Strikes on three regions: Expert warns Russia adopts new energy strategy

Russia has moved away from attempts to cause a nationwide blackout and adopted a new strategy of what the expert described as «regional exhaustion», selecting several specific regions as targets.

This view was expressed by Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Centre, speaking on Radio NV.

He said Russian forces had for a long time tried to achieve a national blackout by attacking Ukraine’s energy system as a whole. However, they eventually realized this approach was not working and switched to a different scenario — «separating the left bank from the right bank and attempting to isolate nuclear power plants».

«If you recall, for several months most attacks followed this exact pattern. It seems they understood that even then they did not have enough capacity to achieve the desired effect. They then devised a new tactic, which has two elements, ” Kharchenko said.

First, Russia is seeking to destroy virtually all infrastructure within a belt of up to about 100 km from the front line and the border, targeting almost everything in that area.

«110-kV substations, boiler houses, 35-kilovolt substations — even relatively small ones. They hit whatever they can reach, ” the expert said.

The second part of the new tactic involves launching heavily concentrated strikes on specific energy-deficit regions.

Russia has now chosen to concentrate its attacks on three regions, the expert said:

• Kyiv and the surrounding region,

• Odesa region,

• Dnipropetrovsk region.

«These are the Kyiv region, which has already gone through three such waves, the Odesa region, which has also suffered two major waves, and the Dnipropetrovsk region, where one major wave and several smaller ones have taken place, ” the expert said.

«These are the three regions Russia is now concentrating on, seeking to inflict maximum damage to infrastructure. Moscow knows they are energy-deficit regions and is focusing on destroying generation inside the regions while at the same time severely limiting their ability to receive electricity from elsewhere. This affects Kyiv as well as Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and Odesa, ” the energy expert says.

Kharchenko believes Russia has failed to achieve a nationwide blackout and appears no longer to be pursuing one.

«But at the regional level, due to the high concentration of strikes — when as many as 15 missiles are directed at each critical facility — they are managing to break through, ” he said.