Water supplies returned to residents of Ukraine’s capital on Saturday, and the metro system resumed, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, as the city began to recover from a barrage of Russian missile strikes Friday that pummeled critical infrastructure. A third of people in Kyiv remained without energy, and emergency power shutdowns were scheduled, he added. Damaged cities — including Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava and Dnipro — reported power outages after the strikes.
In Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the death toll rose to four on Saturday after the body of a toddler was pulled from the rubble, according to the regional governor, and dozens remain injured. Zelensky said such attacks would not “change the balance of power in this war,” contending that Ukrainian forces had shot down at least 60 Russian missiles. However, he warned that the Kremlin still has enough missiles to mount several more “heavy strikes” across Ukraine, and he called for international support in bolstering its air defenses.
Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.
4. From our correspondents
War in Ukraine has devastated a once feared Russian brigade: Considered one of Russia’s most formidable military units, the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade was effectively destroyed after it sent its best fighters and weapons to Ukraine this year, write Greg Miller, Mary Ilyushina, Catherine Belton, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Paul Sonne.
The 200th was among the first units to plunge into Ukraine on Feb. 24, as part of a fearsome assault on the city of Kharkiv. By May, the unit was staggering back across the Russian border desperate to regroup, according to internal brigade documents reviewed by The Washington Post. A document detailing a mid-war inventory of its ranks shows that by late May, fewer than 900 soldiers were left in two battalion tactical groups that, according to Western officials, had departed the brigade’s garrison in Russia with more than 1,400.
The brigade’s collapse in part reflects the difficulty of its assignment in the war and the valiant performance of Ukraine’s military. But a closer examination of the 200th shows that its fate was also shaped by many of the same forces that derailed President Putin’s invasion plans — endemic corruption, strategic miscalculations and a Kremlin failure to grasp the true capabilities of its own military or those of its adversary.
Andrew Jeong
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