“Russia has stepped up its campaign to destroy electricity, water and gas infrastructure across Ukraine.
**On Thursday morning, Moscow carried out another mass strike on Ukraine, just two days after one of Russia’s largest bombardments of the war.**
Since the attacks on the 15th of November, **Ukraine is facing a significant decrease in the power available from its national grid.**
This will impact civilian access to communications, heating and water supplies.”
EDIT: A Russian government news outlet has reported Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, saying the mass missile strikes are being carried out to force Ukraine to hold negotiations.
I haven’t looked closely, but my impression from what images I’ve seen are that the things that have been targeted are non-nuclear generation and power substations (the facilities that convert high-voltage power from long-distance transmission lines to lower, for use in a local area).
Some people are working on improving air defenses, but there are probably some other things that could be done to make the system more-resillient.
I don’t know how much can be done to improve the power substations situation. There are going to be a lot of them, and they necessarily are geographically distributed. Makes it hard to defend them. I’d assume that they’re easier to repair and replace parts on than generation, but though, since it’s probably possible to use off-the-shelf parts, as long as those parts can be provided in sufficient quantity.
One thing might be warning electrical workers working on those sites of any incoming weapons with time for them to get clear, since any workers killed there reduce ability to regenerate the system.
Another might be in making the substations more-resillient to blasts. Maybe separate transformers so that a given weapon can only destroy one or a minimal number. I don’t know if it’s possible to put them in holes — I’d think that flood risk would be bad for electrical equipment. But it might be possible to create physical space between them and set up [Hesco barriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion) or the like around them.
Generation is going to be hard, because I don’t think that much can be done in the short term. It takes a long time to build power generation.
Solar panels are low-density, so hard to effectively bomb with existing bombs, and can be deployed incrementally.
If the rest of Europe can provide power, some can presumably be fed into Ukraine as long as enough power distribution infrastructure exists. Russia won’t hit generation in NATO countries without escalating the conflict to direct Russia-NATO conflict. Power lines are vulnerable to attack — they cover a lot of area — but also relatively-quick and inexpensive to repair. I wonder if, as a matter of wartime exigency, it would be possible to initially install such lines on regular [utility poles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_pole) rather than the long-distance [transmission towers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_tower) that normally support high-voltage lines. Looking online, I don’t think that there’s a hard requirement for the towers other than safety, and if any post-hole digger can be used to be throwing up lines, that would accelerate the rate at which line could be thrown up.
A campaign against civilians, their goal is to destroy Ukraine as a state and by extension to destroy Ukrainian identity and its people.
Such actions are never to be tolerated and especially our geographic proximity makes it necessary to bring our support to the highest level possible. This imperative has been standing since at least February. But as always, next best date is today…
I remain confident to say that everyone supporting or even tolerating Russia is betraying everything we as humans and Europeans stand for.
3 comments
“Russia has stepped up its campaign to destroy electricity, water and gas infrastructure across Ukraine.
**On Thursday morning, Moscow carried out another mass strike on Ukraine, just two days after one of Russia’s largest bombardments of the war.**
Since the attacks on the 15th of November, **Ukraine is facing a significant decrease in the power available from its national grid.**
This will impact civilian access to communications, heating and water supplies.”
EDIT: A Russian government news outlet has reported Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, saying the mass missile strikes are being carried out to force Ukraine to hold negotiations.
I haven’t looked closely, but my impression from what images I’ve seen are that the things that have been targeted are non-nuclear generation and power substations (the facilities that convert high-voltage power from long-distance transmission lines to lower, for use in a local area).
Some people are working on improving air defenses, but there are probably some other things that could be done to make the system more-resillient.
I don’t know how much can be done to improve the power substations situation. There are going to be a lot of them, and they necessarily are geographically distributed. Makes it hard to defend them. I’d assume that they’re easier to repair and replace parts on than generation, but though, since it’s probably possible to use off-the-shelf parts, as long as those parts can be provided in sufficient quantity.
One thing might be warning electrical workers working on those sites of any incoming weapons with time for them to get clear, since any workers killed there reduce ability to regenerate the system.
Another might be in making the substations more-resillient to blasts. Maybe separate transformers so that a given weapon can only destroy one or a minimal number. I don’t know if it’s possible to put them in holes — I’d think that flood risk would be bad for electrical equipment. But it might be possible to create physical space between them and set up [Hesco barriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion) or the like around them.
Generation is going to be hard, because I don’t think that much can be done in the short term. It takes a long time to build power generation.
Solar panels are low-density, so hard to effectively bomb with existing bombs, and can be deployed incrementally.
If the rest of Europe can provide power, some can presumably be fed into Ukraine as long as enough power distribution infrastructure exists. Russia won’t hit generation in NATO countries without escalating the conflict to direct Russia-NATO conflict. Power lines are vulnerable to attack — they cover a lot of area — but also relatively-quick and inexpensive to repair. I wonder if, as a matter of wartime exigency, it would be possible to initially install such lines on regular [utility poles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_pole) rather than the long-distance [transmission towers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_tower) that normally support high-voltage lines. Looking online, I don’t think that there’s a hard requirement for the towers other than safety, and if any post-hole digger can be used to be throwing up lines, that would accelerate the rate at which line could be thrown up.
A campaign against civilians, their goal is to destroy Ukraine as a state and by extension to destroy Ukrainian identity and its people.
Such actions are never to be tolerated and especially our geographic proximity makes it necessary to bring our support to the highest level possible. This imperative has been standing since at least February. But as always, next best date is today…
I remain confident to say that everyone supporting or even tolerating Russia is betraying everything we as humans and Europeans stand for.