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Winter Strikes Kiev
Last night Ukraine was finally confronted with the consequences of attacking Russian infrastructure.
And no, I do not mean last nights Oreshnik strike on the large gas storage facility in west Ukraine. The seismic impulse from that strike likely damaged the geological structure that allowed the gas to be stored in caverns. It can now escape and has been seen burning. Those were the Ukrainian reserves for the rest of the winter. The strike was in revenge for the late December drone strike on Russia’s strategic command facility and Putin’s home near Novgorod. It was also a warning, mostly to Europe.
But the real hurt came with a medium-sized drone and missile strike on Kiev. At least three combined-thermal-electric facilities were taken out. These used to provide water, heating and electricity to the blocks of Soviet era high rises that cover much of Kiev. These strikes, as the Russian Ministry of Defense empathizes in its reports, are in retaliation for strikes on Russian infrastructure facilities. Russia at a time, offered a ceasefire on infrastructure strikes. Ukraine did not keep to it.
Now nearly half of Kiev’s high-rise apartments have lost water, heating and electricity supplies. This while the temperature has gone down to minus 20° Celsius at night. Municipal workers have started to drain (in Russian) all water from intra-house systems. Otherwise the risers and pipes would freeze and break open. But it also means that water and heat supplies will not come back to those high-rises until the temperatures are back in a positive Celsius range.
The buildings have thus become unlivable. Hundreds of thousands if not millions will have to live elsewhere.
The mayor of Kiev Vladimir Klitschko has called on residents to leave the capital:
Half of Kyiv’s apartment buildings, almost 6,000, are currently without heat supply after critical infrastructure in the capital was damaged in a large-scale Russian attack.
“Municipal workers have connected social facilities – in particular hospitals and maternity hospitals – to mobile boiler houses. And together with energy workers they are working to bring electricity and heat supply back to Kyiv residents’ homes,” Klitschko said.
He added that the combined attack on Kyiv on the night of 8-9 January was the most painful for the capital’s critical infrastructure facilities.
“City services are operating under emergency conditions. And unfortunately weather conditions are forecast to be difficult in the coming days.
I also appeal to residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city and go where there are alternative sources of power and heat, to do so,” Klitschko concluded.
A similar situation exist in Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s most industrial cities, since yesterday.
During the war the parts of the Ukrainian population that were not directly involved in fighting seemed to have little interest in what was happening. There was still a lot of nightlife in Kiev, all goods were available and even the few short interruptions of electricity were not much to bother with.
This will now change. Electricity is off for most of the time. Shops are closing because running business on generators is unprofitable. Local public transport is mostly down. Longer range tail transport is interrupted. Apartments are unlivable. The consequences of the war have become personal.
This will change the mood even of those who want to prolong the war. The numbers of those willing to accept the loss of territory in exchange for peace will rise.
After a while a change of policies will follow for this.
Mr./Ms.Korolev, your highly inspiring nickname would actually deserve a much more comprehensive reply, than anything I can produce.
I will not delve in anything specifically related to the rather wild proposals suggested by your links.
However, please let me offer a few elementary remarks on the general subject of hypersonic missiles.
In all likelyhood, these weapons were designed around the idea of
1. In at least some cases, being capable vehicles for non-conventional payload.
2. In the case of conventional payload, being able to defeat actively protected, but possibly fragile, high-priority targets.
For a passively protected target, these kinds of weapons are inherently inefficient.
Extremely inefficient, for very basic reasons such as energy conservation and fundamental limits to the efficiency of exothermic reactions used in propulsion and destructive payload.
In particular.
1. Obtaining hypersonic speeds is highly costly in terms of propellant to payload relation.
Mantaining such speeds is highly dissipative, especially for non purely ballistic missiles, which cannot “store” significant amounts of (gravitational) potential energy.
It is indeed possible to look for an optimum coefficient of drag at high Mach numbers, but that is only a multiplier, and total drag is “exploding” anyway.
2. Efficiency of chemical propulsion is highly limited. This can be seen in any elementary introduction to rocketry, by observing how relatively narrow is the range of obtainable specific impulses (look for that).
If it were not so, all the prolific science-fiction speculation about non-chemical propulsion would not exist.
3. As a consequence of 1 & 2, non-ballistic hypersonic missiles tend to have an unfavourable total mass to payload ratio.
4. In relation to 3, whatever added destructive power may come from kinetic energy, especially in the case of wasteful MIRVs, will NEVER make up for the missing payload (since energy densities of propellants and explosives are NOT different by several orders of magnitudes).
This is particularly true against relatively large targets, such as an underground complex.
This, without even considering the fact that, to exploit KE, you would need a hard and heavy penetrator which would further reduce explosive content.
In short, it is obvious that, A PRIORI, the “hypersonic solution” is very much inefficient (when compared to a conventional heavy bomb) against sturdy, passively protected targets.
What can Oreshnik missiles do, A POSTERIORI, I just do not know.
Posted by: Moametal | Jan 10 2026 5:01 utc | 244
but most of America absolutely hates israel’s fucking guts.
Posted by: Saint Jimmy | Jan 9 2026 21:47 utc | 135
Is that why – give or take – 60% of adults vote for AIPAC stooges, and the remaining 40% can’t be arsed to vote for, let alone campaign for the only opposition party with a believable anti-war, pro-Palestine and anti-zionism stance?
Nations have the governments they deserve. ALL Ukrainians who have not defected and do not actively fight against this shit are complicit.
Posted by: 667 | Jan 10 2026 1:59 utc | 231
Couldn’t agree more. If after 4 years of watching graveyards 20x in size and the country’s infrastructure getting pulverised because ‘Whoever doesn’t jump is a Moskal’, and you haven’t joined the resistance yet, you either support Bandera groupies like Zalushny, Zelensky, Budanov and friends, or you tolerate being ruled (and sacrificed) by them.
[…] as if the European peoples were even asked if they wanted this. […]
Posted by: joey_n | Jan 10 2026 5:28 utc | 260
Well, across Europe, in most countries parties opposed to EU arming and financing the putschist 卐 Ukraine garnered at most around 30% at their last elections, like say the AfD in Germany, RN in France, Lega in Italy or FPÖ in Austria, which means 70%+ of the voting population has thrown their weight behind the continued madness and UrSSula’s vision.
If you ask me, that translates to: Yes, Europeans were asked, their opinion is reflected in the shite governments and parliaments they elected.
Thing is, about insane Nazi regimes … many people gloss over this … they are Nazi and they are insane … makes them somewhat unapproachable.
Posted by: Tel | Jan 10 2026 9:34 utc | 291
In July last year, all it took was a several hundred protestors in Kiev and other major cities, combined perhaps a few thousand, taking to to the streets voicing their anger at the anti-corruption watchdog NABU being stripped of its supposed independence and subordinated to Zelensky and his loyalist minions, for the Rada and Bankova St to get nervous and rescind the controversial law.Now imagine a few million, instead of a few thousand, across towns and cities live streaming on social media their protests. What are the Nazis gonna do? Arrest them all? Mow them down? Hardly.
Posted by: Juan Moment | Jan 10 2026 11:14 utc | 297
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