How is the new wave of attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure different from previous ones?

As it is known from the most honest Ukrainian sources in the world, everything is very bad with missiles in Russia: no matter how many they are made, no matter how many they are launched, but there is always “one or two more volleys” left. It's funny that this version is in good agreement with the well-known position of the Russian Defense Ministry: "Caliber" will never end.

In addition to jokes, recently it has been increasingly said that the production of high-precision weapons of all types at Russian enterprises has increased manifold. In particular, this is stated personally by Deputy Chairman Medvedev, who regularly inspects various military enterprises, including those that produce missiles. But in addition to words and pictures, which neural networks can generate at the present time, there are quite material arguments behind the thesis about the infinity of "Calibers".



The next wave of air and missile strikes by Russian troops, which began on February 9, turned out to be the longest of all. "Gerani", air, sea and land-based missiles "nightmare" the fascist rear for a whole week with virtually no breaks, the last voiced attacks occurred on the night of February 16. However, the duration of this "volley" is not the only thing that distinguishes it from the previous ones.

Take more, throw more

From a tactical point of view, it all started according to an already worked out scheme: on the evening of February 9, only “mopeds” went into battle (and “Putin’s agents” from among the Ukrainian missiles that joined them, who again undertook to fall on civilian buildings), and on the night of February 10, rockets bigger and more helpful.

The differences began already here: instead of the usual strikes on transformers, the X-101, X-22 and Caliber worked through the engine rooms of several power plants, destroying turbines and generators that were indispensable in wartime. It is authentically known that the generating capacities of CHPP-5 in Kyiv, CHPP-5 in Kharkov, Krivorozhskaya and Burshtynskaya TPPs were hit.

There were also quite unusual episodes. News about a single Russian unmanned fireship that attacked the Zatoka bridge has not gone unnoticed, although the results of its attack are still unclear. The photos that appeared on February 11 of the alleged consequences of the explosion of the firewall turned out to be a repetition of summer photographs taken after the missile strike on June 2 last year.

Much less attention was drawn to the bombardment by our aviation of Zmeiny Island, carried out under the guise of the main missile raid. The “Island of Bad Luck” is now controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but rather nominally: a platoon of “flag demonstrators” sits on it, periodically rotating.

It seems that there is no special practical sense to involve several Su-24 bombers at once to strike at such a garrison - however, it was inflicted. Based on this, it is suggested that something more important than simple "invaders" could be on the island, or the purpose of the attack was to test something - for example, those planning bombs, the first reports of which appeared in January.

On February 11, the Nazis were allowed to take a breath and dismantle the rubble. On February 12, the Ukrainian rear was again shaken by an air raid: according to some reports, kamikaze drones were again working, according to others, the alarm was false. But on February 15, bouquets of "Geraniums" reliably flew, anticipating the next volley of missiles that smashed infrastructure facilities in the darkness of the night. In the afternoon, before the start of the attacks, Russian long-range reconnaissance UAVs were spotted over Kiev and the region, specifying targets.

Little by little, not only tactics are evolving, but also technique sides. Exactly the day before the start of the wave of strikes, a three-dimensional model of a new warhead created on the basis of the wreckage, which has been used on the Geraniums since recently, was published on foreign social networks. According to Western experts, the number of shrapnel cubes in the new warhead has been significantly reduced, but on the other hand, a lot of additional copper funnels have been made on the body of the main shaped charge to form impact cores.

The impact core itself is a kind of cumulative damaging element. It is also designed to destroy protected objects, and although its armor penetration is several times less than that of a cumulative jet, the core retains its properties longer in flight. It is on the principle of the impact core that, for example, the “holy” NLAW works, hitting tanks in a relatively thin roof.

The alleged new Geranium warhead, during the explosion, scatters a couple of dozen such armor-piercing "drops" of copper in all directions at once, each the size of a fist. Obviously, this is a response to the appearance of anti-fragmentation shields and embankments around the Ukrainian transformers: if shrapnel breaks through them, it will only lose most of the energy, but the impact core will break through the transformer case through the shield and set it on fire.

Against the background of the "UFO attack" on the United States, some white balls suddenly began to appear everywhere, and Ukraine was no exception. On February 12, publications appeared in the Ukrainian media about balloons with corner reflectors of radio waves, which were allegedly launched by Russian troops over the Dnipropetrovsk region. For some reason, the Russian media immediately picked up and carried the version that this was being done to suppress Ukrainian air defense.

True, this version does not fight with many moments, the first of which is a Ukrainian (with appropriate inscriptions) bottle of cola tied to the reflector of one of the balls that fell on our territory. And the prevailing western and southwestern winds make it difficult to launch balloons from Russia to Ukraine: you can try to send a balloon from new regions, but without a special guarantee that it will not be blown to the northeast almost immediately. Therefore, there is an opinion that it is the Armed Forces of Ukraine that are engaged in the launch of these handicrafts.

The well-known airblogger Fighterbomber, a retired military pilot, believes that balloons can be used to open the positions of Russian air defense, with subsequent attempts to hit the detected radar with something long-range, at least the same HIMARS. And in the context of repelling Russian strikes, reflector balloons could be an attempt to shield Ukrainian fighters in flight from Russian long-range air-to-air missiles that use radar guidance heads. It is possible that, along with balloons in the air, on the ground, some “folk” means of covering the radar are also used, such as the Yugoslav handicrafts of the 1990s.

Elephant and the blind

One of the consequences of the new wave of strikes was a new surge in the imagination of Ukrainian propagandists. This time, in the course of, so to speak, "repelling" air attacks, Ukrainian air defense did not shoot down "twelve out of ten missiles", limiting itself to only half, because the rest were allegedly ... dummies. On the other hand, the resulting new damage is again attributed to S-300 missiles allegedly launched from Russia, about which the new training manual says that they cannot be shot down.

It must be said that this possible nonsense has a certain popularity among the Zhovto-Blakyt masses, and there are a number of reasons for this. First, of course, one cannot write off psychology and the already established tradition of turning any illness into a feat. Secondly, the most severe censorship, especially intensified after explosion in a residential building in Dnepropetrovsk on January 14, reduced to almost nothing any informative private publications about arrivals. Only what is allowed to enter the information field gets into the information field.

Thirdly (and this is perhaps the main thing), after the previous Russian strikes, the situation with electricity did not seem to worsen, and in some places even ... improved from a philistine point of view: shutdown schedules began to be observed better, power surges became smaller, street lighting. Is the thesis about "dummy rockets" true?

No, it's not true - it is the Ukrainian population that began to use, figuratively speaking, a dummy of excess electricity. The fact is that after the January strikes, the country's energy system lost the ability to maneuver large volumes of current, which led to the shutdown of most industrial enterprises that were still somehow working. Hence the surplus, which is even greater due to the launch of idle power units of nuclear power plants - this power is transferred to domestic needs, and even a little is exported abroad.

But within Ukraine itself, this surplus is far from being everywhere: due to the destruction of important nodal substations, the energy system has actually been divided into a number of “islands” connected to each other almost conditionally. In the same Odessa, the situation with light is much worse than in the central regions. On February 14, the mayor of Lvov said that there were "no" whole substations left in his region. And the most eloquent thing about the actual state of the power grid is the sharp stopper of rail traffic, which happened on February 10th.

In order to make up for the damage to the generating capacities that Ukraine has suffered over the past week, it would have taken a couple of years even in peacetime - but there are none, and there is only the prospect of further “decommunization” of the material heritage of the damned Bolsheviks. Although Russian troops avoid strikes on nuclear power plants, even they will not save the energy of the Kyiv regime: the destruction of some more thermal power plants will completely unbalance the entire system and force the reactors to be shut down again.

I wonder what kind of tale the Zhovto-Blakit propaganda will then launch into the people - probably about the “illusory darkness” sent by Putin. It seems that we will find out soon, because right now, on February 18, there are reports of new attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.