Russia and Ukraine are turning their guns on their energy sectors and kyiv has everything to lose because it is fighting at a disadvantage. Not only because of its smaller arsenal, especially because the United States is stopping it. This March, the Ukrainian Armed Forces accelerated their campaign of drone bomb attacks against the Russian oil industry. Up to 15 oil refineries have been hit in Russia, the last on March 23. This campaign, as stated this Friday in Washington Post Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a reaction to the Kremlin's current offensive against the country's electrical grid, the second in the war, which is being carried out with daily bombings that have destroyed several power plants and cut off supplies to thousands of people. Zelensky also confirmed that the US government opposes his attacks on Russian refineries. Washington's fear is that there will be a global escalation in fuel prices.
Russia would have lost 10% of its oil refining capacity, according to British intelligence services. The Bloomberg agency raised the damage to 15%. The latest blow, on March 23 against a plant in the city of Samara (900 kilometers from Ukrainian territory), occurred just one day after Washington's first warning to kyiv. It was through Financial Times. This newspaper assured that President Joe Biden's Administration had insisted to the Ukrainian forces that they must stop these operations. The spokesperson for the US State Department confirmed the unrest in a press conference on March 26: “We do not instigate or support Ukraine attacking outside its territory.”
On March 22, when the information was made public, a particularly tense situation occurred at the kyiv Security Forum. The US Undersecretary of Defense, Celeste Wallander, and Oleksii Danilov, still at that time secretary of the Ukrainian National Security Council, met in a debate. Danilov, then a heavyweight in Zelensky's team, although he would relieve him of his position on March 29. The participants asked Wallander if it was true that his Government had asked to stop the bombings against Russian refineries, to which the Undersecretary of Defense responded evasively, although she reiterated that the United States is in favor of applying sanctions on Moscow and, at the same time, to keep the energy market stable. Danilov took the floor to say that he found it incredible that information like this was leaked to the media, and added: “It is our war and we will not ask anyone for permission to attack on Russian territory.”
“If we do not have air defenses to protect our energy system and Russia attacks it,” Zelensky said in Washington Post, in a veiled criticism of the lack of American military supplies, “my question is: why can't we respond? Your society [la rusa] “You have to learn to live without oil, without diesel, without electricity, it's fair.” Zelensky stated that if Russia stops its bombings against the Ukrainian energy sector, they will stop attacking the Russian oil industry.
Between October 2022 and January 2023, Russia carried out the first campaign focused on destroying the Ukrainian electricity grid. Missiles and drone bombs were periodically directed against power plants and substations, leaving millions of people without electricity during the fall and winter, also without heat or running water. The second offensive against the Ukrainian energy sector has coincided with kyiv's pressure on oil refineries, but the truth is that it has been in the last week when Moscow has focused its fire almost daily on Ukrainian power plants, just after the peak moment of the bombings on its oil industry.
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Ukraine has lost several power plants in the last two weeks, the most important in Kharkiv, the country's second city, and in Zaporizhzhia. The inhabitants of Kharkiv have been experiencing daily interruptions in the electricity supply and telephone network for days. The Zaporizhzhia dam and hydroelectric power station were hit by eight cruise missiles. The plant will not be able to operate again for at least a year. Ukrenergo, the state-owned company that manages the power grid, announced on Friday that daily power cuts were coming into effect in eight provinces. In others, such as Odesa, the supply had been restored after the missile attack on March 25 that left 300,000 people without electricity. The joy was short-lived because this Sunday the city suffered a new blow, this one with drone bombs, against an electrical substation.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmihal on Friday asked citizens to avoid unnecessary consumption of electricity. His government confirmed that Ukraine was once again dependent on imported electricity from European Union countries and is already warning the population to prepare for possible interruptions throughout the country.
Missiles against dams
The most important development in the current Russian phase of attacks in Ukraine far from the front is that it is targeting dams and hydroelectric plants. This was concluded on March 29 by a report from the Institute for the Study of War, a US military analysis center, which mentioned two other damaged hydroelectric plants, in the center of the country (Cherkasi) and in the west, in Chernivtsi. kyiv has the largest water reservoir on the Dnieper River, which allows the operation of a hydroelectric plant that supplies energy to the capital. The Ukrainian media TSN reported this Saturday that if the dam is a Russian target and fractures, as happened with the Nova Kajovka dam in the summer of 2023, a large part of the city center would be flooded in 25 minutes.
kyiv has not yet been a target of the current Russian campaign against the Ukrainian power grid, unlike the 2022 offensive, when it was the hardest hit city. The capital has the best anti-aircraft defense systems in the country, but the bombings of the last two weeks have confirmed that the Ukrainian Air Force suffers from a progressive deficit of anti-aircraft ammunition. In the multiple Russian bombings since March 22, the interception percentage of the invader's missiles has been 60%, compared to 80% in 2023.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba also warned his allies this week that without anti-aircraft systems such as ammunition for US Patriot missile batteries, the war will fall on the Russian side. “Give us the damn Patriots,” Kuleba demanded in Political: “If we had enough air defense systems, specifically the Patriot, we could protect not only the lives of our people, but also our economy.” Since 2023, the Republican Party has blocked in the United States Congress an allocation of more than 50 billion euros for military assistance to Ukraine. “If there is no support from the United States, it means that there is no air defense, there are no Patriot missiles, there are no tools for electronic warfare, there is no artillery ammunition,” Zelensky explained; “It means that we will go backwards, step by step.”
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