Ukraine Rations Power and Warns of Lethal Winter, Despite Battle Gains

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/world/europe/russia-ukraine-power-grid-kherson.html

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KYIV, Ukraine — Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid forced nationwide power cuts on Thursday, deepening the misery of a people facing winter without enough light or heat, while Ukraine’s president accused Moscow of planning to blow up a dam, which would cause catastrophic flooding and knock out more power supply.

The government ordered Ukrainians to minimize electricity use from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., after 10 days of concerted missile and drone attacks on utilities that have left civilians struggling with rolling blackouts and scattered shortages of clean water. Ukrainian and United Nations officials have warned of a deadly humanitarian crisis for civilians in the coming cold months.

Speaking remotely by video to European Union leaders, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that “we have information” that Russian forces had mined the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, a claim that could not be verified or refuted. If the dam were destroyed, he said, towns would be inundated and “hundreds of thousands of people could be affected.”

In an overnight address, Mr. Zelensky, who has said that one-third of Ukraine’s power stations have been knocked out, pleaded with his people to forgo using high-energy devices and to be conscious of every bit of power consumption. The national electric utility, Ukrenergo, said on Thursday that the grid had suffered more attacks in 10 days than in the previous seven and a half months of war, and urged Ukrainians to charge their phones and flashlights before 7 a.m.

Kyiv, the capital, replaced most of its electric trams with buses and told businesses to limit lighting on signs and screens, the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said. On Thursday night, the city was noticeably darker than usual, with only a few streetlights to help pedestrians and motorists find their way, and Kyiv’s main energy provider, Yasno, posted a schedule of staggered, planned blackouts by neighborhood.

But the worsening hardship within Ukraine came amid signs that its battlefield successes could continue. Russia has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine, focusing on civilian infrastructure deep inside the country — an apparent attempt to break the country’s ability and will to fight — rather than on the front lines, where its military has been losing ground for more than a month.

It has said the bombing campaign is retaliation for the Oct. 8 attack that badly damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea to southern Russia, a key supply route for Moscow’s forces in southern Ukraine.

In the southern city of Kherson, Russian authorities said on Thursday that they had evacuated 15,000 civilians and planned to relocate up to 60,000, in what some Ukrainian officials and Western analysts described as a sign that the Russian military may be preparing to abandon the city. The city lies on the Dnipro downstream from the Kakhovka dam, and could be flooded if the dam were damaged.

Kherson was the first important city captured by Moscow’s forces shortly after they invaded in February, but a Ukrainian counteroffensive has made their hold on it increasingly tenuous. Nearly all the Russian-controlled territory is east of the Dnipro, but Kherson sits on the river’s western bank, and Ukrainian forces have destroyed the bridges linking it to reinforcements and supplies.

Russian authorities appeared to be preparing the public for a possible retreat from parts of the Kherson region, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a research group based in Washington. American officials said last month that Russian commanders had recommended retreating across the Dnipro, but that President Vladimir V. Putin had refused to allow it.

A British intelligence report on Thursday said that there was evidence that the Russian authorities were considering a withdrawal from the western bank of the Dnipro, a view supported by U.S. intelligence analysts.

But at the same time, Russia is increasing its military presence in Belarus, north of Ukraine, raising the specter of a new offensive from that direction, the Ukrainian military warned on Thursday. When Russia invaded on Feb. 24, it sent forces southward from Belarus hoping to swiftly capture Kyiv, but the offensive failed and the Russians withdrew from that part of the country.

Assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies suggest that as long as the fall weather remains mild, Ukraine has a good chance to continue retaking territory in the south and east that it lost to Russia early in the war. But the agencies cautioned against expecting outright Russian defeat, or even the kind of headlong retreat seen last month in the Kharkiv region in the east.

There were confused reports on Thursday about the status of another site under Russian occupation, the town of Enerhodar, next to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on the east bank of the Dnipro. Ukrainian officials said that Russian forces were leaving, but The Times could not confirm that, nor was it clear whether such a departure would indicate withdrawal or simply a routine rotation of troops.

Russian forces seized the plant and the town early in the war. Ukrainian engineers have continued to live there and operate the plant under often harsh conditions, but Mr. Putin has said Russia will nationalize it. The plant and its related equipment have been struck repeatedly by shelling, threatening a catastrophic radiation release, with each side blaming the other for the attacks.

Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s cities and vital public services has brought the war home once again to civilians around the country in places that had seen months of relative calm.

“These are war crimes,” Ursula von der Leyen, the leader of the executive branch of the European Union, said on Wednesday. “Targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure with the clear aim to cut off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming — these are acts of pure terror.”

The barrage has relied heavily on exploding drones apparently bought from Iran; Mr. Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had shot down 233 Iranian-made Shahed drones. Iran has denied selling Russia drones, but hundreds of photos from the war zone have emerged of the craft, in flight or in pieces on the ground, and social media accounts linked to the Iranian security forces have gloated about their use in Ukraine.

On Thursday, the European Union and Britain imposed new economic sanctions against Tehran in response to the drone sales, targeting some individuals as well as the company that makes the Shahed. The Biden administration is contemplating additional sanctions as well. Iran is already under severe Western sanctions, including some imposed just days ago, over the violent suppression of protests led largely by women.

The European Union and NATO have been almost uniformly in agreement on supporting Ukraine and punishing Russia, but the expected formation of a right-wing government in Italy has raised doubts about that unity.

In secret audio recordings made public this week, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is expected to play a prominent role in the new government, parroted the Kremlin’s discredited version of the war, saying that Mr. Putin had little choice but to invade to prevent supposed atrocities in eastern Ukraine. He spoke fondly of exchanging birthday gifts and letters with Mr. Putin.

Giorgia Meloni, expected to become Italy’s new prime minister, has insisted that the country’s position on the war will not change, but the party leaders of her anticipated coalition, including Mr. Berlusconi, have been friends and admirers of Mr. Putin.

Megan Specia reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, Monika Pronczuk from Brussels and Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London. Reporting was contributed by Richard Pérez-Peña and Carly Olson from New York, Michael Schwirtz and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, Julian E. Barnes from Washington and Jason Horowitz from Rome.