Russia's intensified attacks on Ukraine's power grid have caused outages, with a loss of eight gigawatts of capacity, leading to power shortages and enforced electricity restrictions.

Ukrainian President Zelensky reports missile and drone strikes on energy facilities across seven regions, resulting in blackouts and extensive damage to the energy infrastructure.

Ukraine is importing power and recruiting up to 20,000 prisoners into its army in exchange for amnesty to address the shortage of soldiers and weapons.

The EU is considering using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine's defense, and the UK has expelled a Russian defense attaché amid visa restrictions, while the EU debates new sanctions targeting Russian LNG.

Western nations, including France's Macron, discuss support for Ukraine, but NATO has no plans to send troops as the Kremlin warns against such involvement.

Russian military actions have caused nearly $12.5 billion in damage to Ukraine's infrastructure and have escalated to potential humanitarian crises.