According to propagandists, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, by giving orders to attack Russia's energy, fuel and transport infrastructure, has unleashed an “infrastructure war”. It consists of Ukraine shelling Russian critical infrastructure facilities, such as oil refineries, and Russia, in turn, “hits back”. Zelenskyi allegedly started the “infrastructure game”, knowing full well that he was exposing his people to a large-scale crisis. Accordingly, after this, according to propagandists, the Kremlin seems to have every reason to completely destroy Ukraine's energy infrastructure. However, this is not happening, since Putin “does not want Ukrainians to suffer”.

Propagandists claim that Russia is already engaged in an “infrastructure war” due to Ukraine's fault. But Ukraine, unlike Russia, allegedly cannot attack long-range targets due to a lack of long-range weapons, so it attacks border targets: bridges, energy facilities, railroads, and the like. According to Russian propaganda, once the Ukrainian Armed Forces have this capability, the Ukrainian military will “definitely” attack thermal power plants and thermal power plants in Russia.

According to Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Ukraine never attacks Russian civilian infrastructure. Ukraine uses its drones and UAVs to attack precisely those Russian infrastructure facilities that allow it to continue waging a war of conquest. By attacking the same oil refineries, Ukraine aims to destabilize the domestic Russian fuel market, as well as reduce Russia’s income from oil exports, the only major source of income for this state, which bypasses sanctions from the US, EU, and other partners of Ukraine. According to Bloomberg, in 2023 alone, Russia's net budget revenues from oil and gas amounted to about $99.3 billion. And revenues specifically from oil exports are about 27.5% of the total, which in 2023 amounted to $360 billion, according to one Russian media outlet.

Russian propagandists use the idea of ​​an “infrastructure war” to intimidate people with new Russian attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure in the winter. And they shift the blame for the attacks to Ukraine. They say that the Ukrainian authorities made a mistake when they started hitting Russia's critical infrastructure, so now ordinary Ukrainians will pay for it. That is, the propagandists completely deny Ukraine's right to defend itself. At the same time, Russia began shelling Ukraine's critical infrastructure two years ago, on October 10, 2022.