On November 23, afternoon, rockets were launched from the mainland, from strategical bombers from the Caspian Sea and ships. Their goal was the energy infrastructure of Ukraine.
The time to scope the mark depended on the distance. At 1:10 p.m., they hit Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk and Krzywy Horn, a minute later in Nikolayev and Odessa, half to 2 in Kiev, Berdyczów, Rytomierz. At the latest, at 13.55, they arrived in Lviv.
After specified an attack, 10 million residents (of 27 million inactive in Ukraine) stayed for hours in the dark, without light and heat, water, communications and the Internet. Kiev, a powerful 3-million-dollar metropolis, lost power, heat, stopped moving suburban railways, subways, trams. The large city without street lighting, houselights and commercials became dreary and dangerous. The city's paralysis was complete, ATMs were not working, people were buying out drinking water, but some, unwilling to stand in long queues, took consecutive from Dnieper. Hospitals and institutions worked on power generators.
The first attack on Ukrainian energy took place on October 10, as a retaliation for the attack on the Crimean Bridge. Then the powerful weekly air strikes began, crushing step by step the Ukrainian energy system. These are not carpet raids (such as those in Serbia or Libya), but precise surgical cuts that destruct key elements.
Despite specified violent attacks, the Ukrainian strategy is highly resilient, each time rising from the fall. He's so powerful that even hundreds of rocket strikes don't knock him on his knees. This is simply a legacy of the russian Union, where modern manufacture and energy infrastructure were built in the 1980s. After all, the aviation manufacture was created there, producing the largest aircraft of the planet An-225, the rocket industry, and especially the shipbuilding industry, which in the times of the USSR was 73% concentrated in Ukraine. Not to mention the steel manufacture or the large chemistry. To power all this, a powerful energy strategy was created, built for 1 of the world's most industrialised regions.
Independent Ukraine no longer needed so much energy, industrial production was constantly shrinking, as was the population. From 1990 to 2019, energy request fell by almost 50%, the manufacture rapidly shrinked. Therefore, this immense supply of power was adequate with the surplus for 30 years of operation of the Ukrainian State. And since February 2022, energy needs have halved due to the collapse of the economy (30% of GDP has fallen since the beginning of the year). And already before the war, Ukraine's energy powers were underutilized – only 54% in 2021. And although Ukraine lost at least 1/3 of its energy possible during the war, however, equally large losses were recorded during the war in humans – almost 10 million inhabitants (mainly women and children) left.
So the power supply is inactive so powerful that it can replenish losses even with specified extended destruction. But with all bombardment of generational powers or power grids, this supply of immunity is getting thinner.
At first, only a fewer / respective hours were needed to reconstruct the system, but now it is much worse. 4 to after the last attack inactive all 4th resident has no access to power. If these attacks proceed to be repeated, Ukraine will permanently sink into darkness. Destroyed transformers can no longer be replaced from warehouses, and fresh ones from the West will not come quickly. Ordering and buying them, even if the West borrows money, will take respective months. specified products are not on the shelf.
Especially as Russia escalates the impact force. The erstwhile mass attack, on November 15, erstwhile more than 90 rockets were launched, hitting 15 power facilities, was already targeted at turning off atomic power. This was full achieved on 23 November when, after the demolition of 750 kV stations, all 3 atomic power plants had to be detached.
One of the stated objectives of the Russian peculiar Military Operations in Ukraine is denazification. In energy, we see decommunization. Communism, as we know, is the power of council plus electrification. Ukrainian energy might not be left on stone.
Andrzej Szczęsniak
Think Poland, No. 49-50 (4-11.12.2022)
