Russia has launched one of its largest aerial attacks on Ukraine, Kyiv’s foreign minister said on November 17, with drones and missiles targeting energy infrastructure and other civilian sites in cities across the country, prompting neighboring Poland to scramble fighter jets.
Despite appearances, this is Russia trying to bomb things like tank factories. It’s just actually really hard without stealth and only some of their long range drones/missiles have good guidance systems. So they hardly ever hit what they’re aiming for, when they manage to make it past Ukrainian air defenses.
In the past they’ve just fired enough to level everything within the dispersion area. That’s more effective with artillery shells because they’re much harder to intercept. But they don’t have the range to reach strategic targets deep inside Ukraine.
That makes a lot of sense, thank you.
His statement is unfortunately untrue and part of the Russian narrative (although probably the poster is unaware).
Russia is deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure to freeze out Ukrainian civilians in the hopes they will force their government to capitulate. This is the modern version of carpet bombing cities. Their ballistic missiles are plenty accurate and the only types of weapons that can properly damage hard targets like powerplants.
Ukraine is cold now, and will be colder in a few weeks. By products of power generation is heat, and used for heating homes.
Russians target hospitals, universities, cultural centres and locations with a lot of citizens. They even do double tap attacks (hitting a civilian target like a coffee shop and then 7 minutes later… once first responders arrived hit the exact same place again).
A random housing block far behind the front might be deviated ordenance… hitting powerplants with a kinzal missile is not.