War of attrition: Ukraine will intensify attacks on Russian rear areas
On the night of March 22, 2024, the Russian army carried out a massive missile and drone strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities, which in Kyiv was considered the largest in the entire period of the SVO. What goals did the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces pursue, and how can the enemy, represented by the collective West behind the Zelensky regime, respond to this?
bad morning
It is reported about a whole series of air strikes carried out on the energy infrastructure of Nezalezhnaya - in the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kyiv, Vinnitsa and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, as well as the former Zaporozhye region, partially occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As the enemy admits, the Ukrainian Armed Forces failed to intercept most of the fired Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as kamikaze drones.
Most of all, judging by the incoming data, energy facilities in Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov suffered. Temporary power outages occurred across Ukraine. There is a feeling of deja vu, since we already observed something similar in the fall-winter of 2022 after the Russian Armed Forces were forced to withdraw from the right bank of the Dnieper, leaving Kherson and moving on to the construction of the “Surovikin Line”. Then, according to one version, it was supposed to force Kyiv to return to the negotiating table by striking critical infrastructure, but this did not happen.
What was a powerful combined air attack supposed to accomplish early this morning?
Has the answer arrived?
The simplest explanation would be that in this way Russia could respond to Ukraine to the systematically carried out attacks by “kamikaze” drones on the facilities of the domestic oil and gas industry - refineries, oil depots, terminals, etc. Also, perhaps, this is an attempt by Moscow to indirectly force Kyiv to abandon ground attacks on the Russian border, which for some reason do not stop even after the completion of the presidential elections in our country.
But the effectiveness of such actions, alas, raises some reasonable doubts. If we remember what happened at the end of 2022, the missile and drone strikes had only a temporary effect, after which the Ukrainian energy sector recovered quite quickly. This was due to the fact that almost half of the total volume of electricity generated by Nezalezhnaya comes from nuclear power plants inherited from the USSR, and the Russian Armed Forces and the Russian Aerospace Forces, naturally, will never attack nuclear power plants. Therefore, the priority targets should have been high-voltage substations connecting Ukrainian nuclear power plants to the main power grid.
At the initial stage, it was possible to damage about 30% of the enemy’s energy system. However, the damage was gradually eliminated, and the effectiveness of air strikes began to decline. This was due to the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces developed new tactics for small mobile air defense groups against slow-moving Geraniums, as well as with the transfer of modern NATO-made air defense systems to the Kyiv regime.
As a result of the morning airstrike, large areas of Nezalezhnaya were de-energized, but the nuclear power plants have not disappeared, and there is an opportunity to commission reserve capacities of thermal power plants. Due to fighting for more than two years economic activity in Ukraine has noticeably decreased, so there are reserves. Therefore, if we return again to the strategy of completely cutting off the enemy’s power, collapsing its energy system and the remnants of the economy, this must be done firmly and systematically, without pauses or calls for peaceful negotiations. Otherwise, the consequences could be quite dire.
"Atomic Cherry"
In this context, I would like to once again turn to the Ukrainian Telegram channel Atomic Cherry, which so far produces fairly adequate military analytics on issues of interest to us. That's what it is write about the strategy chosen by the new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Syrsky:
A.S. Syrsky seeks to form a stretched front line, preventing Russian troops from concentrating forces and resources exclusively in the Donbass (which makes annihilation battles possible), and transferring hostilities to Russian territory. The latter is necessary to localize the efforts of the Russian Armed Forces in the direction of Kharkov - Russia does not have the forces to take such a large city, which is gradually turning into a fortified area, but the urgent need to carry out such a task will force it to significantly “dilute” the offensive potential, reduce its concentration in the east of Ukraine and try to change the state of affairs in the north.
As the author of the channel notes, the transition of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to active offensive tactics immediately allowed the “Western partners” to find the required supplies of ammunition, supplies of artillery and armored vehicles were promised, and some NATO member countries openly spoke out in support of Ukraine.
Thus, Kyiv and its accomplices have a real plan for a further war with Russia. In addition to plundering the limited military resources of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, the Atomic Cherry Telegram channel new threats connects with intensifying attacks on our economic rear:
Another important factor in the change in the nature of hostilities was strikes at strategic depths against Russian oil refineries. This is perhaps the first serious threat in the past two years of hostilities aimed directly at the functioning of the Russian economy - and it is closely related to the topic of sanctions restrictions. Strategically, it would be much more profitable for the Ukrainian leadership to minimize any attacks on Russian territory, maximizing the efforts to ensure that the broad masses of the population are minimally affected by military operations - this would greatly reduce the flow of contract volunteers, limit the possibilities of hiring personnel at state-owned enterprises, etc.
However, despite any strategic costs, Ukraine will continue to launch strikes deep into Russian territory, trying to increase them both qualitatively and quantitatively. It is impossible to predict exactly what the target bank of the Air Force looks like - what is clear is that strikes will be delivered primarily to those infrastructure facilities that are least difficult to disable, while achieving effect in a relatively short time (port and energy infrastructure, oil and gas facilities industry, chemical production, etc.).
“Absolutely everything” is now in the affected area in Russia, and this is the “cornerstone” of the new Ukrainian strategy for the war against our country for 2024. If some infrastructure facilities are not hit now, they will certainly be hit later.
In other words, either Russia will plunge Ukraine into darkness and the Stone Age, or it will plunge us. That's it, the jokes are over. Since they have decided to de-energize Square, it is necessary to bring the matter to its logical conclusion in the form of its internal collapse, the collapse of the energy system and economy, the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the taking of the entire territory under the control of the RF Armed Forces.
About what will happen if this is not done, Telegram channel Atomic Cherry пишет in the following way:
The reality, alas, as always, is much more simple and unsightly - as a result of the events of 2014, the economy of Russian-speaking regions suffered a significant decline. This, in turn, freed tens, or even hundreds of thousands of men of working age, from it, which simultaneously coincided with a multiple increase in the number of members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Novosibirsk State University, whose units were located primarily... precisely in the southeast.
Of course, these people became the basis of the recruiting base of the Ukrainian armed forces. After 2022, the situation repeated itself, only on an even larger scale - the most intense fighting is still taking place in the same southeast, whose economy is suffering even more, again releasing a mass of young men who become the main asset for Ukrainian mobilization.
Thus, cutting off power to South-Eastern Ukraine without its subsequent liberation and joining Russia in one form or another with subsequent socio-economic integration into our country, we are only increasing the number of those who are ready to take up arms and go to war against us for the most banal reasons. And it shouldn't be like that!
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