Category: Ukraine War

Ukrainians work to restore power to nuclear plants as country freezes

Reuters

Ukrainians work to restore power to nuclear plants as country freezes

Pavel Polityuk and Tom Balmforth – November 23, 2022

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine restored power on Thursday to two of its four nuclear power plants but much of the country remained consigned to freezing darkness by the most devastating Russian air strikes on its energy infrastructure so far.

Viewed from space, Ukraine has become a dark patch on the globe at night, satellite images released by NASA showed, following repeated barrages of Russian missiles in recent weeks.

With temperatures falling below zero, authorities were working to get the lights and heat back on. Russia’s latest missile barrage killed 10 people and shut down all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants for the first time in 40 years.

Regional authorities in Kyiv said power had been restored to three quarters of the capital by Thursday morning and water was working again in some areas. Transport was back up and running in the city, with buses replacing electric trams.

Authorities hoped to restart the three nuclear power plants in Ukrainian-held territory by the end of the day. By early evening, officials said a reactor at one of them, the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant, had been reconnected to the grid.

The vast Zaporizhzhia plant in Russian-held territory also had to activate backup diesel power but it too was reconnected on Thursday, Ukrainian nuclear power company Energoatom said.

Since early October, Russia has attacked energy targets across Ukraine about once a week, each time firing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of missiles to knock out Ukraine’s power grid.

Moscow acknowledges attacking basic infrastructure, saying its aim is to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight and push it to negotiate. Kyiv says such attacks are clearly intended to harm civilians, making them a war crime.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was Kyiv’s fault Ukrainians were suffering because it refused to yield to Moscow’s demands, which he did not spell out. Ukraine says it will only stop fighting when all Russian forces have left.

“What is there to talk about? I think that the first step should come from them. For starters, they have to stop shelling us,” said 27-year-old Olena Shafinska, queuing at a water pump in a park in central Kyiv with a group of friends.

Nuclear officials say interruptions in power can disrupt cooling systems and cause an atomic disaster.

“There is a real danger of a nuclear and radiation catastrophe being caused by firing on the entire territory of Ukraine with Russian cruise and ballistic missiles,” Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said.

“Russia must answer for this shameful crime.”

WEAPONISING WINTER

Winter has arrived abruptly in Ukraine and temperatures were well below freezing in the capital, a city of three million. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “clearly weaponising winter to inflict immense suffering on the Ukrainian people”.

The Russian president “will try to freeze the country into submission,” she added.

There was no prospect of action from the Security Council, where Russia wields a veto. Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, said it was against council rules for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to appear via video as he did on Wednesday, and rejected what he called “reckless threats and ultimatums” by Ukraine and its supporters in the West.

He blamed damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure on its air defence missiles and said the West should stop supplying them.

Ukrainian authorities said three apartment blocks were hit on Wednesday, killing ten people.

“Our little one was sleeping. Two years old. She was sleeping, she got covered. She is alive, thanks be to God,” said a man who gave his name as Fyodr, dragging a suitcase as he walked away from a smouldering apartment building hit in Kyiv.

Also in the capital, performers and staff members of the Kyiv National Academic Operetta Theater tearfully bid farewell to 26-year-old ballet dancer Vadym Khlupianets who was killed fighting Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow has shifted to the tactic of striking Ukraine’s infrastructure even as Kyiv has inflicted battlefield defeats on Russian forces since September. Russia has also declared the annexation of land it occupies and called up hundreds of thousands of reservists.

The war’s first winter will now test whether Ukraine can press on with its campaign to recapture territory, or whether Russia’s commanders can keep their invasion forces supplied and find a way to halt Kyiv’s momentum.

Having retreated, Russia has a far shorter line to defend to hold on to seized lands, with more than a third of the front now blocked off by the Dnipro River.

“Ukraine will slowly grow in capabilities, but a continued maneuver east of the Dnipro River and into Russian-occupied Donbas will prove to be much tougher fights,” tweeted Mark Hertling, a former commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe.

“Ukrainian morale will be tested with continued Russian attacks against civilian infrastructure … but Ukraine will persevere.”

Russia has been pressing an offensive of its own along the front line west of the city of Donetsk, held by Moscow’s proxies since 2014. Ukraine said Russian forces tried again to advance on their main targets, Bakhmut and Avdiivka, with only limited success.

Further south, Russian forces were digging in on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, shelling areas across it including the city of Kherson, recaptured by Ukrainian forces this month.

Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield accounts.

Moscow says it is carrying out a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers in what Putin calls an artificial state carved from Russia. Ukraine and the West call the invasion an unprovoked war of aggression.

(Additional reporting by Stefaniia Bern and Reuters bureauxWriting by Peter Graff, Alexandra Hudson, Philippa Fletcher, Editing by William Maclean)

‘Final Crushing Blow’: Putin’s Men Scramble Over Feared Crimea Blitz

Daily Beast

‘Final Crushing Blow’: Putin’s Men Scramble Over Feared Crimea Blitz

Shannon Vavra – November 21, 2022

Getty
Getty

After a series of crushing defeats for Russia’s military in Ukraine from the northeast to the south over the last several weeks, Russian authorities in Moscow appear to be increasingly concerned that Ukraine has set its sights on seizing back Crimea next.

Russian MP Andrei Gurulyov on Sunday urged Moscow to determine the risk of Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization launching an attack on Crimea, which Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russian MP Mikhail Sheremet warned that Ukrainian troops will suffer a “final crushing blow” if they launch an attack on Crimea.

In an apparent attempt to temper fears that Ukraine would go after Crimea, the chairman of the Federation Council’s committee on defense and security, Viktor Bondarev, warned Monday that he doesn’t think Ukraine has the firepower to take back Crimea.

“Ukraine has neither the resources, nor the military force, nor the support of the Crimeans for the promised offensive on the peninsula,” Bondarev said, adding, “‘Crimea is ours’ is not only a slogan and a hashtag. It is an unshakable reality.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration have been warning for months that Ukraine will work to take back Crimea from Russia. And now, with mounting losses for Russia’s army, the pressure is on. Russia just fled the strategically important city of Kherson in the south of Ukraine, a move which the top Ukrainian official in charge of Crimea told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview would be an important precursor to seizing back Crimea.

Putin’s ‘Hunky-Dory’ Act Flops as Frantic Russians Flee Crimea

The Russian officials’ commentary comes after a flurry of Ukrainian officials signaled over the weekend that Ukraine is preparing to kick Russia out of Crimea. Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Volodymyr Havrylov, told Sky News he predicted Ukrainian forces could be in Crimea by the end of the year.

“It’s only a matter of time and, of course, we would like to make it sooner than later,” he said, adding that the timeline is uncertain.

His commentary on the timeline echoed what the top Ukrainian official in charge of Crimea told The Daily Beast. The official, Tamila Tasheva, had said Ukraine could take back Crimea by spring or summer of next year, although she said she thinks it could happen sooner. Tasheva, too, stressed that the exact timeline remains to be seen.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelensky’s office, and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna both signaled this weekend at the Halifax International Security Forum that a Crimea takeover plan is on the horizon, according to Politico.

Mikhailo Podolyak, an adviser for Zelensky, warned Monday that a Russian retreat in Crimea, like the retreat Russia had to order in Kherson, is coming soon.

“Russian propagandists had an order to forget word ‘Kherson,’” Podolyak said. “Today—forgetting Kherson. Tomorrow—Donetsk and Crimea. Soon—Ukraine.”

Bondarev alleged that Ukrainians are just bluffing and making statements about Crimea in order to gain more western military aid and boost morale in the war.

“The expressed desire of the Kyiv authorities to return to the territorial status quo of February 2014 is nothing more than flirting with their own citizens and the desire to convince them of the coming victory, an attempt to boost the morale of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and throw dust in the eyes of Western patrons in the hope of their enhanced assistance,” Bondarev said.

Gurulyov accused Ukrainians of faking confidence as well.

“The… statements that they will go to the Crimea by December are bravado, no one is announcing their offensive,” Gurulyov said.

Nonetheless, Russia is preparing a “covert” mobilization in Crimea, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Monday. The Russian-installed administration in Crimea gathered with local authorities on Saturday to discuss what it viewed as lacking mobilization into Russia’s army, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The group decided to issue summonses for further mobilization on Monday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

The Secret Mission to Snatch Crimea Back From Putin’s Clutches

“On the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, measures of covert mobilization to the ranks of the Russian occupying forces are ongoing,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in an announcement.

Already, some civilians in Crimea are taking a hint and starting to flee Crimea, according to Emil Ibragimov, the head of the educational platform Q-Hub.

And while the Russian-installed governor for Crimea has been signaling that Russia is working to defend Crimea and that everything is fine, a Ukrainian counteroffensive, whether successful or not, could be quite disruptive. Some experts warn that Putin’s claim to legitimacy in Russia has come, in part, from illegally annexing Crimea, so his response to any risk of losing Crimea could be harsh. Russian officials, including deputy chairman of Russia’s defense council, Dmitry Medvedev, have threatened a “doomsday” response if Crimea is attacked.

Following Ukrainian attacks on Russian military bases in Crimea, Russia has begun unleashing a series of attacks against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilians, which has left, in just the last week, half of Ukraine’s energy system disabled, according to Ukraine’s Prime Minister.

What Will Russia Without Putin Look Like? Maybe This.

Guest Essay By Joy Neumeyer – November 21, 2022

Ms. Neumeyer is a journalist and historian of Russia and Eastern Europe.

Credit…Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

Russia’s current condition — militarized, isolated, corrupt, dominated by the security services and hemorrhaging talent as hundreds of thousands flee abroad to escape service in a horrific war — is bleak.

In hopes of an end to this grim reality, some wait expectantly for Vladimir Putin to leave office. To change the country, however, it is not enough for Mr. Putin to die or step down. Russia’s future leaders must dismantle and transform the structures over which he has presided for more than two decades. The challenge, to say the least, is daunting. But a group of politicians is devising a plan to meet it.

Composed of well-known opposition figures as well as younger representatives from local and regional governments, the First Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia met in Poland in early November. The location, Jablonna Palace outside Warsaw, was symbolic: It was the site of early negotiations in the round-table talks that led to the end of Communist rule in Poland. There, over three days of intense debate, participants laid out proposals for rebuilding their country. Taken together, they amount to a serious effort to imagine Russia without Mr. Putin.

The first and most pressing priority, of course, is the invasion of Ukraine. Everyone at the congress opposes the war, which they assume will be lost or lead to nuclear disaster. To deal with the consequences and to prevent a repeat tragedy, they propose an “act on peace” that would demobilize the army and end the occupation of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea; create a joint group for the investigation of war crimes; pay reparations for damaged infrastructure and the families of the dead; and reject future “wars of conquest.” In addition to offering a deterrent to future expansionism, this wide-ranging pledge would provide an essential reckoning with Russia’s history of imperialist invasion.

The officials responsible for the devastation will need to be rooted out, too — something that never happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Congress would bar from working in state and educational institutions those who belonged to “criminal” organizations — such as the Federal Security Services or state television channels — or publicly supported the war, as well as restricting their voting rights. It would also create a “de-Putinization” commission to consider the rehabilitation of certain groups, including those who publicly recant and did not commit especially serious crimes, and open the archives of the security services.

Then there’s the structure of Russia itself. The Russian Federation is highly centralized, with a patchwork of over 80 republics and regions that are strongly subordinate to the president, enabling the accumulation of enormous power. The Congress, drawing on decentralized visions from around the time of the Soviet collapse, proposes to dissolve the Russian Federation and replace it with a new parliamentary democracy. According to a broadly worded draft provision on “self-determination,” the future Russian state should be “joined on the basis of free choice by the peoples who populate it.”

This break with the present could correct the failed promises of the past. From Vladimir Lenin to Boris Yeltsin, modern Russian leaders have a history of offering decentralization to win support and then reneging once they consolidate power. Though all federal subjects are legally equal under Russia’s current Constitution, substantial inequalities persist — a fact that has been highlighted by the disproportionate deployment and death of ethnic minorities from poorer republics like Dagestan and Buryatia in the war in Ukraine.

Revisiting the issue of greater sovereignty could allow the breakaway republic of Chechnya, for example, to leave Russia after its brutal subjugation by Mr. Putin, while enabling regions and republics without strong secessionist movements to renegotiate the allocation of resources and balance of power with the center. It would create a fairer country while undermining Russian nationalism.

The congress is vaguest on its economic plans. One act promises to “review the results of privatization” carried out during the 1990s (which led to the rise of Russia’s oligarchs), while another aims to cancel Mr. Putin’s highly unpopular pension reform of 2020. Missing, however, is a commitment to a strong social safety net or any discussion of transitioning Russia’s economy away from its dependence on energy exports. This is a major oversight. Since the 1990s, when privatization and free elections were introduced simultaneously, wealth and power have been intertwined. Political and economic reform cannot be viewed in isolation from each other.

That’s not the only hitch. The congress’s main organizer and sponsor is Ilya Ponomarev, a leftist tech entrepreneur. The only member of the Russian parliament to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, he left the country, obtained Ukrainian citizenship and now runs a Russian-language news channel in Kyiv. A controversial figure in opposition circles, in August he endorsed the assassination of Daria Dugina, the daughter of the Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin, and asserted it was the work of a secret partisan army inside Russia. This uncorroborated claim outraged fellow opposition figures. Mr. Ponomarev was subsequently disinvited from an event organized by the longtime Kremlin critics Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Despite their disagreements, Russia’s opposition has a loosely converging vision for the future. Mr. Khodorkovsky and Aleksei Navalny, the country’s most well-known dissident, who is currently languishing in a penal colony, have also issued calls to turn Russia into a parliamentary democracy with more power devolved to the local and regional levels. But associates of Mr. Navalny did not attend the congress, nor did Mr. Kasparov or Mr. Khodorkovsky. Its legitimacy — already challenged by a number of Russian antiwar organizations that said it does not represent them — was also questioned by some participants, several of whom left in protest over what they saw as a lack of equality and transparency in how it was being run.

Such feuding doesn’t help the proposals, which can seem far-fetched. Yet history shows that radical developments are often incubated abroad or underground. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, political émigrés in bickering communities around Europe plotted the downfall of the Russian empire. Among them was Vladimir Lenin, who was living in Poland at the outbreak of World War I.

For now, with most of Russia’s population forced into quiescence while others lose their jobs or freedom for expressing dissent, the possibility of the country’s transformation appears remote. Change, however, can come when it’s least expected. In early 1917, a pessimistic Lenin lamented that he probably wouldn’t live to see the revolution; a few weeks later, the czar was overthrown.

Russia is no more doomed to repeat the past than any other country. The time to reimagine its future is now.

Large part of Ukranian corn crop may stay in fields over winter.

Reuters

Large part of Ukranian corn crop may stay in fields over winter.

November 21, 2022

KYIV, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Significant areas of Ukraine’s corn crop may be left to overwinter in the fields due to difficulties with harvesting and fuel shortages, analyst APK-Inform said on Sunday.

Corn can potentially be harvested in winter or early spring, but previously only very small areas of the crop would be left to overwinter if farmers wanted to reduce grain moisture.

Ukraine is a major global corn grower and exporter and harvested almost 42 million tonnes in 2021. This year, analysts say, the harvest could total 27.5 million to 27.9 million tonnes.

APK-Inform said in a report that the prospect for a large part of the corn crop to stay in fields this winter was “becoming more and more possible” due to low domestic prices, difficulties with field work caused by the war and high fuel prices.

The Ukrainian agriculture ministry said on Friday only 50% of the area sown for corn had been harvested as of Nov. 17, or 12.3 million tonnes.

The government has said Ukraine could harvest between 50 million and 52 million tonnes of grain this year, down from a record 86 million tonnes in 2021, because of the loss of land to Russian forces and lower yields.

Farmers have already completed the 2022 wheat and barley harvests, threshing 19.4 million and 5.6 million tons respectively. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

U.S. says Russia’s Ukraine invasion offered preview to potential global tyranny

Reuters

U.S. says Russia’s Ukraine invasion offered preview to potential global tyranny

Phil Stewart – November 19, 2022

(Reuters) -Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has offered a preview of “a possible world of tyranny and turmoil,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday in a speech to a security forum in Canada.

Austin’s remarks were some of his strongest to date on the importance to the international community of helping Kyiv prevail after nearly nine months of war, and they were delivered at what may be an inflection point in the conflict.

After a series of battlefield defeats, Russia is aiming punishing missile strikes at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that could leave millions of civilians exposed to the winter cold. Moscow hopes to exhaust Ukraine’s missile defenses, and buy time to reset its forces, Pentagon officials say.

Austin said Russia was breaking the laws of war.

“These aren’t just lapses. These aren’t exceptions to the rule. These are atrocities,” Austin said.

“Russian missile barrages have left innocent Ukrainians without heat, water, and electricity. We’ve seen schools attacked. Children killed. Hospitals bombed. Centers of Ukrainian history and culture reduced to rubble.”

Moscow denies that its armed forces deliberately target civilians or civilian infrastructure.

The United States and its allies have helped provide arms, intelligence and training to Ukrainian forces, while stopping short of directly intervening in a war against nuclear-armed Russia.

Austin said the United States wouldn’t get dragged into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war of choice,” but warned of the risks of global nuclear proliferation if Moscow were to prevail.

“Putin’s fellow autocrats are watching. And they could well conclude that getting nuclear weapons would give them a hunting license of their own,” Austin said. “And that could drive a dangerous spiral of nuclear proliferation.”

Just days after U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks on Monday, Austin said that Beijing, like Moscow, sought “a world where might makes right.”

Austin said Chinese aircraft were flying near self-ruled Taiwan in record numbers almost daily, while the number of what he called “dangerous intercepts” by China of U.S. or allied forces at sea or in the air were increasing.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing have risen since China staged war games near the democratically-governed island in August after a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Beijing, which views Taiwan as a Chinese province, has long said it would bring the self-governed island under its control and has not ruled out the use of force to do so.

The government in Taipei rejects Beijing’s claims and says only Taiwan’s people can decide its future.

Austin said the United States was drawing on the lessons of Ukraine to “bolster the self-defense capabilities of our Indo-Pacific partners.”

“We’re helping them to become more agile and resilient,” Austin said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis)

Russian chess legend says war in Ukraine is a ‘battle between freedom and tyranny’

Yahoo! News

Russian chess legend says war in Ukraine is a ‘battle between freedom and tyranny’

Alexander Nazaryan, Senior W. H. Correspondent – November 19, 2022

NEW YORK — Chess is a cerebral game, but legendary Soviet grand master Garry Kasparov could make it seem like a contact sport. When he was at the height of his powers in the mid-1980s, he approached the chessboard with the buzzing physical intensity of a wrestler consigned to the wrong contest.

Today, his relentless energies are directed entirely against Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Kasparov approaches with the same singular focus he once reserved for his Soviet nemesis, Anatoly Karpov — who, as it happens, now serves as a pro-Putin parliamentarian. But if the Kremlin autocrat disgusts him, nothing enrages Kasparov like Western hand-wringing over how much to help Ukraine, and for how long.

“Putin is attacking not just Ukraine. He is attacking the entire system of international cooperation,” Kasparov told Yahoo News in a recent interview. “Ukraine is on the frontline of this battle between freedom and tyranny.”

Garry Kasparov, seated, holds a microphone with his right hand and gestures with his left.
Garry Kasparov at the Congress of Free Russia in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sept. 1. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)

Last week’s congressional elections in the U.S. could complicate Ukrainian aid, especially if Republican skepticism hardens into outright resistance. Speaking at a press conference last week, President Biden expressed hope that aid to Ukraine would continue — but also bristled at charges that he’d given Ukraine too much.

“We’ve not given Ukraine a blank check,” the president told reporters, alluding to a complaint about the extent of Ukraine-focused spending made by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who will assume the role of House speaker in January. “There’s a lot of things that Ukraine wants that we didn’t do.”

That is precisely the kind of talk that frustrates Kasparov. He praises Biden’s support of the Ukrainian effort, which has been consistently supplemented by European allies, but can’t imagine its scope being scaled back. “It was much less than Ukraine needed and wanted, but much more than Putin expected.”

The war in Ukraine is closer to poker than chess, a contest of stare-downs and bluffs. On the chessboard, an opponent has nowhere to hide his pieces, but poker is by its nature a game of incomplete information, of trying to guess and then being forced to act on those guesses.

Is one of the cards Putin is holding a nuclear strike? How long can an energy-starved Europe last before folding? How long will American aid last?

Kasparov does not ignore those very real considerations, but he also refuses to become paralyzed by the infinite varieties of geopolitical speculation. For him, the war retains an unignorable moral clarity. “I believe Ukraine can and will win,” he says. “I think it’s inevitable. It’s a matter of the cost. And every day of delay, of giving Ukraine what it needs to win, simply is pushing this cost up.”

Vladimir Putin sits at a large desk with many phones and a flat screen.
Russia President Vladimir Putin at a videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow on Monday. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Utterly unpalatable to Kasparov is the argument that Ukraine should sue for peace, not because the war is going badly for Kyiv but because it is expensive for Washington, London and Berlin.

That was the widely understood subtext of a letter sent on Oct. 24 by House progressives to Biden, urging him to “pursue every diplomatic avenue” while pointing out — not incorrectly — that the war is “fueling inflation and high oil prices for Americans in recent months.” A furor followed, and a day later the letter was recalled, but not without the Russians having noticed growing American reluctance to fund the Ukrainian resistance.

Kasparov finds such talk exceptionally dangerous. He thinks of the conflict in the Manichaean world of chess, where there is only black and white, defeat or victory. Either the West defeats Putin, or Putin defeats the West. “If we capitulate today in light of Putin’s nuclear blackmail, who’s to say that he won’t use the same exact blackmail five years later, six years later?” Kasparov wonders, his tone and expression suggesting this is far from an idle musing.

“And who’s to say,” he continues, “that other dictators around the world won’t look at this and say, ‘Oh, look at that. The West is willing to capitulate to nuclear blackmail? Why don’t we do the same thing?’ And for countries that don’t have nuclear weapons today? Why shouldn’t they have nuclear weapons if nuclear weapons are effective, and helping them get what they want?”

Missile rising from smoke and flames moments after takeoff near a green building and towers in a clearing of trees against a clouded sky.
In a photo released on Oct. 26, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired as part of Russia’s nuclear drills in Plesetsk, northwestern Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

That dark scenario is most likely to be realized in Taiwan, with an emboldened Xi Jinping looking to fully and finally assert China’s control over the island.

Kasparov was especially dismayed — and, characteristically, infuriated — by Elon Musk’s “peace plan,” which would effectively cede vast swaths of Ukraine to Russia. Kremlin propagandists instantly embraced the idea, pointing to condemnation from the American political and media establishment as evidence that Musk (who did not respond to a Yahoo News request for comment sent over Twitter) had spoken some forbidden, consensus-shattering truth.

“He’s buying Russian propaganda points,” Kasparov says of Musk. “It’s very, very damaging.”

Kasparov left Russia in 2013, disgusted by the ever-deepening repressions of the Putin regime. In 2015 he published “Winter Is Coming,” an urgent warning to Western policymakers about Putin, whom he called “clearly the biggest and most dangerous threat facing the world today.”

Never especially shy or circumspect, Kasparov blames President Barack Obama for trying to “reset” relations with Putin shortly after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, in what was the first incursion by the Kremlin into a sovereign nation since the fall of the Soviet Union. Later, Obama warned that if Russia crossed a “red line” in Syria and used chemical weapons in support of Bashar Assad’s regime, “there would be enormous consequences.”

Putin and Obama moments before they shake hands in front of Russian and American flags.
Putin and President Barack Obama at a bilateral meeting during a G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, in 2012. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Then Russia did use chemical weapons. “And Obama blinked,” Kasparov laments, charging the president with “weakness.” It’s not clear, however, what Obama — already managing two costly conflicts, in Afghanistan and Iraq — could have done to stop Putin, short of a military intervention that likely would have been unpalatable to the American public. A representative for the former president did not respond to a request for comment.

No development emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, Kasparov argues, like the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. “I wouldn’t call it withdrawal. It was a stampede,” he told Yahoo News. “And it was a disaster. And undoubtedly, it added to Putin’s confidence.”

Today, the 59-year-old New York resident — who is retired from professional chess but still teaches a class on MasterClass — runs the Renew Democracy Initiative, a nonprofit that closely coordinates aid efforts with not-for-profit relief organizations working in Ukraine, which RDI executive director Uriel Epshtein says ensures that supplies and funds get to the right people, in the right places, instead of being squandered or lost.

“It’s our responsibility to give them what they need not merely to survive, not just enough to survive, but enough to actually win the war,” Epshtein, the son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey, told Yahoo News. He also described efforts in what has come to be known as the “information space,” which the Kremlin has tried to flood with its own propaganda.

Black-and-white image of Garry Kasparov in a dark turtleneck sweater appearing to pose with his left hand slightly pointing up.
Kasparov on MasterClass. (PR Newswire via AP)

RDI works with retired U.S. Gen. Ben Hodges to produce short, polished videos that explain the state of war in digestible terms. It has also solicited and published essays by dissidents from around the world in partnership with CNN, part of a series called Voices of Freedom. Contributors have included, among others, the Egyptian-American dissident Mohamed Soltan and the Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad, who was recently the target of an assassination attempt in New York.

“They have the credibility to break through our partisan shields,” Epshtein says, “to remind us that America is a force for good, and it can remain a force for good.”

That argument has been challenged by Putin’s dark tirades against what he has described as a West whose colonial bloodlust, in his telling, has been married to an anti-Christian progressive agenda. As the war has gone ever more poorly for Russia, these anti-Western screeds have grown ever more sharp.

“Putin’s Russia is on a steep decline,” Kasparov says. “I don’t believe that by next spring Russia will be able to conduct this war.” Recent military advances by Ukraine, including most recently the liberation of Kherson, do give hope of an eventual Ukrainian battlefield victory.

Here Epshtein intercedes: “It’s up to us,” he says.

Republicans on House Judiciary panel focus on first White House target

CBS News

Republicans on House Judiciary panel focus on first White House target

Kathryn Watson – November 18, 2022

With the House Judiciary Committee’s gavel and subpoena power close at hand, Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, is getting ready to launch his first investigations of the Biden administration, starting Friday with what he has recently referred to as the administration’s “anti-parent directives.” It’s the type of request from House Republicans that the White House is describing as politically motivated, as Republicans prepare to take control of the House.

In a letter obtained by CBS News, Jordan and Republicans on the panel made their first request for testimony and documents from the Biden White House since the GOP won control of the chamber. They wrote to White House chief of staff Ron Klain to ask White House officials to testify at the beginning of the next Congress, as part of a House GOP probe of what they say is the administration’s “misuse of federal criminal and counterterrorism resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings.”

House Judiciary Republicans want to know more about any actions the Biden administration took regarding an October 2021 memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland noting the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff” and directing the FBI and U.S. attorneys to meet with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial leaders to address strategies for dealing with those threats.

The memo followed a September 2021 letter from the National School Boards Association asking the administration to investigate threats of violence against school board members that “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Jordan and Republicans on the committee believe employees within the Executive Office of the President were involved in discussions surrounding that National School Boards Association letter and earlier this year requested documents and information about the White House’s “collusion with the NSBA.”

Republicans on the committee allege the administration is using law enforcement to “chill” parents’ First-Amendment rights, although the letter doesn’t call parents who protest school board meetings “domestic terrorists,” as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has claimed, as an Associated Press fact check noted.

“The American people … deserve much more accountability and transparency about the Biden administration’s anti-parent directives,” Jordan said in an Oct. 17 letter to Klain, asking the White House to preserve all records related to the matter.

Jordan’s Friday letter requested testimony from Mary C. Wall, the senior adviser for the COVID-19 response team; Julie C. Rodridguez, director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs; Katherine Pantangco, policy adviser for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs; and Nezly Silva, senior policy analyst for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

The request for testimony is voluntary — for now. But if the officials don’t agree to testify and provide records, in January, when Republicans control the House, “the committee may be forced to resort to compulsory process to obtain the material we require,” Friday’s letter says. Jordan’s efforts to obtain records related to the National School Boards Association letter and Justice Department memo have so far been unsuccessful.

The White House suggested congressional Republicans don’t have their priorities in the right place.

“Instead of working with President Biden to address issues important to the American people, like lower costs, congressional Republicans’ top priority is to go after President Biden with politically-motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories,” said Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office. “President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities, and we hope congressional Republicans will join us in tackling them instead of wasting time and resources on political revenge.”

Jordan’s letter to the White House Friday is just the beginning of the array of probes the House is expected to undertake once the 118th Congress is seated and Republicans have control. Jordan’s committee and Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee also plan to investigate Hunter Biden and the president himself. Jordan has sent the White House letters requesting testimony and information on a number of topics since Mr. Biden took office, despite Republicans’ current lack of subpoena authority.

It remains to be seen exactly how many seats Republicans will have in the 118th Congress, although CBS News has projected the GOP will have between 218-223 seats. To control the lower chamber, they need 218. A handful of races remain to be decided.

Not all Republicans believe a focus on multiple investigations into the Biden administration and Hunter Biden is the way to go. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, of Utah, appeared to encourage the party to avoid such types of hearings, and instead, focus on things like inflation, the debt, spending, and entitlement and immigration reform.

“Two roads diverge before this potential GOP majority,” Romney wrote last week. “The one ‘less traveled by’ would be to pass bills that would make things better for the American people. The more tempting and historically more frequented road would be to pursue pointless investigations, messaging bills, threats and government shutdowns.”

Bio of Polish statesman holds lessons on today’s Ukraine

Associated Press

Bio of Polish statesman holds lessons on today’s Ukraine

John Daniszewski – November 18, 2022

FILE - Jozef Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence in 1918, sits for a portrait on March 19, 1932, in Warsaw, Poland. More than 100 years ago, Pilsudski stated that the long-term security of Europe would need an independent Ukraine, according to a new biography of the Polish leader. The biography, “Józef Pilsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland” by Joshua D. Zimmerman is published by Harvard University Press. (AP Photo, File)
Jozef Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence in 1918, sits for a portrait on March 19, 1932, in Warsaw, Poland. More than 100 years ago, Pilsudski stated that the long-term security of Europe would need an independent Ukraine, according to a new biography of the Polish leader. The biography, “Józef Pilsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland” by Joshua D. Zimmerman is published by Harvard University Press. (AP Photo, File)
This cover image released by Harvard University Press shows "Jozef Pilsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland" by Joshua D. Zimmerman. (Harvard University Press via AP)
This cover image released by Harvard University Press shows “Jozef Pilsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland” by Joshua D. Zimmerman. (Harvard University Press via AP)
FILE - Polish dictator and military leader Marshal Jozef Pilsudski reviews troops in Warsaw on Nov. 5, 1927. Farsighted, analytical and determined, Pilsudski never managed to fulfill his hope for a Ukraine independent of Russia and connected to Europe. But he did, improbably, wrest his own homeland from the grip of tsarism and from Austria and Prussia. His story is the subject of a new biography, “Józef Pilsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland” by Joshua D. Zimmerman. (AP Photo, File)
Polish dictator and military leader Marshal Jozef Pilsudski reviews troops in Warsaw on Nov. 5, 1927. Farsighted, analytical and determined, Pilsudski never managed to fulfill his hope for a Ukraine independent of Russia and connected to Europe. But he did, improbably, wrest his own homeland from the grip of tsarism and from Austria and Prussia. His story is the subject of a new biography, “Józef Pilsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland” by Joshua D. Zimmerman. (AP Photo, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — One hundred years ago, a revolutionary Polish patriot argued that Russia’s hunger for territory would continue to destabilize Europe unless Ukraine could gain independence from Moscow.

Poland’s Marshal Józef Piłsudski never managed to fulfil his hope for an independent Ukraine connected to Europe. But the farsighted and analytical statesman did manage to wrest his own homeland from the grip of czarism and from two other powers, Austria and Prussia.

At a time when many Poles had given up on the dream for full independence, Piłsudski put a sovereign Polish state back on the map of Europe at the end of World War I, after more than a century’s erasure.

Piłsudski’s story, complete with flaws, accomplishments and echoes of today’s war in Ukraine, is brought to life in a recent biography, “Józef Piłsudski Founding Father of Modern Poland,” by Joshua D. Zimmerman, a professor of Holocaust Studies and eastern European history at New York’s Yeshiva University. The book, published by Harvard University Press, also reexamines Piłsudski’s relationship to Ukraine.

Thickly mustached, with heavy brows and a hawk-like visage, Piłsudski lived modestly and inspired his troops by leading them in battle. He was celebrated at home and abroad in his day, but his memory outside of Poland has faded.

After proclaiming a new Polish republic, Piłsudski and his legionnaires fought a series of wars to define, secure and defend its borders, culminating with his greatest victory: turning back a Bolshevik army in 1920 that was threatening to drive all the way to Berlin and carry a Communist revolution to the heart of industrial Europe.

Before that battle, known as the “Miracle on the Vistula,” Piłsudski’s forces had marched deep into Ukraine and occupied Kyiv in an alliance with nationalist leader Symon Petliura, who also was fighting the Bolsheviks, amid Ukraine’s short-lived independence in 1918-21.

As Zimmerman recounts, Piłsudski had a vision of a multilingual and multiethnic Poland that respected the rights of minorities, especially Jews. That earned him the enmity of nationalists who wanted a Poland run for ethnic Poles.

After World War I, Piłsudski hoped Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine could form an alliance to counter Russia in the style of the Polish-Lithuanian union that existed for centuries prior to 1795. But Ukrainians and Lithuanians were wary of Polish claims on their territories, and Pilsudski’s vision of an anti-Russian alliance never became reality.

In language that might be applied to today’s discourse, Piłsudski conceived of a sovereign Ukraine not merely to prevent Russian aggression but as an outpost of Western liberal democracy.

“There can be no independent Poland,” he is quoted as saying in 1919, “without an independent Ukraine.”

Piłsudski launched a military campaign in 1920 to support Ukrainian nationalists against Bolshevik rule, an action condemned by some as an overreach. Zimmerman believed he had a rationale that echoes today, when Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic countries, as well as Finland and Sweden, feel that Russia under President Vladimir Putin must be contained.

On May 7, 1920, Piłsudski’s cavalry entered Kyiv, followed by Polish and Ukrainian infantry. At the peak of his Ukrainian campaign, he ordered his commanders to withdraw “as soon as possible” in order to establish friendly relations with the new Ukrainian state. according to Zimmerman.

“My view is that he clearly championed an independent Ukraine, one that would be a democratic outpost on Russia’s border, a buffer between Russia and the West, but also a staunch Polish ally that shared Piłsudski’s democratic values and the values of at least his followers,” the author said.

Poland and Lithuania — two countries that emerged from Soviet rule — are among Ukraine’s strongest diplomatic champions against Putin’s Russia.

Zimmerman’s book makes a balanced and “significant contribution” to the understanding of Piłsudski, said Michael Fleming, a historian and director of the Institute of European Culture at the Polish University Abroad in London.

“Pilsudski was well aware of the challenges posed by Poland’s geography and concluded that an independent Ukraine would share Poland’s interest in limiting Russia’s expansionist tendencies,” Fleming said by email. “At the same time, however, it is important to remember that western Galicia (including Lviv) was much contested” between Poles and Ukrainians.

Indeed Polish and Ukrainian nationalists clashed in the early 1900s and again during and after World War II, and some ethnic animosities have lingered.

During Russia’s civil war between the Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White Army, Pilsudski resisted pleas for Poland to help the Whites. No matter who won, he believed, Russia would remain “fiercely imperialistic.”

There was little to gain from negotiations because “we cannot believe anything Russia promises,” Piłsudski is quoted as saying.

Piłsudski, born in 1867 and raised in present-day Lithuania, was steeped in the romanticism of Polish independence. He acquired a burning hatred of czarist authority that held Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine in its grip, and he and his brother were implicated in a plot to assassinate the czar and imprisoned.

Zimmerman traces how, upon his release, Piłsudski became the leading activist of the banned Polish Socialist Party, published its newspaper for years, made a daring escape from a second Russian imprisonment after he was caught — by pretending to be insane — and then turned to creating a military force in Austrian-ruled Poland that eventually fought against Russia during World War I.

Although they fought under Austria and Germany, Piłsudski’s insistence on Polish independence ultimately led to his imprisonment by the Germans, a sacrifice that enhanced his legend among his fellow Poles. Upon his release, he was acclaimed the country’s leader and the de facto founder of modern Poland on Nov. 11, 1918, now celebrated as Polish independence day.

After Poland’s borders were secured and a civil government established, Piłsudski mostly stepped back from public life. But after several years, he followed with his own turn to strongman rule.

Concerned that a democratic Poland was slipping away and disgusted by 13 failed Polish governments, he led a 1926 military putsch to restore order. After imposing a system of “managed” democracy and soft dictatorship, Piłsudski’s final years were burdened by declining health and growing worries about how to position Poland between a rising Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany.

Zimmerman captures the difficulties of knitting together Poland and details its conflicts, including pogroms against Jews by some of Piłsudski’s troops. Yet he views Pilsudski as a defender of Jews and pluralism.

The author makes the case that Piłsudski, although flawed, possessed the judgment and skills to defend Poland’s interests. His death in 1935 left Poland with a vacuum in leadership, unable to stave off the German and Soviet invasions of 1939.

Yet Piłsudski’s creation of an independent Poland after World War I helped ensure that when World War II ended and Soviet rule receded, there would be no question that an independent Poland would reemerge.

John Daniszewski, editor-at-large for standards and former senior managing editor for international news at The Associated Press, is a former Warsaw correspondent.

The Rupture That Could Trigger Putin’s Deadliest Rampage Yet

Daily Beast

The Rupture That Could Trigger Putin’s Deadliest Rampage Yet

A. Craig Copetas – November 18, 2022

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

The Kremlin’s chief executioner in Crimea is not modest about having slaughtered some 70,000 of her neighbors.

“We need pitiless, unceasing struggle against the snakes who are hiding in secret,” Rosalia Zemlyachka told the Sebastopol newspaper Vremya. “We must annihilate them, sweep them out with an iron broom, a sea of blood, everywhere.”

Witnessing Zemlyachka’s carnage first-hand, Russian opposition leader Sergei Melgunov said the lampposts of Crimea’s largest city are “richly garnished with wind-swayed corpses.” In the nearby beach resort of Feodosia, Melgunov and other officials said they observed Zemlyachka commandeer the city’s wells as burial pits. When the shafts were clogged with tortured soldiers and civilians, Melgunov added, she strapped her victims to planks, either roasting them alive in furnaces or drowning them in barges in the Black Sea.

“It’s a pity to waste cartridges on them,” Zemlyachka said.

To be sure, Western leaders now wrestling with the question of whether to encourage and fund Ukraine’s intention to grab back Crimea may not be familiar with the Kyiv-born secret policewoman known to locals as Demon.

The Secret Mission to Snatch Crimea Back From Putin’s Clutches

Yet back in Moscow—a century after Zemlyachka, at the end of the Russian Civil War supervised the Bolshevik’s extermination of a population nearly three times the size of Key West—the Demon remains the darling of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a superstar at KGB headquarters, and the poster ghoul for what Russia is capable of doing if Ukraine marches on Crimea.

“Ukraine will be liquidated,” are the words Putin’s celebrated primetime shill and alleged war criminal Vladimir Solovyov employs almost nightly on television to reawaken the spirit of Zemlyachka.

“Russia’s military mindset is always annihilation,” says a veteran Kremlin specialist who spent years in Moscow and remains attached to a Western intelligence agency. “What’s been remarkable since the fall of Kherson is we’ve never before heard Russian politicians and propagandists pushing a terror campaign at a level reminiscent of the Bolshevik Revolution. They are off the charts.”

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>People arrived from Kherson wait for further evacuation into the depths of Russia at the Dzhankoi's railway station in Crimea on October 21, 2022.</p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">Stringer/AFP via Getty Images</div>
People arrived from Kherson wait for further evacuation into the depths of Russia at the Dzhankoi’s railway station in Crimea on October 21, 2022.Stringer/AFP via Getty Images

None of this surprises 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk.

“Russians can tolerate their war criminals who win,” Matviichuk told The Daily Beast over a recent dinner in Paris. “Russians cannot tolerate their war criminals who lose.”

Matviichuk, director of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, says her organization has so far itemized more than 21,000 instances of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The desecrations in Bucha, Izium, and Kherson are so grisly that she and other human-rights lawyers are now imploring UN member states to “develop a new definition of a war crime and a method to prosecute them,” she says.

Olena Tregub is devoted to assuring Putin’s war criminals are losers. She’s also a woman who knows her guns and ammo. Tregub’s a vocal member of the Ukrainian government’s anti-corruption committee, and her job is to ensure every penny of foreign aid and caisson of weapons sustains a war effort aimed at ultimately unfurling her country’s flag over Crimea.

“We go big,” Tregub says. “We take back Crimea. This is the only way to punish Russia for Putin’s crimes in Ukraine.”

Glorious visions of repelling Russian imperialism for centuries have galvanized the Ukrainian imagination. “The fortifications of the Syvash are so strong that the Red High Command has neither the men nor the machines to breach them,” Vremya guaranteed its readers in 1920. “All the armed forces of the Soviets cannot frighten the Crimea.”

Indeed, General Pytor Wrangel, the German-Baltic commander in charge of defending Crimea, was so certain of victory that he created a new medal of honor called the Order of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, an award later bestowed on Mother Theresa, Pope John-Paul II, and Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman sent into space.

Back on Earth, French Lieutenant General and former NATO commandant Michel Yakovleff says, “I’m not convinced Ukraine needs to recover Crimea.” In an interview with The Daily Beast beneath crystal chandeliers and murals of naked cherubs inside the French Senate, the battle-hardened veteran of Operation Desert Storm and NATO’s campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo has spent the past nine months huddling with Ukrainian politicians and military strategists.

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>Antonovski Bridge, which is allegedly demolished to stop Ukrainian forces from crossing the Dnieper River as Russian forces withdrew to its left side of the river, is seen after Russian retreat from Kherson, Ukraine on Nov. 14, 2022. The only transportation road from Kherson to Crimea was the Antonovski Bridge.</p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</div>
Antonovski Bridge, which is allegedly demolished to stop Ukrainian forces from crossing the Dnieper River as Russian forces withdrew to its left side of the river, is seen after Russian retreat from Kherson, Ukraine on Nov. 14, 2022. The only transportation road from Kherson to Crimea was the Antonovski Bridge.Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“We’re not sure how much of Crimean population would want to return to Ukraine,” Yakovleff cautions. “An internationally sanctioned referendum might be diplomatically in order to accommodate the thousands of Russians involuntarily brought in after the 2014 Russian annexation. There will be internal problems. Taking back Crimea could be a mixed blessing.”

The reaction of Andriy Yermak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pretty much encapsulates Kyiv’s position on which side finally controls Crimea. “Does anyone seriously think that the Kremlin really wants peace?” he wrote on Twitter. “It wants obedience.”

But as the havoc drags on into winter, the only certainty is that the peninsula Moscow’s pizhony or “stylish ones” refer to as the Russian Riviera is the eye of a brewing storm between Ukraine and its Western allies.

“We don’t offer up policy,” the Western intelligence operative says. “We do know how Russia operates, its military abilities and capabilities. Most important, Russians don’t care about losses, and they still have a lot of air power and other dirty tricks to terrorize Ukraine beyond bombs and missiles. Too many people have a hard time accepting those realities.”

The irony of the situation is palpable. “Russia has also been heavily dug into eastern Ukraine for eight years,” he adds. “So it would actually be easier to militarily retake Crimea than the Donbas.”

On the one hand, allowing Crimea to remain Russian and home to the Black Sea fleet might be the tranquilizer that calms Putin into making peace while retaining his power. The intelligence analyst suggests such a brokered peace won’t hold.

“Strategically, rip the Russians apart, because you don’t want to give them time to rebuild and come back, which they will,” he says. “The longer you can force Russia into rebuilding its military, the better off Europe and the rest of the democratic world is.”

On the other blood-stained hand, how much more Russian-induced trauma can Ukraine absorb? Back in 1933, at the height of Stalin’s enforced two-year terror-famine Holodomor, Ukrainians were dying at a rate of 28,000 per day, for a total death count of nearly 4 million people. Yakovleff insists that history ensures a Ukrainian victory this time around.

“Putin is being beaten by what’s become the most powerful army in Europe,” Yakovleff says. “If Putin survives, he would be the only Russian leader to survive a defeat of this magnitude. His personal fate is sealed.”

On the other hand, Hanna Shelest, director of the security and military analysis group Prism in Kyiv, has legitimate cause for concern. “I trained NATO officers at a war college,” she explains. “The only map of Ukraine was in my office. Not one of my students knew the distance between Crimea and the nearest NATO country. It’s the same thing eight years after Putin invaded Crimea,” Shelest adds. “NATO has no strategic vision of Crimea.”

Ukraine capital Kyiv, port Odesa area suffer power shortages -Zelenskiy

Reuters

Ukraine capital Kyiv, port Odesa area suffer power shortages -Zelenskiy

November 18, 2022

FILE PHOTO: German President Steinmeier and Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy attend a joint news briefing in Kyiv

(Reuters) – Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, the area around the Black Sea port of Odesa and more than a dozen other regions are grappling with power shortages following relentless Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday.

“The situation with power supplies is difficult in 17 regions and in the capital,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

“Things are very difficult in Kyiv region and the city of Kyiv – Odesa region and also Vynnitsia and Ternopil,” he said, referring to two areas in western and southwestern Ukraine.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said earlier that Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have crippled half of the country’s energy system.

Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine with an estimated population of about 3 million, with up to two million more in the Kyiv region. Odesa, the focal point of Ukraine’s agriculture exports, is the third most populous city, with about one million.

Emergency blackouts were occurring in those areas, Zelenskiy said. Other areas were subject to “stabilisation” blackouts according to a schedule.

With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first winter snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardments during the past month of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the nine-month-long war.

Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, though the conflict that began with Russian forces invading their neighbour in late February has killed thousands, displaced millions and pulverised Ukrainian cities.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski; editing by Grant McCool)