The Russian army lost more than 50 % of the territories of Ukraine captured after February 24. Putin cannot logically explain to his electorate the reasons for such defeats, and the only thing left for him is to fight with the help of “scorched earth tactics”: Russian troops in Ukraine are committing genocide, mindlessly destroying civilian infrastructure. According to estimates, more than 90 % of artillery strikes and 100 % of missile strikes made by Russia are directed at non-military targets. This is a real genocide that Russia is carrying out in the 21st century, trying to wipe an entire country off the face of the earth.
Russia had fired more than 1,000 missiles and UAVs at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after October 10. This is a conventional date of a new stage of Russia’s war: it can be called an “infrastructure war” or hostilities against a purely civilian population and civilian objects. Not only critical infrastructure suffers from Russian missile and artillery strikes. But also civilians. Thus, since December 8, Russian troops have been systematically shelling territorial communities in the Sumy region. More than a hundred mortar and artillery strikes are carried out every day, the occupiers do not hesitate to drop explosives from UAVs on village houses. There is no military purpose in such actions, it is classic terror combined with war crimes.
On December 10, Russia carried out a massive strike with the help of Iranian UAVs on the energy infrastructure in the Odesa region, as a result of which the city was without electricity, heat and water supply for more than a day. According to energy experts, a stable electricity supply to the city will become possible only in the spring, and currently more than 1.5 million people in the Odesa region remain without electricity. Super-powerful artillery strikes on Mykolaiv and Kherson. In fact, a week after the Russians fled from Kherson, they began to systematically attack the city’s energy infrastructure. Russia is brutally shelling populated areas along the combat line, effectively wiping some of them off the face of the earth, for example, Bilohorivka in Luhansk region, Izyum in Kharkiv region. On December 8, Russia struck Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region with S-300 missiles. S-300s pose an increased danger to peaceful Ukrainians, because Russia has an extremely large number of charges and is actually shelling the border settlements of Ukraine without control.
Thus, Russia combines massive missile strikes and shelling with the help of artillery and MLRS. More than 90 % of Ukraine’s infrastructural losses fall on civilian objects. Russia deliberately inflicts the most massive strikes during severe frosts: this tactic was adopted by Putin personally in order to cause the greatest possible damage and suffering to the civilian population of Ukraine.
Russia should be recognized as a terrorist state at the official level and find itself in complete international isolation. Ukraine needs accelerated deliveries of Western weapons, namely anti-missile and air defense equipment, tanks, artillery, and MLRS. Ukrainian cities need a large number of electric generators and fuel and lubricants. Ukraine must survive this winter and defend its independence and sovereignty, which is encroached upon by the largest totalitarian state of our time.