Russia's invasion of Ukraine prompted the West to rebuild its military capabilities and its defense industrial base. Will Russia's turn to strategic bombing against Ukraine's electrical grid inspire the West to build much-needed resiliency in its own electrical grid before we too are tested in a war?
Russia is seemingly turning to strategic bombing to break out of the ground stalemate that its ground forces have been unable to end with a breakthrough or collapse of Ukraine's ground forces:
With a decisive breakthrough in Kherson and Kharkiv now beyond reach, the Kremlin has reoriented its plans. Rather than seizing territory, it is systematically dismantling the infrastructure that allows Ukraine to function by targeting the energy facilities that power its defenses, sustain its factories, and keep its people warm.
It is part of preparations for an expected summer offensive, which Moscow hopes will finally put it in a position to dictate terms for peace.
Ukraine has already turned to strategic bombing on a smaller but more focused scale to escape the war of attrition that Russia has imposed on Ukraine. Ukraine has seemingly succeeded into dramatically increasing its kill ratio against Russian troops by slowly retreating while battering the advancing Russians.
This is looking more like the Iran-Iraq War when both sides sought to break out of the stalemate with a "War of the Cities" where each battered the other's civilians. Those campaigns were intermittent unlike the Russian efforts, especially, in the Winter War of 2022, and so did not decide the war.
The difference in the current war is that Russia is harming civilians with its broad energy generation campaign; while Ukraine is focused on military logistics and manufacturing.
If the West bolsters Ukraine's capacity to repair battle damage to their electricity production and distribution network, that would greatly improve Western electric grid resiliency during war. I think this is probably more urgent than learning about small drone usage from Ukraine.
And Russia's campaign reflects Allied strategic bombing of Germany in World War II, which forced Germany to divert air defense resources to the homeland at the expense of the front:
Every missile and unit expended against a $20,000 Shahed drone targeting a regional substation is one less interceptor available to cover frontline positions in the Donbas. Russian infrastructure strikes force Kyiv to repeatedly choose between protecting its grid and protecting its soldiers.
So air defenses able to protect the home front is a big lesson from the Winter War of 2022.
Back to the Iran-Iraq War, despite efforts at striking civilians and oil exports, the war was decided on the land by an Iraqi counteroffensive that smashed the Iranian troops long immune to their own slaughter. And of course, Germany was defeated on the ground in World War II. So what is going on with Ukraine's counter-attacks? Last week ISW assessed the Ukrainian counter-attacks exploiting Russia's loss of Starlink communications:
The cascading effects that the Ukrainian counterattacks in the Oleksandrivka, Hulyaipole, and Zaporizhia directions have generated in other sectors of the front show how constrained the Russian force structure in Ukraine really is.
A relentless and meticulously planned drone campaign is choking Russia’s front-line forces, expanding the so-called “kill zone” threefold in some areas.
Ukraine learned this from Russia on some sections of the front.
But I hate to rely on my hopes. Yet after four years, morale on one side or another could crack.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here.
NOTE: Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump on Substack. You may read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
