Full record
HitgeopoliticsRussia will increasingly shift strategy toward destroying Ukrainian infrastructure to make Ukraine unable to function as a country.
A scored prediction by Peter Zeihan, made on .
Scored prediction
Hitgeopolitics“as we're going to see more and more intently moving forward the ukrainians have the momentum they're getting more and more gear and the Russians know that that's not a tide that they can blunt so what they're trying to do is to destroy the ability of Ukraine to function at all as a country”
Russia will increasingly shift strategy toward destroying Ukrainian infrastructure to make Ukraine unable to function as a country.
- Made on
- 2022-11-25
- Outcome
- Hit
- Importance
- 4 / 5
- Effect on score
- +3.82
What counted as right
- Status
- resolved
- Settled on
- 2023-11-25
In the months following, Russia conducts a sustained, intensifying campaign targeting Ukrainian civilian/energy infrastructure (e.g., systematic strikes on the power grid).
Criterion ('sustained, intensifying campaign targeting Ukrainian civilian/energy infrastructure, e.g. systematic strikes on the power grid') is well-supported by multiple independent sources (Wikipedia synthesis citing Ukrainian govt/IEA, and IEA directly). The campaign was unambiguous and ongoing throughout the prediction window (late Nov 2022 - 25 Nov 2023). Resolved_on set to the deadline since this is a continuing-condition claim that was satisfied throughout the window. No scoring assigned at this stage.
Sources
War, Winter, Ukraine
YouTube ·
Evidence of what happened
Russia conducted a sustained, systematic campaign against Ukraine's energy grid beginning October 2022 and intensifying through the winter: a 10 Oct 2022 wave of 84 cruise missiles + 24 loitering munitions hit the grid nationwide; by 19 Nov 2022 nearly half the power grid was offline and 10 million Ukrainians lost electricity; by mid-December 2022 Russia had fired more than 1,000 missiles and drones at the energy grid. Per the IEA, roughly half of Ukraine's power-generation capacity was occupied, destroyed, or damaged during 2022-2023.
Russian state media in December 2022 openly described the mass-scale attacks on energy infrastructure, CHP plants, and electrical substations as intended to 'force adequate behavior' of Ukrainians, with experts calling for increased 'systematic destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure' — matching the predicted shift toward making Ukraine unable to function.
IEA analysis documents repeated, escalating waves of strikes on Ukraine's energy sector across the 2022-2023 winter and again as winter set in late 2023, confirming a sustained intensifying campaign rather than isolated strikes.
Corrections
No public corrections.
Effect on the score
+3.82- How sure they sounded
- 85%
- Outcome
- Hit
- Importance
- 4 / 5
This page shows the scored prediction as published; the site doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Where this came from
Russia will increasingly shift strategy toward destroying U…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- August 2, 2026
- Made on
- 2022-11-25
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources