Dark Kyiv
Moon of Alabama
Moon of Alabama (Blog)
[First, a comment by Another World Is Possible:]
🔺What are legitimate targets in war? It seems to us that a distinction should be made between civilian infrastructure on the one hand and institutions, military positions plus military gear on the other. More importantly, there should be one between civilians and military personnel.
🔺A big problem here is the degree to which civilian and military infrastructure are interrelated. In such situations, then what do you do? Is the bombing of power stations legitimate?
🔺The darkening of Kyiv is holding a population hostage to its rulers. The threadbare, unsupported theory here basically is that a cold, hungry population then rises up and overthrows the hated regime. To our knowledge, this has never happened anywhere.
🔺In our view, the civilian population is always sacrosanct, and their needs must go first. To bomb their much-needed supply of electricity is not OK. Not in Ukraine, not in Yugoslavia, not in Palestine, nor anywhere else. We generally support the Russian special operation, but depriving Ukrainian civilians of electricity in wintry conditions is taking it a step too far. We’re not OK with it. – Editor
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NATO doctrine holds that the side in a war that has severe trouble with its infrastructure has choices to make.
Electricity and heating supplies in Ukraine have stopped in large parts of the country. Kyiv had already been on scheduled blackouts in which groups of consumers received, for example, four hours of electricity, only to be cut off for eight hours. That scheduling has ended. The blackout has become permanent.
Over several weeks, Russian attacks had isolated Kyiv's electricity supply from the rest of the country. It then attacked generating stations within the city. There is now less than 10% of the electricity supply available than the city would normally use. Public lighting has been shut down as much as possible. Factories have closed down. Schools and Universities are on prolonged holidays. Many shops have closed because running their private generators costs more than they can make while open.
The electricity generation stations were also supplying hot water for long-distance heating. Several hundred Soviet-era high-rises in Kiev, each of them with hundreds of apartments, have neither heat nor power. The temperature in Ukraine has been below 0 °C for several days. Many of the buildings had not drained their water systems. The radiators and water supply lines have frozen and burst open. Those high rises are now uninhabitable. Experts estimate that up to 9 months of repair time and substantial funds will be needed to fix each of them. About 150,000 people are affected by this.
Kyiv is not the only city in trouble. Odessa is likewise shut down. People are protesting in the streets. Dnipro has similar problems. Today, an attack hit Kharkiv and disabled one of the last combined heat and electricity stations within the city. Sumy and Zaparochia also reported blackouts.
Currently, a wave of Arctic air is flowing into Ukraine, with night temperatures expected to drop to minus 30° centigrade.
The government of Ukraine says that it is expecting a new Russian wave of attacks. This, it says, will likely take out the transformer station that makes up Ukraine’s long-distance 750 kilovolt electricity network, which is fed by nuclear power stations. The stations are not endangered, but they would have to lower their output or shut down, as there will be no one connected to them to receive the electricity they generate.
Large electric energy systems are very complex. To restart a system once it has broken down requires a lot of coordination and planning. Any mistake will immediately lead to new breakdowns and damaged equipment. The systems in Kiev are now in a state where it could take weeks without new Russian attacks to get them up and running again.
Ukraine had been warned that any attack on Russian infrastructure would be responded to in kind. But it continued to attack Russian cities, which led to deaths and serious problems in Belgrade and elsewhere.
For three years, Russia had mostly refrained from attacking Ukrainian infrastructure. Electricity and heat supply operated at peacetime levels. Only during the last year did attacks increase. In March 2025, President Trump announced a 30-day ceasefire on infrastructure. Russia is committed to it. Ukraine didn’t.
In November 2015, Ukraine blew up transmission pylons that supplied Crimea. 75% of its population was left without electricity. A brewery in Lviv celebrated that by creating a dark beer named ‘Crimea by night’.
In 1999, NATO bombed Serbia to further split up Yugoslavia. NATO bombing started on March 23, 1999. It took out some 80% of Serbia’s electricity and water supply. During a press conference on May 25, 1999, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea justified the attacks as follows:
Jamie Shea: Pierre, excuse me if I reply to this in English but this is an important point and therefore I would like to get my message across universally here to everybody in this room.
Let us not lose sight of proportions in this debate. President Milosevic has got plenty of back-up generators. His armed forces have hundreds of them. He can either use these back-up generators to supply his hospitals, his schools, or he can use them to supply his military. His choice. If he has a big headache over this, then that is exactly what we want him to have and I am not going to make any apology for that. [...]
🚩 Question (Norwegian News Agency): I am sorry Jamie but if you say that the Army has a lot of back-up generators, why are you depriving 70% of the country of not only electricity, but also water supply, if he has so much back-up electricity that he can use because you say you are only targeting military targets?
Jamie Shea: Yes, I’m afraid electricity also drives command and control systems. If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO’s five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he doesn’t do so we will continue to attack those targets which provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it’s for him to deal with but that water, that electricity is turned back on for the people of Serbia.
It seems NATO doctrine holds that the side in a war that has severe trouble with its infrastructure has choices to make to improve its circumstances. It is time for someone to teach that to Kiev.
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