The latest Russian airstrikes have caused the worst damage to Ukraine’s energy sector since the beginning of the war

• If the Russians can continue at the current pace, the Ukrainian energy industry is at risk of a very serious crisis.
• Every morning in the camp they were forced to sing the Russian national anthem. Those who refused were beaten. And Orbán lied about them – the story of 11 prisoners who ended up in Hungary.
• The Russians did not conquer Ivanivsk near Bakhmut, they once again boasted prematurely.
• It is difficult everywhere, but there have been no serious changes in recent days.
• Map of the day – Ivanivske.
• Videos of the day – a Russian tank near a factory crashes into a passenger car; a French bomb leveled the Russian headquarters.

The information in this text is a summary of events for Wednesday, March 27. The situation may be different in some places.

If the Russians can continue at the current pace, the Ukrainian energy industry is at risk of a very serious crisis. It was widely expected that Russia would repeat the campaign against Ukrainian energy from the turn of 2022 and the turn of 2023 this winter. That did not happen. The airstrikes continued, but they focused more on the arms industry. Paradoxically, the overwhelming onslaught came at the beginning of spring. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyi reported, the Russians sent 190 rockets and cruise missiles, 140 Shahids and dropped 700 aerial bombs to Ukraine in the week to March 24.

Heavy airstrikes continued this week. In several places, they destroyed or severely damaged key components of the energy sector that would take years to repair even in peacetime. A significant part of Ukraine was left without electricity, and Kiev had to start buying it from abroad, which will further burden the country’s already badly damaged economy.

A well-known example of the effectiveness of the new Russian airstrikes is the decommissioning of the hydropower plant on the Dnieper in Zaporizhia. Its repair will take years. A less known but comparably serious damage is the destruction of the thermal power plant in Kharkiv. The Russians have been trying to hit it since the beginning of the invasion, but they destroyed it only now. The result is 700,000 residents without electricity and costly reconstruction, which is on par with the construction of a new power plant. It is expected to last at least a year. But it is questionable whether it is worth investing in it during the ongoing fighting.

The first crucial question is whether the Russians have the capacity to continue effective airstrikes. Second, to what extent and whether they were made possible by the weakening Ukrainian air defenses.

The first theory says