Russia stopped trying to crash Ukraine’s whole grid and started killing it one region at a time. Over the past week it fired nearly 2,700 drones, 1,700 glide bombs and 66 missiles, most of them at substations. On October 16 more than a million people lost power in one morning. Lutsk was told to expect at least 24 hours dark, and a food plant burned in the same wave.
A grid dies at the substation, not the power plant. One high-voltage substation feeds a county. Take it and the water pumps and cell towers go with it, and a replacement transformer is a months-long order.
Their lights are a test bed for ours. The same Russian services put wiper malware into 30 Polish energy sites last December, built to leave half a million people dark in midwinter. In February CISA told American utilities to assume they’re next. The object to remember is the substation off your county road. Chain-link fence, nobody inside.
The risk for your family is a winter heat plan that assumes that substation is nobody’s target.
This week: put a non-electric heat source in the house. Fill the tub and the jugs the night a load-shed notice lands. Call your utility and ask if your house is single-fed.
Today’s SITREP has the warning signs and the full breakdown. ⚡