The Patriot would be the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has provided to Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks.

Large parts of Ukraine are still under Russian control, heavy fighting continues around the country, and the city of Kherson itself remains within reach of Moscow’s shells and missiles.

A forced pullout from Kherson – the only provincial capital Moscow had captured after invading Ukraine – would mark one of Russia’s worst setbacks of the war.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and ‘well over’ 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the Russians were feigning a pullout from Kherson to lure the Ukrainian army into an entrenched battle.

The mayor of Kyiv said that the city’s power grid was operating in ’emergency mode.’

Ukrainians are bracing for less electric power this winter following a sustained Russian barrage on their infrastructure in recent weeks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expects his troop mobilization for combat in Ukraine to end in about two weeks.