On March 18, right in the middle of a phone conversation with Trump, Putin, for the sake of demonstration, banned Gerasimov from striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. This was his response to Trump’s attempt to ban long-range strikes altogether. The army responded with decent diligence and elements of provincial comedy: the military shot down its own drones launched at Ukraine before the phone ban.
It is already obvious that the parties are unable to enforce the ban along the front line and in the near rear. A ban in this area is impossible. A voluntary moratorium (since no documents were signed about it) on bombing of energy infrastructure is generally in Russia’s favor. Of course, Ukraine got an opportunity to at least partially restore the networks and prepare for winter. But its only success was the strikes on oil storage facilities and refineries.
The strikes on ammunition depots organized by the headquarters in Wiesbaden are very rare episodes. To damage a military plant you need a very different kind of bombing. A case in point is the attempted AFU raid on the Geraney factory in Alabuga. The AFU has virtually no weapons to hit protected targets in the Russian rear. Buildings that do not burn themselves and are not packed with explosives do not suffer fatally from single hits by light-engine aircraft.
If the moratorium is extended for 30 days, the AFU will be able to move air defense assets from gas storages, wells, and power plants to other facilities, which are almost all located in cities. In essence – all the same air defense assets of the AFU against the same number of air attack assets of the Russian Armed Forces.
The massive strikes on Ukraine, which continue at the same pace, are not comparable to the almost ceased impact of the AFU on Russian Federation industry. The RF Armed Forces have a huge number of targets for strikes, there are no prohibitions on depth. And the impact on the enemy’s defensive potential remains the same. It is profitable for Putin to prolong the moratorium.
