"Civilian eyes and ears, in particular, are blacked out" - that's an interesting point, so we are saying that temporarily neutralising civilian infrastructure like cameras, and impairing communications, is part of the rationale. I suppose this could also be why they are being oblique, because it would acknowledge that those civilians, or their facilities, are being used in a specific military role.

@Steve They don't have to be used in a specific, military role to have military value in terms of intelligence. It's extremely important to note this, because they are civilians, NOT military assets. But damaging an opponent's infrastructure, including civilian infrastructure, is part and parcel of bringing a country to its knees and so becomes justified as a military objective even if it's not indicating targets that can shoot back.

But because Ukraine is propped by the West, I don't buy the logic that impairing production in Ukraine would cause a military advantage. I do however see how switching off a massive latent intelligence network is useful to the progress of the Russian fronts. Years ago they used to run landlines on significant battery banks, so telecoms didn't shut down with power outages, but they've probably abolished all that in the meantime, so cutting the power is sufficient to knock out wired telecoms. And they can probably block civilian wireless.

@Steve Ukraine is not propped up by the west in the way I think you understand. They receive weapons from several countries, it's true - but the vast majority of Ukraine's military materiel is homegrown, and that industrial sector is being rapidly advanced as fast as Ukraine can convert production capacity to that end. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Ukraine)

But they're still underwritten by the West. It doesn't matter if they're making most of it for themselves for now - the West would still step in whenever their own capacity deteriorated, just as it has with a variety of weapons systems which they did not even possess in the first place.

@Steve It does not follow that their allies will step in to cover any loss of capacity. Indeed, the US in particular is showing tremendous hesitancy to supply materiel - subject to regular pauses/delays induced by Congress, and is generally considered unreliable by Ukrainians. Moreover, if Ukrainian capacity decays rapidly it's entirely possible their allies will write them off as a lost cause.

In the US, obviously there's a reluctance to provide advanced weaponry directly, and there's also internal dispute about foreign policy, but I don't think the limitations arise on the cost of economic support from the West in general.

@Steve "I don't buy the logic that impairing production in Ukraine would cause a military advantage." There's a cost-benefit analysis here too. While the ultimate benefit in Korea or Vietnam was small for the US, so might be the effort to destroy the energy infrastructure. In Korea in particular it was achieved in four days (90% destruction) once the decision was taken (in 1952).

@MakeStackExchangeGREAT4ever, perhaps; I suppose I'm proceeding from the assumption that the missile strikes are not completely trivial for Russia to execute (i.e. costly enough they'd want to maximise their bang for the buck through intelligent target selection), and the repeated targeting of electric power (and sensational reporting of it by the West) suggests a deeper rationale for the Russians and real military harm being sustained by the Ukrainians as a result.

"But because Ukraine is propped by the West, I don't buy the logic that impairing production in Ukraine would cause a military advantage." - why not? Even if Ukraine receives plenty of equipment from the West, it is logical for Russia to tie down at least some part of it, so that it can't all immediately reach the front. Equipment needs to be transported, and destroying infrastructure hampers that. Every effort spent on mitigating damage to infrastructure is taken away from actually transporting equipment to the front lines.

You write "this does not constitute a war crime", then weaken this to "not prima facie a war crime". That's not the same. Moreover, your legal analysis of proportionality is misleading, because it leaves the impression that any military benefit of sufficient size justifies the attack, completely glossing over the fact that the law of war requires the military benefit to be "concrete and direct" (see Protocol Additional I, article 51, paragraph 5b), which is very unlikely to be met for the vast majority of russian strikes, and has caused the ICC to indict russian commanders for war crimes.

@vsz, but if it's a transport issue, then wouldn't rail hubs, signal boxes, mainlines, and marshalling yards, get the same sort of treatment? Or is rail in fact getting the same treatment, but the press is just emphasising electric power bombing because "Russia blows up railways again" sounds like normal fayre for war, whereas civilian blackouts can be hyped into "war crimes against civilians" and that kind of propaganda line?

@meriton, I think most people are tired of hearing fussy arguing about how everything is a "war crime", especially when the whole war itself is said to be a crime by the same voices, so it just becomes endless jabbering. True war crimes are those which do not serve adversaries on either side of the conflict. Unless you can identify how Russia is being harmed by its own counterproductive actions here, then it is not a war crime, it's just whatever the eventual victor says it is. War is by definition a situation in which might will make right.

I think you cannot judge if it is a war crime or not - this is up to a proper court. You are also claiming war crimes are decided by a victor - and this is not correct either, the war crimes are decided by a court, not by a victor.

@Mykola but the courts are not truly uncorrelated from who the victors are. In WW2, Americans bombing German naval vessels flying the red cross flag rescuing British survivors from the sea (and thereby killing British servicemen and British civilians), were never convicted of war crimes, and this is just one example of many. Hey, even today, the USA has it as a public policy to invade Netherlands if the International Criminal Court headquartered there arrests American service personnel. So the ICC never dares to try.

@vsz WWII was a world war and this war is local, so, I personally don't expect any victor to be influential enough to dictate its power to the world.

@vsz Re: USA and ICC - yes, they have a policy - and the power to enforce it. I don't like it, but it is what it is. As per this case - I think it is a huge stretch to compare the USA and russia. To sum up: If russia wins, they still cannot dictate their will to the world, and in case of Ukraine - Ukraine does not oppose any international investigations already, so, I don't expect they will in the future.

@Steve Even with West support let's say (random numbers) that a Ukranian factory can produce 2400 rifles a day. If with one missile on a powerplant you can stop that factory for even a day because it has no electricity you achieved the same result as destroying 2400 rifles with a single missile in addition to possibly hamper communications.

@Mykola, the victor decides what the law is, and who the appointed judges are. It's like Humpty Dumpty said to Alice: the question is which is to be master, that's all.

@JohnDoe, but how short are the Ukrainians of any locally-producible materiel? The Russians could coventrate the Ukrainian economy, and the West will just put equivalent materiel on a train instead and send it in from outside. In fact it makes you wonder why they are even manning factories, rather than sending all the manpower to the front, except perhaps as a charade to maintain the ambiguity about who is really running the war.

@Steve your assumption is wrong, the victor does not decide neither who the judges are nor what the law is. There are cases when the victors are the same part as the world's leading powers, but this war is clearly not the case. If this is not part of your views, I would ask for a citation from a UN body. If this is part of your views - I think your moral values are completely different from mine, and I don't want to keep the discussion. Just one last thing - next time you are robbed, don't call the police, let the victor decide what the law is.

@Mykola, the UN itself is just a club of victors. I'm not attempting to impose moral values on you, I'm just describing the physical reality of who actually decides what the law says. Under normal circumstances, "when you are robbed", the citizen who lives lawfully expects the state, on his behalf, to be the victor over the robber. This is related to the concept of the state seeking a monopoly on violence. But of course, international affairs are not characterised by violence being monopolised in this way.