Posted on 10/13/2022 4:08:12 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
Power has largely been restored across Ukraine following this week's attacks by Russia on Ukrainian energy facilities, the head of Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo said on Thursday.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi told national television that some repair work was continuing on damaged infrastructure but supplies had been restored. Despite this, Ukrainians should continue to conserve energy because further Russian attacks were possible on energy facilities, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Hilarious the way some childish FReepers were clapping and cheering with glee about some tiny city getting its power plant knocked out, claiming that that somehow marked “the end” for the Ukrainian fighting spirit
Ukraine will be giving up now! Their spirit is broken by these attacks!
LOL
Amounts to pinprick nuisance attacks, and not much else.
And the power grid is already back up. So FAIL!
Newsome wishes he could blame power failures on Russia. LOL
Have they lifted their 5pm to 10 pm power blackouts
Ukraine’s power grid gets bombed into oblivion and they have it back up in running in a day, we have a minor windstorm and ours is out for a week....
Kudrytskyi said Monday’s attacks across Ukraine could be “the biggest attack on an energy system... in the history of the world.”
—
No exaggeration there. No sir.
How many are still without power in Florida?
And there are those here celebrating USD bringing power back online in Ukraine.
GloboHomo propaganda! Neocon lies! When Putin stands he blocks out the sun, and plunges all of Ukraine into darkness!
Now where did I put that bottle of Stoli?
From what I’ve heard (not in the press or blogosphere - actually through more secure channels than that), Ukraine’s CNI risk strategy for at least 15 years has included “what ifs” like major interruption to their grid systems.
They did a huge overhaul of the technology in the infrastructure to reduce dependencies on legacy Russian kit.
Then there’s this...
It’s well worth a full read because it does rather bust open the idea that Ukraine was some slow-witted, backward bumpkin country incapable of getting its act together enough to join the other eastern European states within a few years (the Russian caricature).
On the roadmap in March 2021: Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) with solar Photovoltaic (PV) plants; Energy Management System; synchronization with the European electricity grid; and decarbonization of its power sector.
Ukraine disconnected its grid from Russia’s and Belarus four hours before the Special Military Operation kicked off, and within a few months was connected to the European grid. So some of those improvements must’ve already been in place.
It really wouldn’t surprise me at all if Ukraine had already ensured (post-2014) that a Russian targeted attack on its energy infrastructure would have to be pretty devastating to completely knock it all out.
Maybe the only things they didn’t expect were Russia to militarily occupy NPPs (Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl) and use them as munitions warehouses, because that’s only marginally less insane than intentionally triggering a nuclear accident.
But by and large, I think Russia was jumping up and down talking about having knocked it all out and the Khokols facing a frozen winter... only to have the divots in the Ukrainian roads fixed inside of a week and the CNI repaired in equally short order.
Russia could just keep blowing stuff up, but as long as the Ukrainians can keep repairing the damage, it’s not going to make a massive difference.
Ukraine’s got some figures in its head. If Russia thinks 300,000 Uke casualties is enough to break Ukraine’s resolve, they’re massively deluded. Ukraine braced itself for a figure closer to 3 million.
One of the soldiers being trained in Britain told me, once people in Russia started talking openly (even on television) about a cull of 15% of the adult population - and the DNR prat went far further than that on camera - he got off the fence and signed right up for the war.
By pledging to deliver an unprecedented level of brutality EVEN AFTER AN UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, Russia made the war existential to Ukrainians. They took the view it’d be cheaper in the long run for Ukraine to lose a million or even two million fighting back, than surrender on day one of the war and have a MINIMUM of 3 million deaths.
And there are those here celebrating USD bringing power back online in Ukraine.
Stupid. Are there any US emergency line repair crews working in Ukraine instead of Florida?
I know. I don’t know why anyone would cheer on Russian aggression?
I’m not exactly cheering for Ukraine either though, but I do like to see Russia get their ass kicked by the underdog.
Pavel Gubarev, Russia's "DPR" figure in Donetsk, states their intent towards Ukrainians, who he says are possessed by the devil : "We aren't coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don't want to be convinced, we'll kill you. We'll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you."
From: Angry Staffer
“Day 228 of Putin’s 3 Day War
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the war is not going well for Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs came out with updated Russian casualty numbers this morning:
According to them, 62,500 Russian soldiers have been killed and 5,133 armored personnel vehicles destroyed or captured.
They also claim Russian forces have lost 1,477 artillery systems, 266 aircraft, 235 helicopters and 2,486 tanks. These numbers are almost certainly inflated, though much of the vehicle damage has been corroborated by Oryx and other open-source analysts. Accurate troop casualty numbers are always difficult to pin down in the fog of war, but we’re talking about a catastrophic loss for Russia if even half of what Ukraine is claiming is true.
For what it’s worth, Western intelligence estimates generally range from between 20,000-30,000 Russians KIA. This is untenable for Putin, and why he announced the partial mobilization earlier this month. I’m not sure why he thinks injecting untrained soldiers into the equation is going to help him, but here we are.
What’s new?
In the month since the last update, Ukraine has retaken thousands of square kilometers of territory - including virtually all of Kharkiv Oblast and a good chunk around northern Kherson - inflicted hundreds (possibly thousands) of new Russian casualties and captured a metric shit-ton of Russian military hardware. Putin is also seeing Russian support for the war fall to new lows, with prominent milbloggers turning on him, and persistent rumors of dissention in the ranks of the Kremlin leaking to the media.
Oh, and a large chunk of his favorite bridge now leads to the Moskva (that’s the one at the bottom of the sea) instead of Crimea.
The Reality on the Ground
Perhaps my favorite part of this most recent embarrassment is that Ukraine’s advance is being fueled almost entirely by captured Russian hardware:
“Kupyansk, Ukraine—Captured and abandoned Russian tanks, howitzers and fighting vehicles—quickly scrubbed of their Z tactical markers and repainted with Ukrainian crosses—are being turned against their former owners as Ukraine’s military advances in the eastern part of the country.
Some Russian pieces of equipment were ready for immediate use, while others are being repaired to return to the front. Tanks, vehicles and guns too damaged to salvage are being cannibalized for spare parts. Crucially, Russia has also left behind large quantities of Soviet-standard artillery shells that had nearly run out in Ukraine.
This haul is helping power Ukrainian forces as they retake parts of the eastern Donetsk region, including the town of Lyman, and push further east into nearby Luhansk. Kyiv has regained more than 4,000 square miles of land in the east over the past month, in addition to advances in the south.” via WSJ
In an ironic - and absolutely hilarious twist - Russia is now the number one supplier of arms to Ukraine. We’re talking about over 400 captured tanks, 600 armored vehicles, dozens of new multiple launch rocket systems, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
To be clear, Western aid made the initial push possible, but the amount of captured equipment - and the incompetence that goes with it - is staggering.
Reinforcements are on the way! ...maybe
Conscripted Russians Keep Mysteriously Dying Before Reaching Battlefield
“State news agency Tass reported that the body of the soldier had been found on the site of the Novosibirsk Higher Military Command School (NVVK) in Siberia, according to the regional human-rights commissioner Nina Shalabayeva.
The local news outlet Sibkray.ru reported that the man was from Novosibirsk and, according to relatives, had died “as a result of violent actions.”
The name of the conscript and how long he was in the unit is unknown. Shalabayeva told the outlet that investigators were looking into the death and “are not giving more information.”
Shalabayeva said that, on Sunday, a 35-year-old volunteer from the Irkutsk region, southeastern Siberia, who was later named as Alexander Koltun, died in his sleep at the same site.
His mother, Elena Zausaeva, said he had died on the fourth day of his stay in the unit. She had been told on the phone that “he died from low-quality alcohol” and had been drinking there “for several days.” via NewsWeek
Deaths have ranged from ‘heart attacks’ to alcohol poisoning. It’s more than a little bit suspicious that healthy conscripts - many of whom don’t want to be there in the first place - are dying before they can make it to Ukraine.
The sham referendum
This feels like forever ago, but on Wednesday, October 5, Putin declared four regions of Ukraine - Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia - part of Russia. Ukraine, for their part, wasn’t impressed with Putin’s attempt to illegally grab 43,000 square miles of their territory and immediately went back on the offensive. As of the night of the supposed annexation, not a single one of the annexed territories were fully controlled by Russia.
Away from the battlefield, Putin’s sham referendum was met by almost universal condemnation, and a whole host of new sanctions from the West. The United States also immediately announced another aid package worth approximately $625 million:
“four HIMARS MLRS and ammunition;
16 155 mm howitzers and 75,000 artillery rounds for them;
500 precision-guided 155 mm artillery rounds;
1,000 155 mm rounds of remote anti-armor mine systems
16 105 mm howitzers;
30,000 120 mm mortar rounds;
200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles;
200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
obstacle emplacement equipment;
Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
field equipment.” via Yahoo News
The precision-guided 155 mm artillery rounds referenced above are the M982 “Excalibur” GPS-guided rounds, and these are absolute game changers. The most up-to-date extended range (ER) variant can accurately hit a target at distances nearing 45 miles. This is done via really ingenious glide-fin technology: essentially, at the top of the ballistic arc, glide-fins will deploy and extend the range by around 10 miles, give or take a couple.
Crimea River
On October 7, Putin’s reality on the ground went from bad to worse with the bombing of the Kerch Strait Bridge. From ISW:
“A large-scale explosion damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge that links occupied Crimea with Russia on October 8. Maxar satellite imagery shows that the explosion collapsed one lane of the road bridge and damaged the nearby railway track.[1] The Russian Investigative Committee stated that a truck exploded on the bridge and ignited seven fuel tanks on the railroad.[2] A small fraction of Russian milbloggers speculated that Ukrainian saboteurs used a boat to detonate the bridge from the sea, though there is no visible evidence for such a conclusion.[3] The Kremlin refrained from accusing Ukraine of sabotage or attack, echoing similar restraint following the sinking of the cruiser Moskva and the Ukrainian strike on Saky airfield in Crimea.[4] Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the incident, but The New York Times reported that an unnamed senior Ukrainian official stated that Ukrainian intelligence participated in the explosion.[5] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted that the Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a government commission composed of government officials, security services, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations to investigate the ”emergency.”[6]
The explosion will not permanently disrupt critical Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Crimea, but its aftermath is likely to increase friction in Russian logistics for some time. The road bridge appears at least partially operational, and the railroad bridge did not suffer significant structural damage according to Russian reports that generally seem plausible based on the available video evidence. Russian footage shows people walking on the damaged road bridge and a train moving on the railroad bridge.[7] The Head of occupied Crimea Sergey Aksyonov claimed that the remaining lane of the road bridge opened to cars and buses after a rigorous security check, but that trucks must move by ferry.[8] The collapsed lane of the road bridge will restrict Russian military movements until it is repaired, forcing some Russian forces to rely on the ferry connection for some time. Russian forces will likely still be able to transport heavy military equipment via the railroad. Russian officials will likely intensify security checks on all vehicles crossing the bridge, however, adding delays to the movement of Russian military equipment, personnel, and supplies to Crimea. Putin has already signed a decree strengthening the security protocol on the bridge under the supervision of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).[9” via ISW
There’s quite a bit of speculation as to what exactly happened on the bridge. Originally, my thought was that the explosion originated under the bridge, but available satellite imagery and videos from at the scene make it less clear. The damage pattern doesn’t resemble any of the vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) blast patterns that I’ve seen, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’m sure we’ll find out more about the origins of the blast soon.
Regardless, losing a large chunk of Putin’s favorite bridge almost 8 months into his 3 Day War seems suboptimal. To make matters worse for Russia, Ukraine followed up the bridge strike with a strike on a key railway hub in Ilovaisk - approximately 90 miles northeast of Mariupol. Coupled with the clear logistical problems caused by the Kerch Bridge bombing, damage to the Ilovaisk railway hub is going to make resupplying the M14 highway (Mariupol, Meliotopol, Kherson) corridor very difficult, if not impossible.
I would expect to see a significant push to reclaim territory in southern Ukraine in the coming days to weeks.
Where do we go from here?
I expect to see the Ukrainian forces make significant gains in the Kherson region in the coming weeks, and - aside from something absolutely barbaric - I’m having a difficult time seeing what Russia can do to change the battlefield calculus here.
Momentum is completely on the Ukraine’s side, and their recent victory in the east has given them a significant morale boost, too:
“Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. Inside there was a sniper rifle, rocket propelled grenades, helmets and belongings. The men were gone.
“They dropped everything: personal care, helmets,” said the commander, who uses the code name Swat. “I think it was a special unit, but they were panicking. It was raining very hard, the road was bad and they drop everything and move...
There has been little time for reflection for the Ukrainians as they press their counterattack, focused on keeping the pressure on the retreating Russian army to prevent it from regrouping. Yet after months in the trenches never seeing the faces of the enemy, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have now engaged the Russians up close and gotten a chance to size up their opponent.
“We have the strength to do this,” Swat said. “Because right now they are in panic, they really are in panic.” via Yahoo News
I also found some comments by General Petraeus to be particularly interesting:
“Former CIA Director and retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus said in a new interview that Russia can still inflict destruction upon Ukraine, but Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot reverse Ukrainian gains in the four regions Moscow recently annexed.
“I think he’s literally out of moves,” Petraeus told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble.
“He’s trying all these different desperate actions, but the fact is, the reality that confronts Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine is that Ukraine has a vastly more capable and larger force than does the country that is more than three times their size,” Petraeus continued. “So the reality on the battlefield now is desperate for Putin. There’s literally nothing he can do. It is irreversible.”
I agree with him to a point, but I would argue there’s still *something* Putin could do and losing some of the Kerch Strait Bridge might make him and Sergei Surovikin, his new commander of all forces in Ukraine, more likely to do it. To be clear, the United States still assesses that Putin isn’t actively planning to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but the threat still exists and is something that must be prepared for.
There are prominent voices in Russia who are calling for such an escalation, even though they know it wouldn’t cause Ukraine to surrender, nor are their troops well-trained enough to capitalize on a tactical nuclear strike, anyway:
“Another war correspondent, Evgeny Poddubny, writing for the state RT outlet, said that nobody in the Ukrainian leadership seemed to fear Russia anymore.
The enemy has stopped being afraid, and this circumstance needs to be corrected promptly,” he wrote in RT’s Telegram channel. “Commanders of formations, heads of intelligence agencies, politicians of the Kyiv criminal regime sleep peacefully, wake up without a headache and in a good mood, without a sense of inevitability of punishment for crimes committed.”
Russia should also revive Mr. Putin’s formula for winning the Chechen war more than two decades ago when he vowed to pursue adversaries relentlessly — and even “waste them in the outhouse,” the post said.
At least at first, the attack did not incite more of the intense criticism focused in recent weeks on the Defense Ministry and the minister himself, Sergei K. Shoigu.
But the $7 billion, 12-mile-long bridge was a symbolic and engineering triumph for Mr. Putin. Completed in 2018, it literally cemented Russia’s claim to make Crimea part of its territory. Damaging it, as some commentators noted, raised questions about that control — which will most likely force the president to respond in some way.” via The New York Times
For our part, we’re doing everything we can to make Putin realize that he can’t un-ring that bell, and that the consequences would be dire. The message to him right now is essentially, “being embarrassed by Ukraine probably sucks, but not nearly as much as being targeted by all of NATO.”
Let’s hope he listens...”
~ Angry Staffer
Sure. They are really failing, aren't they, Biden?
They only control 20% of Ukrainian land -- and growing.
WOW. If that is failing, winning will be totally devastating for Zelensky the clown and his sub-clowns!
Could be true, but any less optimistic report would be banned by the Ukrainian government or the one-world press.
WSJ video link (may not be available to non-subscribers) showing great aerial pics and video of LONG lines of vehicles waiting days to cross back over to Russia.
Only partial access across bridge. Ferries are bogged down, alternate routs are too dangerous.
Stupid. Are there any US dollars providing for the repair of the Ukrainian power grid?
You and I both know the answer to that question.
“ They only control 20% of Ukrainian land — and growing.”
Nope; shrinking.
And this whole invasion was supposed to be done in a week or two.
Right, because most/all our money is going to Ukraine, so we can't help Florida. Stupid
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