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| The New York Times |
Ukraine said it had struck the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet with missiles, while Russia claimed the damage was caused by a fire. The attack on the ship came as Moscow moved to escalate its offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine, and E.U. leaders considered the oil ban despite its potential to increase energy prices around the bloc.
ImageMourners at a funeral ceremony for Taras Bobanych, 33, deputy commander of the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector, at a cemetery in Lviv on Wednesday.
Mourners at a funeral ceremony for Taras Bobanych, 33, deputy commander of the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector, at a cemetery in Lviv on Wednesday.Credit...Mauricio Lima
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| Sunday Times UK |
Dan Bilefsky and Matina Stevis-Gridneff
Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.
European officials are drafting the most contested measure yet to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, an embargo on Russian oil products — a move long resisted because of its enormous costs for Germany and its potential to disrupt politics around the region and increase energy prices.
The growing consensus around a step previously seen as politically untenable underscores the extent to which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unified the world’s biggest trading bloc against Russian aggression. It would need to be approved by the European Union’s 27 member countries to go into effect.
Europe is highly dependent on Russian gas supplies, and in the past the E.U has equivocated over such a drastic move because of fears of economic turmoil that could follow. There is also worry over President Vladimir V. Putin’s longstanding tactic of wielding Russian energy as a geopolitical weapon.
As the E.U. was considering how to ratchet up the costs of war for Mr. Putin, Russia’s flagship in its Black Sea fleet was “seriously damaged” on Thursday and its crew forced to abandon it, a symbolic blow to Russian forces that could also have strategic consequences for the war. The event quickly became caught up in the conflict’s parallel information war, with Ukraine claiming to have struck the vessel, Moskva, with Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles and Russia saying that an onboard fire had caused the damage.
Although analysts said the possible loss of the ship would not alter the course of the war, an attack by the Neptune missile systems, if confirmed, would be a significant sign of Ukraine’s military capability and could serve as a deterrent to Russian naval attacks. It would also be the first successful Ukrainian attack on a major Russian warship at sea rather than at port.
Here are other major developments:
Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana traveled to Kyiv and sites of rights abuses in the city’s suburbs, becoming the first American officials to turn up since the start of the war. The United States is also considering whether to send a high-level official to Kyiv in the coming days.
Russia is continuing to target southern Ukraine, where it hopes to complete a “land bridge” connecting Crimea to its forces in the east. The main remaining obstacle to that goal is the besieged southern city of Mariupol.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s former prime minister, said Moscow would be forced to “seriously strengthen” its defenses in the Baltics if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, as the two countries are considering.
Moscow said on Thursday that Ukrainian helicopters had launched strikes against a Russian town near the Ukrainian border, the latest in a series of reported attacks that has prompted Russian threats of retaliation.
Ukrainian officials say that departing Russian soldiers have laced large swaths of the country with buried land mines and jury-rigged bombs.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff
Europe starts drafting a ban on Russian oil imports.
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| After weeks of war and mounting evidence of atrocities committed by Russian forces, European Union officials will prepare an embargo of Russian oil products later this month. Credit...Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters |
BRUSSELS — European Union officials are drafting the most contested measure yet to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, an embargo on Russian oil products.
The bloc has long resisted a ban on Russian oil because of its enormous costs for Germany and its potential to disrupt politics around the region and increase energy prices.
But E.U. officials and diplomats say the union is now moving toward adopting a phased-in ban designed to give Germany and other countries time to arrange alternative suppliers. The union took a similar approach earlier this month when it banned Russian coal, providing for a four-month transition period.
The oil embargo would not be put up for negotiation among the E.U. member states until after the final round of the French elections, on April 24, to ensure that the impact on gas prices does not help the right-wing populist candidate Marine Le Pen and hurt president Emmanuel Macron’s chances of re-election, officials said.
The timeline is as important as the details of the ban, and is indicative of the brinkmanship required to convince all 27 E.U. countries to agree to take the previously unthinkable step, as Russia prepares its renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine.
But officials and diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the news media, said there was a growing sense that the measure would be taken even in the absence of more revelations like the atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine.
“The Commission and E.U. members have smartly shied away from defining red lines that would trigger a sanctions response since Russia attacked Ukraine,” said Emre Peker, a director at the Eurasia Group consultancy.
“I expect the E.U. will shy away from defining triggers,” he added, “as continued escalation by Russia in eastern Ukraine and revelations from Bucha and elsewhere continue to drive momentum behind a hardening European stance. Any other major catastrophes that unfold will just add more impetus to the E.U. response.”
The European Union, which has taken five rounds of increasingly severe financial sanctions against Russia since the invasion began on Feb. 24, is under tremendous pressure by allies to stop lining the Kremlin’s coffers through oil purchases. So far they have kept gas imports from Russia off the table because they remain too critical to important European economies, Germany’s in particular.
Ivan Nechepurenko
Moscow accuses Ukraine of conducting airstrikes against a Russian border town.
Moscow said on Thursday that Ukrainian helicopters had launched strikes against a Russian town near the Ukrainian border, the latest in a series of reported attacks that have prompted Russian threats of retaliation.
It was not possible to confirm the Russian account, and Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on it. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Moscow has often blamed Ukrainian forces for attacking Russian border towns and crossings, which Ukraine’s National Security Council has dismissed as an effort “to ramp up anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russia.”
The latest reported incident occurred in Klimovo, a sleepy Russian town about six miles northwest of the Ukrainian border, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement. Two low-flying Ukrainian helicopters fired on least six residential buildings, injuring seven people, the statement said.
Over the past week, Russia has repeatedly accused Ukraine of conducting attacks and preparing acts of sabotage on Russian soil. On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that if the attacks continue, it would retaliate by striking Ukrainian command points, including in Kyiv.
In recent weeks, Russian officials have also accused Ukraine of attacking a border village in the Belgorod region, an airstrike against a major fuel depot in the region and the bombardment of a railway bridge leading to Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer
As two U.S. lawmakers visit Kyiv, the trip’s organizer says he hopes more officials, and weapons, will follow.
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| Representative Victoria Spartz, who was born in Ukraine, traveled to Kyiv and its suburbs with Senator Steve Daines on Thursday, weeks after delivering an impassioned speech condemning Russia’s invasion. Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times |
BORODIANKA, Ukraine — In a hastily organized show of support for Ukraine, Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana traveled on Thursday to Kyiv and sites of rights abuses in the city’s suburbs, becoming the first American officials to turn up since the start of the war.
“Nothing can substitute for actually being here, seeing it first-hand, spending time with the people and leaders here in Ukraine who have been horribly affected by this war,” Mr. Daines said in an interview, standing on a heap of rubble from an apartment building that had collapsed on its inhabitants in the town of Borodianka.
It was important, he said, for American elected officials to show solidarity.
Mr. Daines and Ms. Spartz, both Republicans, were invited by the Ukrainian government, with just over a day’s notice. Mr. Daines had broken off from a visit to Eastern Europe to make the trip. Ms. Spartz, who last year became the first Ukrainian-born lawmaker to serve in Congress, had planned an unofficial visit to Ukraine and later joined Mr. Daines for the trip supported by the Ukrainian government.
Once in Kyiv, where they arrived by train from western Ukraine, the pair traveled by car escorted by the police on a route through stark scenes of destruction, blown-up Russian tanks, and rubble, where rescuers were still searching for bodies. The two also observed an exhumation from a communal grave in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv where hundreds of bodies were found on the streets after Russian forces retreated.
The horror in Bucha — where some victims’ hands were bound and some had been shot in the head, in a sign of extrajudicial killings — has become emblematic of the war’s toll and a new touchstone of rights abuse in wartime in Europe. Several European delegations have also visited the site.
The two Republican lawmakers arrived as the Biden administration is considering sending a high-level official to Kyiv in the days ahead as a sign of support, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made high-profile visits over the past month to countries neighboring Ukraine, and other top American officials have made similar visits, some coming close to the border. But no American official had publicly visited Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in late February, and the United States has evacuated all diplomats.
Both Mr. Daines and Ms. Spartz said they were urging the United States to return diplomats to Ukraine as some European states have done now that Kyiv, the capital, is no longer under imminent threat of attack by Russia.
“I hope that our visit will encourage more American officials and leaders to come, to stand with the people of Ukraine,” Mr. Daines said, while Ms. Spartz said it was “important to show our support, to show we care.”
Standing in the rubble of the collapsed building, where Ukrainian officials have said that at least 21 people died, Mr. Daines found a child’s toy — a wooden car — and looked into apartments that had been peeled open by the explosion, revealing kitchen cabinets still hanging on a wall.
In Bucha, the two watched the Ukrainian authorities remove three bodies from the tan clay soil of a churchyard where a communal grave was being excavated.
Mr. Daines described what he had seen as “indisputable evidence of war crimes.”
“It’s everywhere,” he said. “We’ve been driving for miles and miles and miles, seeing death and destruction caused by Vladimir Putin in this evil invasion.”
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said he had arranged the visit in the hope that more American lawmakers would follow, get a first-hand sense of the stakes in the war, and vote to provide additional weapons to Ukraine.
Both Ms. Spartz and Mr. Daines said they supported bipartisan efforts in Congress to spur the Biden administration to deliver weapons to the Ukrainian Army more swiftly.
“I think we should be providing the lethal aid that they need to win this war,” Mr. Daines said. “The humanitarian crisis will not end until the war ends. And the war will not end until the Ukrainians win.”
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| Using a Neptune missile on Russia’s Black Sea flagship would be a big deal,’ a former U.S. Army commander says. |
Michael Schwirtz
Using a Neptune missile on Russia’s Black Sea flagship would be a big deal,’ a former U.S. Army commander says.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said on Thursday that taking out the Moskva, Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea, would be more than a symbolic victory for Ukrainian forces.
The successful use of Ukrainian-made Neptune missile systems, which have never been used in combat, would serve as a deterrence to Russian naval forces and make them reconsider plans to conduct amphibious assaults along the Ukrainian coast, General Hodges said in an interview.
“This is a big deal because it shows that the Ukrainians have some capability,” he said. “This will be a huge boost to them and will also increase deterrence. Russian ships will be hesitant to get too close.”
Marc SantoraReporting from Warsaw
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| The Russian Navy’s Flagship, guided-missile cruiser Moskva in Istanbul last year. Credit...Yoruk Isik/Reuters |
John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said on CNN that the United States had not yet determined what caused the fire aboard Russia’s Black Sea flagship. He also said the Pentagon’s understanding was that the vessel was still afloat.
Ivan NechepurenkoReporting from Tbilisi, Georgia
Russia said there would be “no more talk of a nuclear-free Baltics” if Sweden and Finland decided to join NATO. Former President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who is now a senior security official, said Moscow would be compelled to “seriously strengthen” its ground and air defense forces in the area, and potentially deploy nuclear-equipped warships “at arm’s length” from the two countries.
Marc Santora, Michael Schwirtz and Ivan Nechepurenko
Damage to Russia’s Black Sea flagship is a boost to Ukraine, but unlikely to alter the war.
The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet suffered catastrophic damage on Thursday that a senior Ukrainian official said was the result of a missile strike by Ukrainian coastal defense forces, though Russia claimed that the damage was caused by an onboard fire.
The crew of the Russian guided-missile cruiser, the Moskva, abandoned ship after a fire detonated ammunition aboard, Russia’s defense ministry said. It said in a statement that the fire aboard the cruiser had been contained, but the Ukrainians said the ship had sunk.
The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea, Maxim Marchenko, said on Telegram that the country’s forces had struck the ship with anti-ship Neptune missiles. The senior Ukrainian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe an active military engagement, said that it was the first time the Ukrainian-developed Neptune missile had been used in the war.
There was no independent visual confirmation of the vessel’s status, and the statement about the Neptune could not be independently verified.
Whatever the cause of the ship’s possible demise, it was a potent symbolic victory for the Ukrainian military, an embarrassment for Moscow, and — if a Neptune was used — a demonstration of the power that new weapons could have in shaping the war. It would be the first successful Ukrainian attack on a major Russian warship at sea rather than at port.
Ships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet have been offshore since the start of the war, periodically launching rocket or missile attacks against targets inside Ukraine. The fleet has cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, removing a key economic lifeline.
The potential loss of the Moskva provides a morale boost to Ukrainian forces, but it is unlikely to change the course of the war. Russian forces are on the verge of taking the strategic port city of Mariupol, which would pave the way for the creation of a “land bridge” between Russian territory and the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
The Moskva, with a crew of almost 700, is the pride of the Russian naval fleet in the Black Sea. It was originally built in the Soviet era in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv — the city where Ukrainian forces last month mounted a spirited defense that stopped the Russian advance toward Odesa.
The Ukrainians have long had the ability to strike Russian ships parked near their territorial waters, but the Neptune gives the nation’s territorial defense forces far greater range. The missile, which is based on the Soviet AS-20 “Kayak” anti-ship missile and is similar to the U.S.-built Harpoon missile, can reach targets as far as 200 miles offshore.
As the Russian Navy positioned its fleet in menacing fashion on the Black Sea in the weeks before the war, Ukraine raced to prepare defenses and its military described the Neptune as a vital weapon being added to its arsenal.
It is unclear how many Neptune missiles Ukraine’s Navy has. But if it was a Neptune that hit the Moskva, it would be a demonstration of the weapon’s effectiveness. The Ukrainians have called on the West to deliver sophisticated anti-ship weapons since the war began.
The Pentagon estimates that the Russian Navy has “a couple of dozen ships” in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and Ukraine has had a hard time countering Russia’s naval dominance.
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A satellite image from Maxar Technologies showed the Moskva in the Black Sea northwest of Sevastopol, Crimea, on April 10.
Credit...Maxar Technologies, via Reuters
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In March, Ukraine’s military said it had destroyed a Russian ship at the southern Ukrainian port of Berdiansk, which is under Russian occupation, and videos and photos reviewed by The New York Times confirmed at the time that a Russian ship was on fire at the port.
Lt. Cmdr. Jason Lancaster, a U.S. Navy surface warfare officer, said the threat posed by missiles like the Neptune “changes operational behavior” of an opponent.
Writing for the Center for International Maritime Security this month, he said that “these behavioral changes limit Russia’s ability to utilize their fleet to their advantage,” and that “the added stress of sudden combat increases fatigue and can lead to mistakes.”
The flagship vessel entered service in the early 1980s, was renamed the Moskva in 1996, and was partially refitted in 2020, according to the Russian news media. It was an integral part of the Russian advance in this war.
It was also the vessel that Ukrainian troops famously told off as it approached a Ukrainian garrison on Snake Island on the Black Sea.
According to an audio exchange made public in late February, a Russian officer told the Ukrainians to surrender. “This is a Russian military warship,” the officer said. “I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and needless casualties. Otherwise, you will be bombed.”
A Ukrainian soldier offered a simple, if obscene, refusal, using words that have become a rallying cry around Ukraine.
Marc Santora Reporting from Warsaw
Russia’s tech industry faces a ‘brain drain’ as workers flee.
Almost one million Ukrainians who fled the country after the Russian invasion has returned, according to Andriy Demchenko, the spokesman of the State Border Guard Service. More than 4.5 million people left or were evacuated from Ukraine into neighboring countries in less than two months of fighting, according to the United Nations. Another 7.1 million people have been internally displaced.
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| Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, Armenia. The country has become a landing spot for tech workers leaving Russia.Credit...Daro Sulakauri for The New York Times |
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Zvartnots International Airport in Yerevan, Armenia. The country has become a landing spot for tech workers leaving Russia.
In early March, days after Russia invaded Ukraine and began cracking down on dissent at home, Konstantin Siniushin, a venture capitalist in Riga, Latvia, helped charter two planes out of Russia to help people flee.
Both planes departed from Moscow, carrying tech workers from the Russian capital as well as St. Petersburg, Perm, Ekaterinburg, and other cities. Together, the planes moved about 300 software developers, entrepreneurs, and other technology specialists out of the country, including 30 Russian workers from start-ups backed by Mr. Siniushin.
Thousands of other Russian tech workers fled to Armenia in the weeks after the invasion. Thousands more flew to Georgia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries that accept Russian citizens without visas.
By March 22, a Russian tech industry trade group estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 tech workers had left the country and that an additional 70,000 to 100,000 would soon follow. They are part of a much larger exodus of workers from Russia, but their departure could have an even more lasting impact on the country’s economy.
The exodus will fundamentally change the Russian tech industry, according to interviews with more than two dozen people who are part of the tight-knit community of Russian tech workers around the world, including many who left the country in recent weeks. An industry once seen as a rising force in the Russian economy is losing vast swaths of its workers. It is losing many of the bright young minds building companies for the future.
“Most Russian tech workers are part of the global market. Either they work for global companies or they are tech entrepreneurs trying to build new companies for the global market,” Mr. Siniushin said through an interpreter from his office in Riga. “So they are leaving the country.”
The recent exodus reverses 10 to 15 years of momentum in the Russian tech industry, said Konstantin Sonin, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, who immigrated from Russia to the United States. “It is now like the ‘90s, when whoever was able to move moved out of the country,” he said.
Tech is a small part of the Russian economy compared with the energy and metals industries, but it has been growing rapidly. The loss of many young, educated, forward-looking people could have economic ramifications for years to come, economists said.