NYT: Russia Plans Winter Strikes to Knock Out Energy in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa
According to a Russian government plan reported by The New York Times, Moscow hopes to force Ukraine to capitulate this winter by wrecking its energy system. Ukraine intercepted the plan and showed it to European allies in September.
Russia expects to force Ukraine to surrender this winter by disabling its energy system and leaving Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa without electricity, heating and water, The New York Times has reported. The newspaper reviewed a Russian government plan that Ukraine intercepted and presented to its European allies in September. The war is now in its fifth year.
What the plan envisages
The plan calculates that cutting water, power and heat to Ukraine's three largest cities would take about 70 ballistic missiles, 720 long-range drones and 150 guided aerial bombs. Russian military planners reportedly believe that a month of strikes at this intensity would destroy the Ukrainian energy system.
The paper says earlier attacks have already left Ukrainian power plants unable to run at full capacity, and each new strike quickly knocks them offline. The three combined heat and power plants serving Kyiv had a total capacity of about 1.3 gigawatts before the war; it is now about 500 megawatts. If the plan worked, the three cities could lose 90% of their generating capacity and see heat supply fall by 90%, disrupting water and sewage systems.
Why Moscow is confident
Russia's confidence stems largely from Ukraine's shortage of air defenses, especially Patriot interceptor missiles, without which Ukrainian forces can hardly defend against ballistic missiles. Analysts say Moscow has a better chance of success in its air campaign than at any earlier point in the war: Ukraine's missile defenses are depleted after cuts in American aid, Russia's missile and drone arsenal has become stronger and more effective, and years of strikes have left the energy infrastructure far more vulnerable.
That makes Moscow highly unlikely to accept any form of the energy ceasefire that Kyiv has repeatedly proposed. Harry Nedelcu, a director at the consulting firm Rasmussen Global, told the newspaper: "The only card they have to pressure the Ukrainians are these air attacks. They don't have anything else."
History points the other way
The paper notes, however, that bombing campaigns that devastate economies and civilian life usually fail to force an enemy to give in. The United States did not achieve its aims this way in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s, or in the current war against Iran. Seth Jones, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that punishing a civilian population and trying to break its will has a very poor historical record of forcing a concession of defeat.
