Inside Putin’s War of Attrition

ukraine
Ukrainian artillerymen reload a M777 howitzer as they fire towards Russian positions on the frontline of eastern Ukraine. Photo: Anatolii Stepanov / AFP
Julia Ioffe
November 30, 2022

Whatever euphoria there was after the liberation of Kherson earlier this month has long ago faded. In the weeks since, autumn has brought the cold and the rain, clogging the battlefields with mud and filling trenches with dingy gray water. The Russians have continued pounding Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones, focusing specifically on civilian infrastructure. So far, they’ve knocked out some 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity grid, leaving whole swathes of the country without heat or light as winter sets in. Though electricity has mostly been restored to Kyiv, the capital has been dealing with rolling blackouts for weeks, and hospitals as far west as Lviv have reported having to conduct surgeries by flashlight. A widely circulated nighttime satellite image shows a scantly-lit black patch where Ukraine is on the map, surrounded by the well-lit European countries around it.