The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
Why is Russia not eliminating all of the generating capacity outside NPPs?
By allowing islands where the power is still available it means people will move and concentrate there. Leaving the cities close to the front.
Totally destroying the non-nuclear power stations could also make the grid unstable and knock the nuclear reactors out of the grid as well.
It takes a lot of time to spool down a nuclear reactor and this cannot be done without a power supply. Making the grid unstable would risk causing nuclear meltdowns.
Judging from recent events that could be happening now though.
This recent attack caused more dooming than I thought it would. People seem to have woken up to the fact that Russia could in fact de-energize Ukraine if they wanted to and they haven't done so now not because of lack of ability but for other reasons.
People who normally are not pro-Russia are even saying this is FAFO, Ukraine started it by attacking Russian refineries first etc.
Ukraine is connected to the European power grid. Taking out their power generators might overload certain connectors, but will not plunge the country into darkness as long as the cross-border connectors are in place.
@Temstar the power plants enjoyed a formidable GBAD umbrella. However, Ukraine has begun to suffer from an interceptor shortage (in particular those that can intercept high speed ballistic missiles like Kinzhal) and this is allowing a much larger proportion of Russian missiles to get through. Plus, Russia has been stockpiling its missiles for quite a while now to build up for burst strikes like these that can overwhelm the Ukrainian defense.
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We have virtually no idea about previous interception rates, we have virtually no idea about current interception rates.
The one thing we know is that large power plants are objects whose destruction can't really be hidden away - if you even want to hide it.
While the media narrative is that Russia can now destroy power plants because Ukraine has run out interceptors, we have to think of the context; Russia has had the ability to destroy these power plants for at least the majority of the war, if not the entire war. To think this is only a matter of Ukraine's current inability, rather than choices made by Russia are outright absurd.
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It’s not absurd. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a war of attrition for quite some time now, and it’s beginning to pay dividends for Russia. Either Ukraine is running out of interceptors or Russia has significantly attrited their air defense platforms.
Having said that, Western military analysts have warned in the beginning of the year that Russia will have an opportunity this year to overwhelm Ukraine’s GBAD precisely due to an interceptor gap. However, the same people claimed that production rates for interceptors are ramping up and will surpass Russia’s missile production within a year.
You're simply assuming that Ukrainian powerplants would be more or less unassailable if Ukraine had bigger interceptor stocks, thus Ukrainian power plants being hit proves that Ukraine is running very low on interceptors.
If we don't assume that Ukrainian powerplants are more or less unassailable if Ukraine had a bigger interceptor stock, then a Ukrainian power plant being hit proves nothing.
In reality we mostly have no way of verifying either sides claim of missile interceptions, as the information vacuum is almost total with few examples of open information like when major power plants gets hit or stray videos of explosions are released.
What narratives military experts push are fairly irrelevant, they play their part in the war propaganda. Focusing on fundamental aspects like troop concentration has proved far more useful than listening to military experts simply ignoring such things; remember how the narrative of Ukrainian offensive genius quickly faded when Russia decided to mobilize equivalent numbers, thus preventing Ukraine from establishing massive local superiority?
Generally speaking there is no data at all on interceptor deliveries, making any assumption based on such incomplete knowledge is absurd. Only thing we get is the war propaganda from Kiev being parroted by loyal journalists and experts. And we know Kiev's war propaganda is aimed at maximizing foreign support in its struggle against Moscow , thus the general narrative will always be: Patriots/IRIS, etc works great, but we need more.
Which brings us back to the core question: Are Ukrainian Power plants now being destroyed because Ukraine is running out of interceptors or because Russia is now targeting Ukrainian power plants? A related question is: Has Russia previously been targeting Ukrainian power plants but failed due to interceptions?
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
I see the root cause for the Russian escalated attacks on dual use infrastructure as a direct result of the continuing and escalating Ukrainian attacks on Russian dual use, and now civilian targets.
Despite widespread western misconceptions and deliberate propaganda misinformation, I think Putin is far more concerned and in touch with popular Russian public sentiment than most in the west would expect or believe.
The reason Russia has previously held back in hitting critical dual use infrastructure in major Ukrainian cities is not due to a lack of capacity but rather due to the fear that doing so would cause a massive humanitarian disaster and tip public sentiment against the SMO, since the Russian state itself has previously always portrayed the Ukrainians as misguided and lost Slavic siblings.
There have been a pretty concerted but subtle Russian propaganda attempt to change that narrative with racially charged slurs being commonly directly at the Ukrainians. But it is the Ukrainians themselves who have been doing the heavy lifting in massively turning Russian public sentiment against them with their entirely needless and pointless attacks against Russian boarder towns, refineries and even resorting to terrorist attacks against civilians in the Moscow theatre attack. Yes, there is still much denying about Ukraine being responsible in the west, but the Russian public overwhelmingly believes it was the Ukrainians, which is what matters most for Putin.
I see these attacks as a test by Putin to see how the Russian public would react. Especially since the weather is warming so the loss of power is unlikely to create any lethal threats to the population of the affected areas.
If there are no unexpected shifts in Russian public sentiment, the gloves may truly be coming off now.
Do you have any idea of how much power a country with 30 million people uses?
Even huge interconnectors between industrial countries in Europe aren't large enough to cope with a task like this. The HVDC link between France and the UK has only like 2000 MW capacity. That is less power than a single one of the power plants the Russians destroyed this week in Ukraine. And this kind of electric infrastructure can also itself be attacked. It takes years and billions to build. But even if you built it the Russians can just destroy the power converter stations.
Ukraine would be better off doing the opposite of what you said. Distributing its energy grid. For example they could install rooftop solar.
Do not be ridiculous. The Russians destroyed the switching stations without any issue when they wanted to do it. They could have destroyed the power plants and bridges any time they wanted to. They didn't do it because back then they wanted to make reconstruction of Ukraine easier after the conflict ended. They seem to have given up on that.
This is clearly retaliation for the Ukrainians striking Russian oil refineries.
Remember that when the conflict started Putin even gave the troops explicit orders not to use mortars to reduce collateral damage. That is how naive they started this conflict out as. But as things progress further the Russians will just keep turning the screws on Ukraine more. Russia has the capability to ramp up the conflict as much as they want to including turning the whole country of Ukraine into a glass parking lot.
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