Referenews

Russia has launched more than 1,000 cruise missiles and drones at the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure over the last two months, knocking out much of Ukraine’s power generation. With temperatures dropping, keeping the country’s cities habitable has become one of the foremost challenges for Ukraine’s government.

In many Ukrainian cities, utility employees fear going to work, knowing that electric stations could be targeted. Authorities around the country have set up tents where residents can stay warm, charge their phones and refill their jugs with fresh water, for the growing number of Ukrainians who can’t do those things at home.

“No matter what the missile worshipers from Moscow are hoping for, it still won’t change the balance of power in this war,” Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said in his nightly address on Friday. “They still have enough missiles for several such heavy strikes. We have enough determination and self-belief to take back what is ours after these blows.”

The electricity network has been hit especially hard in the Kyiv region, where homes rarely get six hours of electricity a day.

Mr. Klitschko warned on Saturday that even as homes were reconnected to the grid, rolling power outages would continue. In another post on Telegram, the mayor said a glass bridge in Kyiv near the river was repaired and reopened. The tourist attraction widely referred to as the “Klitschko bridge” had been damaged in the first major Russian missile strike in October. “One of our symbols of indomitability is again gladly waiting for the residents of Kyiv,” he wrote.

On Saturday, power was restored to Kharkiv in Ukraine’s northeast, according to the regional governor, after Friday’s strikes had left the city entirely without electricity.

Four people were killed in Friday’s attacks, including a 1-year-old boy whose body was pulled from the rubble of a destroyed house in the southern city of Kryviy Rih on Saturday morning. At least 13 people were injured, including four children. A total of 450 children have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office.

Two more Russian missiles fired from Crimea were shot down near Odessa early on Saturday, according to regional officials.

In many cities near the front lines of Russia’s invasion, local officials are facing a similar struggle to keep the lights on.

Halyna Luhova, head of the city of Kherson’s civil-military administration, said electricity, which Russian forces had knocked out before they retreated from the area in November, has been restored to about 90% of the city’s residents. Some 80% have heat and three-quarters have running water, she said.

Russia occupied Kherson for months after launching its full-scale invasion early this year, but Ukraine’s army retook the city six weeks ago. Russian forces, who pulled back east of the Dnipro River, are now firing rockets at Kherson from across the river.

“The issue is that our enemy is less than one kilometer away,” Ms. Luhova said. “They’re targeting the heating and power stations.”

The headquarters of the city’s water company was hit earlier this month, and the utility’s director was injured in the blast. In the last two days, 22 employees of the utility have quit; about 300 remain out of around 1,000 before the war began.

“We’re using all our human resources that we have, but it’s still not enough” to repair the damage to the infrastructure, Ms. Luhova said. “People are afraid to work because it’s a potential target. And of course, the enemy took all the equipment. There’s a huge shortage of equipment that we need to do the repairs.”

A heating station near the river has been abandoned, Ms. Luhova said, because Russian snipers are targeting anyone who goes near it. Water was drained from the pipes so they wouldn’t freeze and burst, leaving some 7,000 people in the area without running water.

One person was killed and another injured by Russian shelling in the city on Saturday morning, according to the governor. Meanwhile, the sound of outgoing Ukrainian fire echoed through Kherson’s streets.

Cars were lined up waiting to leave the city. About 70,000 residents remain, Ms. Luhova said, nearly 85,000 fewer than a month ago. More than 300,000 people lived in Kherson city before the war.

Meanwhile, Russian President

Vladimir Putin

spent Friday at the joint headquarters of the country’s armed forces that are fighting in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin. He listened to proposals from military leaders for how to conduct operations in Ukraine, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported Saturday.

Mr. Putin’s visit to the command headquarters follows several military setbacks for Russian forces, most recently the withdrawal from Kherson. The Kremlin had claimed the city as part of the Russian Federation, after a staged referendum in September that was widely criticized as a sham.

Mr. Putin pledged last week to continue the attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, despite the widespread criticism from outside of Russia. “There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” he said. “Yes, we do that.”

On Monday, Mr. Putin is scheduled to visit neighboring Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, where he will meet with Belarusian President

Alexander Lukashenko.

The visit is stirring unease in Belarus over the Kremlin’s efforts to potentially drag the country into a deeper involvement in the war. Russia used Belarus as one of the staging grounds for its invasion of Ukraine early this year.

—Ann M. Simmons contributed to this article.