In response to battlefield defeats, Russia rained hundreds of missiles and suicide drones down on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The wave of Russian air strikes resulted in rolling blackouts that started nationwide to prevent a complete collapse of the Ukrainian energy grid.
Hitting power plants and substations would in no way cause damage to the Ukrainian military as it uses an autonomous power supply. However, Moscow has been desperately looking for ways to freeze the war.
Russia needs to buy time and lick its wounds by regrouping the forces and replenishing the munitions it uses in Ukraine. The blackout tactic assumes that power outages will make the Ukrainian society less willing to resist and more likely to demand peace talks from the Kyiv government.
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To ease the strain on the grid, Kyiv homes need to go an average of 8-12 hours a day without power. The largest energy company released a timetable of four-hour blocks in which different areas of Kyiv would go dark.
When checking the blackout schedule for my home, the grid reminded me of birch trees. The repetition of light and dark areas is similar to the bark of birches, characteristically marked with horizontal lines.
Birch is a basic image of the Russian national myth. The poetic cult of beryozka elevated it to the symbol of Motherland, which eventually deteriorated into a cliche. Today, Ukrainians can highlight someone’s Russianness by asking a person “to go hug a birch tree.”
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History proves that bombing a nation into submission rarely ever works. Since World War II, terrorizing civilians into curbing their support for the war has failed repeatedly. The tactic tends to backfire, urging the attacked society to get radicalized against conciliation.
Air strikes tell the targeted society that their existence will not be safe until they eliminate the threat through a decisive victory rather than a negotiated peace.
Moscow bombs shattered the semblance of normality which returned to Kyiv after the Russian troops fled from the North of Ukraine in the spring. The capital and other cities far from the frontline embraced a sense of shared suffering with methodically shelled cities like Mykolaiv and Kharkiv.
Intended to push the Ukrainian government toward peace negotiations, Moscow once again motivated the civilians to insist on defeating the aggressor.
Kremlin outwardly shows that it is a constant threat. There’s no way to guarantee that the terrorizer won’t strike again. Eradicating the threat is most likely the only option to achieve peace. There may be no surer path to safety.
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When looking at the outage timetable, I see Russia. The mysterious Russian soul is not hugging birches anymore. It is lurking in a thicket of the great Russian culture cliches and tearfully begging for making peace while launching kamikaze drones from the comfort of beryozkas to leave me with no heat and power as winter arrives.
