New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- Power by the hour in Kyiv, buses by the dozen in Kupiansk: a country times its days to outage windows and artillery while Europe races to plug the air-defense gap.

KYIV - Trains rolled through the capital on reserve power, traffic lights blinked out in patches, and water pressure fell in a few neighborhoods before stabilizing. For much of Tuesday and into Wednesday, Ukraine's largest city moved in fits as the national grid absorbed another round of strain. Day 1,328 of the war felt less like a single event and more like a sequence: a grid lurching back to life after fresh strikes, local evacuations in the northeast where the front presses hard, and diplomatic signals abroad that will shape how cold the coming winter...