On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko said the Ukrainian army had established control over the Sudzha gas hub, a major facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine, which has continued despite the war.
It is the only point of entry for Russian gas into the EU.
As of Thursday, gas was reportedly still flowing from Sudzha.
Russia’s National Guard said it had reinforced security around Kursk’s nuclear power station, which lies some 70km north-east of Sudzha.
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The one thing that worries me about the incursion is that from an armchair historian’s view, attacks against morale rarely if ever work. It’s pretty much acknowledged that “strategic bombing” during WWII had the opposite effect, both during the Battle of Britain and on how US and British bombing of German population centers. See also Lee’s incursion into Pennsylvania, with the explicit purpose of sapping Union support and which ended in Gettysburg. Heck, even the Russian attacks on civilian targets have proven ineffective even in their goal of grinding down resistance in the Ukrainian population.
Now to overthink this, if I were in Zelensky’s position I would say much the same, because it forces the Russians to deploy troops away where they can’t afford, and distracts them from the actual military targets.
So yeah, I hope the incursion here is directly tied to military goals, to hampering the Russian army in a more direct manner than just “let’s try to make Russians feel our pain”.
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The bit about the gas hub is very interesting.
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Reuters:
Exclusive: Iran to deliver hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia soon, intel sources say
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Context for that:
TLDR: the capture of the gas metering station might trigger a force majeure clause stopping gas deliveries mainly to Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, but for now gas still flows as usual, and both Russia and Ukraine apparently want that to continue.
And another interesting article:
Once again proving that Russian red lines and threats of nuclear apocalypse at every turn are empty talk designed to scare its adversaries into inaction. Because each time any of those red lines is crossed the official response is to downplay and pretend that nothing important happened.
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Let’s hope so. Russian economy and military logistics are critically dependent on railroads, so large scale breakdowns should have a strong and immediate impact.
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The sanctions have contributed to a ball-bearing shortage in Russia
Ah, may I suggest to my 
railway-running comrades simply to use a journal bearing instead.
We have lots of experience with those in my neighbourhood.
There’s even a local song about the event…
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This is weird. For the first four years of the war in Donbas (2014-2018), the Ukrainian defense was called the Anti-Terrorist Operation, but that framing was forced by Ukrainian weakness at the time, and is not something that should be anyone’s first choice. It was either putting the internal security services (SBU, equivalent to American FBI or Russian FSB) in charge of a limited “anti-terrorist” operation, or declaring a state of war to use the full armed forces. Ukraine could hardly afford to do the latter given the pitiful state of its army in 2014, and also considering that the choice had to be made by the former speaker of the parliament who temporarily became acting president after the ouster of Yanukovych and thus lacked a mandate for drastic actions.
Russia has no such limitations - Russian border regions have already been part of the “Special Military Operation” area for some time, with active deployment of military units and construction of fortifications along the border. So Putin calling this a “counter-terror” operation and putting defence against Ukrainian tanks and artillery in the hands of FSB (whose main area of expertise is rounding up peaceful protestors, and who recently failed to prevent a massive IS terror attack outside Moscow) is just weird and smacks of desperation.
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I believe the counter terror operation is related to the Russian population
It said this was done “to ensure the safety of citizens and suppress the threat of terrorist acts by enemy sabotage and reconnaissance units”.
The authorities now have powers to enter private homes, restrict the movement of traffic and pedestrians, order the temporary relocation of people and monitor information sent electronically.
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The Russian “counter-terrorism operation” is a state of emergency similar to martial law. It does not mean that the FSB will be in charge of military operations.
The authorities now have powers to enter private homes, restrict the movement of traffic and pedestrians, order the temporary relocation of people and monitor information sent electronically.
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