by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
This week’s announcements of emergency electricity rationing and scheduled power supply cuts in the farwestern Ukrainian regions of Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Transcarpathia indicate that pinpoint drone targeting by the Russian General Staff is a new stage in the electric war since President Vladimir Putin put on pause long-range missile attacks on western Ukrainian power generation plants since August 26.
On Tuesday, the regional Ukrainian media reported “restrictions will apply to businesses in the Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn oblasts starting on 13 November, in five phases, and will be scheduled from 07:00 to 20:00. The restrictions are being implemented due to damage to critical infrastructure by Russian forces and decreasing temperatures.” The national utility Ukrenergo announced that from November 13 “GOPs [power limit schedules] are being introduced due to a shortage in the energy system in the Carpathian region”.
The deficit in the current demand-supply balance for electricity has also been compounded by the decline reported in the Ukrainian press of imports of power from cross-border sources in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. The reported cutback this week defies the European Union (EU) agreement at the end of October for “an increase of the export capacity limit to Ukraine and Moldova to 2,100 megawatts (MW) during this winter. It represents an increase of 400 MW from the previous value [1,700 MW]…The 2,100 MW export capacity limit will apply from 1 December 2024.”
“This is a temporary situation,” Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Halushchenko announced on Wednesday. “ ‘Unfortunately, restored generation facilities can occasionally fail. This has happened, but all these issues will be resolved, and the situation will stabilize,’ he stated. The minister also pointed to a significant reduction in electricity imports to Ukraine, which are currently down to about 100 MW.”
A military source comments: “The damage from the August attacks has not been repaired – just patched up. There have been strikes on transformer stations since. They’ve been smaller in scale but indicative of the [Russian] General Staff’s knowledge of the [Ukrainian] distribution grid vulnerabilities. The General Staff’s moves have complicated Ukrainian efforts to keep the power on. The Ukrainians are hiding how bad the situation is, including in terms of getting spares. The temperature is dipping below freezing at night, the daylight hours are shorter, the electrical lighting and heating loads are going up. The jury-rigged grid is unable to handle it without curtailments.”
THE WINTER FREEZE BEGINS IN THE UKRAINE
Click for enlarged view on source: https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/ukraine/kyiv/ext
Follow the stages of the electric war campaign here. The evidence of the Putin Pause was analysed on October 22. Russian military strategy for including the western region nuclear power plants (NPP) of Rivne and Khmelnitsky was discussed on November 2.
Ukrainian media have reported Russian drone movements close to (but not targeted on) Khmelnitsky NPP on September 22 and Rivne NPP on September 24-25. Then on November 7 fresh drone attacks “disrupted energy supplies in the Zhytomyr and Rivne oblasts on Thursday. It made Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo cut power to thousands of people in the affected areas.”
In the northeastern region of Sumy on November 12, a drone attack targeted the Shostkinska gas- fuelled power station. According to Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad Telegram platform, the plant “plays a key role not only in providing the city with heat, but also in the functioning of a number of military facilities, including repair shops and supply warehouses of the Ukainian Armed Forces. A temporary stop of the [power plant] creates difficulties for the functioning of these facilities, especially in the cold season. Destabilization of infrastructure reduces the enemy’s capabilities to organize logistics and repair work.”
There has been no report by the Russian military bloggers of a missile attack on energy infrastructure west of the Dnieper River since August. The daily bulletins from the Defense Ministry in Moscow regularly use a paragraph identifying the restriction of targeting on western electricity targets. For example, from the November 13 bulletin, “operational and tactical aviation, unmanned aerial strike vehicles, missile troops and artillery of groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation defeated the infrastructure of military airfields, energy facilities used for the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, as well as accumulations of manpower and military equipment of the enemy in 139 districts.”
Asked if the General Staff can be expected to expand winter-freeze operations to include drone raids west of Kiev to trigger electricity overload and grid collapse, the source said: “Yes, but it won’t be high profile. A switch here, a transformer there, ‘incidental’ damage to power lines and substation yards near military targets.”
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