‘Total darkness and cold are coming.’ Massive strikes hit Ukraine electrical grid.

Along the frontline, Ukrainian officials said their forces were holding their positions, or making small but consistent advances. Russian forces appeared to be staging a tactical withdrawal in the southern Kherson region, which, if were to fully return into Ukrainian hands, would spell a major military and psychological blow to Moscow’s war effort.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national electricity provider, said in a statement that the “scale in damage” in western Ukraine was “comparable or may exceed the consequences” of the attacks two weeks ago , when Moscow began its air campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Ukraine’s air command said that 33 missiles were fired in all — 17 missiles from “at least 10” bombers from Russia’s strategic air command, and 16 missiles from ships in the Black Sea.

Later, in a statement on his Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number of missiles fired at 36, calling the attack “massive”.

“These are vile strikes on critical objects,” he said.

Ukrenergo also said that temporary power outages hit the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kirovohrad — an expanse stretching across the country from west to east.

Presidential adviser Kyrylo Timoshenko posted on Telegram listed the number of people in each region without power, totaling about 1.5 million people.

Ukrainian parliamentary deputy Kira Rudik tweeted the 1.5 million figure with the comment, “Total darkness and cold are coming.”

Ihor Polishchuk, mayor of Lutsk in the Volyn region, reported on Telegram that an “energy facility” there had been “completely” destroyed. “Its recovery is currently impossible,” he said, but didn’t provide further details.

Head of the Odessa regional military administration Maksym Marchenko said that Russian forces delivered “two rocket strikes on an object of the energy infrastructure,” leaving some communities without power.

Local officials also reported missile strikes in the Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, and Kirovograd regions.

However, there were successes. Ukraine’s air command said that of 33 missiles fired by the Russians, 18 were destroyed.

The air command also said that 10 kamikaze drones had also been shot down in the Mykolayiv region in southern Ukraine.

Missiles did not strike the capital Kyiv, but there were still blackouts in some parts of the city and air raid sirens sounded throughout the morning.

Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko posted on Telegram that antiaircraft systems had shot down “a number of missiles” in the Kyiv region and urged residents to stay indoors and seek shelter.

American officials have approved the delivery of two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, a sophisticated antiaircraft system, to Ukraine in the coming weeks. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov also announced on Twitter last week that IRIS-T air defense systems from Germany had arrived in the country – Germany has promised four, but Reznikov did not specify how many had arrived.

“A new era of air defense has begun in Ukraine,” he tweeted.

However, Ukrainian officials from President Zelensky on down have hammered home the message that the country needs many more such air defense systems if it hopes to thwart the kind of wide-ranging attack as was seen on Saturday.

Ukrainian officials said this week that Russia’s targeted strikes had destroyed about 30 percent of the country’s autotransformers, which are crucial for transmitting electricity along the country’s electrical grid.

On Saturday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba repeated the calls for more air defense systems, tweeting that the day had begun with “a barrage of Russian missiles aimed at critical civilian infrastructure” and that “there should not be a minute of delay” in sending the antiaircraft weapons.

Meanwhile, the Institute for the Study of War said on Friday that Russian forces continue to withdraw from parts of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, where Kyiv forces have been steadily advancing.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian military Facebook account said Russian forces had left the small villages of Charivne and Chkalove in the Kherson region, while troops had managed to build a barge bridge across the Dnieper river, next to the damaged Antonovskiy bridge, to aid their movements.

Concern continued to mount over a possible attack on the Nova Kakhova dam in the Kherson region. Russian officials have warned, without evidence, that the Ukrainians plan to blow the dam up. Earlier this week President Zelensky told European Union heads that Moscow had mined the hydroelectric plant, which if breached would flood some 80 communities and destroy most of the region’s water supply. Neither sides’ claims could be verified.

Russian officials stepped up efforts on Saturday to remove civilians from Kherson, with officials promising people government payments of 100,000 rubles ($1540) as well as housing certificates to purchase an apartment.

Pro-Kremlin Russian media showed Kherson families in Anapa, Russia, being granted housing certificates, part of a propaganda drive to reassure domestic audiences, as state television anchors in recent days have been preparing audiences for the possible loss of Kherson.

Ukraine says the removals amount to illegal deportations, designed to depopulate occupied regions of Ukrainians. Pro-Kyiv Telegram channels in Kherson also said that Russian officials were allowing few people to leave for Ukrainian territory, and warned that those who relocated to Russia may be forced to take Russian passports.

As removals continued Saturday, Kirill Stremousov, the Moscow-appointed deputy head of the civilian-military administration in Kherson, claimed that 25,000 people had left the city, but admitted that some civilians appeared to be waiting for the arrival of Ukrainian forces.

“We are not forcing anyone, we are not forcibly dragging anyone anywhere,” he said. “There is some part who are waiting for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Sergei Aksyonov, Moscow’s designated leader in Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014, said that beginning Saturday authorities would begin accepting housing applications from residents of Kherson removed to Crimea.

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers applauded Saturday’s strikes on vital electricity networks, but called on Russia’s military to scale up attacks on major power infrastructure that could not be swiftly repaired.

Over the last two weeks, hardline nationalists on Russian state television and pro-war Telegram channels have been euphoric about Russia’s current strategy of destroying Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure, although destroying vital civilian infrastructure may constitute a war crime.

“The effectiveness of our strikes depends only on their consistency and frequency, sufficient to make the repair of damaged objects useless,” Alexander Kots, a correspondent from pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda said on Telegram on Saturday.

Stremousov for his part said on Telegram on Saturday that in the parts of Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian government, a collapse “in electricity, water and heating is inevitable”.

Even in those regions where the electricity infrastructure was not targeted on Saturday, shelling continued. Head of the Kharkiv regional military administration Oleh Synyehubov said that Russian forces had fired on settlements, destroying residential houses and causing fires to break out.

In Kharkiv city, local residents said some regions had long been without power. Viktor, who asked that only his first name be used because of the sensitivity of the current circumstances, said that his region was lacking water, and his family was using candles.

“They say that there will be electricity today,” he wrote by text message. “If it continues much longer like this, we’ll have to live like cave people.”

Stern reported from Kyiv; Dixon from Riga and Khurshudyan from Kharkiv. Adela Suliman contributed.