The Ukraine is winning this! Except for the no heat and water part.

Did I mention 1/3rd of the population has been forced from their homes? And the constant missile bombardment? Once again, the media has it right...this thing is turning around.

Ukrainians Struggle to Conserve Energy After Strikes Damage Power Stations

Published Oct. 18, 2022

Updated Oct. 19, 2022, 6:43 a.m. ET

Here’s what we know:

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations were “destroyed” in the past eight days, causing “massive blackouts across the country.”

Bottled water and rolling blackouts are part of daily life amid the attacks.

Russian officials hint that their hold on Kherson is shaky.

Kyiv should cut diplomatic ties with Iran, Ukraine’s foreign minister says.

Denmark says ‘powerful explosions’ caused the Nord Stream pipeline leaks.

Bottled water and rolling blackouts are part of daily life amid the attacks.

KYIV, Ukraine — From towns near frontline battlefields to high-rises in the capital, Ukrainians were trying to conserve energy as President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Tuesday that Russian attacks over the past eight days had destroyed 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations and caused “massive blackouts across the country.”

The latest strikes have increased the likelihood of a miserable winter, with residents having to do without basic services such as heat and water. The World Health Organization has warned of the potential for a spiraling humanitarian crisis, given that a lack of access to fuel or electricity “could become a matter of life or death if people are unable to heat their homes.”

The United Nations’ human rights body has said that deliberate strikes on such civilian targets could constitute a war crime. Mr. Zelensky urged Ukrainians in his nightly address on Monday to reduce their electricity use during peak hours to “enable the whole country to go through this period more stably,” and many residents and businesses have been doing their part.

In his statement on Tuesday, he did not specify which power stations had sustained significant damage. On Tuesday, blasts hit a district on the eastern shore of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, according to the mayor, along with cities in the north and center of the country.

The strikes on Ukraine in recent weeks have targeted both electrical infrastructure and thermal power plants. Many cities and towns rely on a centralized system to heat homes, pumping water from these thermal plants though pipes that reach houses and large apartment complexes across the region.

If the plants are damaged — or the pipes — it could threaten heating across a wide area. Those who rely on electric heaters also risk facing a winter without proper warmth in their houses because of rolling blackouts.

The attack on Kyiv killed three people and knocked out electricity and water in parts of the city, officials said, and came one day after Russia struck the city with exploding Iranian-made drones, apparently targeting electricity and heating facilities.

In Kyiv, lights flickered just after 9 a.m., and residents living in the city’s eastern reaches said they had heard an explosion. The mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, said that an “object of critical infrastructure” had been struck. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in Mr. Zelensky’s office, said that at least three strikes had hit an energy site, resulting in “serious damage,” without elaborating.

Video showed smoke rising near power plants in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian attacks in recent days have destroyed 30 percent of the nation’s power stations, causing large-scale blackouts.CreditCredit...Unknown via Storyful

By midmorning, people in Kyiv were lining up at stores to fill bottles with fresh water, and electricity suppliers warned that the city would experience blackouts while repairs were underway.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it had launched long-range strikes on Tuesday targeting “the military control and energy systems of Ukraine” and depots storing foreign-supplied military weapons and equipment, and that “all the assigned targets had been neutralized.” It was not possible to verify the claim.

Even as Russia’s forces lose ground on the battlefield to Ukrainian counteroffensives in the east and south, Moscow has stepped up its aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities, including many, like Kyiv, that lie far from the front lines.

On social media, shops, banks and other major retailers have posted photos of the measures that they are taking to reduce energy use, such as turning off illuminated signs. In the capital, some billboards are no longer lit up at night, and streetlights are being partly turned off. Still, towns and cities across Ukraine are dealing with rolling blackouts or going without power entirely.

In Washington, Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Tuesday that, with its latest airstrikes on Ukraine’s electrical grid, the Kremlin was “obviously trying to inflict pain on the civilian society as well as try to have an impact on Ukrainian forces.”

“But what we’ve seen so far is Ukraine be very resilient and their ability to get things like their power grids back up online quickly,” General Ryder told reporters.

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

The commander of the Russian invasion said on Tuesday that his army might face “hard decisions” about its tenuous hold over the strategically important Ukrainian region of Kherson, just minutes after a top Moscow-appointed official there announced an evacuation of civilians from four occupied districts.

Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the top Russian commander in Ukraine, acknowledged in a rare interview that the situation in the Kherson region has been “difficult” after the Ukrainian army damaged two key connections to other Russian occupied territory. For weeks, Ukrainian forces have been advancing slowly toward the regional capital, the city of Kherson, in a counteroffensive aimed at driving the Russians back across the Dnipro River.

In a video statement, Vladimir Saldo, the head of the regional occupation administration, said that residents would be evacuated from four districts on the west side of the Dnipro River. Mr. Saldo — who was appointed governor of the Kherson region by the Kremlin shortly after Russia formally annexed the territory at the end of September — cited the risk of shelling and the need for Russia to build defensive lines to repel an expected Ukrainian attack.

General Surovikin, in his first public remarks since he was appointed as head of the Russian military force in Ukraine on Oct. 8, said that the Russian Army would assist the evacuation and stressed the challenging conditions his forces face — with a tacit acknowledgment that a retreat from the city of Kherson might be necessary.

“Our future plans and actions regarding the city of Kherson will depend on the unfolding military-tactical situation,” he said in a televised statement. “I repeat — today it is already quite difficult.”

The announcements underscored Russia’s precarious hold on the strategically important swath of Ukrainian land that allows the Russian forces to operate on the western side of the Dnipro River, which divides the country into two. That control allows Russia to threaten the rest of the Ukrainian-controlled Black Sea coast, including the symbolic city of Odesa. But advancing Ukrainian forces have severed the bridges that were used to resupply and reinforce Russian troops on the west bank of the Dnipro River.

Ukraine has coveted the liberation of Kherson since the first weeks of the war, when the city became the only regional capital to fall to Russian forces since the invasion began.

But as Ukrainian forces push closer to the city limits, they face a conundrum: Unlike the Russian military, which appears to have no qualms about targeting infrastructure and killing civilians to achieve its war aims, Ukraine would like to avoid destroying Kherson in the process of recapturing it. If Russian forces put up a concerted fight to keep the city, Ukraine might hesitate to use all of its firepower.

Pro-Russian military bloggers — an increasingly vocal group in Russia — praised General Surovikin for being frank about the challenges in Kherson. Many interpreted his statement as a sign that Russia might be preparing for a large-scale battle, while others said it could be a sign of a coming retreat.

“There are three options here: Either our forces would dig in where they are, or they would retreat to the city of Kherson, trying to engage the enemy in street fighting,” said Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular blogger. “Or they would evacuate.”

— Ivan Nechepurenko and Michael Schwirtz

The State of the War

Drone Attacks: The use by Russia of Iranian-made drones in recent strikes on Kyiv may be a sign that the country’s military is running low on precision-guided weapons. It also shows how Tehran has become an increasingly close ally to the Kremlin.

Russia’s Chaotic Draft: Newly mobilized Russian recruits are already at the front in Ukraine, reports say, fighting and dying after only days of training. The draft has provoked widespread criticism across Russia and prompted thousands of Russian men to flee the country.

Ukrainian Offensive: Moscow’s recent aerial campaign across Ukraine does not appear to have changed the course of the war in the south and the east, where Russia is mostly falling back as Ukrainian troops try to regain territory.

Arming Ukraine: The Russian strikes have increased pressure on Western officials to deliver arms to help protect Ukraine. Here is a closer look at the military aid the country needs.

Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who has been detained in Russia since February, sent a message of thanks to her supporters on Tuesday — her 32nd birthday.

According to a statement from two of her lawyers in Russia, Maria Blagovolina and Alexander Boykov, Ms. Griner said: “Thank you everyone for fighting so hard to get me home. All the support and love are definitely helping me.”

The lawyers said they had met with Ms. Griner for several hours on Tuesday and relayed messages from well-wishers. “Today is of course a difficult day for Brittney,” they said, adding that she was “very stressed” in anticipation of a hearing over the appeal of her conviction on drug charges, which is scheduled for Oct. 25.

Ms. Griner told her lawyers last week that she was not optimistic about the chances of her being freed before serving her full nine-year sentence and that she was struggling emotionally. Ms. Griner is allowed outside once a day, according to Mr. Boykov, during which she walks for an hour in a small courtyard at the penal colony outside Moscow where she is being held. She spends the rest of her time in a small cell with two cellmates, sitting and sleeping on a specially elongated bed to accommodate her 6-foot-9 frame.

While she awaits the appeals court hearing, Mr. Boykov said, Ms. Griner struggles in large part because it is “very difficult” to speak to her relatives. He added that it had been very difficult to organize phone calls with Ms. Griner’s wife, Cherelle, and that she had been unable to speak to her parents or siblings since her detention, as far as he was aware.

Last Wednesday, President Biden said that there had been no movement with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, over Ms. Griner’s case. A White House official said last week that the administration was trying “every available channel” with Moscow, including the one through which U.S. officials arranged a prisoner swap in April to secure the release of Trevor Reed, a former Marine who had been serving a nine-year prison sentence in Russia.

Ms. Griner was stopped in February at an airport near Moscow on her way to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a Russian professional women’s basketball team. Customs officials said that she had been carrying two vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage. In August, she was sentenced to nine years in prison after a trial that was all but assured to end in a conviction.

The United States has said that her detention and trial were politically motivated and that the Kremlin wants to exchange her for high-profile Russian citizens held in the United States. After her conviction, Russian officials said that political negotiations with the United States were already underway.

WASHINGTON — Iran has sent trainers to occupied Ukraine to help Russians overcome problems with the fleet of drones that they purchased from Tehran, according to current and former U.S. officials briefed on the classified intelligence, a further signal of the growing closeness between Iran and Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Iranian trainers are operating from a Russian military base in Crimea where many of the drones have been based since being delivered from Iran. The trainers are from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a branch of the Iranian military designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.

In recent days, the Iranian drones have become an important weapon for Russia, which has used them as part of the broad strikes across Ukraine against electrical infrastructure and other civilian targets. The deployment of the Iranian trainers appears to coincide with the stepped-up use of the drones in Ukraine and indicates a deeper involvement by Iran in the war.

“Sending drones and trainers to Ukraine has enmeshed Iran deeply into the war on the Russian side and involved Tehran directly in operations that have killed and injured civilians,” said Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official and retired C.I.A. officer.

“Even if they’re just trainers and tactical advisers in Ukraine, I think that’s substantial,” Mr. Mulroy said. The United Nations’ human rights body has said that deliberate strikes on such civilian targets could constitute war crimes.

— Julian E. Barnes