mikael Valter. x. ANALYSIS A NEW PHASE OF THE WAR, MARCH 29th 2024It becomes more and more clear that the Russo-ukrainian war has entered a new phase with the large scale attacks on Ukrainian power plants. Last night the large Hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) in Kamienske (1), Kremenchuk (2) and Kaniv (3) and a number of Thermal power plants (TPPs) was hit. On March 22 the large HPP in Zaporizhia (purple) as well as a number of TPPs, for example in Kharkov and Odessa, was attacked.Until now the Russian attacks towards the energy network in Ukraine has been focused on the power distribution system and damages have been easy to repair quickly. This new campaign is a much more serious threat since its focus is towards the power production facilities. These might take years to repair or replace.Why has Russia shifted its focus? I honestly expected a much more concentrated campaign towards big power plants, bridges over the Dniepr and railways, already in the Autumn of 2022. The reasons this didn't happen are twofold. First of all Russia didn't want to destroy the critical infrastructure in Ukraine, because they hoped to minimise reconstruction costs and Russia also still hoped that Ukraine would get a change of regime that would lead to Ukraine once again becoming allied to Russia. Russia didn't want its future ally to be a wasteland. The second reason Russia didn't attack the critical infrastructure was that Ukraine still had a strong Air Defence (AD) network and Russia had a limited number of weapon systems to use. Now Ukraine has very limited AD resources and Russia has drastically increased weapons production.Russia seems to have come to the conclusion that it's more important to actually defeat Ukraine than to preserve critical infrastructure for a unlikely future allied Ukraine. This means that Russia probably expect to take on the heavy burden of rebuilding critical infrastructure after the war, but that cost is less important than the cost of not winning a clear victory in the war. Since Russian gloves are off regarding critical infrastructure, we can assume that Russia now take the war very seriously. They didn't start doing it until the Autumn of 2022. But after the loss of western Kherson oblast and eastern Kharkov oblast Russia began a step by step increase transforming into a war economy and mindset.