Russia Unleashes One of Its Largest Assaults Yet

Russian airstrikes targeting energy and other facilities rocked Ukraine from east to west Tuesday, causing broad power blackouts. A senior official warned that the situation was "critical" and urged Ukrainians to "hang in there" as neighborhoods went dark, per the AP. The Washington Post describes the assault as "one of the most widespread" since the war began nine months ago. The aerial attack, which resulted in at least one death in a residential building in the capital, Kyiv, followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes in the war—the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number of Russian missiles fired in the latest assault at 85, and he warned that more attacks may be coming. "We will survive everything," he said with the shake of a fist. As its battlefield losses mount, Russia has in recent months increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine's power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark. Among regions where officials reported strikes were Lviv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, and Rivne in the west, and Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, in the northeast. Several missile strikes also hit Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky's native city, according to its mayor.

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