Anton Gerashchenko
@Gerashchenko_en
More and more, I find myself thinking that we're asking the wrong question. We ask: Can Russia conquer Ukraine now? Can it seize the country militarily? And we answer with relief - probably not.
But that is the wrong question. The right one is different - and more frightening: Can Russia destroy Ukraine's energy system and infrastructure? Here, the answer is yes.
Ukraine's defense against ballistic missiles is now approaching zero because of a global shortage of interceptors, in which Ukraine is not a priority. In 2026, deliveries of interceptor missiles have fallen to roughly one-third of their 2025 level.
The enemy understands this. In 2026, Russia has significantly intensified its use of ballistic and hypersonic missiles, including Zircon, Iskander-M, and S-400 missiles.
In just the last two massive attacks, Russia launched 60 ballistic missiles. Ukraine managed to intercept only two.
Contrary to the widespread perception, the Ukrainian energy system is not as large as it seems. Its operation depends on a relatively small number of critical facilities: nuclear power plants, several major power stations, several dozen key substations, and high-voltage transformers. The transformers are the weakest link. They are expensive, almost entirely imported, take months to manufacture, and there are almost no reserves left.
During the 2025-2026 heating season alone, the UN Monitoring Mission documented 423 attacks on electricity infrastructure facilities and another 74 strikes on heat supply systems. According to Ukrainian energy analysts, since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has carried out more than 60 major campaigns against Ukraine's energy infrastructure, using around 2,900 missiles and more than 12,700 drones.
The situation this winter promises to be significantly harder.
Of course, frozen and half-destroyed Ukrainian cities are not necessarily conquered cities. But they are cities becoming unlivable, cities people are forced to leave. And that means weakening the institutional and socioeconomic fabric of the state - and weakening support for the front.
At current rates of Russian ballistic missile production and Ukraine's lack of air defense, Russia sees an opportunity to destroy Ukraine's energy and logistics infrastructure in a single winter. I see no grounds for optimism here, and I will not offer any.
If this happens, what comes next? No one can say for certain. But we know exactly what Russia wants: all of Ukraine. And knowing how Russia behaves in occupied territories and areas under its control, we can imagine what it plans to do.
Russia does not necessarily have to capture the entire territory of Ukraine with troops. It has experience in establishing puppet regimes and taking control of the key functions of a state. The model is already familiar from the occupied territories: administrations installed and cultivated under the FSB, Russian passports made a prerequisite for access to basic services, and filtration turned into a routine procedure. The population's loyalty is not required.
Mariupol, Melitopol, and Kherson region have shown: a non-loyal population is not an obstacle to control, but material to be processed. Those who can be intimidated, bribed, or reprogrammed through school, television, and passports will be. Those who cannot will be filtered, imprisoned, deported, or killed. Children will be taken away and re-educated.
That is why assuming that public resistance alone will make occupation impossible is a dangerous illusion. Russia's model of control is designed specifically for a hostile population and treats that population as a resource.
The occupied Ukrainian population has already become a resource for the Russian army. In occupied Donbas, Russia has forcibly mobilized, according to various estimates, more than one hundred thousand men since 2022 - and used them as expendable infantry in the first waves.
If Russia occupies more Ukrainian territory, it could gain access to hundreds of thousands of potential future soldiers, many of them with experience in modern warfare.
If Russia establishes political control over most of Ukraine, a large part of Ukrainians will want to leave. But the number of refugees reaching the EU would be determined not by people’s desire to leave, but by the border regime Moscow chooses to impose. Potentially another 5-10 million could leave the country. But Russia would decide who gets to cross the border.
There are three possible border scenarios.
The first is closure and filtration, following the model already used in occupied territories. Perhaps 500,000 to 1.5 million people would make it to the EU, while most would be trapped inside. For the Kremlin, this would be the optimal scenario - both for erasing Ukrainian identity and for creating a mobilization base.
The second is a controlled wave: selectively opening the border and releasing groups of 1- 3 million people in several stages, with the aim of overwhelming the EU, fueling anti-immigration sentiment, and deepening political divisions across Europe.
The third is a collapse of control. If the authorities, the army, and the border system disintegrate faster than Russia can establish its own control, the flow could approach the upper estimate of 5-10 million people, constrained only by the capacity of the borders.
If Ukraine falls, Russia will gain more than a new recruitment pool for its military. It will gain the time and space to prepare for its next military campaigns. And the next war will be fought on EU territory.
Of course, we can listen to those who insist that Russia would never do such a thing. But it is worth remembering that these pseudo-experts are not risking their own lives. If their predictions prove wrong, they will simply shrug and say, "Who could have known?"
That leaves one practical conclusion that I consider honest: we do not have the luxury of wishful thinking. Europe's future depends on whether Ukraine survives this winter.
And this is a very practical matter: missile defense, interceptors, reserves of high-voltage transformers, and decentralized power generation. Every month of delay in delivering what Ukraine needs increases the risk that, for the first time, the pace of destruction will exceed the pace of recovery.
Resilience is a resource that may run out as early as February.
5:43 AM · Aug 7, 2026 · 75.2K Views
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/2085678140664217958
