Zelensky has been fearmongering about Russian-backed protests since mid-November in a desperate attempt to preemptively discredit genuinely grassroots demonstrations ahead of his plans to cling to power after his term expires on 21 May. He accordingly tasked the SBU with snuffing out growing dissent caused by his latest conscription drive and other unpopular policies, yet they were so preoccupied with thwarting this scenario that they didn’t realize that Russian spies infiltrated Ukraine’s energy sector.
The Associated Press included the following tidbit in their article about Russia’s latest energy grid strikes:
“’They did a huge intelligence job,’ (director of the Kiev-based Energy Industry Research Center Alexander) Kharchenko said, pointing to the precise nature of the attacks and the damage done. The Russian military seemed to ‘know everything about the current status of many energy infrastructure objects,’ including their defenses.”
The compromised technicians do specialized work that can’t be easily replaced in a possible purge.
It’s unclear why these employees suddenly decided to collaborate with Russia, but it might possibly be that they hope that optimizing the efficacy of its energy grid strikes can hasten an end to their country’s conflict by pressuring Zelensky to resume peace talks. After all, they had plenty of opportunities to either reach out to Russian intelligence on their own or respond to its agents’ presumable outreaches any time over the past two years, but they only sought to do so now two years into the conflict.
Ukrainians are understandably fatigued and frustrated with how long everything has drawn out for, not to mention how impossible it’s become for their side to claw back some of the territory that they lost since the special operation began after the counteroffensive’s spectacular failure last summer. Many of them also know someone who was maimed or killed in one of the meat grinders that Zelensky set up along the Line of Contact and naturally don’t want anyone else to suffer because of his delusions.
The question is no longer whether Ukraine will lose, but how much territory and people it’ll lose once everything finally ends on what are increasingly becoming Russia’s terms with each passing day that the conflict continues. Zelensky can either sue for peace to preempt what the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee expects to be a Russian military breakthrough by sometime later this year or cling to false hopes of victory on Kiev’s terms at the expense of more land and lives in order to delay the inevitable.
In the minds of those energy sector employees that are collaborating with Russia, it’s much less costly to help Russia inflict more damage against the national grid with a view towards pressuring Zelensky into resuming peace talks than to keep the meat grinders running and risk a military breakthrough. Regardless of however one judges their motives, they aren’t doing this for financial gain since they could have sought such long ago, but because they’re fatigued with the conflict and want it to end soon.
