Can someone explain to me how it's possible that Ukraine still has electricity at all? I've been reading for a year about dozens (which must now surely be in the hundreds) of airstrikes on key energy infrastructure. Are they really hitting their targets? Or are they just provocatively attacking some office building next door? Maybe I'm just being naive. But in my country, we wouldn't have power anymore after 2-3 airstrikes.
Ukraine is a very large country, and there could be a lot more energy infrastructure than you possibly imagine. There have been many more important targets, needing to be struck, since the war began.
Up to now, Russia has not been trying to completely knock out the energy system. The gloves have been on, and Russia did not want their brother nation to completely freeze last winter. The pressure has been increasing gradually.
The Russians have been toying with the energy system, striking at distribution points like sub-stations, and the odd thermal plant. This is to see how they fix it, how long it takes, and who does it. Discover the weak points and get an understanding of how to completely knock it out when, and if, the time came for that.
The system has been much degraded already and is operating at a fraction of its previous capacity, and energy has been supplied by Western countries. Russia has not been able to target nuclear power plants, for obvious reasons, so they hit the nearby substations instead. The substations do get repaired, given time, and no doubt, a lot of assistance from the West.
Now, following the Kursk incursion, the gloves are off. Negotiations have been ruled out. The war is reaching a critical point, and the Russians have finally decided to deal serious damage to the energy system, and perhaps knock it out completely. We don't know if the plan is to go that far, or how fast. It would likely take several more nights of very heavy airstrikes to do this.
Right now, the longest scheduled rotating blackouts in cities are about 12 hours, but this will soon get much worse.
