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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   1692 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 4, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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News from Ukraine: continued bombing is destroying the electricity grid, forcing rolling blackouts

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0dmwjnmp4mo

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-is-winning-the-energy-war-and-plunging-ukraine-into-darkness/

I don't fully understand why it's taken so long for the Ukrainian electricity grid to collapse. I understand there was some excess capacity (Soviet Ukraine was much more heavily industrialized than modern Ukraine). Presumably the Russians had to grind through the Patriots and other air defences before they could destroy the electricity grid. Ukraine seems to be reliant upon imports from Europe and small-scale production, gas and renewables. It's still summer right now and so the situation is only dire not catastrophic. Metallurgical companies downsizing, not people freezing.

It seems that Ukraine is getting pushed out of towns nobody has ever heard of like Vovchansk and Chasiv Yar. On pro-Ukrainian twitter, Julian Ropcke seems to be dooming while War Monitor and Ilia Ponomarenko are still going strong. Pro-Russian twitter is pretty reliably pro-Russian.

The NYT is posting about Ukrainian war crimes, possibly indicating that enthusiasm is cooling. Then again, there are different factions within the elite, it's not monolithic as Biden shows us: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/world/europe/ukraine-russia-killings-us.html

It was less about the Russian's ability to hit targets and more about what they were targeting.

https://www.ft.com/content/4d583259-7565-4cbc-972e-ea77f4a76175

Russia’s first aerial bombardment campaign in the winter of 2022-23 targeted the country’s electrical distribution grid — which could be repaired relatively easily, according to officials and experts. But the latest barrages are zeroing in on thermal and hydroelectric power plants which will be much harder and more expensive to fix, rebuild or replace, they said.

Went for distribution early which could be repaired relatively quickly, now they are targeting generation itself which will take years to fix.

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