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KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a major buildup of his country’s military forces Thursday in an apparent effort to replenish troops that have suffered heavy losses in six months of bloody war and prepare for a long, hard battle in Ukraine. The move to increase troop numbers by 137,000, or 13 percent, to 1.15 million by the end of the year comes amid chilling developments on the ground in Ukraine:

Fueling fears of a nuclear disaster, the Zaporizhzhia power plant amid fighting in southern Ukraine was cut off after fires damaged the last functioning transmission line, Ukrainian authorities said. The incident caused a blackout across the region. The plant was later reconnected to the grid, a local official based in Russia said. The death toll from a Russian rocket attack on a railway station and the surrounding area on Ukraine’s Independence Day has risen to 25, Ukrainian authorities said. Russia said it targeted a military train and claimed to have killed more than 200 Ukrainian reservists in Wednesday’s attack.

Putin’s decree did not specify whether the expansion would be achieved by expanding the military, recruiting more volunteers or both. But some Russian military analysts predicted a greater reliance on volunteers because of Kremlin concerns about a possible domestic backlash from an expanded camp. The move will boost Russia’s armed forces to a total of 2.04 million, including 1.15 million troops. Western estimates of Russian dead in the Ukraine war range from more than 15,000 to more than 20,000 – more than the Soviet Union lost during its 10-year war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said last week that up to 80,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded, eroding Moscow’s ability to launch major offensives. The Kremlin has said that only volunteer contract soldiers are taking part in the Ukraine war. But more willing soldiers may be hard to come by, and military analysts said planned troop levels may still be insufficient to sustain operations. Retired Russian colonel Viktor Murakovsky said in comments to the Moscow-based online news agency RBC that the Kremlin would likely try to continue relying on volunteers and predicted that would account for most of the increase. Another Russian military expert, Alexei Leonkov, noted that training in complex modern weapons typically takes three years. And draftees serve only one year. In this handout photo from video released by the Press Service of the Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday, Russian Malka artillery systems fire from an unknown location in Ukraine. (Photo: Press Service of the Russian Ministry of Defense via AP) “A draft will not help with this, so there will be no increase in the number of lottery tickets,” Leonkov was quoted as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. Fears of a Chernobyl-like disaster have risen in Ukraine amid clashes surrounding the Russian-held Zaporizhia plant. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of bombing the site. It was not immediately clear whether the damaged line in Thursday’s incident provided outgoing electricity or incoming power to operate the plant, including the vital cooling system for the reactors. Ukrainian authorities said a backup power line using electricity from another, non-nuclear plant remained connected and in use. The governor of Zaporizhzhia, who has settled in Russia, Yevgeny Balitsky, claimed that a Ukrainian attack caused the fire that destroyed the transmission lines. Ukraine’s nuclear power agency, Energoatom, blamed “attackers’ actions”. Although the incident apparently did not affect the reactors’ cooling systems – the loss of which could lead to a meltdown – it sparked fears of disaster. “The situation is extremely dangerous,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. “I’m getting reports that there are forest fires near the power plant. We still need to look into this matter more.” Elsewhere on the battlefront, the deadly strike at the train station in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, came as Ukraine braced for attacks linked to the national holiday and the war semester, which also hit two on Wednesday. Ukraine’s deputy chief of staff, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, did not say whether all 25 people killed were civilians. If it were, it would amount to one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in weeks. Thirty one people were reported injured. Witnesses said some of the victims, including at least one child, were burned to death in train cars or passing cars. “Everything was covered in dust,” said Olena Budnyk, a 65-year-old Chaplyne resident. “There was a dust storm. We couldn’t see anything. We didn’t know where to run.” A person holds a placard reading, “The war in Ukraine is not over,” in Habima Square as people gather to mark Ukrainian Independence Day in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Wednesday. (Photo: Ariel Schalit, Associated Press) The dead included an 11-year-old boy who was found under the rubble of a house and a 6-year-old who was killed in a car fire near the train station, authorities said. Russia’s defense ministry said its forces used an Iskander missile to strike a military train carrying Ukrainian troops and equipment to the front line in eastern Ukraine. The ministry claimed that more than 200 reservists were “destroyed on their way to the combat zone”. The attack served as a painful reminder of Russia’s continued ability to cause large-scale suffering. Wednesday’s national holiday celebrated Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. Tetiana Kvitnytska, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional health department, said those injured in the train station attack suffered head injuries, broken limbs, burns and shrapnel wounds. After attacks in which civilians were killed, the Russian government has repeatedly claimed that its forces only target legitimate military targets. Hours before the carnage at the train station, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu insisted the military was doing everything it could to save civilians, even at the cost of slowing its offensive in Ukraine. In April, a Russian missile attack on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed more than 50 people as crowds of mostly women and children tried to flee the fighting. The attack was denounced as a war crime. In Moscow on Thursday, Dmitry Medvedev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said Western hopes of a Ukrainian victory were futile and stressed that the Kremlin would press home what it called a “special military operation”, leaving only two possible Results. “One is the achievement of all the goals of the special military operation and the recognition of this result by Kyiv,” Medvedev said on the channel of his messaging app. “The second is a military coup in Ukraine followed by recognition of the results of the special operation.” x

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Derek Gatopoulos and Hanna Arhirova