In Destroying Ukraine's Power Grid the Russians are Following Our Lead.

Iraqis Could Tell Ukrainians What to Expect

Russia is well on the way to destroying Ukraine’s electrical power grid, ensuring escalating misery for Ukrainian civilians in the months to come. Until this spring, Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure were largely confined to the distribution system, such as sub-stations, which could be repaired in relatively short order. In recent months however, actual power stations have come under sustained attack, with many destroyed beyond repair.

On June 7, Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal announced that almost three quarters of the country’s thermal power plants were out of action and that, in all, 42 generating stations had been destroyed and that a further 20 hydroelectric stations were damaged. Blackouts are becoming ever more common, and lasting longer. A high proportion of the urban population live in high-rise apartment blocks, where elevators are ever-more frequently shut down and may soon be permanently out of action. Bakeries cannot bake bread; Kyiv’s streetcars cannot run; the air fills with diesel fumes as people and businesses rely on generators. It will only get worse when winter comes, condemning people to freeze to death in their unheated apartments. Entire cities may become uninhabitable as water and sewage systems fail for lack of power.

We don’t know the precise calculations of the Russian General Staff in planning this offensive, but we do know what U.S. planners had in mind when they inflicted similar punishment on the Iraqi power grid in 1991. That war has almost entirely retreated from the collective U.S. memory, except perhaps as a “good '' war fought for limited objectives. But in our PBS Frontline documentary The War We Left Behind, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden, planner of the bombing offensive that began in January explained to myself and Leslie Cockburn that Iraq’s electrical power system was the central target of the air campaign. “The reason why electricity is so enormously important is because virtually everything that one needs to operate at a strategic level is dependent on electricity,” especially Saddam Hussein’s ability to command and control his army. That part of the plan turned out to be a failure, since Saddam never lost that ability, but Iraqi society was meanwhile reduced to a pre-industrial level almost overnight.

Doug Broderick, director of Iraqi operations for the Catholic Relief Services charity at the time, described to us how, “If you don't have electricity you can't pump the water. You can't use chlorinators. You don't have pumping station capabilities to get water out into the water supply network and out to the people. Nothing works.” Along with the disruption of the water supply, the power shut-off also collapsed the sewage system. At the Rustamiyah sewage treatment plant, serving three million people in Baghdad, the power cut-off knocked out the plant's electrical and computer systems permanently. When we visited it had been shut down for eight months, and fifteen million gallons of raw sewage was pouring into the Tigris river, by now a major source of drinking water, every hour. As a result of this typhoid was spreading rapidly, especially among children.

With cannibalization and scraping together spare parts, the power system was partially restored in the six months following our July, 1991, filming visit, and staggered on in the ensuing decade. Then, in the course of the 2003 invasion, American bombs and missiles destroyed the grid all over again. Following the war, reconstruction was assigned as part of the rewards of victory, to American contractors who labored ineffectually amid a slough of corruption. The system has never totally recovered.

Ukrainians should know what to expect.