Putin 'living in fear for his life', Zelensky's aide says

Russian president Vladimir Putin is "living in fear for his life" as his army retreats, a senior Ukrainian military aide said. Earlier this month, Russia announced it was withdrawing from the Kherson region, marking one of the most embarrassing defeats for Vladimir Putin.

"[Putin] is very afraid because there is no forgiveness in Russia for tsars who lose wars," Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, told The Times.

"He is fighting for his life now. If he loses the war, at least in the minds of the Russians, it means the end. The end of him as a political figure. And possibly in the physical sense," he added.

Meanwhile, Ukraine scrambled to restore power in the country, aided by the reconnection of the country's four nuclear plants, but millions of people were still in the dark after the most devastating Russian air strikes of the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleaded with Ukrainians to use energy sparingly. "If there is electricity, this doesn't mean you can turn on several powerful electrical appliances at once," he said adding that 6 million people were still without power, half as many as there were in the immediate aftermath of the Russian assault.

"Together we will be able to go through this difficult path for our country. We will overcome all challenges and we will definitely win," Zelensky said.

This comes as Russian president Vladimir Putin met with the mothers of soldiers saying that he shared the women's' pain, telling them that "the main guarantee of our success is our unity".

"Russia is first and foremost about people, their culture, their traditions, their history, which is passed down from generation to generation and absorbed with mother's milk," Vladimir Putin said.