Kyiv Feb. 28, 12:27 a.m.
Moscow Feb. 28, 1:27 a.m.
Washington Feb. 27, 5:27 p.m.
Live Updates: Ukraine Agrees to Talks with Russia, as Putin Places Nuclear Forces on Alert
Civilians joined Ukraine’s outgunned military in the country’s desperate bid to stop Russia’s offensive, winning increased support from other countries. The E.U. said it would ban all Russian aircraft and finance the donation of weapons to Ukraine.
KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine agreed on Sunday to have Ukrainian officials take part in talks with Russia “without preconditions,” even as President Vladimir V. Putin further escalated tensions by placing his nuclear forces on alert.
“We agreed that the Ukrainian delegation would meet with the Russian delegation without preconditions on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, near the Pripyat River,” Mr. Zelensky announced on his official Telegram channel, describing a phone call Sunday with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus.
Mr. Lukashenko “has taken responsibility for ensuring that all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks and return,” Mr. Zelensky continued. The Belarusian leader is a close ally of Mr. Putin’s.
It was not clear when the talks would begin, and late Sunday a Russian state news agency reported that they would only start Monday morning.
But just before Mr. Zelensky’s announcement, Mr. Putin issued a new threat to the West, which has increasingly rallied behind Ukraine as its citizens and its military fight back against the Russian invasion. In brief remarks aired on state television, he told his defense minister and his top military commander to place Russia’s nuclear forces on alert.
The Ukraine Interior Ministry said on Sunday that 352 civilians have been killed since the invasion began, including 14 children.
And even as the talks neared, satellite imagery showed a miles-long convoy of hundreds of Russian military vehicles bearing down on Kyiv.
Mr. Putin characterized his nuclear alert move as a response to the West’s “aggressive” actions. Not only are Western countries imposing “illegitimate sanctions” against Russia, Mr. Putin said, “but senior officials of leading NATO countries are allowing themselves to make aggressive statements directed at our country.”
In Britain, which has ruled out deploying its own troops to Ukraine, a top official said Sunday that she would support Britons who want to go to Ukraine to take up arms. “Absolutely, if that is what they want to do,” said Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
As part of the West’s intensifying reaction to the Russian invasion, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union commission, announced an E.U.-wide ban on all Russian aircraft. The bloc also said it would finance the donation of weapons to Ukraine and ban the Kremlin-funded global broadcaster RT.
On the economic front, the oil giant BP announced that it would “exit” its nearly 20 percent stake in Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company, saying its involvement with Rosneft “simply cannot continue.” And FedEx and UPS said they were halting shipments to Russia.
Details about the meeting at the border were not yet clear, including who would participate. Mr. Zelensky earlier on Sunday had rejected holding talks in Belarus — as Russia has been demanding — because Russia staged part of its invasion from Belarus after amassing troops in the country. But Mr. Zelensky’s stance shifted after he spoke by phone with Mr. Lukashenko and received his assurances.
“I will say frankly that I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting, but let them try to make sure that no citizen of Ukraine has any doubt that I, as a president, did not try to stop the war,” Mr. Zelensky said.
Ukraine has filed a lawsuit against Russia in the United Nations’ top court, accusing it of planning a genocide of Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote Sunday on Twitter: “Russia must be held accountable for manipulating the notion of genocide to justify aggression. We request an urgent decision ordering Russia to cease military activity now.”
Ukraine asked the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, to order Moscow provisionally to halt its military operations in Ukraine, in order to prevent “irreparable prejudice to the rights of Ukraine and its people” and to avoid “aggravating” the dispute between the two countries, both parties to the Genocide Conventions.
It also disputed Russia’s claims of genocide organized by Ukraine in the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist regions, which the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, used as a justification for the invasion.
Ukraine “emphatically denies” that any such genocide has occurred and asked the court “to establish that Russia has no lawful basis to take action in and against Ukraine for the purpose of preventing and punishing any purported genocide.”
The International Court of Justice rules on disputes among United Nations member nations over questions of international law, and although its orders are legally binding, governments do not always comply with them.
Ukraine sued Russia in 2017 in the court, accusing it of supplying funds, weapons and training to illegal armed groups in the eastern Donbass region and of discriminating against the Crimean Tatar and ethnic Ukrainian communities in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. That case is continuing, and the final judgment could take several years, but the court granted some provisional measures to Ukraine in 2019, including that the Ukrainian language be used in education.
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Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is freezing its assets in Russia and plans to divest from the Russian market, a spokeswoman for the fund said Sunday.
The $1.3 trillion fund — the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund — held 27 billion kroner, equivalent to roughly $3 billion, in assets in Russia at the end of 2021. Its Russian investments equaled 0.2 percent of the fund.
The operator of the fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, will neither buy nor sell shares in Russian assets, according to Line Aaltvedt, the fund’s spokeswoman. The fund will work with the Ministry of Finance to prepare a plan to divest from the Russian market. No timeline for the divestment was given.
The announcement on Sunday was part of a fleet of measures by the Norwegian government in support of Ukraine, including joining European Union sanctions and allocating up to 2 billion kroner for humanitarian aid. On Sunday, the E.U. also announced that it would finance the provision of weapons to Ukraine and ban Russian aircraft from E.U. airspace.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund was created in the 1990s to invest the country’s oil and gas revenue abroad. Since 2004, it has operated under ethical guidelines including bans on investing in companies that sell certain weapons.
More than 300,000 Ukrainians have fled to the European Union since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on Thursday, and the bloc is bracing itself for the arrival of up to four million Ukrainian refugees, E.U. officials said on Sunday.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, will ask member nations next week to grant temporary asylum to all Ukrainians coming to the bloc for up to three years, the bloc’s commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, told reporters on Sunday. Member nations will have to agree, but Ms. Johansson said after a meeting of interior ministers on Sunday that “an overwhelming majority” was in favor.
Seven million Ukrainians are expected to be displaced as a consequence of the Russian invasion.
Ukrainians can stay visa-free in the European Union for up to 90 days, and they can move freely between member nations. According to the commission, many have already left the first country they arrived in and headed to countries with big Ukrainian diasporas, mainly the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
So far, a limited number of Ukrainians have applied for asylum, Ms. Johansson said, with most joining their relatives who already live in the European Union. “But things will change, and we need to be prepared for much higher number of people trying to come,” she added.
Ukrainian refugees were met with “impressive solidarity” from citizens and governments of the member nations bordering Ukraine — Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary — according to Ms. Johansson.
In Poland, a massive grass-roots mobilization of citizens is helping Ukrainian refugees — taking them into their homes, transporting them through the border, feeding them and clothing them. On the government level, Poland has prepared a train to transport wounded Ukrainians from the city of Mosciska to Warsaw, Poland’s capital, where they will be dispatched to different hospitals.
Poland, which already is home to millions of Ukrainians, has been the main destination for those fleeing the Russian invasion. Polish authorities said that so far 213,000 Ukrainians have crossed into the country. The country has opened its border with Ukraine to all, regardless of their legal status.
“Anyone fleeing from bombs, from Russian rifles, can count on the support of the Polish state,” the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, told reporters on Thursday.
Slovakia announced that all Ukrainians coming to the country will get a temporary residency, with free health care and permission to work. And the government of the hard-line Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban passed a special decree last week, granting all Ukrainians temporary protection.
This stands in stark contrast to the earlier attitude of the nationalist Eastern European governments, which for years resisted taking in their share of the more than one million asylum seekers, mainly from Syria, who came to the bloc during the 2015 refugee crisis.
Polish authorities are currently building a wall at its border with Belarus, after thousands of Middle Eastern refugees and migrants tried to reach the country last year, with the vast majority being pushed back into Belarus by army and border guards. An unknown number of migrants remain stranded at the border, and aid organizations reported last week that a 26-year-old man from Yemen froze to death.
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Continue reading the main storyUkraine’s U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, distributed leaflets at the Security Council with a hotline number and a website for Russians to inquire about soldiers killed or taken prisoner in Ukraine. He said Russia had already blocked the website. Mr. Kyslytsya said a delegation from his country was currently moving toward the border on a dangerous road for peace talks with Russia.
BRUSSELS — European officials were poised to approve a new sanctions list naming some 25 oligarchs, including some of the people closest to President Vladimir V. Putin, in another attempt to isolate him and his government as Russian troops met fierce resistance on the ground in Ukraine.
The draft list of names, which was first reported by Bloomberg, includes Igor Sechin and Nikolay Tokarev, the chief executives of Rosneft and Transneft, major oil companies; Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, the owners of the Alfa Group financial-services conglomerate; Alisher Usmanovm, a copper tycoon; and Alexei Mordashov, a steel tycoon.
The list could still change at the final approval stage.
Earlier Sunday, the European Union announced that it was set to approve the closure of its airspace to Russian aircraft, ban transactions with the Russian Central Bank and block the state-funded RT and Sputnik from broadcasting in the European Union.
Another key part of the measures against Russia announced Sunday was the purchase and shipment of weapons by the European Union to help Ukraine fight Russia, the first time the bloc has ever taken such a step in its history.
Reporting from Brussels
Ukraine launched a lawsuit against Russia on Saturday in the top court of the United Nations, accusing the country of planning a genocide of Ukrainians. Ukraine asked the International Court of Justice to order “provisional measures” for Moscow to “immediately suspend the military operations.”
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, compared the Ukrainian forces to Islamic State terrorists and said the real threat to Ukrainian civilians came from them, not from the Russian army.
China, India and the United Arab Emirates again abstained from voting on a Security Council resolution that called for an emergency session of the General Assembly. Russia was the lone negative vote but because it is a procedural vote it only required nine positive votes to be adopted.
While tens of thousands of Ukrainians have sought safety in neighboring countries, some have returned from abroad to fight against the Russian invasion and reunite with family members.
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Continue reading the main storyThe UN Security Council adopted a resolution to call for an emergency session of the General Assembly which will convene in the next 24 hours. It is the first time such a session has been called in decades, said U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, because “This is not an ordinary moment. We need to take extraordinary action to meet this threat to our international system and to do everything we can to help Ukraine and its people.”
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that President Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on alert although he faces no nuclear threat from Ukraine. “He is under no threat from NATO, a defense alliance that will not fight in Ukraine. We urge Russia to tone down its dangerous rhetoric regarding nuclear weapons,” she said.
After intense street battles on Sunday, footage verified by The Times showed the charred remains of Russian military vehicles on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
Other videos show Russian vehicles driving through the small city of Bucha, surrounded by sounds of heavy fighting, and Russian troops firing at an Afghanistan War memorial of a military vehicle — which they seem to have mistaken for Ukrainian forces.
The convoy of destroyed vehicles was filmed by a Ukrainian man along a road that leads from Bucha to Irpin, which is the next town en route to Kyiv.
A photo shared earlier in the day shows a large plume of smoke rising from the approximate location of a bridge connecting the two cities — an indication that yet another bridge may have been destroyed by Ukrainian forces to stop the Russian advance.
Addressing the planned talks between his country and Russia, Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, read this statement outside of the Security Council: "There is nothing wrong with negotiations and we will be happy if the result of the negotiations is peace and the end of war. But we will not give up, we will not capitulate, we will not give an inch of our territory. that is the goal of our struggle."
The United Nations Security Council will put to vote a resolution on Tuesday that calls for an immediate halt to hostilities in Ukraine, protection of civilians and access for humanitarian aid, said France’s ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Rivière. The Council is holding an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon at 3 pm to discuss the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. Russia has a veto power to block the resolution from passing.
New satellite images from Sunday show Russian ground forces getting closer to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. A long convoy is stretched out over more than three miles of road, consisting of hundreds of vehicles according to Maxar Technologies, which released the images. Videos posted to Twitter on Sunday also show a large convoy, possibly the same one as in the satellite images.
The forces include infantry fighting and supply vehicles around 40 miles northwest of Kyiv. They are on a road that leads to the area of fierce fighting that was captured in a dramatic video Saturday.
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Continue reading the main storyFedEx and UPS, two of the world’s largest delivery services representing crucial elements of the global supply chain, have halted shipments to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
Both carriers alerted customers on their websites. “Our focus is on the safety of our people,” UPS said in a statement. The company added it “continues to closely monitor the situation and will re-establish service as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.”
FedEx’s statement echoed UPS. “We are closely monitoring the situation and have contingency plans in place,” it said.
Deliveries in and out of Ukraine have also been suspended.
Reporting from London
Denmark will donate 2,700 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, prime minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters on Sunday. Sweden will also send 5,000 anti-tank weapons, 5,000 helmets, 5,000 body shields and 135,000 field rations to Ukraine, Ann Linde, Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs said on Twitter. Earlier on Sunday, Italy’s foreign minister Luigi Di Maio said Italy would immediately send 110 million euros to Ukraine.
The World Health Organization warned Sunday that many Ukrainian hospitals were running dangerously low on oxygen supplies.
In a statement, the organization said that the majority of hospitals across the country could exhaust their oxygen reserves within the next day, and that some had already run out.
“The oxygen supply situation is nearing a very dangerous point in Ukraine,” it said. “This puts thousands of lives at risk.”
Oxygen supplies are needed to treat a range of patients, including the roughly 1,700 people being treated in Ukraine now for Covid-19, the W.H.O. said.
Complicating the situation, medical oxygen manufacturers in parts of the country are facing shortages of zeolite, a critical chemical product used to produce medical oxygen, and trucks are not able to transport oxygen supplies to hospitals, the W.H.O. said.
The organization was working with Ukrainian health authorities to identify immediate oxygen supply needs and looking for ways to import oxygen through regional networks, including transporting them through neighboring Poland.
The U.S. State Department announced on Sunday that it would provide about $54 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, including food, drinking water, shelter, emergency health care and protection. The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday about whether oxygen would be included in that aid and when it would arrive.
The United Nations also announced on Thursday that it would allocate $20 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Martin Griffiths, the U.N. humanitarian chief, said in a statement that the funds would be used to provide health care, shelter, food, water and sanitation.
A spokesman for the U.N. said that the aid will include medical oxygen, which is ready to be sent, but that its delivery will depend on access and security.
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Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Sunday in Madrid to demand an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The deputy mayor of Spain’s capital city told the demonstrators that “the world is scandalized” by Russia’s attack.
SOCHI, Russia — Thousands of people took to the streets of Russian cities on Sunday to protest President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, risking beatings and getting arrested.
The protests on Sunday followed similar antiwar demonstrations around the country that have taken place in dozens of Russian cities every day since Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border early in the morning on Thursday. Protesters also turned out in cities around the world.
Many Russian protesters said they were dumbfounded by Mr. Putin’s decision to send troops and heavy weaponry into what many in Russia consider a “brotherly nation.” Millions of Russians have relatives or friends in Ukrainian cities. Many were raised in Ukraine and cherish childhood memories of it.
At the protests, many people said they came to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people and were confident that Mr. Putin’s decision will severely damage Russia.
Fyodor Gurov, for instance, said he never took part in protests before, but he was shocked when he read the news on Thursday that Russia attacked Ukraine, a country where his relatives live.
“I started feeling shame that I live in Russia,” Mr. Gurov, 22, said, speaking on the phone from a police van, where he was being detained.
On Sunday, Mr. Gurov said he came to stand in front of the Russian Foreign Affairs building in central Moscow with a poster saying “No to war!” Shortly after he came there, the police detained him, threatening to break his hand. A flight attendant, Mr. Gurov is also afraid of losing his job after European countries blocked airspace to Russian flights.
In Moscow, crowds of people moved around the city center, chanting “No to war!” To make it harder for police to detain them, they tried not to concentrate in a single place. Still, the police rounded up more than 1,100 people in the Russian capital alone and more than 1,100 in other Russian cities according to OVD Info, a rights group that tracks arrests at demonstrations in Russia.
Apart from arresting people at demonstrations, Russian authorities also said they would increase pressure in other spheres. Government employees who signed letters and petitions against the war, for instance, were threatened with dismissal.
The Russian prosecutor general’s office warned Russians on Sunday that the provision of loosely defined “assistance to a foreign organization or their representatives in activities directed against the security of Russia” can be qualified as high treason, punishable by up to 20 years behind bars. Russia’s communications watchdog announced on Friday it would partially limit access to Facebook as retaliation for restricting some pro-Kremlin media accounts.
On Sunday, many Russians also came to a bridge opposite the Kremlin to lay flowers to the spot where Boris Nemtsov, a prominent Russian opposition politician, was brutally shot to death seven years ago. Throughout his political career, Mr. Nemtsov spoke against any form of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Some people, who took part in the initial wave of protests on Thursday, could not go out again to avoid committing the same offense twice. Aleksei Kudasov, for instance, was arrested on Thursday and later released, so he decided not to take the risk, but said he was ready “to do everything to for this nightmare to stop.”
Mr. Putin’s decision will bring “nothing but grief to both sides of the conflict,” he said, adding that he would donate to rights organizations and will help spread truthful information about the conflict.
“People should not spend their nights in the metro for the president of another country to move tin soldiers on a map,” said Mr. Kudasov, 31, a copywriter. “Many of us have relatives and friends in Ukraine — to attack such a neighbor is an absolutely savage decision.”
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky was often derided as a comic turned unlikely politician. But with the help of social media, he has become the leader Ukraine did not know it needed.
Dressed in an army-green T-shirt or fleece, unshaven and wan, Mr. Zelensky has inspired Ukrainians to fight for their country — and Europeans to see Ukraine in a different light, as a victim of aggression fighting bravely for independence, freedom and democracy.
Mr. Zelensky’s decision to remain in the capital, Kyiv, while it’s under Russian attack — and his family’s decision to stay in Ukraine — has moved many, particularly in contrast to the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, who fled Kabul as soon as the Taliban were on the outskirts, demoralizing what was left of the Afghan army.
He and his team have also made excellent use of social media, with impassioned speeches showing his presence on the streets of Kyiv going viral. Ordinary Ukrainians are reporting on events in Ukraine on TikTok, and some people are making videos hailing Mr. Zelensky and showing Ukrainians doing what they can to push back Russians — filling bottles meant for Molotov cocktails, volunteering to fight, being issued with automatic weapons and vowing to defend their country.
Mr. Zelensky’s response to a reported American offer to evacuate him — “I need ammunition, not a ride” — will most likely go down in Ukrainian history whether he survives this onslaught or not.
This is the leader of the Free World. #Zelinsky #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/WltKR4upxM
— Greg Gaylor (@SMUMustangAlum) February 26, 2022
But Mr. Zelensky has also inspired European leaders to do more for Ukraine. Appearing onscreen during the emergency summit meeting of European Union leaders three days ago, on Feb. 24, he gave a passionate 10-minute speech that moved some reluctant leaders to endorse a harsher package of economic sanctions on Russia, a senior European official said.
His intervention will be part of history, said the official, who was in the room. It was very emotional, leaders were deeply affected.
The silence in the room was impressive and the impact was clear, the official added, and it was his impression that it made a major difference in persuading more reluctant countries, like Germany, Italy and Hungary, to agree to tougher financial and banking sanctions and the delivery of defensive weapons to Ukraine.
“This may be the last time you see me alive,” Mr. Zelensky said.
Rather die freemen than to be slaves.
— Engineer Mutalya Geoffrey (@eyasalawo) February 26, 2022
I stand with President Volodymyr Zelinsky. Thank you for exhibiting true leadership. I stand with the people of Ukraine ✊#strong #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/LycJTuelBN
Mr. Zelensky’s actions and the tough resistance efforts from ordinary Ukrainian men and women — slowing down the Russian advance and volunteering to fight with automatic weapons — have also had an important impact on European opinion, European officials say, making it easier for their leaders to be bolder and to more freely accept refugees coming their way from Ukraine.
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Continue reading the main storyThe United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday afternoon on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, diplomats said. The meeting is at the request of France’s President Emmanuel Macron and supported by the United States, Britain, Norway, Mexico, Ireland and Albania, diplomats said.
BRUSSELS — European countries under the banner of the European Union banded together for the first time to finance the provision of lethal weapons to Ukraine, in what the bloc’s top official called “a watershed moment.”
“For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, said Sunday. She spoke ahead of a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers intended to hash out details of a raft of new sanctions and other measures aimed at Russia.
Ms. von der Leyen also announced a total closure of E.U. airspace to Russian aircraft.
The measure, she said, will exclude not just Russian airlines but also Russian-chartered private jets from all 27 member states’ airspaces, practically banning Russians from European skies. A number of countries had started announcing individual airspace closures on Saturday.
The bloc will also take steps to bar RT, the Kremlin-funded global broadcaster, as well as Sputnik, a news agency, from European airwaves, Ms. von der Leyen said.
“We will ban in the E.U. the Kremlin’s media machine,” she said. “The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to saw division in our Union.”
Ms. von der Leyen said the bloc would also start developing fresh sanctions against Belarus, which has emerged as the key proxy and assistant for the invasion of Ukraine.
In an unusually emotive statement, Ms. von der Leyen, a German politician and former defense minister who is appointed to her E.U. role, not elected, was effusive in her praise of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and said Ukrainians were welcome to seek refuge in the E.U.
“President Zelensky’s leadership and his bravery, and the resilience of the Ukrainian people are outstanding and impressive,” she said. “They are an inspiration to us all.”
“We welcome with open arms those Ukrainians who have to flee from Putin’s bombs,” she said, “and I am proud of the warm welcome that Europeans have given them.”
Ms. von der Leyen’s announcements still needed to be approved formally and put into effect by the individual E.U. member states, following the normal decision-making structure of the bloc which is a club of sovereign states, not a federation.
Safak Timur and
Turkey will implement a 1936 international treaty that would potentially ban both Ukrainian and Russian warships from passing through the straits connecting the Black Sea to the south, Turkey's top diplomat said on Sunday.
Turkey said it had decided that the invasion of Ukraine and the resulting fighting constituted a war. The word “war” allows Turkey to close the straits to vessels of the countries involved.
“To be honest, we have reached the conclusion that this now turned into war,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a televised interview on the CNN Turk news network.
Turkey on Sunday described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “war,” with consecutive tweets and statements from top officials of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan had earlier called the invasion a “military operation” of Russia that violated international law.
Ukraine has been appealing to Turkey to stop Russian warships from passing through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, which fall under the 1936 Montreux Convention.
Mr. Cavusoglu mentioned in his remarks Sunday that both countries still have the right to move vessels to home bases in the Black Sea.
“There shouldn’t be abuses,” he said. “It shouldn’t join the war after crossing the strait saying that it would go to its base.”
On Saturday, a short time after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine posted on Twitter indicating that Turkey had banned the Russia passage of warships through the Black Sea, Turkey denied there had been any measures taken.
A Turkish official close to Erdogan who asked to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that Mr. Erdogan did not tell Mr. Zelensky that he had agreed to a ban on the passage of Russian military vessels.
The confusion may have come from a grammar mistake, which is common for Ukrainian speakers, since the language has no articles, and he may have meant to say “a” ban rather than “the” ban in his English language post.
I thank my friend Mr. President of 🇹🇷 @RTErdogan and the people of 🇹🇷 for their strong support. The ban on the passage of 🇷🇺 warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for 🇺🇦 are extremely important today. The people of 🇺🇦 will never forget that!
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 26, 2022
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Former President Donald J. Trump’s praise of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has rekindled a debate over an all-but-forgotten chapter of Mr. Trump’s presidency: his impeachment in 2019 for withholding military aide to Ukraine to try to force Ukraine’s president to dig up dirt on his Democratic rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
That Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been praised in recent days for his bravery and leadership, yet only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, voted to convict Mr. Trump after his 2020 Senate trial. On Sunday, Mr. Romney said he was sure some of his Republican colleagues would like to forget the incident.
“That was a very sad and awful exchange on the part of our president; this was Zelensky, now a world hero, asking for weapons, and it was an American president slow-walking the provision of those weapons in order to have Zelensky carry out a political investigation on his foe,” Mr. Romney said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It was wrong. It was in violation of a president’s responsibility to defend our nation and defend the cause of freedom and resulted in his being impeached.”
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who has zealously pursued Mr. Trump for his role in fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol from her position on the House’s Jan. 6 committee, voted against that first impeachment. On CBS’s “Face The Nation,” she said she did not regret that vote because Democrats were not diligent enough in gathering hard evidence to support it.
“You’ll see with the Jan. 6 committee, we have a very aggressive litigation strategy,” she said, “and I think there were a number of instances in the first impeachment where it would have been important and decisive to have witnesses testify who did not come in and testify.”
But other Republicans simply refused to talk about Mr. Trump and Ukraine.
“If you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about Vladimir Putin or any other topic, I’d encourage you to invite him on your show,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can speak for themselves.”
One Republican who did offer a view on Mr. Putin was Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who suggested that the Russian president may be taking leave of his senses.
Mr. Putin “appears to have some neurophysiological health issues,” Mr. Rubio said on CNN, “but most telling is, this is a man who has long prided himself on emotional control. His recent flashes of anger is very uncharacteristic and show an erosion in impulse control.”
The British oil giant BP said on Sunday that it would “exit” its nearly 20 percent stake in Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company, making it one of the first large companies to abandon Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
BP, which is based in London, has worked in Russia for over 30 years, but the attack on Ukraine “represents a fundamental change,” the company’s chairman, Helge Lund, said in a statement on Sunday. “It has led the BP board to conclude, after a thorough process, that our involvement with Rosneft, a state-owned enterprise, simply cannot continue.”
As Russia grows increasingly toxic in the world’s eyes — harsh sanctions are piling up, planes flying from Russia are being blocked from other nations’ airspace and protests are spreading — BP’s decision could encourage other companies to follow its lead.
Also on Sunday, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund said it would divest its Russian investments. Furthermore, companies that do business in Russia are bracing for repercussions on their bottom lines, as sanctions are poised to hobble Russia’s economy.
BP came under pressure in recent days from both the British government and opposition lawmakers over the Rosneft stake. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken a hard line against the Russian invasion ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin, arguing strongly that Europe needs to rapidly reduce its dependence on imports of natural gas from Russia.
In these circumstances, BP’s large holding in Rosneft looked increasingly untenable. The government’s concerns were expressed during a video call between Mr. Looney and the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday afternoon. A BP spokesman, David Nicholas, said the decision was made by the BP board “after careful and due consideration.”
Mr. Kwarteng praised the decision on Sunday. “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine must be a wake up call for British businesses with commercial interests in Putin’s Russia,” he said on Twitter.
It was not clear how BP would accomplish its exit from Rosneft. A BP spokesman said the company would begin to dispose of its stake, valued by BP at $14 billion at the end of last year, but did not yet know how it would accomplish that. Rosneft shares have plummeted in recent days, and the only buyers might be Russian state entities.
BP also said that both its chief executive, Bernard Looney, and his predecessor, Bob Dudley, would resign their seats on the Rosneft board.
The opportunity to buy a substantial slice of one of the world’s largest oil producers might also appeal to other state-owned companies like those from China willing to bargain-shop in Russia.
BP, in exiting Rosneft, might draw protests from investors over the resulting loss of dividends from the Russian stake as well as market value. On the other hand, some analysts welcomed BP’s move.
“While we’re surprised it happened so quickly, equity investors will now benefit from removal of Russian news flow volatility and much stronger” environmental credentials at BP, said Oswald Clint, an analyst at Bernstein, a research firm.
The board resignations will lead to accounting changes at BP. The company will no longer book its share of Rosneft’s profits ($2.7 billion last year) and reserves (about 55 percent of BP’s holdings) as well as production (about one-third).
BP received $600 million in dividends from Rosneft last year, and would have been expected to receive more this year because of higher oil prices.
BP also said it would write off at least $11 billion in the first quarter of 2022, but potentially much more, related to the Rosneft holding.
While BP is the Western oil company with the most to lose in Russia, it will remain a relatively large player that under Mr. Looney has been aggressively investing in offshore wind and other clean energy businesses, although these remain small compared with oil and gas at the company.
Moving away from Rosneft fits with this new tack. Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said “the Rosneft stake is out of sync with BP’s longer-term strategic direction,” even though “walking away at this time is obviously not ideal from a shareholder value perspective.”
BP’s exit from Rosneft, once accomplished, will draw at least a temporary line on BP’s long experiment with Russia, which began early this century with the company investing $8 billion in a joint venture called TNK-BP with a group of Russian oligarchs headed by Mikhail Fridman.
After a decade of stormy relations among the partners, BP sold its share in the joint venture to Rosneft in 2013 for $12.5 billion in cash plus the 19.75 percent stake Rosneft.
Other large Western oil companies may also feel a chill over continued operating in Russia. TotalEnergies, the French giant, has a stake in Novatek, a Russian gas producer, and a share in a large liquefied natural gas facility in the Russian Arctic. Shell has a modest shareholding in an L.N.G. facility on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, where Exxon Mobil has been producing oil for a quarter of a century in a joint venture with Rosneft.
Analysts say that Russian operations have already lost relative importance in the portfolios of the Western oil industry. Russia may have vast troves of oil and gas, but the appetite for investing there has been curbed by the combination of climate change concerns and sanctions imposed on the Russian industry over Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Surging oil and gas prices and resulting higher profits may also help paper over whatever earnings hit the companies take in Russia this year, analysts say.
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