply to itself. the west interprets that as weakness. Russia refuses to retaliate against western-backed attacks on its territory. again, the west interprets that as weakness. that’s why the war is entering its 4th year. You can’t negotiate with these people. The russians are learning and participating in the theater, but they are paying a heavy price in personnel. of course, ukraine is paying the highest price, but that’s a price the ukrainian leadership, brussels, and washington are willing to pay.
So, to be clear, are you proposing Oreshnik strikes on Berlin, Paris, London, etc.?
My impression has been that a majority have wanted peace for a long time, but the stooge govt installed by the US ignored them. After all, wasn’t Zelensky elected in large part on a campaign promise to end the civil war? How did that work out?
It doesn’t really matter what most Ukrainians want. Their leadership has remained subservient to Western interests and it seems rather unlikely that top-down assassinations would change that picture, other than to stoke the desire for revenge.
So here is what I am seeing on Russian state-adjacent TV and popular blogs in terms of framing this “energy war”.
1. There are explicit references to a NATO briefing from May 25, 1999 (https://nato.int/en/news-and-events/events/transcripts/1999/05/25/press-conference), when Jamie Shea, then-NATO spokesman, is defending strikes against Serbian electricity and water infrastructure. Here is the specific part of the briefing that I see being quoted:
The framing is – what is good for the goose should clearly be good for the gander. Or something along those lines. Moreover, there is stress that most of this infrastructure is “dual-use”, meaning it powers not only civilian buildings but military installations and drone production facilities.
2. The more militant commentators, particularly in Solov’ev’s little media empire, have taken the line of – ordinary Ukrainians were just fine when the Kiev regime was depriving Donetsk and its environs of water and electricity, or shelling the place outright, so who cares that now those chickens are coming home to roost. “I care about the Russian people being killed by the Ukrainians in Belgorod, not Kiev residents not having heat.” To be sure, Solov’ev & Co. have been consistently playing to the, shall we say, more hawkish end of the political spectrum; I doubt that the average Ivan and Olga in the street are quite as strident, though given regular reports on the news about Russian civilians being killed in Ukraine-adjacent regions, they are probably not all too compassionate towards the Ukrainians, either.
And to be expand a little on the latter point – when various international agencies or NGOs talk about “civilian deaths in Ukraine”, they elide somewhat in that they count civilians killed on the Russian side of the contact line, e.g. in Donetsk or wherever, as “Ukrainians”. I recall the ombudswoman for human rights in Lugansk reporting back in 2022 that ~2000 civilians there were killed that year due to Ukrainian shelling. Several thousand were killed in the Kursk region during that incursion, and this was also splashed all over the evening news day after day. So if the framing is – they are killing our people, but we are just leaving them without electricity and heat (never mind the excess deaths that might lead to), well, we’re still the more humane side of the conflict. Or something along those lines.
3. The nightly 8 o’clock national news have taken an interestingly neutral line; they assiduously report the facts of the blackouts, as well as every utterance by Klichko, DTEK, whatever on how many people are without power, water, heat. But they never address the normative side of the question. It is as if they were reporting, as they do, on strikes against tanks or artillery positions. Meanwhile the Ministry of Defense frames each strike as “in response to” Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians and infrastructure.
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Personally, I suspect the Russian General Staff isn’t thinking about this in terms of “damage to civilians”, but rather whether blowing away the infrastructure will help attain some future military objective, probably in the context of taking a big chunk of Left Bank Ukraine. Which it sounds like, based on public statements, they now mean to do before crossing the Dnieper towards Odessa-Nikolaev. I mean, there is likely a reason why they seem to be splitting the grid into sub-regions, and specifically hitting a lot more targets in the east than in the west of the country. [We’ll know for sure if or when they start shutting down rail traffic between east and west.] So there is a qualitative difference between the 1999 NATO briefing – surrender, and we’ll stop hitting civvies – and what is happening here.
At the same time, I am…not thrilled by the way this is being pitched in the media, because there seems to be a bit of a mental transition from “these are our misguided brothers and sisters who need to be saved” to “this is an enemy population that needs to be subjugated”. Which may factually be true, but that isn’t the sort of propaganda one saw back in 2022-2023. Not to mention the fact that, if Moscow means to ultimately control (partly annex, partly vassalize) most or all of Ukraine, Moscow will be the one that will need to rebuild everything. Although I suppose, based on their experience with the already-annexed regions, they might have said – we need to rebuild the whole infrastructure from the ground up anyway, might as well smash the old stuff on the way in if this helps us militarily in some fashion.
At what point will the de-electrification make the logistics of the AFU unsustainable? They still have brigades facing off against the Russians all the way from Sumy down to Kherson, and Russian progress is often the result of slowly advancing to get fire control of highways that brings supplies to the AFU troops. Is the electrical campaign just affecting civilians in cities, or is it at some point also going to dry up the back-end capacity of Ukraine to keep supplying its troops at the line of contact?
It is surprisingly difficult to find sources on the fact that transformers for power grids are custom made, except for the fact that some people say so and that all manufacturers of big transformers offer the possibility of custom orders.