Bog Definition Which of Polands Physical Features Has Made It an Easy Target for Invading Armies
Russia fires missile barrage at Ukrainian cities and military targets.
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Russia pounded military targets throughout Ukraine on Saturday, in apparent retaliation for the sinking of an important naval ship and in preparation for an offensive in the Donbas region of the country's east.
Russia's Defense Ministry said Saturday the strikes had destroyed workshops in a tank factory in Kyiv and a military hardware repair facility in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine. Also targeted was the Ukrainian military factory on the outskirts of Kyiv, called Vizar, that produced the Neptune anti-ship missile that sank the flagship vessel of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, in a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.
The coming battle in the east will be fought largely on open terrain offering far fewer havens for Ukrainian fighters to hide while launching attacks on Russian armored vehicles, as they did so successfully in repelling the Russian forces from around Kyiv. The Russian missile attacks on Friday into Saturday seemed calibrated to weaken Ukraine's ability to withstand armored assaults in that setting.
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The strikes served as a reminder that wherever the fighting is concentrated on the ground, Russia still can and will strike anywhere in Ukraine, and they underscored the importance of Ukraine's industrial capacity, including its ability to make and repair weapons.
Why Russia waited until two months into the war to target these facilities is unclear. While the strikes could have been a response to the sinking of the Moskva, Russia's Defense Ministry has not acknowledged that Ukrainian missiles hit the ship, which it says was mortally wounded by a fire and ammunition explosion.
Some analysts have pointed to the recent appointment of a top Russian battlefield commander in Ukraine, Gen. Aleksandr V. Dvornikov, as a factor in Moscow's strategy. He is expected to address the lack of coordination and planning that has hampered Russian forces so far, reorganizing and redirecting them for the fighting in Donbas.
The rocket and missile attacks on Saturday also rained down on an airport in central Ukraine, the Black Sea port of Odesa, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the western city of Lviv. Explosions from at least one strike shook Kyiv, the capital, and Ukraine's air defense force said it had shot down a volley of four cruise missiles in flight elsewhere in the country.
Moscow retaliated diplomatically against the West on Saturday, barring Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other senior British officials from entering the country over their support for Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Mr. Johnson has been a leading voice in Europe against Moscow, and even traveled to Kyiv a week ago to meet with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Britain has supplied Ukraine with new anti-ship missile systems, armored vehicles and other military equipment. Ukrainian fighters have used lightweight anti-tank weapons supplied by Britain to devastating effect against Russia's armored vehicles.
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In Germany, the economy minister called on people to cut back their energy consumption, including by drawing curtains and lowering the temperature in their homes, as part of what he described as a national effort to reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Germany has joined other Western nations in imposing embargoes on Russian coal and possibly oil, but it is reluctant to do the same with Russian gas, which accounts for more than half its gas imports.
"We can only become more independent of Russian imports if we see it as a large joint project in which we all participate," the minister, Robert Habeck, told the Funke media group on Friday. He added, in reference to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: "It's easy on the wallet and annoys Putin."
In the weeks since Ukrainian forces repelled the Russian attempt to seize Kyiv, residents have been streaming back into the city. But the window-rattling blasts Saturday offered a stark reminder that the war is far from over, even far from the front.
Russia's cruise missiles, the principal weapon in Saturday's attacks, can strike over long distances at sites throughout the country. Through the day Saturday, air raid sirens wailed in Kyiv, and overnight the distant, dull thuds of air defense missiles exploding could be heard in the sky over the city.
"Our air defenses are working, our military is defending us, but all the same there were explosions," in a southeastern district of the capital, Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said in a statement on Telegram. The strike killed one person and wounded several others, he said.
In the statement, Mr. Klitschko said Kyiv remains a target for Russia despite the defeat of its ground assault force, which retreated hastily, leaving in its wake burned tanks, its own war dead and hundreds of civilian bodies lying on streets. Police said Friday they have so far found 900 bodies of civilians in the Kyiv region, the administrative district surrounding the capital.
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President Zelensky said in a late night address on Saturday that Russian forces had been expelled from nearly 1,000 villages, towns and cities of varying sizes across Ukraine. Most of the liberated communities lie in the northern parts of the country, and had suffered extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure during the monthlong Russian occupation.
Mr. Zelensky also acknowledged the Ukrainian army had lost as many as 3,000 troops in fighting to date, while insisting that Russian fatalities were far higher.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the air defense force said it had shot down four cruise missiles flying toward Lviv, and that a missile had exploded in the air near Odesa. Also near Odesa, Ukraine shot down a Russian unmanned aerial drone as it was reconnoitering military sites, the local authorities said.
Later, Mr. Zelensky acknowledged that Russia seemed poised to take full control of Mariupol, a strategic southern port, with its troops controlling all but a small part of a besieged city they have reduced to ruins. In recent days, Russian forces have advanced to the city center, and the remaining Ukrainian troops, hunkered down in the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and in Mariupol's port, are greatly outnumbered and desperately short of provisions.
"Nevertheless, our guys are heroically defending," said Mr. Zelensky, speaking to Ukrainian media outlets. "We are grateful to them for that."
Near Kirovograd in central Ukraine, Russian long-range rockets struck an airport Thursday night, according to a local mayor, who said there were dead and wounded after the attack but did not specify how many.
The cruise missile strikes in Kyiv have continued nearly daily through the war but often hitting targets in outlying areas, without causing much disruption to life in the city, which has been reviving. So far, missiles have not struck key government buildings, including the presidential office and Parliament — whether they were targeted but successfully shielded by Ukraine's air defenses is not clear.
"The war goes on in Kyiv and we cannot relax," said Galina Ostapenko, 72, a retired postal worker, who was walking in the yard of her apartment building a block or so from the site of the strike Saturday.
"What happened pains my heart," she said of the explosion in her neighborhood. "I will teach my grandchildren to hate the Russians."
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As Russia steps up its attacks on Ukrainian military targets, Washington has been speeding up efforts to supply Ukraine with advanced weapons and long-range artillery pieces in recent days. Russia warned Washington of "unpredictable consequences" if it continues to ship heavy arms to Ukraine.
The attacks with precision munitions came as Russia continued to move equipment and forces into position for a renewed offensive, which military analysts have warned could be both long and bloody.
The eastern front stretches over some 300 miles from Kharkiv in the north to Mariupol in the south and many of the people living in the region have fled as weeks of shelling have destroyed critical infrastructure, flattened homes and left scores dead.
The shelling has increased as Russia moves troops and equipment into position for a full-scale assault. Unlike the precision strikes on military targets in other parts of the country, the indiscriminate bombardments in the east are often directed against homes and infrastructure.
On Saturday, a Russian shell hit an oil refinery in the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region, setting off a large blaze, according to Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor. "Shelling continues in residential areas of Lysychansk, and locals are asked to remain in shelters," he wrote in a message posted on social media.
In Kharkiv, where Russia is trying to keep Ukrainian forces tied up as its troops try to advance into areas further south, two people were killed and 18 others wounded when what appeared to be guided missiles slammed into a shopping center in the heart of the shattered city.
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In Dnipro, the local government said that a Russian missile had struck an abandoned poultry farm.
There were also reports from local and national Ukrainian officials of Russian rocket attacks on Poltava, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv.
Even as Ukrainians take stock of the devastation left in the wake of the Russian occupation across the north of their country, the situation in areas under Russian occupation remained grave.
Ukrainians also say that Russian forces are trying to cover up evidence of war crimes in places that they control, although witness accounts and statements to that effect from local officials have been impossible to verify as Russian forces have blocked access to outsiders.
Local residents have relayed reports of Russian soldiers exhuming the bodies of civilians buried in the yards of residential buildings in Mariupol, and forbidding people to bury or remove the bodies of the dead, according to a statement posted on the City Council's Telegram channel. Local officials say that Russia is burning the bodies as part of an effort to hide the extent of the slaughter in the city.
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Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kyiv, Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine.
April 16, 2022, 10:15 p.m. ET
Times photographers document strikes and destruction in Ukraine.
Volunteers at a cemetery in Bucha, Ukraine, loaded a truck with 65 bodies to be taken for further forensic investigation on Tuesday. Execution-style atrocities against civilians have been reported in Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
Firefighters respond to the scene of a bombing by Russian forces in the eastern Ukrainian town of Derhachi, about 7 miles northwest of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city that has sustained extensive Russian shelling, on Friday afternoon.
A bicyclist rides past the ruins of the village of Andriivka, about 40 miles west of Kyiv, on Thursday. Villagers described living through fierce battles between Russian and Ukrainian fighters, weeks of occupation of their homes by Russian troops, and the detonation and destruction of some homes during the Russian military withdrawal.
Olha Petrovna Kosyanchuk and her aunt Rayisa Misura, 94, mourn the loss of Anatoly Kosyanchuk, 77, Ms. Kosyanchuk's husband, at a cemetery on Friday in Bucha. Mr. Kosyanchuk was killed by a heavy hit to the head, believed to be a rifle butt, a day before Russian forces fled the city.
April 16, 2022, 8:30 p.m. ET
Mental health professionals across Eastern Europe say the war has sown intense anxiety.
For the past seven weeks, Dr. Simona Neliubsiene has struggled to focus on her patients' charts, distracted by images of bombed cities flashing in her head.
At night, she lies awake in bed, her heart thumping, frantically doom-scrolling through the latest news about Russia's war in Ukraine.
"I never had anxiety attacks before," said Dr. Neliubsiene, a family physician in Kaunas, Lithuania. "But after the first week of the war, I started thinking that maybe I should take some of the pills that I am prescribing to my patients."
Many Eastern Europeans feel intimately connected to the conflict in their region. Although the violence has not yet spilled outside Ukraine, some people in neighboring countries said they were making detailed war contingency plans — just in case. They complained that they were unable to escape the relentless news coverage.
Because of the proximity of the war in Ukraine, some Eastern Europeans are afraid of getting pulled into the fight. Images of the bloodshed only hundreds of miles away are dredging up painful memories of atrocities committed by Russian soldiers during World War II and the Soviet occupation in this part of the world years ago.
"When I saw those images, I was not able to move," Dr. Neliubsiene said. "My family did not get supper that evening."
According to interviews with over a dozen mental health professionals and patients from Eastern Europe, there has been a surge in profound anxiety, as well as in requests for sleeping pills and calls to crisis hotlines.
"This is a raw existential crisis," said Sara Koszeg, a psychologist from Budapest, who started a project documenting people's nightmares about the war. "And it has a biological effect: You are alert all the time, and this affects your sleep."
Psychologists say that the challenge of anxiety is that people worry about things that are out of their control. And one of the most frequent symptoms of anxiety is insomnia.
Dr. Neliubsiene has been swamped with requests from patients experiencing insomnia and anxiety. She has been prescribing them muscle relaxants for short-term use, and has been recommending physical activity, reduced screen time and fixed routines. One of her patients, a woman in her 50s, told her she was afraid to fall asleep. "She said, 'What if Putin invades while I am sleeping?'" Dr. Neliubsiene recalled.
April 16, 2022, 7:06 p.m. ET
Russians turn to Telegram for uncensored news on Ukraine.
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Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Russian journalist Farida Rustamova used the Telegram chat app for one purpose: messaging friends.
But as the authorities shut down media outlets that strayed from the official line, including the publications she wrote for, she started posting her articles on Telegram. Her feed there — where she has written about the consolidation of Russia's elites around President Vladimir V. Putin and the reaction among employees of state-run media to an on-air protest — has already garnered more than 22,000 subscribers.
"This is one of the few channels that are left where you can receive information," she said in a call over Telegram.
As Russia has silenced independent news media and banned social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Telegram has become the largest remaining outlet for unrestricted information. Since the war started, it has been the most downloaded app in Russia, with about 4.4 million downloads, according to Sensor Tower, an analytics firm. (There have been 124 million downloads of Telegram in Russia since January 2014, according to Sensor Tower.)
"Telegram is the only place in Russia where people can exchange opinions and information freely, although the Kremlin has worked hard to infiltrate Telegram channels," said Ilya Shepelin, who used to cover the media for the now-shuttered independent TV channel Rain and has established a blog critical of the war.
After the independent radio station Echo of Moscow was shut down last month, its deputy editor in chief, Tatiana Felgengauer, said, her Telegram audience doubled. And after the Russian authorities blocked access to the popular Russia news site Meduza in early March, its Telegram subscriptions doubled, reaching nearly 1.2 million.
"I get my news there," said Dmitri Ivanov, who studies computer science at a university in Moscow. He said that he relied on Telegram to view "the same media outlets I trust and the ones whose sites I would read before."
Opponents of the war use the platform for everything from organizing antiwar protests to sharing media reports from the West. In March, The New York Times launched its own Telegram channel to ensure that readers in the region "can continue to access an accurate account of world events," the company said in a statement.
But the freedom that has allowed the unfettered exchange of news and opinion has also made Telegram a haven for disinformation, far-right propaganda and hate speech.
Propagandists have their own popular channels — Vladimir Solovyov, the host of a prime time talk show that is a font of anti-Ukraine vitriol every weeknight, has more than 1 million subscribers. Channels in support of Russia's war, many of them run by unidentified users, proliferate.
State-run media outlets, like Tass and RIA News, also distribute their reports via Telegram.
April 16, 2022, 6:24 p.m. ET
In a late-night address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said conditions in Mariupol remained "as severe as possible" and were "just inhuman." His remarks came hours after Russia said it was poised to complete the capture of the besieged city, and after he acknowledged that Ukraine's forces held only a small part of it. He continued to plead for military aid and said he was also open to "a negotiating path" forward. "Military or diplomatic — anything to save people," he said.
April 16, 2022, 5:57 p.m. ET
Ukrainian refugees attend a Passover Seder in Poland.
KRAKOW, Poland — About 40 Ukrainian refugees visited the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, Poland, on Friday night for the Passover Seder ritual, revisiting the Jewish story of flight as they themselves are living as refugees.
Krakow was a thriving center of Jewish life and culture for centuries. During the Nazi occupation in World War II, its Jewish population was almost entirely decimated.
Ukraine and Poland share the most tragic of histories: During the Holocaust, the Nazis killed over three million Polish Jews and over one million Ukrainian Jews.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Krakow has welcomed more than 150,000 refugees. Jonathan Ornstein, the executive director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, spoke at the Seder and served as the host.
For some, their recent journey has been a reliving of the Passover story, in which the Israelites fled Egypt.
In the Passover story, the Israelites left Egypt with almost no notice. Tatiana Bolldanova, 68, escaped her home in Darnytskyi, on the outskirts of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, after a missile hit nearby. "We left within several hours," she said. "I fit my life into a small suitcase."
April 16, 2022, 5:19 p.m. ET
Putin's forces are pivoting to a very different battlefield.
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KYIV, Ukraine — There are fields instead of city streets, farmsteads instead of apartment buildings. Open highways stretch to the horizon.
The battles in the north that Ukraine won over the past seven weeks raged in towns and densely populated suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, but the war is about to take a hard turn to the southeast and into a vast expanse of wide-open flatland, fundamentally changing the nature of the combat, the weapons at play and the strategies that might bring victory.
Military analysts, Ukrainian commanders, soldiers and even Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, acknowledge that a wider war that began with a failed attempt to capture the capital will now be waged in the eastern Donbas region.
With few natural barriers, the armies can try to flank and surround each other, firing fierce barrages of artillery from a distance to soften enemy positions.
"What we're talking about is, no kidding, a conventional, very lethal battle of maneuvers where Russian forces are going to attack Ukraine's fixed positions on ground that is more open," said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.
April 16, 2022, 4:35 p.m. ET
Russia claims it has surrounded a steel plant where Mariupol's last defenders are holding out.
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Russia said it was poised to complete the capture of the strategically important port of Mariupol on Saturday, after nearly two months of fighting and bombardments that have devastated the city and killed an unknown number of civilians.
The Russian defense ministry claimed it had cleared most of the city of Ukrainian forces except at the sprawling Azovstal steel plant, where Ukrainian fighters have been holding out.
A ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Russian forces had surrounded about 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers in the steel plant, blocking any exit. "The only chance to save their lives is to voluntarily lay down their arms and surrender," he said, according to the state news agency Tass.
President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged on Saturday that the Ukrainian forces still defending Mariupol control only a small part of the city, and face a better-equipped force that is six times larger than their own.
Speaking to reporters in the capital, Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky described the area as "not a very large part" of the city, which has been besieged since the early days of the war. "Nevertheless, our guys are heroically defending," he said. "We are grateful to them for that."
Mr. Zelensky said that his government was in daily contact with the defenders that have been holding the plant, near Mariupol's port. "Certain plans and negotiation processes are being worked out" in an effort to help them, he said. He did not elaborate on those efforts, except to say, "There is no trust in the Russian negotiators regarding Mariupol."
He also said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, a news outlet, that if the remaining Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol were wiped out it would put an end to peace talks with Russia.
In recent days, Russian forces had advanced to the center of the city. On Friday they seized another steel plant in the north of Mariupol.
Local officials have said thousands of civilians and an unknown number of soldiers are believed to have died in Russian bombardments over the last eight weeks. The executive director of the World Food Program warned that civilians trapped in Mariupol are at risk of starving to death.
April 16, 2022, 3:43 p.m. ET
Reporting from Andriivka, Ukraine
Four civilians who died under Russian occupation were buried in the village of Andriivka, about 40 miles west of Kyiv, on Saturday. Mourners placed flowers and loaves of bread on their caskets, traditional Ukrainian offerings for the deceased.
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April 16, 2022, 3:26 p.m. ET
Reporting from Rome
During the homily for the Easter vigil service in St. Peter's Basilica late Saturday, Pope Francis addressed three members of Ukraine's parliament and the mayor of Melitopol, who were present. "In this darkness that you live in," he told them, "the dark darkness of war and cruelty, we all pray with you this night, we pray for so much suffering. We can give you our company, our prayer and tell you courage and we will accompany you."
April 16, 2022, 2:23 p.m. ET
Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia
Russia's Defense Ministry said that the entire urban area of the city of Mariupol has been captured by its forces. In a statement, the ministry said that all Ukrainian forces in the city are now concentrated on the territory of the giant Azovstal steel factory, and that "the only chance to save their lives" would be to surrender.
April 16, 2022, 2:18 p.m. ET
Another Russian general has died in Ukraine, according to a statement from Alexander Beglov, the governor of St. Petersburg. The statement said that Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov of the 8th Army died in battle, giving no details of when or where, and was buried in St. Petersburg on Saturday. At least seven other Russian generals have died in Ukraine, as high-ranking officers have been pushed to the front lines to untangle tactical problems.
April 16, 2022, 2:02 p.m. ET
Zelensky acknowledges that Mariupol's defenders now control only a small part of the city.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged on Saturday that the Ukrainian forces still defending Mariupol control only a small part of the port city, and face a better-equipped force that is six times larger than their own.
Mr. Zelensky described the area as "not a very large part" of the city, which has been besieged since the early days of the war. "Nevertheless, our guys are heroically defending," he said, speaking to Ukrainian media outlets. "We are grateful to them for that."
Mr. Zelensky said that his government was in daily contact with the defenders, who have been holding out in the Azovstal metal plant near Mariupol's port. "Certain plans and negotiation processes are being worked out" in an effort to help them, he said. He did not elaborate on those efforts, except to say, "There is no trust in the Russian negotiators regarding Mariupol."
In recent days, Russian forces have advanced to the center of the city. On Friday they seized another steel plant in the north of Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces were holding out. The remaining Ukrainian forces are concentrated in the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and in the city's port.
The executive director of the World Food Program warned Friday that civilians trapped in Mariupol are at risk of starving to death. Local officials have said thousands of civilians and an unknown number of soldiers are believed to have died in Russian bombardments over the last eight weeks.
April 16, 2022, 1:29 p.m. ET
A missile attack in Kharkiv has killed two civilians and injured 18 others, according to a statement from the regional prosecutor's office. It said that Russian forces used a long-range cruise missile to fire on two districts, damaging houses, a market and shops.
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April 16, 2022, 1:26 p.m. ET
A Russian default is looming. A bitter fight is likely to follow.
Russia is ambling toward a major default on its foreign debt, a grim milestone that it has not seen since the Bolshevik Revolution more than a century ago and one that raises the prospect of years of legal wrangling and a global hunt by bondholders for Russian assets.
The looming default is the result of sanctions that have immobilized about half of Russia's $640 billion of foreign currency reserves, straining the country's ability to make bond repayments in the currency the debt was issued in — dollars. Girding for a default, Russia has already pre-emptively dismissed it as an "artificial" result of sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies, and it has threatened to contest such an outcome in court.
The coming fight, which would probably pit Russia against big investors from around the world, raises murky questions over who gets to decide if a nation has actually defaulted in the rare case where sanctions have curbed a country's ability to pay its debts.
April 16, 2022, 12:25 p.m. ET
Fire, debris and charred mannequins: A missile strike hits a Kharkiv shopping center.
KHARKIV, Ukraine — What appeared to be guided missiles slammed into a shopping center in central Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding eight others, according to police officials at the scene.
The strike, which happened just before noon, lit the building on fire and spattered debris across the city block. It was unclear what the intended target was, but a National Guard training center is a few hundred yards from where the missiles struck.
Firefighters on scene battled a blaze that had ignited on the buildings' top floors well into the afternoon as burning pieces fell to the ground. The shopping center was conjoined with an unoccupied factory.
A walkway that spanned across the street was damaged in the blast, and tilted precariously over a street littered with burning cars; parts of at least one of the missiles that had struck the buildings; and charred mannequins.
A bystander stumbled through the wreckage, looking for the front license place of his small sedan that had been all but destroyed in the explosions.
April 16, 2022, 11:36 a.m. ET
Charitable donations to Ukraine have reached nearly $924 million, according to a statement posted online by Ukraine's presidency. It noted that 47 percent of the donations came from philanthropists in the United Kingdom and almost 8 percent from the United States.
April 16, 2022, 11:16 a.m. ET
Putin says Russia should redirect energy exports to 'the south and the east.' It's not that simple.
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With the United States banning Russian energy imports, and Europe weighing how far to go in doing the same, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia told top officials and industry representatives this week that Moscow should be looking to redirect its energy exports to "promising markets" in "the south and the east."
Mr. Putin ordered up plans to expand export infrastructure to Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific. But the only real alternative for Russia to offset losses from Europe, its biggest customer by far, would be Asia— given its geographical proximity, economic growth and scarcity of natural resources, analysts say.
Ramping up energy deliveries to Asia, though, would require building pipelines, railways and ports in Russia's east — a process that would take years, if not decades. It also would require political will and a commitment to increase infrastructure for countries on the receiving end.
"When you look at the amount they send to Europe, even if Europe halves its dependence, that would be a huge amount to send elsewhere," said Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior principal fellow at the National University of Singapore's Energy Studies Institute.
Oil and liquefied natural gas, delivered by ship, can be more easily redirected, he said, but replacing gas exports will be far more difficult.
"The idea that they can send huge amounts of gas that goes to Europe and switch it to Asia, even in a year or two, is a non-starter really," Mr. Andrews-Speed said.
Europe accounts for about half of Russia's crude oil and condensate exports, three quarters of its natural gas exports, and a third of its coal exports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Early indications are that Russia has found interest in India and China.
India said in mid-March that it was in talks with Russia to increase oil imports at a discounted price, despite warnings by some U.S. officials that undercutting efforts to isolate Russia could have consequences. India depends on imports for about 80 percent of its oil needs, with 3 percent of that coming from Russia.
In the first five weeks of the war in Ukraine, India's purchases of Russian oil jumped more than 700 percent compared to the prior five weeks, according to the Russian Tanker Tracking Group, an initiative led by Ukraine's government to monitor Russian oil sales.
On the eve of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia signed a $20 billion, yearslong deal to sell 100 million tons of coal to China. A senior Chinese diplomat said in early April that China was not a party to the conflict in Ukraine and didn't think "our normal trade with any other country should be affected."
China already receives Russian gas through the 1,800-mile-long "Power of Siberia" pipeline, which began flowing in 2019, and is in talks to build a second pipeline.
Europe has banned Russian coal and indicated on Thursday that an oil embargo was in the works, likely to be adopted in the coming weeks. European nations have been paying about a billion euros a day to Russia for the bloc's energy imports, the E.U.'s foreign policy chief said last week in a speech before the European Parliament.
Russia's need to find new destinations for its energy exports could mean countries are able to command a steep discount, according to analysts.
"Western companies divesting from Russia means that Asian companies will likely face fewer competitors in the Russian commodity market, giving them the upper hand in the negotiation of terms and prices," analysts for the British consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft wrote in a report this week. "Major importers such as China and India will be in a more comfortable position to negotiate terms with other energy suppliers."
April 16, 2022, 10:33 a.m. ET
Explosions in Kyiv are a chilling reminder that the war isn't over despite Russia's withdrawal from the city.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Residents have been streaming back into Ukraine's capital since Russian forces retreated from the area, but window-rattling blasts in the city Saturday were a stark reminder that the war continues.
The distant, dull thuds of air defense missiles exploding could be heard in the sky above the city overnight. Throughout the day on Saturday, air raid sirens wailed in Kyiv.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said emergency crews were responding to a strike in the southeastern district of the capital that killed one person and wounded several others.
"Our air defenses are working, our military is defending us, but all the same there were explosions," Mr. Klitschko said in a statement on Telegram.
The statement said that Kyiv remains a target for Russia despite the withdrawal of its ground assault force, which retreated hastily from the area and left burned tanks, its own war dead and hundreds of dead civilians in its wake. The police said on Friday that the authorities have so far found 900 bodies of civilians in the Kyiv region, the administrative district surrounding the capital.
In Kyiv, Mr. Klitschko urged refugees and internally displaced people not to return to the capital. "We cannot ban returns, we can only recommend," he said.
Ukraine's military on Saturday also discouraged people from returning, saying that between 40,000 and 50,000 people a day are now streaming back into the capital, creating miles-long traffic jams that obstruct military movements.
For its part, the Russian military had warned a day earlier that the "number and scale" of missile strikes on Kyiv would escalate. Russia's military spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said Friday the strikes would be in retaliation for a Ukrainian helicopter attack on a Russian village near the Ukrainian border. Ukraine has denied attacking the village.
The warning also came after Ukraine sank the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the Moskva missile cruiser, with two domestically-produced Neptune missiles, according to Ukrainian and U.S. officials.
Russia has not conceded the cruiser sank because it was hit by missiles, saying only that it went down after a fire detonated ammunition.
Yet early Friday, Russian cruise missiles struck a Ukrainian military factory on the outskirts of Kyiv that manufactures Neptune missiles, suggesting acknowledgment in the form of retaliation.
Cruise missile strikes on Kyiv have been a near-daily occurrence throughout the war, but they often have hit targets in outlying areas and have not caused much disruption to life in the city, which has been reviving. So far, missiles have spared key government buildings including the presidential office and Parliament.
"The war goes on in Kyiv and we cannot relax," said Galina Ostapenko, 72, a retired postal worker who was walking in the yard of her apartment building a block or so from the site of Saturday's strike. The explosion rattled her windows.
"What happened pains my heart," she said. "I will teach my grandchildren to hate the Russians."
April 16, 2022, 10:21 a.m. ET
Ukrainian officials will visit Washington for economic meetings.
WASHINGTON — Top Ukrainian officials are expected to attend the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington next week when the world's top economic diplomats gather to discuss the effect that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is having on the global economy, according to a World Bank official.
The Ukrainian delegation is set to include Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal; Serhiy Marchenko, the country's finance minister; and Kyrylo Shevchenko, the Ukrainian central bank governor.
The war in Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions against Russia are expected to weigh on global economic growth this year as countries around the world cope with higher commodity prices and disruptions to energy supplies.
Senior Russian officials are expected to participate virtually in the spring meetings, a person familiar with their plans said. It was not clear whether any lower-level Russian officials would attend in person.
The Ukrainian officials will participate in a round-table event about the crisis in Ukraine that will be hosted by the World Bank on Thursday.
Plans for the Ukrainian delegation to come to Washington were reported earlier by Reuters.
April 16, 2022, 10:07 a.m. ET
Russian forces shell towns across eastern Ukraine as military analysts predict a major offensive.
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Heavy shelling was reported in towns and villages across eastern Ukraine on Saturday as Russia set the stage for what military analysts predicted would be a brutal battle to control a region already reeling from weeks of bombardments and fighting.
The eastern front stretches about 300 miles from Kharkiv in the north to Mariupol in the south, and many civilians living in the region have fled, as weeks of shelling have destroyed infrastructure, flattened homes and left scores dead. The shelling has increased as Russia has moved troops and equipment into position in recent days for a full-scale offensive.
Unlike Russia's strikes on military targets in other parts of the country, the bombardments in the east often target homes and infrastructure.
On Saturday, a Russian shell hit an oil refinery in the city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region. It set off a large blaze that stretched over thousands of yards, according to Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor.
"Shelling continues in residential areas of Lysychansk, and locals are asked to remain in shelters," he wrote in a message posted on social media.
In Kharkiv, where Russian forces are trying to keep Ukrainian forces tied up as they try to advance in areas further south, one person was killed and eight were wounded after what appeared to be guided missiles slammed into a shopping center in the heart of the shattered city, according to police officials at the scene. The strike, just before noon, lit the building on fire and spattered debris across a city block.
It was unclear what the intended target was, but a National Guard training center is a few hundred yards from where the missiles struck.
In Dnipro, the local government said that a Russian missile struck an abandoned poultry farm. There were also reports from local and national Ukrainian officials of Russian rocket attacks on Poltava, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv.
There were also reports of shelling in the southern region of Kherson, where Ukrainian forces are trying to take back territory under Russian control. In recent days, Russian ground forces have tried to advance into several small cities along the eastern front but have been repelled each time, according to the Ukrainian military.
The Institute for the Study of War said in an analysis that so far Russia had followed tactics in the east that had proven unsuccessful in the country's north, funneling small groups of soldiers into attacks on Ukraine's defensive positions without pausing to prepare a more successful offensive.
"The Russian military appears to be carrying out an approach in eastern Ukrainian similar to its failed efforts north of Kyiv in early March," the analysis said.
April 16, 2022, 9:57 a.m. ET
The Moskva's sinking inspires one of Ukraine's most popular rockers.
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The sinking of the Russian warship Moskva is being celebrated by Ukrainians as an iconic victory, including in a new song by one of the country's most popular rock musicians.
Vadym Krasnooky, the lead singer of Mad Heads, on Saturday debuted an acoustic version of "Cruiser Moskva" at a news conference. He said he wrote the song after the sinking of the Moskva, the pride of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which the Pentagon confirmed Friday was struck by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles.
Mad Heads, which has played rock, hillbilly and psychobilly music since its founding 25 years ago, had stopped performing when Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Mr. Krasnooky appeared solo with an acoustic guitar in Lviv to perform the new song, which includes the refrain: "Oh the ship, oh the ship, Moskva burn! Burn! Burn in hell forever."
"We have to find a way to channel all this hate," he told The New York Times.
Leader of Mad Heads Vadym Krasnooky presented a song dedicated to the Moskva cruiser sunk by the Ukrainian military.
— Ukraine Media Center (@CenterUkraine) April 16, 2022
«The fact the flagship sank is very symbolic and good sign of where all this russian military «machine» and whole regime is going», he saidhttps://t.co/mgtKIhuuSM
The song's lyrics reference an incident from the beginning of the war, when a border guard on a rocky outpost of Ukraine reportedly responded to Russian calls for surrender with an expletive telling the ship what it could do. A Ukrainian official has claimed the Moskva was the ship involved in that incident.
"The ship became transformed into a symbol of our enemy," Mr. Krasnooky said.
April 16, 2022, 9:48 a.m. ET
The closing of Ukraine's southern ports could trigger a global food catastrophe, the U.N. warns.
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GENEVA — As Russia gears up for a military offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine, the United Nations warned on Saturday that closures of ports on the Black Sea could trigger a global food catastrophe that yields starvation, mass migration and political instability.
Ukraine's silos are brimming with grains that in a normal year help feed 400 million people around the world. But the supply chain has been disrupted by the war, with ports unable to operate normally near the heart of a war zone.
"You pull that off the market," David Beasley, executive director of the U.N.'s World Food Program said in a phone call from Ukraine's western city of Lviv, "you begin to realize you have a perfect storm coming our way."
Mr. Beasley spoke at the end of a four-day visit to Ukraine to explore ways to deliver food to around 1 million Ukrainians trapped in cities and other areas cut off by Russian forces and to examine the wider threat to global food markets.
The food-supply challenge within Ukraine was not complicated, he said. "We've got the food, we've got the money, give us the access."
The challenge for global food supplies is keeping open the southern ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhny and Mykolaiv on the Black Sea coast, which are in Ukrainian hands but threatened by Russia's anticipated offensive.
Mr. Beasley said he had spoken by phone and set out his concerns in writing, but that the Kremlin had not responded to any of the U.N.'s concerns.
"We have made no headway whatsoever," he said.
"This is where the international community has got to come in and make some very serious decisions about protecting ports for humanitarian purposes and opening up ports for the whole world," he added, "because the whole world is going to pay a price if we don't get the ports open."
Some 45 million people in 38 countries are "knocking on famine's door as we speak" thanks to the cumulative toll of wars, droughts and the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Beasley said. The Ukraine war's impact on food prices and fuel and shipping costs looks set to drive that number up and limit the U.N.'s capacity to help them.
Operating costs of the U.N. food program have risen by $71 million a month, Mr. Beasley said. "That means we will be feeding four to five million people less a year because of the cost increase alone."
The short-term problem is a financial one, Mr. Beasley said, adding that rich countries and the world's billionaires needed to step forward to plug the funding gap, which is around $8 billion.
The more alarming threat is the longer term challenge to global food markets. Ukraine's farmers could still produce a harvest that would help feed the world's hungry if the war were to stop now, he said — but not if the southern ports and Black Sea shipping routes remain shut.
Mr. Beasley said he is urging leaders of the Group of 7 nations and other governments to get unused agricultural land back into production to offset the possible loss of Ukrainian and Russian food supplies but warned that global food market shortages and further dramatic hikes in food prices would spell disaster for poor countries.
"You will have famine, death and starvation," he said, "you will have the destabilization of several nations and you will have mass migration."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04/16/world/ukraine-russia-war-news
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