Author: John Hanno

Fox News

Russian military is now storming Mariupol steel factory, Ukrainian forces say

Greg Norman – May 3, 2022

Ukrainian forces at the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol said Tuesday that Russia’s military is now storming the complex.

The move comes almost two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military not to storm the plant, but rather block off the last pocket of resistance in the besieged Ukrainian city.

Asked about reports in Ukrainian media that the plant was being bombarded, Sviatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Regiment that is holed up there, said “it is true.”

Vadim Astafyev, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, said Tuesday that Ukrainian fighters holed up at the plant “came out of the basements, took up firing positions on the territory and in the buildings of the plant.” Astafyev said Russian forces along with rebel forces from Donetsk were using “artillery and aircraft… to destroy these firing positions.”-

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said earlier Tuesday that more than 200 civilians are still at the Azovstal factory following United Nations-assisted evacuation efforts there in recent days, according to Reuters.

Mariupol patrol police chief Mykhailo Vershinin also was quoted by Ukrainian television on Tuesday as saying that the Russian military “have started to storm the plant in several places.”

Denys Shlega, a commander of a brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard at Azovstal, said “the enemy is trying to storm the Azovstal plant with significant forces using armored vehicles.”

In a statement Tuesday, the U.N. said “101 civilians have successfully been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and other areas in a safe passage operation coordinated by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.”

“Thanks to the operation, 101 women, men, children, and older persons could finally leave the bunkers below the Azovstal steelworks and see the daylight after two months,” said Osnat Lubrani, the U.N. Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine. “Another 58 people joined us in Manhush, a town on the outskirts of Mariupol.

“We have accompanied 127 people today to Zaporizhzhia, about [143 miles] northwest of Mariupol, where they are receiving initial humanitarian assistance, including health and psychological care, from UN agencies, ICRC and our humanitarian partners,” she added. “Some evacuees decided not to proceed towards Zaporizhzhia with the convoy.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Business Insider

Ukraine invasion made Russia’s military ‘significantly weaker’ despite its defense budget doubling in the past 20 years, UK says

Sophia Ankel – May 3, 2022

• Russian defense expenditure has grown significantly over the years, the UK said.
• But the invasion of Ukraine has made the Russian military “significantly weaker,” it said.
• Russia’s military is falling short in Ukraine, with reports describing low morale and elite troop losses.

The invasion of Ukraine has made Russia’s military “significantly weaker” despite its defense budget doubling in the past 20 years, the UK said Tuesday.

“Russia’s military is now significantly weakened, both materially and conceptually, as a result of its invasion of Ukraine,” the British Ministry of Defence tweeted in its daily intelligence report on Russia’s invasion.

“Recovering from this will be exacerbated by sanctions. This will have a lasting impact on Russia’s ability to deploy conventional military force,” it said.

The ministry added that while Russia’s defense budget had doubled from 2005 to 2018 — with major investments made in air, land, and sea capabilities — its new equipment has not helped it to “dominate Ukraine.”

In 2008, Russia’s then-defense minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, announced a major structural reorganization of the country’s armed forces, calling it the New Look military modernization process.

The reorganization came after Russia’s weeklong war with Georgia that same year showed that its military still lacked operational capacities, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

But since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, multiple reports have described how Russian forces were still falling short in the face of staunch Ukrainian resistance.

The head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, told the Ukrainian news outlet The New Voice of Ukraine on Monday: “All they spent money on was to show the greatness of the Russian army in the world. Now we have seen that there is no greatness at all.”

Ukraine’s defense ministry also said last month that Russia was failing to recruit new troops because potential conscripts were too afraid of dying in battle.

Budanov, the intelligence chief, suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin could officially declare war on May 9 as a way to prepare for mass mobilization.

Putin is under pressure to demonstrate he can show a victory by May 9, a Russian holiday that commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and is usually marked with a military parade in front of the Kremlin.

Daily Kos

Ukraine Update: Surprise Ukrainian gains north of Kharkiv could impact battle for Donbas

Mark Sumner, Daily Kos Staff – May 03, 2022 

The big story today is that something not small happened over the last week. Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine moved to what is being called the Battle of the Donbas, most actions seem to have taken place at a rate that roughly approximates the growth of fingernails. Here and there Russian forces have managed to advance, but far more often attempts to dislodge Ukrainian forces from towns and villages have been repulsed. 

Sadly, because the area of the battle is close to the Russian border, Russia is able to defend the airspace with both planes and anti-aircraft systems working from across the border. That makes it difficult for Ukrainian aircraft to operate in the area and give Ukraine the kind of air support that would allow them to make large-scale counter attacks. So Russia keeps shelling, then tries to move forward. Then it shells some more. Russian losses are terrible. Ukrainian losses are also painfully high. But Ukraine has multiple prepared positions against just this kind of attack, and Russia has nothing like the ratio of forces necessary to overwhelm Ukrainian positions. 

So, in most of eastern Ukraine, the fields are getting heavily fertilized with blood, and the muddy roads are getting heavily strewn with wreckage, but not much else is happening that looks like progress for either side.

Which only serves to make what’s happening north of Kharkiv more exciting.

Over the last week, Ukraine has mounted a steady counteroffensive directed at troops north of Kharkiv and west of the Siverskyi Donets River. Starting with Russian forces right on the doorstep of the battered city, Ukraine has pushed back through the suburbs, then into outlying towns and villages along multiple roadways. On the west, they’ve pressed in to take the town of Udy, less than 5 miles from the Russian border. 

In what may be one of the most impressive moves of the second phase of the war, Ukrainian forces bypassed Russian forces in multiple villages, took a series of small roads, and entered the town of Staryi Saltiv on Sunday—a move so unexpected that when I first got reports of Ukrainian forces in the town, I disregarded them. After all, there were several other areas with Russian occupation “in the way.”

But the Ukrainian move into Staryi Saltiv was real, and though fighting in the town continues, it seems that Russian forces that were south of that location, but on the west bank of the Donets, have gone missing. In other words, they’ve withdrawn north or south before they could be cut off and chopped up in an isolated position. As a result, a whole chain of villages appears to have come back into Ukrainian-controlled territory without the need for a step-by-step fight.

Reports have indicated that the troops assigned to this area by Russia just are not very good, or that some of them are forced conscripts put in place by the Luhansk “republic.” Whatever the case, Ukraine has been able to shift them roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) since the counterattack out of Kharkiv began. 

However, it’s not clear that this will continue. Russian forces may be falling back in chaos, with Ukrainian forces chasing them to the border. On the other hand, they may be falling back behind lines being held by more stalwart troops, where they can get their act together and be plugged back into the line.

For Russia, the threat is not so much that Ukrainian forces will march to the border and just keep going. The threat is right there in Staryi Saltiv. That’s because this town is the site of a highly strategic bridge crossing. [Correction: The Ukrainian army blew up that bridge back on Mar 5 during the early stages of the invasion]. If they could push 15 miles north from there, they could reach Vovchans’k, a critically important road and rail junction. All the men and material coming in from Belgorod (20 miles northwest) passes through this point. As it stands, occupying Staryi Saltiv puts Ukrainian forces within artillery range of Russia’s major entry point.

These actions seem improbable. Even laughable. But then, so did the possibility of Ukraine suddenly showing up in Staryi Saltiv in the first place. Right now, pro-Ukraine Twitter is full of tweets like this one:

Meanwhile, pro-Russian Twitter is full of claims that the territory taken by Ukraine had “no military value,” that Russia only fell back to more important positions, and that by doing so it freed up forces to be used elsewhere. 

Right now, the fog of war over what’s happening at Staryi Saltiv is a real pea-souper. But as we go through today, maybe it will be possible to tell what’s happening. If Ukraine continues to advance along those other roads moving north of Kharkiv, it may signal a general Russian withdrawal from the area west of the Donets. If Ukraine reports that it has put forces on the east side of that bridge, it will be a genuinely big deal—one that’s likely to demand Russia turn some force around from other efforts to secure its rear. 

One thing to watch for soon: Look for what happens in the town of Shestakove and village of Fredirivka north of Kharkiv. These towns are sitting on a much better roadway between Kharkiv and Staryi Saltiv. If Ukraine really intends to move a lot of force in that direction, expect these towns to become the focus of some attention Real Soon Now. 

NBC News

Retired Marine colonel is teaching Ukrainians how to fight

Ken Dilanian and Didi Martinez – May 3, 2022

Andy Milburn commanded a special operations task force fighting the Islamic State in Iraq.

But the retired Marine colonel says he’s never seen atrocities like the ones committed by the Russians in Ukraine.

“I have seen a lot of devastation and depravity of mankind,” he said. He was in Bucha, outside Kyiv, where the bodies of hundreds of massacred civilians, including children, were found after Russian forces were driven from the city. “Bucha — Bucha was something that really…left me numb for several days … family vehicles, every occupant killed, not just one or two, not just because soldiers were trigger happy but clearly targeted all along that road,” he said. “It just left me with such a feeling of contempt and anger that I never felt for the Islamic State, [that] I never felt for al Qaeda.”

Milburn, who retired in 2019 as deputy commander of U.S. special operations forces in the Middle East, traveled to Ukraine in March intending to cover the conflict as a journalist. But he quickly decided he needed to get involved.

“Just writing about stuff wasn’t really at all satisfying,” said Milburn, who spoke to NBC News from Kyiv.

He formed the Mozart Group, drawing in other former British and American commandos to create a team of special operations veterans that trains and equips Ukrainian soldiers. The name was intended as a counterpoint to the Wagner Group, a notorious Russian mercenary organization. But Milburn says his group does not fight.

“It’s really important that we get guys in who are not adventure-seekers,” he said. “They’re not here to get their gun on, because they have moral clarity. They see a purpose here, and they want to be here for that reason.”

He says he has about 10 to 15 trainers in the country at any one time, all vetted by his contacts in the British and American militaries. All are volunteers.

Although Washington says it is sending billions in military aid, and Ukrainian officials says it has made a critical difference, Milburn says he’s seen little evidence of any reaching the front lines, at least among the Ukrainian special operations forces he is trying to help. Pentagon officials say they don’t have a good handle on what happens to the aid once it reaches Ukraine.

“They’re short of individual first aid kits, they’re short of body armor, they don’t have gloves, they don’t have eye protection, they don’t have ear protection,” Milburn said. “We saw a unit the other day where they evacuated six guys who have ruptured eardrums in one day. You know, I mean, the fixes for these things are easy.”

He’s been impressed, though, by the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers.

Knocking out Russian tanks has become “almost passe here,” he said. “There are guys who will, with a handheld weapon like the Javelin or the NLAW (antitank weapon) or an RPG, knock out two or three T-72s in the course of the day and not even think of it as worth discussing. Things that would get you a silver star or a Navy Cross in the U.S.”

Milburn believes his team has made a difference. In addition to basic tactics, the Mozart Group has trained Ukrainians how to be snipers and how to remove landmines, he says, and they have also removed landmines themselves.

“I can tell you without any proof that I am confident that we have probably saved Ukrainian lives,” he said. “And I hope inflicted more pain on the Russians because of the training that they’ve had.”

But he says the conflict is in a new phase, “a grinding war of attrition … and that’s why it’s so important to tip the balance back in favor of the Ukrainians,” he said. “On one side, you’ve got mass, just a never-ending supply of personnel. The Russians are taking heavy casualties, but they just don’t care.”

Biden administration officials have discouraged Americans from going to fight in Ukraine. In March, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said “we urge them not to go” and that people who wanted to help Ukraine should donate to relief agencies instead. That same month, when asked about would-be military volunteers, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred reporters to a State Department travel advisory that said Americans should not go to Ukraine and those there should leave immediately.

The New York Times – Opinion

It’s Time to Rage

By Roxane Gay – May 3, 2022

Dr. Gay, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the memoir “Hunger,” and the forthcoming “How to Be Heard.”

My wife’s stepfather began raping her when she was 11 years old. The abuse went on for years, and as Debbie got older, she was constantly terrified that she was pregnant. She had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.

Debbie’s stepfather often threatened to kill her younger brother and her mother if she told anyone, so when the fear of pregnancy became too consuming, she told her mother she was assaulted at school. Her mother took Debbie to a doctor, who said that because of her scar tissue, she was sexually active and must have a boyfriend. It was the early 1970s.

A pregnancy would have, in Debbie’s words, ruined her life. Today, she is 60 years old. She is still dealing with the repercussions of that trauma. It is unfathomable to consider how a forced pregnancy would have further altered the trajectory of her life.

I was sexually assaulted by several young men when I was 12. I have told the story, and am tired of telling it, and the story is not the point. I had not yet had my first period. And still, in the weeks and months after, of course I worried I was pregnant. I worried I would not know who the father was.

If I had been pregnant, I don’t know what I would have done. I was Catholic. Abortion was a sin. But a 12-year-old is not equipped for childbirth or parenthood. The trauma I endured would have only been compounded by a forced pregnancy. And the trajectory of my life, too, would have been further altered.

It is stunning that a draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked before the justices planned to announce their decision, likely next month. It is also telling. Whoever leaked it wanted people to understand the fate awaiting us.

At least, that is what I am telling myself. And thank God somebody did, so we know. So we can prepare. So we can rage.

We should not live in a world where sexual violence exists, but we do. Given that unfortunate reality, we should not live in a world where someone who is raped is forced to carry a pregnancy to term because a minority of Americans believe the unborn are more important than the people who give birth to them.

And we should defend abortion access not only in cases of sexual violence. All those who want an abortion should be able to avail themselves of that medical procedure. Their reasons are no one’s business. People should not have to demonstrate their virtue to justify a personal decision about how to handle a life-altering circumstance.

We should not live in a country where bodily autonomy can be granted or taken away by nine political appointees, most of whom are men and cannot become pregnant. Any civil right contingent upon political whims is not actually a civil right.

Without the right to abortion, women are forced to make terrible choices. These burdens disproportionately fall upon poor and working-class women without the means to travel across state lines to receive the care they need. Despite promises from the anti-abortion movement to support pregnant women and children, the “pro-life” lobby appears to be invested only in the unborn. The same mostly male politicians who oppose abortion so often do everything in their power to oppose rights to paid parental leave, subsidized child care, single-payer health care or any kind of social safety net that could improve family life.

The leaked document is a draft. Abortion is still legal, though it is largely inaccessible in parts of the country. The Supreme Court has issued a statement emphasizing that the draft, while authentic, may still change. Still, it is a harbinger of terrible things to come. As many as 25 states are poised to ban abortion the moment Roe v. Wade is overturned.

And there are other disturbing considerations in the draft decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito. Some have expressed the concern that by extending Justice Alito’s reasoning, other hard-won rights — such as the rights to contraception and marriage equality — could be struck down too. That is to say, this decision is opening the door for social progress and civil rights to be systematically dismantled on the most absurd of pretexts.

And this is not a theoretical threat. We are already seeing how several states are trying to legislate trans people out of existence with laws banning gender-affirming health care for children, and in Missouri, a proposed law could extend that denial to adults.

I do not know where this retraction of civil rights will end, but I do know it will go down as a milestone in a decades-long conservative campaign to force a country of 330 million people to abide by a bigoted set of ideologies. This movement seeks to rule by hollow theocracy, despite our constitutional separation of church and state. The people behind this campaign do not represent the majority of this country, and they know it, so they consistently try to undermine the democratic process. They attack voting rights, gerrymander voting districts and shove unpopular legislation through so that they can live in a world of their choosing and hoard as much power and wealth as possible.

Where do we go from here? To protect women’s bodily autonomy, the right to abortion must be codified in federal law. But the possibility of that seems very distant. In their joint statement, issued after the Supreme Court leak, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, did not use the word “abortion” even once. President Biden has barely uttered it during his presidency. It’s hard to believe they are as committed as they need to be to protecting a right whose name they dare not speak. Until the Democrats stop lounging in the middle of the political aisle — where no one is coming to meet them — nothing will change.

The possibility of so many civil rights being rolled back is terrifying. Millions of Americans now wonder which of our rights could be stripped away from us, our friends and family, our communities. The sky is falling, and a great many of us are desperately trying to hold it up.

As Debbie and I discuss the strong likelihood of Roe v. Wade being overturned, we have started worrying about potential legal consequences for our very happy marriage. In June, we will celebrate our second wedding anniversary.

When we exchanged our vows, everything changed. We were already committed, but our commitment deepened. There was a new and satisfying gravity to our relationship. In an instant, I understood that marriage is far more than a piece of paper — but that having that paper mattered.

We have each worked very hard to overcome the traumas we endured as children, to allow ourselves to love and be loved wholly. This life we share would not be possible had we ended up pregnant far too young and against our will, with no recourse. This life we have made together isn’t political. It is deeply personal. And yet our lives and our bodies remain subject to political debate. In one way or another, they always have.

How are we free, under these circumstances? How can any of us be free?

The New York Times – Opinion

A Message to the Biden Team on Ukraine: Talk Less

By Thomas L. Friedman – May 3, 2022

Growing up in Minnesota, I was a huge fan of the local N.H.L. team at the time, the North Stars, and they had a sportscaster, Al Shaver, who gave me my first lesson in politics and military strategy. He ended his shows with this sign-off: “When you lose, say little. When you win, say less. Goodnight and good sports.”

President Biden and his team would do well to embrace Shaver’s wisdom.

Last week, in Poland, standing near the border with Ukraine, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin got my attention — and certainly Vladimir Putin’s — when he declared that America’s war aim in Ukraine is no longer just helping Ukraine restore its sovereignty, but is also to produce a “weakened” Russia.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” he said. “So, it has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

Please tell me that this statement was a result of a National Security Council meeting led by the president. And that they decided, after carefully weighing all the second- and third-order consequences, that it is in our interest and within our power to so badly degrade Russia’s military that it will not be able to project power again — soon? ever? not clear — and that we can do that without risking a nuclear response from a humiliated Putin.

Have no doubts: I hope that this war ends with Russia’s military sharply degraded and Putin out of power. I’d just never say so publicly if I were in leadership, because it buys you nothing and can potentially cost you a lot.

Loose lips sink ships — and they also lay the groundwork for overreach in warfare, mission creep, a disconnect between ends and means and huge unintended consequences.

There has been way too much of this from the Biden team, and the messes have required too much mopping up. For instance, a short time after Austin’s statement, a National Security Council spokesperson said, according to CNN, that the secretary’s comments reflected U.S. goals, namely “to make this invasion a strategic failure for Russia.”

Nice try — but that was a contrived cleanup effort. Forcing Russia to withdraw from Ukraine is not the same as declaring that we want to see it weakened so badly that it can never do this again anywhere — that’s an ill-defined war aim. How do you know when that is achieved? And is it an ongoing process — do we keep degrading Russia?

In March in a speech in Poland, Biden said that Putin, “a dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase a people’s love for liberty,” and then the president added, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

In the wake of that statement, the White House contended that Biden “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” but rather was making the point that Putin “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”

Another cleanup word salad that just convinces me that the National Security Council didn’t have a meeting that set limits on where U.S. involvement to assist Ukraine stops and starts. Instead, people are freelancing. That’s not good.

Our goal began simple and should stay simple: Help Ukrainians fight as long as they have the will and help them negotiate when they feel the time is right — so they can restore their sovereignty and we can reaffirm the principle that no country can just devour the country next door. Freelance beyond that and we invite trouble.

How so? For starters, I don’t want America responsible for what happens in Russia if Putin is toppled. Because one of three things will most likely result:

(1) Putin is replaced by someone worse.

(2) Chaos breaks out in Russia, a country with some 6,000 nuclear warheads. As we saw in the Arab Spring, the opposite of autocracy is not always democracy — it’s often disorder.

(3) Putin is replaced by someone better. A better leader in Russia would make the whole world better. I pray for that. But for that person to have legitimacy in a post-Putin Russia, it’s vital that it does not appear that we installed him or her. That needs to be a Russian process.

If we get Door No. 1 or Door No. 2, you wouldn’t want the Russian people or the world holding America responsible for unleashing prolonged instability in Russia. Remember our fear of “loose nukes” in Russia after the fall of communism in the 1990s?

We also don’t want Putin to separate us from our allies — not all of whom would sign on for a war whose goal is not just liberating Ukraine but also ousting Putin. Without naming names, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently complained that some NATO allies actually “want the war to continue. They want Russia to become weaker.”

Remember: A lot of countries in the world are neutral in this war because, as much as they might sympathize with Ukrainians, they really don’t like to see America or NATO act like a bully — even toward Putin. If this is going to be a long war, and Ukraine is able to recover all or most of its territory, it is vital that this be perceived as Putin vs. the world, not Putin vs. America.

And let’s be careful not to raise Ukrainian expectations too high. Small countries that suddenly get the backing of big powers can get intoxicated. Many things have changed about Ukraine since the end of the Cold War — except one: its geography. It is still, and it will always be, a relatively small nation on Russia’s border. It is going to have to make some hard compromises before this conflict is over. Let’s not make it even harder for it by adding unrealistic goals.

At the same time, be careful about falling in love with a country you could not find on a map with 10 tries a year ago. Ukraine has a history of political corruption and thuggish oligarchs, but it was making progress toward democratic reforms before the Russian invasion. It has not become Denmark in the last three months, although, God bless them, a lot of young people there are really trying, and I want to support them.

But I saw a play in 1982 that I cannot get out of my head. Israelis fell in love with the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, with whom they teamed up to drive Yasir Arafat’s P.L.O. out of Beirut. Together they were going to remake the Levant but overreached. This led to all kinds of unintended consequences — the Phalangist leader got assassinated; Israel got stuck in the mud in Lebanon; and a pro-Iranian Shiite militia emerged in south Lebanon to resist the Israelis. It was called “Hezbollah.” It now dominates Lebanese politics.

The Biden team has done so well so far with its limited goals. It should stay there.

“The war in Ukraine gave the administration an opportunity to demonstrate the U.S.’s unique assets in the world today: Its ability to forge and hold a global alliance of countries to confront an act of authoritarian aggression; and second, the capacity to wield an economic super weapon in response that only the dominance of the dollar in the global economy makes possible,” explained Nader Mousavizadeh, founder and C.E.O. of Macro Advisory Partners, a geostrategic consulting firm.

If the U.S. can continue to effectively deploy those two assets, he added, “it will vastly improve our long-term power and standing in the world and send a very powerful deterrent message to both Russia and China.”

In foreign affairs, success breeds authority and credibility, and credibility and authority breed more success. Just restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty, and frustrating Putin’s military there, would be a huge achievement with lasting dividends. Al Shaver knew what he was talking about: When you lose, say little. When you win, say less. Everyone can see the score.

The New York Times

Missiles hit power stations in Lviv and along crucial railways in central and western Ukraine

Jane Arraf – May 3, 2022

LVIV, Ukraine — Russian missiles struck power plants in Lviv on Tuesday night, knocking out electricity in much of the western Ukrainian city near the Polish border where tens of thousands of civilians fleeing fighting in the east have sought refuge.

The attacks were the most widespread strikes inside the city since the war began, and came as the Russian military pressed its attacks on Ukraine’s railway system, the country’s lifeline to Poland, carrying both humanitarian aid and supplies for the military.

Altogether, Russian forces hit six electrical substations along the railway system in central and western Ukraine, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, the head of the Ukrainian Railway.

The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, said two power stations had been hit in the city, adding that there was “serious damage to the municipal infrastructure.” The head of the Lviv regional administration, Maksym Kozytskyy, later said that three power stations had been hit. Two people were reported injured.

A missile last month hit a garage near railway tracks on the outskirts of Lviv, killing at least seven people.

In addition to cutting off electricity, Tuesday’s attacks also halted water pumping in some areas of Lviv.

The explosions were heard in the center of Lviv on Tuesday evening. Near the railway tracks on the outskirts of town, black smoke billowed in the distance while ambulances and fire trucks sped from the site.

Police cruisers blocked roads to prevent vehicles from getting closer. Houses and apartment buildings were dark in many neighborhoods with the only light coming from streetlights still operating. City officials said emergency equipment in hospitals, which were also plunged into darkness, had kept going with backup electrical systems.

At another impact site, white smoke billowed from near the train tracks. Only a sliver of a moon illuminated the pitch-dark streets.

Mykhailo, a security guard who did not want to give his last name, said he took cover behind a concrete wall when the blasts hit.

“I haven’t felt an explosion this close before,” he said.