How Ukraine Won the Battle for the Power Grid
Putin’s actions has turned Ukraine resolutely against his occupation
The world sat back and took note in September 2022 when Ukraine liberated 12,000 square kilometers in the Kharkiv region. The Washington Post declared Ukraine’s Kharkiv offensive ‘reshaped the war.’
After 48 hours, the Ukrainian army had penetrated 20 kilometers into enemy territory. By the end of the third day, the counter ran up 50 kilometers. The fast moving attack brutally exposed the lack of defensive depth in the Russian lines.
Vladimir Putin, who was already in a state of panic over the inglorious domestic response he received for his partial mobilization order, asked his generals to change the strategy. The special military operation will no longer be a fight against the Ukrainian army, instead it will add civilians as legitimate targets.
The Russian army is used to targeting civilian populations to achieve their military objectives. They reduced a once bustling Aleppo into an inhospitable terrain for Syrians.
Rescue workers in Aleppo reported that their cars and headquarters were among the first targets hit on Friday,” The Times’s Anne Barnard and Somini Sengupta reported in September 2016. “The effect was instant: Now, when people are buried in rubble, no one comes. Or it takes longer for them to arrive. Relatives are again exhuming relatives with their own hands.
The Russian army repackaged its destruction and devastation doctrine for Ukraine.
On October 10th, eight days after the Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv ended, Russia launched a barrage of missiles against 11 infrastructure facilities throughout Ukraine. The days when Russia only attacked energy facilities in front lines are over. This nationwide attack served as a warning to Ukrainians that they cannot feel safe anywhere in their homeland.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have continued since that date.
They wanted to initiate a long-term blackout and to freeze our big cities. The idea was to force us to negotiate not through emerging victorious on the battlefield but by terrorizing the population,” Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the C.E.O. of Ukrenergo, told The NewYorker
Russia bombarded Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with 1,350 rockets and drones between October and January.
For decades Ukraine and Russia shared the same electric grid. “Much of the crucial equipment in the energy sector, from power-generating turbines to transformers and control-panel switches, are of Soviet vintage. The layouts of Ukraine’s plants and substations hardly vary from those in Russia; many were constructed from blueprints still readily available in Moscow”.
Russians knew Ukraine’s power grid and they also knew where they will be most vulnerable. The attacks did succeed in plunging Ukrainian cities into darkness on several occasions. A Shahed kamikaze drone attack in December damaged Odesa’s electricity grid. It left around 1.5 million residents were without electricity. Last month, Russia deployed its hypersonic Kinzhal missiles to attack Ukrainian infrastructure.
The number of days Russia attacked Ukrainian infrastructure
- October : 6
- November: 3
- December: 5
- January: 3
- February: 4
- March: 1
Putin wanted to push Ukrainian cities into a deep freeze during the winter by disconnecting their power connection. He failed miserably in his attempt to subjugate Ukrainians. The interval between subsequent attacks has grown over time.
The winter is almost over, while Kyiv is still lit up in the night.
The Ukrainian Response
The majority of our discussion about Ukraine remains focused on battlefield gains and losses, often ignoring the response of average Ukrainians to the war.
It includes Ukrainians who still return home despite knowing that they might be killed in one of those apartment strikes the Russian army is famous for. It is also about the men and women who refuse to close their businesses. We should also not forget that Ukrainians simply turn on their phone torchlights in dark alleys and keep walking during power outages.
Ukrainians understood that this was another front in the war. Russians wanted to stop the electricity from flowing. Ukrainians responded by making sure that it kept flowing.
Even after losing scores of transformers, switches, and other critical infrastructure components, Ukraine’s engineers have maintained power across the country. Every minute Ukrainian engineers worked on fixing the broken power lines, transformers, substations and power plants, they knew they had a target on their backs.
Of course, they were alerted by air-raid sirens. But to walk into a well-known target zone and to keep their heads down for hours on end required commitment that goes far beyond their work.
The west gave them a huge helping hand in fixing the damaged infrastructure. On December 13, more than 70 countries came together to raise more than a billion dollars to help Ukraine survive the winter.
Ukraine received funding to “improve its infrastructure and access to electricity, heat, water, food, health care, and transportation”. USAID still delivers supplies needed by Ukraine to provide heating and hot water to people around the country.
With time, Ukrainian air defenses also became better at intercepting missiles and drones.
“Most of the drones fired by Russia are now shot down before reaching their targets, and most of the missiles too. Data from EIRC shows fewer than 10% of the 1,400 missiles and drones fired at Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure since early October have actually destroyed key components of the grid”. According to The Strategist, Ukrainian interception rates improved from 50%-60% in June last year to nearly 90% right now.
Ukraine still does not have the means to intercept the Kinzhals and Kh22s, but those missiles are not available in abundance for Russia.
Yesterday, the Biden administration committed an additional “$2.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine, saying it will provide air defense systems that include gun trucks and laser-guided weapons to counter Russia’s relentless use of drones”.
The Ukrainian resolve to defeat the Russian army has not changed one bit due to the attacks. Recent polls show that more than 80% of Ukrainians want the fight to continue, the same number as before the attacks on the energy grid.
They are not going to give up.
Putin’s army repurposed Kinzhal, Kh-22 ASCMs and S-300 (SA-20) air defense missiles for attacking Ukrainian infrastructure. The interval between each attack has grown over time. Only a shortage of precision weapons could explain this. They are dependent on their monthly production rate.
The Russian army has made a huge mistake by using so many of these high-tech weapons to subjugate civilians. Their current weapons stock pile will leave the Russian military in an extremely vulnerable position while defending against Ukrainian counterattacks.
