A massive Russian missile and drone attack damaged power plants and caused power outages for more than a million Ukrainians Friday morning, in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the war’s biggest attacks on energy infrastructure.

Police said the attack killed at least three people and injured 15 others office of the Ukrainian Attorney General.

The attacks came as the Kremlin escalated its rhetoric on the conflict, saying Russia was “in a state of war” in Ukraine – going beyond the euphemism “special military operation” – due to the West’s heavy involvement on the Ukrainian side.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, traffic lights were not working and water supplies were disrupted. A fire raged in the country’s largest hydroelectric dam, in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia. A few dozen kilometers to the southwest, an electricity line supplying a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant was temporarily knocked out.

“The enemy is now launching the largest attack on Ukraine’s energy sector in recent times,” said Herman Halushchenko, Ukraine’s Energy Minister. said on Facebook. “The aim is not only to cause damage, but also to try again, as last year, to cause a large-scale failure of the country’s energy system.”

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had launched 63 Iranian-made “Shahed” attack drones and 88 missiles during the attack, including hypersonic weapons that fly several times the speed of sound. The air force said it had shot down most of the drones but fewer than half of the missiles, a low interception rate compared with previous attacks that may reflect Ukraine’s dwindling air defense supplies.

“Russian missiles have no delays, unlike aid packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said said on social mediaa clear reference to the $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine that the Republicans in the US Congress have lasted for months.

“Shahed drones have no indecisiveness, unlike some politicians,” Mr. Zelensky added.

Nevertheless, Russia complained on Friday about the United States’ assistance to Ukraine during the two years of war.

Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, the Kremlin has insisted it was carrying out a “special military operation.” The country’s communications watchdog ordered Russian news media not to describe the hostilities as an “invasion” or a “declaration of war.”

But Russian officials, including President Vladimir V. Putin, have occasionally used the word war in reference to the conflict, usually to point out that Russia has been fighting a Western coalition. And in an interview published Friday in an aggressively pro-Kremlin tabloid, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov tried to explain the change.

“Yes, it started as a special military operation, but as soon as this grouping was formed, when the collective West became a participant in this operation on the side of Ukraine, it became a war for us,” he said. “I am convinced of that,” he added. “And everyone should understand that for their internal mobilization.”

Friday’s attack was reminiscent of Russia’s air campaign against the Ukrainian energy network during the first winter of the war, which plunged Kiev into cold and darkness. Ukrainian authorities had warned that Russia was likely to repeat the campaign this winter, but instead, airstrikes in Moscow so far have mainly targeted industrial and military facilities.

Friday’s attack was Russia’s second large-scale airstrike in two days. a rocket attack on Kiev Thursday injuring at least 13 people and damaging several buildings.

The latest attack began shortly after midnight, when Russian forces launched dozens of attack drones against several Ukrainian regions, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Then, around 3 a.m., Russian fighter jets fired cruise missiles, followed by ballistic missiles and then hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, one of the most advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal.

The complex barrage appeared intended to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses a strategy used in previous Russian air raids. The Ukrainian air force said it had failed to shoot down the Kinzhal missiles.

Rocket attacks on power stations caused power outages in seven Ukrainian regions. according to Ukrenergothe national electricity company, which provided the country with urgent energy support from Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, said the attack was larger than those that focused on energy infrastructure during the first winter of the war. Oleksi Kulebathe deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office said hundreds of thousands of homes had temporarily lost power, affecting about 1.2 million residents.

Mr Kuleba said “blackout schemes” have been introduced in several regions to “preserve the energy system” during repairs.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the eastern city of Kharkiv was particularly affected, where about fifteen explosions were heard. A pumping station was hit, hampering the city’s water supply, and electric trams and buses did not function.

‘The city is almost completely without electricity’ Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the regional military administration said in the early morning. He said 700,000 residents of the region had no electricity as of 9am

In the southern city of Zaporizhia, the Dnipro hydroelectric power station suffered damage to its structure, including a large dam. Photos and videos posted online showed fire and smoke coming from the plant, and local authorities said the road over the dam was closed. Ihor SyrotaThe head of Ukrhydronenergo, the state-owned company that owns Ukraine’s hydroelectric power stations, said there was no risk of a breach but that an electricity generating unit was in critical condition.

Attacks on electricity installations were also reported in the western regions of Vinnytsia, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Air raids on these areas have been rare during the war.

After the first winter of the war, Ukraine invested in protecting its energy infrastructure by building multi-layered fortifications including sandbags, concrete walls and cages filled with stones. But The country’s energy system continues to falter.

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting from Kiev.

Under immense pressure to come up with billions of dollars to shore up Ukraine’s military and replenish its members’ dwindling arsenals, the European Union said Wednesday it had devised a legal way to use frozen Russian assets to help arm Ukraine. just as it was considering other mechanisms to strengthen the defense industry.

The developments mark a major milestone, with U.S. funding for Ukraine remaining stuck in Congress and Ukrainian defenses sagging as shortages of ammunition, artillery shells and missiles force rationing on the battlefield.

Although the EU is exploring a number of different ways to find money for defense purchases, they all face hurdles.

The goal of “making Russia pay” for Ukraine’s arsenal and its reconstruction has become a popular slogan among allies, but translating it into actual policy has proven difficult, largely due to legal concerns about liquidating Russian state assets that frozen by sanctions.

Now, after months of political wrangling, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has found a way to use the profits from these frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s benefit, most of which goes to military aid to Ukraine.

How the plan will work

The plan, which will be submitted for approval to EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday, would provide Ukraine with up to 3 billion euros, or about $3.25 billion, or even 15 billion euros ($16.3 billion) between 2023 and 2027 ) could yield between 2023 and 2027, depending on the situation. market conditions. The first payment to Kiev could be made as early as July, the commission said on Wednesday.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, Western countries took the unusual step of freezing more than $330 billion in Russian central bank assets abroad. The largest part of this – more than 217 billion dollars – is located in the European Union. With payments to Russia blocked by sanctions, Moscow has been unable to access these assets, sell them or benefit from the interest earned on them.

As such, the cash generated from the assets has been stuck abroad, with a large majority in Belgium held by Euroclear, a financial services company. Under the EU plan, 97 percent of the profits generated by these assets would go to Ukraine from February 15. Companies like Euroclear would keep 3 percent to fund ongoing and future lawsuits by Russia seeking to recover its assets and revenues.

This year, 90 percent of that windfall would go to financing weapons for Ukraine, the committee said, while the rest would be set aside for the bloc’s fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

“The Russians won’t be very happy,” said Josep Borrell Fontelles, the A top EU diplomat said this this week. The amount of money, he added, “is not extraordinary, but not negligible.”

An earlier version of this plan was postponed twice during 2023 due to disagreements between member states Concerns of the European Central Bank. The bank, the eurozone’s version of the US Federal Reserve, warned that using assets from another country’s central bank could damage Europe’s reputation as a safe place to store money, undermining its ambition bloc could harm the international use of its common currency, the euro.

As Mr Borrell had predicted, the Russians were outraged by the proposal. “This is outright banditry and theft,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, Russian news agency TASS reported.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was more reserved. “Europeans are fully aware of the damage such decisions can do to both their economy and their image, and their reputation as reliable guarantors of the inviolability of property,” Tass quoted him as saying.

How else can the EU raise money for war and weapons?

Revenue from frozen Russian assets is a start, but the EU will need billions more to continue supporting Ukraine and strengthening its own defense, especially with the looming possibility of a complete break in US aid to Ukraine under the presidency of Trump.

The arsenals of the bloc’s 27 members have been depleted after two years of arms and ammunition transfers to Ukraine. Just as importantly, Europe’s defense industry says it needs more certainty and upfront investment before it can ramp up production.

Building an integrated military industry is new territory for the European Union, which from its inception has been primarily an economic and trade alliance.

But the need for Europeans to invest in defense has become more urgent following recent comments by former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. He said last month that he would oppose NATO’s defense of European members who have underpaid for the alliance’s common defense needs, and that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever they want” in Europe.

The Europeans have taken note. “Europe has not invested enough in its security and defense for decades,” Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, which sets policy priorities, said in a letter to EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday. “As we face the greatest security threat since the Second World War, it is high time we take radical and concrete steps to be defense ready and put the EU economy on a war footing.

“This means spending more and buying more together, therefore more efficiently,” he added. “We must also help the defense industry access private and public funds.”

At Thursday’s summit, EU leaders will discuss the idea of ​​letting the bloc’s development and climate bank, the European Investment Bank, venture into defense procurement – a major shift in the strategy and purpose of climate change and green energy , highlighting the urgency felt everywhere. the EU to strengthen military capabilities.

Some EU countries would like to see the bloc jointly issue bonds to secure cheap defense financing. But this is not popular among the richer EU countries, especially Germany. The bloc also maintains the European Peace Facility, an off-budget pool of money that is slowly being tapped for defense purchases for Ukraine. France wants this fund to pay only for equipment produced in Europe, which is seen as a major limitation as Europe’s defense industry says it is unable to produce fast enough to meet growing needs.

Meanwhile, EU countries operating outside the EU’s restrictions and structures have been able to move more quickly to support Ukraine, underscoring the bloc’s rigidity. The Czech Republic is leading a buyers group with other EU allies and has already secured 300,000 grenades for Ukraine as supplies are dangerously low.

Biden administration officials have made regular trips to Europe to discuss using Russian resources to help Ukraine. At a meeting of treasury ministers in Brazil last month, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said direct asset seizures were a possibility and suggested there was a legal justification for it.

But the meeting was marred by divisions among policymakers. Some, such as French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, argued that taking assets directly from Russia’s central bank would be a violation of international law.

Eshe Nelson contributed reporting from Frankfurt, and Alan Rappeport from Washington.

Ukrainian soldiers ducked into trenches for hours as artillery exploded around them, then ran to the safety of an armored personnel carrier – only to be chased through the vehicle’s open rear hatch by an exploding drone.

“All I could see were sparks in my eyes,” said one of the soldiers, a sergeant, as he recounted how the pursuing drone exploded, leaving him and his team injured but somehow still alive . He asked to be identified only by his first name, Oleksandr, as per military protocol.

The fighting on the plains in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia, where Oleksandr’s vehicle was hit earlier this year, has been raging for ten months now in two phases: first with Ukrainian forces on the offensive, and now on the defensive, as Russia attacks on the area are escalating. Ukraine gained ground during last summer’s counter-offensive.

Military analysts have described Ukraine’s strategy as “hold, build and attack”: holding the line in the country’s southeast, replenishing units with new troops and hitting back with long-range drone strikes on oil refineries and military logistics targets in Russia.

In Zaporizhia, this meant defending an area created by last summer’s counteroffensive, a semicircle 10 miles (16 kilometers) deep that pushes into Russian-held territory, forming a bulge. Soldiers describe destroyed villages, trenches and fields that form a moonscape of shell craters.

At the southern tip of the semicircle lies the village of Robotyne. Ukraine retook the country last summer, in the culmination of a counter-offensive that not only failed to achieve a breakthrough but also left the Russians in a strong enough position to push back across the southern front.

Ukrainian forces occupying that frontline bulge could be attacked from three sides, creating a dilemma: giving up that pocket would ease pressure on them, but it would also represent a symbolic setback in the war, losing territory lose what they had won in a war the previous year. high costs in casualties and destroyed weapons.

During an interview last week, soldiers who had recently fought there described minor fluctuations on the front in both directions, and being severely defeated by Russian artillery. Overall, Russia is firing seven times as many artillery shells along the front line as Ukraine, Gen. Ivan Havryliuk, a deputy defense minister, told Ukrainian media on Monday.

American weaponry donated to the counteroffensive last year, including Stryker armored vehicles, has proven useful in protecting soldiers from this barrage as they fight defensively.

But American politics now threatens the arms supply. A package worth about $60 billion in military and financial aid has been stalled in Congress for months over objections from some Republicans. The Biden administration announced last week that it would send $300 million in emergency aid using funds left over from previously approved aid.

Russian forces have attacked the region around Robotyne and nearby areas nine times in the past day, the General Staff Headquarters said on Tuesday. When the Ukrainians captured the village last year, they pierced a key Russian anti-tank defense line; now the Russians are trying to push them back and fill that gap.

Like Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Robotyne, which had about 500 inhabitants before the war, is now just a ruin. Throughout the war, U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed concern that Ukraine was holding out for too long in defending such places, using soldiers and munitions to cling to devastated cities of little strategic value.

But for Ukraine, the area around Robotyne remains worth fighting for, at least for now.

“At some point, symbolic becomes strategic,” Yurii Sak, a former adviser to the defense minister, said of the fighting. Defending the gains of the offensive, he said, is “important for morale, it is important for popular support, it is important for the inner belief in our potential to win.”

The battle also inflicts more casualties on the attacking Russians than on the Ukrainians in their defensive positions, Mr. Sak said. “As long as that calculus continues, it supports holding the ground,” he said. “It’s a war, so casualties are inevitable on both sides.”

Russia is now on the offensive along the entire frontline, which stretches in a 600-mile crescent from the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine to the southern Dnipro River. The Kremlin’s military has exploited its advantages in ammunition, manpower and aviation.

Russia has expanded the ranks of its military by deploying squads of former convicts. The country is buying artillery shells, missiles and exploding drones from North Korea and Iran to replenish its supplies. Its planes evade Ukrainian air defenses by dropping bombs from a safe distance that glide toward their targets.

This year, Russia has dropped more than 3,500 glide bombs, according to the Ukrainian military. Moscow’s electronic warfare tools jam signals and confuse coordinates for Ukraine’s satellite-guided weapons.

The result was enormous progress compared to February expelled Ukraine from the small town of Avdiivka in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Since then, Russia has been attacking with a combination of ground attacks and aerial bombardments at seven points along the front, the Ukrainian General Staff Headquarters said.

In the northeast, Russian troops are advancing through pine forests toward the city of Kupiansk on the Oskil River in an attempt to reverse the gains made by Ukraine in a counter-offensive in the fall of 2022.

In the Donbas, a region of rolling hills dotted with coal mines and factories, Russia has pursued four lines of attack, trying to exploit the openings created by the capture of Avdiivka. Ukrainian forces say they are taking up defensive positions west of the city, although Russia has captured several small villages as it tries to advance.

Near the southern city of Kherson, Russia attacked a Ukrainian outpost across the Dnipro River, on its eastern bank, in an area otherwise controlled by Russia. Russian forces attacked the position three times on Monday, the Ukrainian military said.

The position there is supplied by boat and, like the bulge in the lines around Robotyne, is precarious.

These battles are worth it, Ukrainian officials say, because they are killing and wounding Russia’s tens of thousands of soldiers, but there is skepticism in Washington.

“I understand the administration is frustrated,” said Evelyn Farkas, director of the McCain Institute, referring to the Biden administration.

“It is unclear whether military decisions are purely military or influenced by political pressure or even direction,” she said.

When training for Ukrainian troops fighting in the semi-circular area near Robotyne, soldiers noted one benefit of the shift to a defensive strategy: fewer casualties. The Russians now have to leave their trenches to attack, while the Ukrainians fight from the cover of their positions.

Withdrawing, according to a soldier also named Oleksandr, would only leave Ukrainian troops fighting in other positions under similar conditions. “You have to defend every meter,” he said.

Yet it is a fierce battle in the south, across a landscape of open fields, muddy roads, ruins of farms and countless blown-up vehicles, with Russian forces confronted from three sides.

Ukrainians have fought in the area long enough to give the positions they defend nicknames such as The Wheel, Silicon and Tank Trench.

Russian reconnaissance drones continuously fly overhead, directing artillery or mortar fire at the soldiers. Aerial bombings are common.

Small drones equipped with explosives and cameras regularly buzz around, chasing cars and sometimes people. The one that flew into Sergeant Oleksandr’s armored personnel carrier in January injured everyone inside, but they all survived. Last week he was training to return to fighting in the same area.

With additional U.S. aid still in doubt, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Tuesday called for “creative, adaptable and sustainable ways” to continue arming Ukraine and praised European allies who sought to strengthen Kiev’s military as the war against Russia entered a critical phase. stretch.

Mr. Austin, speaking in Germany at the start of a semi-regular meeting of nearly 50 countries supplying Ukraine’s armed forces, said allies would “dig deeper to get crucial security assistance to Ukraine.” He singled out Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden for recent weapons donations and noted the Czech Republic’s efforts to deliver 800,000 artillery shells – the first tranche of which could arrive on the battlefield within weeks.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Berlin would send Ukraine 10,000 rounds of much-needed artillery shells, 100 armored infantry vehicles and transport equipment in a new injection of aid worth 500 million euros, about $544 million.

“Things are progressing sometimes in small steps, sometimes in bigger steps, but the most important thing is the constant supply of ammunition,” Pistorius told journalists in Germany. local news reports.

The United States remains the largest donor of military aid to Ukraine, and last week Washington pledged another $300 million in air defense missiles, artillery shells and armor systems. The latest package also included assault missiles with a range of about 100 miles that deliver clusters of small munitions and can cause damage over a wide area, although they are still at least a week away from arriving.

Still, Ukrainian forces are expected to burn through the new U.S. aid within a few weeks, and it’s unlikely the Biden administration will be able to send much more unless Republicans in Congress agree to a $60 billion emergency spending plan to send additional weapons to send to Ukraine. and strengthen arms production in the United States.

At the meeting, held at Ramstein Air Base, a US military hub in Germany, Mr Austin said: “The struggle in Ukraine remains one of the great causes of our time.”

“The Ukrainian people do not have a day to lose, and neither do we,” he added. “So we continue to develop creative, adaptable and sustainable ways to support Ukraine’s defenders.”

But Ukrainian soldiers are already running low on ammunition: a shortage of artillery shells forced a retreat to the eastern city of Avdiivka, and air defense missiles have been rationed around the highest priority cities and infrastructure to protect against Russian attacks.

On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine said: “The needs are obvious: patriots, ATACMS, F-16s and of course artillery,” ticking off a list of missiles, fighter jets and grenades. At a meeting in the Ukrainian capital Kiev with Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, Mr. Zelensky urged allies to quickly supply them.

The $60 billion aid package for Ukraine has been blocked by Republicans in the House of Representatives. In his own summary of Monday’s meeting in Kiev, Mr. Graham predicted that at least some U.S. aid to Ukraine would come in the form of loans, as former President Donald J. Trump has pushed for, rather than outright donations.

“I know Americans want to help our friends and allies, but I also believe we should consider our economic situation as we help others,” Mr. Graham said. said in a statement on Monday. He said he would also demand that the Biden administration send longer-range missiles to Ukraine, which would allow its forces to attack Russian territory, and that training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets be accelerated.

Uncertainty about U.S. involvement in Ukraine has largely pushed European allies to try to fill the void, but production of key weapons systems and artillery ammunition has struggled to ramp up and cannot keep up with demand.

Some European leaders – especially in the Baltic states, Scandinavian countries and those bordering Ukraine – have also raised alarm over the specter of a Russian invasion of NATO territory if Russia were to win the current conflict.

Mr. Austin reiterated these concerns ahead of the meeting in Ramstein, where he sat next to Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. It was Mr. Austin’s first in-person return to the group since two hospitalizations this year, including a days-long stint in January related to complications from a prostate cancer operation that he failed to disclose to the White House, prompting criticism.

“Let’s not kid ourselves: Putin won’t stop at Ukraine,” Austin said. “But as President Biden has said, Ukraine can stop Putin if we support Ukraine and provide the weapons the country needs to defend itself.”

Erik Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

His most beloved crooner sang a nationalist ballad with an appeal to the Russians: “The Motherland is calling. Don’t abandon her.”

His favorite band sang a moody song about sacrifice in wartime.

And then he took the stage, under a banner celebrating the tenth anniversary of the conquest of Crimea from Ukraine, to remind thousands of Russians on Red Square that his struggle to add territory to Russia was not over.

President Vladimir V. Putin, a day after declaring victory in a performative election, signaled Monday that the war against Ukraine would continue to dominate his rule and called for unity to return the people of eastern Ukraine “to their home family.”

“We will move forward together, hand in hand,” Putin told the crowd, boasting of a restored railway line that he said would soon connect to Crimea through territory taken from Ukraine. “And this is exactly what really makes us stronger – not words, but actions.”

The display of nationalist fervor capped a three-day election whose foregone conclusion prompted comparisons of Putin’s Russia with other authoritarian dictatorships. On Sunday evening, state news quickly declared that he had won more than 87 percent of the vote.

Underscoring the artificial nature of the election, Mr Putin brought the three puppet competitors the Kremlin had chosen to face him onto the stage in Red Square and offered each a turn at the microphone, saying they all had “different approaches,” but “one motherland.”

The communist candidate, who was placed second by Russian authorities with just over 4 percent of the vote, praised Mr Putin for bringing Crimea back to his “home port”.

The nationalist candidate said Crimea would forever be part of Russia on world maps and cheered: “To Russia, to our great future and to the president of a great Russia!”

The latest candidate, from the New People’s Party, said he would never forget the pride he had in Putin when he annexed Crimea in 2014.

“Happy Holidays!” Mr Putin shouted. “Long live Russia!”

The crowd erupted into the Russian national anthem before men in military uniforms with pre-war ‘Z’ patches and medals took the stage and joined a singer in a war ballad. “Give him the strength to win,” went the chorus.

Mr. Putin, 71, showed little of the emotion he has sometimes shown at similar events in the past, such as when he burst into tears during a victory speech after the 2012 election. He delivered the words of the national anthem with relatively little enthusiasm and quickly left the event.

The celebration made clear that the war against Ukraine had become the organizing principle of Putin’s rule, and was held as Russians braced for what was to come in a country still fighting on the battlefield and led by a new , encouraged leader.

The huge crowd that gathered in Red Square was made up in part of government workers, students and others who were given tickets and in some cases asked to attend, a common practice at pro-Kremlin rallies in Russia.

A 59-year-old social worker who gave her name as Nadya and arrived waving a giant Russian flag and wearing a folk headdress known as a koolhnik, said she did not want war but that the West should stop antagonizing Russia. Russia, she said, must be respected, and ending hostilities is not up to Mr. Putin.

“It doesn’t depend on us,” she said. ‘It’s the West. England, America – they want to divide us and turn us into little colonies.”

For many Russians, the big concern now is new military conscription as Putin expands his invasion even further.

A 29-year-old government analyst at the celebration, who gave his name as Maksim, said that because he saw no other candidates as strong as Putin, he voted for him. But he expressed his condolences for the people living in Ukraine, as well as the Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines, and acknowledged that he feared a new conscription.

“I worry about it, I worry about it every day,” he said. “We don’t even know what will happen tomorrow.”

There are other jitters too, from the expectation of higher taxes to the possibility of greater repression. Mr. Putin, recently elected to his fifth term, could reshuffle his Cabinet, a typical post-election procedure that some analysts believe he could use this time to elevate the most hawkish members of the ruling elite. to take.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, predicted that Mr. Putin would try to revamp the personnel in his “power vertical,” the blanket term for the political system he has honed and that of post-Soviet Russia created a global economy. autocracy. She said he could try to promote young, loyal, pro-war bureaucrats over the older generation of civil servants – mainly men born in the 1950s – who now dominate the upper echelons of his system.

“In times of war, there may be increasing demand for the ‘young hawks’,” she says wrote.

Mr Putin’s inauguration is scheduled for May – a moment of pomp and circumstance that the Kremlin has turned into a televised ritual demonstrating his grip on the Russian state, and an occasion when he is likely to deliver a speech outlining his vision for the next six years.

But in the hours after polls closed on Sunday, Putin quickly made it clear that his top priority was to continue his invasion of Ukraine until Kiev and the West agreed to a peace deal on his terms.

He said at a press conference after midnight that Russia wanted talks to build “peaceful, long-term neighborly relations,” and not an agreement that would allow Ukraine to “pause for a year and a half to two years to rearm.”

Repeat a warning he made Last summer, Mr. Putin said Russia could try to create a “security zone” on Ukrainian territory, which Russia currently has no control over.

He gave no details, but analysts believe such a buffer zone would require an attempt to seize parts of Ukraine’s Kharkov region – an attack that could require new military service.

But analysts also warned that given the opacity of Putin’s government, it is difficult to predict how much will actually change. To the extent that Mr. Putin replaces some of his top officials, his priorities will be “their loyalty first and their effectiveness second,” said Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist in St. Petersburg.

Monday’s orchestrated outpouring of support for Putin in Red Square, which was broadcast across the country on state television, was intended to make clear that supporting the Russian leader was a patriotic, everyday activity.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, political scientists studied Russia found it that the perception of Putin’s popularity helped to actually win him support and keep him in power. Many Russians felt that everyone around them supported the Russian leader.

“People like to go with the crowd,” says Noah Buckley, professor of political science at Trinity College Dublin and co-author of the study. “People like to be on the winning side.”

That kind of support can quickly collapse as perceptions of popularity erode, Mr. Buckley noted. But he said, “I certainly don’t predict that around this election or anytime soon.”

Gathered in a Ukrainian farm, the soldiers checked their equipment: rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, spare batteries for radios, red and white flashlights, everything needed for a stealthy and daring night attack across the border into Russia.

The soldiers are Russians who have turned against the government of their country’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and are now fighting for the Ukrainian side by raiding Russia.

Their goal was to break through the first Russian defense line, hoping to open a path for another unit to drive deeper into Russia with tanks and armored personnel carriers.

“We will jump into their trench and hold it,” explained one of the soldiers, who declined to be identified for security reasons. “Either we take them out, or they take us out.”

According to both Ukrainian and Russian accounts, fierce fighting raged for five days along Russia’s southern border, marking the most sweeping ground attacks on Russia since the Russian army invaded Ukraine two years ago.

Three Russian exile groups, almost openly backed by Ukrainian military intelligence, say the attacks are timed to undermine the sense of stability underpinning Putin’s push for a fifth term, with three days of voting ending on Sunday.

Ukraine has recently become increasingly bold in organizing direct attacks within Russia, sabotaging railways in Siberia, attacking refineries and fuel depots with exploding drones and now supporting groups that drive tanks across the border. Fearing that Russia could escalate its military response, the United States and its Western allies have banned the Ukrainian military from using donated weapons in these attacks throughout the war.

Military analysts say the strikes will draw Russian air defenses away from the battlefield, put a dent in Russia’s sanctions-deficient oil economy, unnerve Russians and could create leverage in future negotiations, even as Ukraine faces setbacks along the front in the country.

The area around the border where the exile groups are attacking – a sparsely populated area of ​​fields, forests and small villages – had already fallen into a chaotic state after almost two years of Russian cross-border attacks with artillery and small sabotage units that had slipped into Ukraine.

The response, a politically driven escalation ahead of Russia’s elections, is notable for its scale and the number of soldiers involved, commanders of Russia’s exile groups said.

About half a dozen Russian border posts and villages have been attacked and the tanks are the first foreign military attacks in Russia since World War II, the Russian exiles say.

The ground fighting coincided with a wave of long-range attacks by Ukrainian drones on Russian oil refineries and the Russian city of Belgorod. Two people were killed in drone strikes in the city on Saturday, the regional governor said.

Mr. Putin, speaking at a Security Council meeting on Friday, described “attacks on peaceful settlements on the territory of Russia” and said that 2,500 soldiers, whom he called mercenaries, led by the Ukrainian government, along with tanks and armored vehicles, carried out attacks on peaceful settlements on the territory of Russia. attacks along the border. The attacks on five locations were aimed at disrupting elections this weekend, but they were all repulsed, Putin said, adding: “The enemy will not go unpunished for these attacks.”

The three exile groups – Free Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion – have declined to reveal their numbers but confirmed the use of tanks in the fighting.

“Putin has commented twice about our special liberation operation, which means we are hitting the target,” said Aleksey Baranovsky, a spokesman for the Legion of Free Russia. The attacks, he added, were intended to show resistance to Mr. Putin during an otherwise staged election.

“Elections are a time when our voices are heard,” he said.

The attacks continue along a roughly 100-mile border between the Sumy and Kharkov regions of Ukraine and the Belgorod and Kursk regions of Russia, according to both Russian and Ukrainian sources.

Russian military bloggers have identified nine raid locations. Both sides described cross-border helicopter attacks from Ukraine. The preparation of the operation, witnessed by journalists from The New York Times, It involved approximately 50 soldiers, two tanks and four armored personnel carriers, including two American-designed M-113 armored personnel carriers. Many countries have donated M-113s to Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Friday that it had repelled all attacks and used rockets to hit the invading soldiers who landed by helicopter, forcing them into a minefield. The statement said Russian forces had destroyed 18 tanks and 23 other armored vehicles.

Further away from the border area, Ukrainian drones struck two oil refineries in the Samara region, on the Volga River in central Russia, on Saturday, causing a fire at one, regional officials and Russian media reported. Ukraine has hit a dozen refineries since the start of the year, and Russian media have reported rising gasoline prices in Russia.

Ukraine is recruiting from exiled Russian nationalists and disaffected ethnic minorities. The leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, Denis Kapustin, openly embraces far-right views and uses White Rex as his military call sign. German officials and the Anti-Defamation League have identified Mr. Kapustin as a neo-Nazi.

In an interview on Wednesday at a base in a Ukrainian village, Mr. Kapustin said the attacks in Russia just before the election were bigger than the small-unit sabotage operations he had carried out.

The group, he said, was now attacking “en masse with tanks, armored vehicles and artillery” and had successfully destabilized the border area before the elections. Along with a cross-border attack last spring, he said, his group had managed to derail trains with minor operations.

His group’s attacks on Russia, he said, had shattered Putin’s assumption that Russia would be immune from retaliatory attacks after it invaded Ukraine.

“They were clearly shocked,” he said of Russia’s leadership. “They realized, OK, Pandora’s box is now open. Everything can happen.”

The Ukrainian military, he said, “helps us a lot” with intelligence, logistics and evacuation of the wounded, but, he added, it does not send Ukrainian citizens across the border to Russia. The ultimate goal of the operations, he said, is more than conducting “hit-and-run” attacks; it is intended to hold territory within Russia.

The cross-border raids, he said, had forced Russia to divert military resources that could have gone to the front in southeastern Ukraine. Yet Russian forces have an advantage in numbers, weapons and ammunition and have crept to the front in trench fighting in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian-backed groups have also suffered setbacks at the border. Russian fighter jets carried out bombings near the border with Ukraine, and Ukrainian authorities ordered the evacuation of 22 towns and villages on Saturday.

After donning their gear and checking their weapons, the Russian Volunteer Corps unit that set up in a farmhouse in the early hours of Thursday was ready to launch their attack into Russia – but the tanks and armored vehicles for the second waves of their attack were nowhere to be seen.

The soldiers sat on the ground and one fell asleep on top of boxes of tank ammunition. The column of armored vehicles had gotten lost on back roads near the border.

“Send me your coordinates,” a commander shouted over the radio to the armored car drivers. The drivers did not know them.

“Is it stupidity or sabotage?” the commander shouted back.

Trucks were sent to search for the armored vehicles. Hours passed before they arrived and it was already morning, even though the invasion of Russia would begin at night. It would now take place in daylight.

“It’s war, nothing ever goes according to plan,” said one of the officers.

Later, one tank broke down before reaching the border, and another was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the fighting.

The group returned to its base on Thursday evening, without having broken through the border. Military officials reached by phone said they would try again this weekend.

A few kilometers from the front line, a new sign was recently placed on the large billboard of an occupied city in Ukraine’s Luhansk region.

“Vote for our president. Together we are strong,” said a resident of Anastasiia on the sign in the white, blue and red colors of the Russian flag.

The message was clear to her: that the President was Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, not Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and that Mr. Putin was the only choice in the Russian presidential elections that have taken place in the occupied parts of Ukraine over the past three years. took place. to soften.

Mr. Putin long ago turned Russia’s elections into a predictable ritual designed to convey legitimacy to his rule. In the occupied territories, this practice has the additional purpose of presenting the occupation as a fait accompli and identifying dissenters, according to political analysts and Ukrainian officials.

“Elections in these regions confirm the idea that they have the same laws and procedures as the rest of the country,” said Ilya Grashchenkov, a Russian political scientist who is advising a long-running candidate running against Putin. The result, he said, is that they become woven into the fabric of the Russian state.

For many in the occupied territories, the election ritual takes place under the watchful eye of armed soldiers.

Wearing face coverings, the soldiers have escorted poll workers door to door through the occupied parts of the four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed after invading the country two years ago, according to local residents, statements by Russian officials and videos on social media. media.

Occupation officials say the show of force is necessary to protect those collecting votes.

The pollsters are calling for votes that would give Putin, who has no serious challenger on the ballot, his fifth term as president and another six years in office.

Ukrainian officials, Western allies and rights groups have called the election an illegal sham. They say the vote is marred by widespread intimidation and coercion and is part of a broader campaign of repression against residents of the occupied territories.

“They promote it even though it is not a real election,” said Anastasiia, a resident of the Luhansk region. “Everyone knows who is going to win.”

Anastasiia, 19, left the occupied territories earlier this month to build her life outside the war zone. Fearing retaliation, she asked to be identified only by her first name and to omit the name of her city to protect relatives left behind.

Few if any countries are expected to recognize election results in the occupied territories, including the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed in 2014 after earlier Russian aggression in southeastern Ukraine. The United Nations considers the entire territory to be part of Ukraine.

Analysts say the coercion, numerous electoral machinations and the exodus of pro-Ukrainian residents mean that Putin will almost certainly have an even bigger landslide in the occupied territories than in the rest of Russia.

For the Kremlin, it is the electoral process itself, and not the margin of victory, that furthers its cause.

Holding elections, however orchestrated and unfair, in the occupied territories allows Putin to strengthen his claim. It also allows him to portray himself as a champion of democracy and draw contrast with Ukraine, which suspended its presidential elections this year because of the war, said Mr. Grashchenkov, the political analyst.

Russia has already held two previous elections in the four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine that it has partially occupied since invading the country. The Kremlin claimed that 99 percent of residents of Donetsk, the most populous of the occupied regions, opted to join Russia in 2022. Putin’s party candidates won a landslide victory in local elections in the occupied territories last year.

Ukraine and Western countries have called these elections a sham.

Beyond such voices, Russia has eradicated Ukrainian identity and language with Russian curricula in schools, requiring Russian passports for work and cracking down on people with pro-Ukrainian political views.

Russia’s attempts to simulate a normal electoral process often collide with the realities of war, sometimes in farcical ways.

For starters, Russia does not have full control over the regions where it claims to vote. And just months after the country held a sham referendum to declare the city of Kherson part of Russia, its forces were forced to surrender the city to the Ukrainian army. (Russia continues to maintain control over the southern part of Kherson province).

A similar dissonance emerged as this month’s presidential election approached.

For example, little is known about how many voters there are. The constant shifting of the front lines, the flight of local residents and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and workers have dramatically changed the demography of the occupied territories. The full effect of this transformation remains largely unknown due to strict Russian censorship and ongoing fighting.

But the few available estimates indicate a drastic decline in the occupied population. Figures from Russia’s election commission show that the occupied Kherson region, for example, lost 13 percent of its registered voters, or 75,000 adults, in the last three months of last year.

In total, Russia’s election body claims that the four Ukrainian regions annexed in 2022 have 4.5 million voters. This would represent a 33 percent drop from the last voter list published by the Ukrainian government before the large-scale invasion. Ukrainian officials say the actual number today is likely even lower.

The picture is further complicated by the Russian government’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed in the occupied territories to vote there. Russian propaganda videos published on social media have shown election workers dodging grenades and diving into ditches to deliver ballot boxes to stoic soldiers in the trenches.

Russian authorities have not published the locations of polling stations or the names of members of local electoral commissions. It has also used the system to the state’s advantage.

Occupation officials have labeled the occupied territories as “remote,” a label previously reserved for places like the reindeer herding communities of the Arctic. This allowed Russia to extend the voting period there by three weeks, making the process even more difficult to monitor. Polling stations in two of the occupied regions, Zaporizhia and Donetsk, opened on February 25 and will close in March. Voting ends in Russia on December 17.

The “remote” designation has also given pro-Russian election officials the ability to go door to door soliciting votes from residents of the occupied territories. And because voting takes place there under martial law, these officials are accompanied by armed soldiers.

“Dear voters, we care about your safety!” the electoral commission for occupied Zaporizhia said wrote in one Telegram message earlier this month, where camouflaged voters with blurred faces cast their votes. “You don’t have to go anywhere to vote – we will come to your home with the ballots and ballot boxes.”

The Russian Election Commission claimed there were almost 1.4 million votes was released in remote areas on March 11. In the last Russian presidential election in 2018, remote areas in the far north and east of Russia accounted for just 180,000 votes.

Ukrainian officials say this rise is being achieved through intimidation.

“Voting is taking place at gunpoint,” Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights ombudsman in the Ukrainian parliament, said in a statement this month. “Participating in such ‘elections’ is a matter of survival.”

The actual wishes of the majority of residents are indecipherable. No independent opinion polls have been published in the occupied territories since the invasion. And the exodus of pro-Ukrainian residents means that many of those who remain often support the occupation, or at least have resigned themselves to it.

Russian officials have justified extraordinary voting procedures in the occupied territories as a security necessity. Ukrainian forces and partisans have regularly targeted Russian collaborators and occupation officials, including electoral workers.

Most recently, a deputy mayor of Berdiansk, on the coast of the Azov Sea, was killed in a car explosion on March 6. Ukraine’s military intelligence took responsibilitysays the official, Svetlana Samoilenko, was killed for forcing residents “to participate in illegal, fake voting.”

Ukrainian officials say Russia also uses elections to identify residents unhappy with the regime. The government in Kiev says Ukrainians are routinely jailed, tortured or summarily executed by invading forces as part of a campaign of forced “Russification” of the occupied territories.

“If you vote, you are loyal to Russia and you have opportunities,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst. “If not, you are under pressure. You are being investigated.”

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London.