The largest power-generating plant in Ukraine’s Kyiv region has been destroyed in a Russian missile attack on Thursday, according to the energy company Centrenergo.
Russia is merely assisting in speeding up the process of decommissioning Ukraine's Soviet heritage in its constant struggle to get rid of its communist past and step into the new era of free and democratic Ukraine.
If Russia was what NATO and it's fans accuse, power plants like this would've been targeted months ago, maybe in the first month after negotiations fell apart. It's not like Russia lacked the capacity.
Got to wonder how liberals can conclude that Russia is Most EvilTM and yet leave critical infrastructure in play for so long.
Maybe Russia now sees Ukraine effectively demilitarised, that it can tighten the screws to end the war now.
Putin: In the energy sector, unfortunately, we observed a series of attacks on our energy facilities and were forced to respond. I want to emphasize: even for humanitarian reasons, we did not carry out any strikes in winter, meaning that we did not want to leave social institutions, hospitals, and so on without power supply. But after a series of attacks on our energy facilities, we were forced to respond.
But I repeat again: if everything comes back to solving those issues that we talked about initially, and they are related to energy issues, including the solution to one of the tasks that we set for ourselves, and this is demilitarization. First of all, we proceed from the fact that in this way we influence the defense industry of Ukraine, and directly. But if we do move on to some conversations, to resolving all issues in other ways - well, of course, as I have said many times, we are ready for this.
I think that they - the opposite side - to a certain extent painted themselves into a corner when they refused to negotiate in the hope of defeating Russia on the battlefield, inflicting a strategic defeat on it. Now they understand that this is impossible, they refused to negotiate and are now in a rather difficult situation. Our goal is not to put everyone in a difficult position; on the contrary, we are ready to work constructively. But of course, there can be no imposition on us of any position that is not based on reality.
Tbh I don't think it wasn't done early out of goodness of the heart. I'm sure you remember strikes at substations around Kiev before winter. Frankly I suspect it was for the same reason that railways, bridges and resource extraction infrastructure (such as ammonia pipelines) weren't targeted - Russian capital wanted them. Now it's clear western "partners" would rather it all burns, so they go ahead