Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on November 18 that almost half of that country's energy infrastructure has been disabled by Russian strikes, as Moscow kept up attacks causing gas and electricity cutoffs and Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in the east.
"Almost half of our energy system is out of order," Shmyhal said, noting that ,on November 15 alone, about 100 Russian rockets fell on Ukrainian cities with energy facilities being the main targets.
After the attacks, about 10 million Ukrainians were left without electricity in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Lviv, and other cities, officials said.
The Kremlin says the attacks -- which coincide with plummeting temperatures -- are the result of the "unwillingness of the Ukrainian side to enter into negotiations" with Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on November 17 that seven people had been killed in the attacks on infrastructure and officials "are doing everything to normalize the supply" of power and gas.
Ukrainian specialists working around the clock have restored power to about 70 percent of consumers in a number of regions in central Ukraine, authorities said, but cautioned that work is being slowed down by land mines planted by retreating Russian forces in the Kherson region.
Ukrainian experts have also arrived and are working at the location in the border area of southeastern Poland where a missile this week killed two people, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on November 18.
NATO member Poland and its Western allies say evidence from the site indicates that the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian air-defense missile during one of the heaviest waves of Russian air attacks on Ukraine.
Elsewhere, Ukraine said on November 18 that its forces repelled multiple Russian attacks in the east.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the military fought off Russian offensives in eight locations in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including Novoselivske and Stelmakhivka in Luhansk and Belohoryivka and Pervomaiske, Vodyane, and Novomykhailivka in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, investigators in Ukraine's recently liberated southern Kherson region uncovered 63 bodies with signs of torture after Russian forces left, Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said on national television.
A top Ukrainian human rights investigator released a video on November 17 of what he said was a torture chamber used by Russian forces in Kherson, including a small room in which he said up to 25 people were kept at a time.
Dmytro Lubinets, the parliament's human rights commissioner, shared the video on social media.
And the Russian Defense Minister alleged on November 18 that Ukrainian forces had executed at least 10 Russian prisoners of war in what he said were war crimes "blatantly ignored" by the West.
It cited video circulating on Russian social media that was initially impossible to verify, but said it was "neither the first nor the only war crime" perpetrated by pro-Kyiv forces.
Late on November 17, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Commander in Chief General Valery Zaluzhny, according to a readout of the call provided by his spokesperson.
