The reactionary regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin is stepping up its bombardment of Ukraine’s cities, residential areas and power supplies. Putin counts on demoralizing the Ukrainian people, enabling Moscow to conquer and assimilate them. This is despite Russia’s forces suffering catastrophic casualties.
The Kremlin aims to deprive the Ukrainian people of heat during the coming winter’s frigid temperatures. But despite temporary blackouts, the dedication and ingenuity of Ukrainian power workers has kept the national electrical grid functioning.
On Oct. 10, Moscow launched 465 drones and nearly three dozen missiles, disrupting power supplies in nine regions of Ukraine and plunging some parts of the capital, Kyiv, into darkness. Ukrainian air defenses were able to down 405 drones and 15 missiles, but the rest got through. The Russian military has adapted its airborne weaponry to make unexpected dives and turns, which Kyiv’s defenses haven’t adjusted to yet.
In Kyiv and elsewhere, 29 people were injured while a 7-year-old boy was killed in Zaporizhzhia.
The Kremlin has also escalated attacks on Ukraine’s trains and rail network. A Russian drone strike targeted two passenger trains in the Sumy region Oct. 4, killing one person and injuring at least 30.
Ukraine’s agricultural production is also a target. A giant Soviet-era pig farm outside Kharkiv was hit by three waves of drones Oct. 3. Out of 15,000 pigs penned up there, 13,000 were killed in the attack and subsequent fire.
These brutal attacks aimed at civilians were met with jingoistic praise in the state-controlled Russian media. On Rossiya-1 TV, Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov called for even heavier strikes “to turn off the lights for good and make them freeze in the dark this winter” and “to break the will of the Ukrainian people.”
By contrast, Ukraine is concentrating on launching its precision drones and missiles against Russian military targets, as well as oil refineries and depots crucial for Putin’s war machine. As Moscow responds by shifting remaining oil and gas supplies from civilian use, prices at the pump for workers have soared.
Russian airfields, ammunition and missile stockpiles have been hit, including in Moscow-occupied areas in Ukraine, from the Donbas to Sevastopol in Crimea.
Kyiv has launched more than 30 strikes on Russian oil and gas sites since the start of August, setting many ablaze hundreds of miles inside Russia. At least 16 of the country’s 38 oil refineries have been hit, with five disabled, cutting Moscow’s productive capacity by 20%.
Putin is prepared to sacrifice Russian workers in uniform en masse to pursue his dream of conquest. But Ukrainian toilers are determined to defend their country’s national sovereignty.
Heavy casualties for small gains
Russian forces have suffered over 1 million casualties since the war began. Moscow now controls a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and has seized less than 1% since January 2024.
Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian senator and member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party from the part of Zaporizhzhia occupied by Moscow, admitted last month that despite relentless Russian attacks, the upper hand is with the Ukrainian defenders. Russian forces are advancing only “with enormous difficulty and at a colossal cost,” he said.
He described the front line as largely deadlocked today. Russian armor “is destroyed before it even reaches the front,” he said, and small infantry assault groups push forward with little success. Despite Russia’s advances in drone technology, Kyiv’s forces have “10 times more drones.”
Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former top general and current ambassador to the U.K., wrote in the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya online newspaper Sept. 24, “Ukraine’s advantage lies in its people.” They “not only stopped the invader but have already made the country a hub of battlefield innovation.”
For months Putin has concentrated forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, trying to take the strategic hub of Pokrovsk, without success. Ukrainian forces inflict heavy losses on the attackers daily. Some 20 Russian workers in uniform, a platoon’s worth, die for every yard of ground gained. And many gains are rapidly reversed.
‘I just want to get home alive’
Journalists from the independent outlet Verstka quoted revealing discussions from private group chats of mobilized Russian soldiers at the front Sept. 26. They interviewed several about life in the trenches and their views on the war. Many said the prospect of being thrown into Moscow’s “meat grinder” attacks is a deadly game of roulette.
“I just want to return home alive. I’m not a patriot and I’m not dying to take over Ukraine,” one draftee, a retired cop, said. “Everyone wants to go home.”
“People are fleeing every day” from the front, said a mobilized soldier serving in a military police unit tasked with catching deserters. He said few people condemn them.
“I Want to Live,” a group in Ukraine that helps Russian soldiers surrender safely to Ukrainian forces, released figures Oct. 8 on recent Russian military losses. The staggering number is 281,550 casualties in just eight months of 2025, about a battalion a day.
Putin tries to hide the huge losses from the Russian people. Having brutally suppressed anti-war protests at home, his regime is now investigating the Russian Antiwar Committee and hundreds of thousands of other anti-Kremlin exile groups and individuals abroad, whose reports on the real facts of the war make their way back into Russia.
The regime calls them “terrorists,” claiming they’re planning the “overthrow of the government.” Putin rightly fears Russian working people will ultimately respond to such a call.