Kyiv March 25, 2:01 a.m.
Moscow March 25, 3:01 a.m.
Washington March 24, 8:01 p.m.
Live Updates: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Shifts Dynamic of War
President Biden met with European leaders in Brussels to reinforce solidarity against Russia’s invasion and proposed excluding Russia from the G20. Ukraine said it had destroyed a Russian naval ship.
Michael D. Shear and
BRUSSELS — President Biden and leaders of more than 30 nations convened Thursday to demonstrate united opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, announcing new economic sanctions, aid for refugees, deployment of additional forces to Eastern Europe and grim preparations in case Russia uses chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
But the historic gathering of world leaders in a series of three summits on Thursday underscored how the United States and its allies have in some ways reached their self-imposed limits in crafting a united global response to the largest European conflict in more than a half-century. While they are sharpening the tools they are using against Russia, they appear to have few new ones to reach for.
Mr. Biden and the allies have moved with unexpected speed and authority over the past four weeks, rallying much of the world against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
And yet, the sense of stalemate on the battlefield is now also felt in the halls of diplomacy, where taking dramatic new steps to counter Mr. Putin’s aggression is proving difficult. Europeans have said they are not willing to bear the consequences of new limits on the Russian energy that they depend on. And Mr. Biden has said he is not willing to commit troops to Ukraine and risk going to war against Russia.
As the allied leaders met in Brussels, the Ukrainian military, entering the second week of a counteroffensive, claimed on Thursday to have destroyed a Russian military landing ship in the southern port of Berdyansk. In the embattled towns around the capital, Kyiv, intense fighting had set so many fires on Thursday that the city was shrouded in a ghostly haze of white smoke.
Mr. Biden said the United States would accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, and he and his counterparts announced a new round of weapons shipments for Ukraine, but not the fighter jets that President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded for.
They expressed in one voice their “resolve to counter Russia’s attempts to destroy the foundations of international security and stability.” But they again declined to enforce a no-fly zone in the skies over Ukraine, which would mean readiness to shoot down Russian planes.
They vowed to tighten sanctions on Russia, but the Europeans stopped short of blocking imports of Russian oil and gas, as the United States has done. Europe is hugely dependent on Russian energy, paying Mr. Putin the vast revenues needed to support his military — and giving him the power to wreak havoc on Europe by disrupting supplies.
“I think we’re seeing a coordinated divergence between the European Union and the United States,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group. “There’s no rupture or even a split. Rather, there is an agreement that the U.S. will go more aggressively than the E.U. because they can afford to do so.”
Speaking to reporters Thursday evening, Mr. Biden said that he had requested the emergency meetings — with leaders of NATO, the European Union and the Group of 7 industrialized nations — to show Mr. Putin that the allies will not “crack” in their determination to keep economic pressure on Russia over days, weeks, months and more.
“We have to stay fully, totally, thoroughly united,” he said, adding that he favors ejecting Russia from the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.
For Mr. Zelensky, though, none of it was enough. He has become more pointed in his criticism of Western restraint on military aid as Russian forces have savaged Ukrainian cities and towns, especially in the south.
Speaking by video to NATO leaders behind closed doors, Mr. Zelensky thanked them for their support but chided them for not doing more. He described his battered country, which is not a NATO member, as trapped “in the ‘gray zone’ between the West and Russia,” according to a transcript released by the Ukrainian government.
“On Feb. 24, I addressed you with a perfectly clear, logical request to help close our skies,” he said of his request for a no-fly zone over Ukraine to keep Russian planes away. “In any format. Protect our people from Russian bombs and missiles. We did not hear a clear answer.”
“And you see the consequences today,” he added a moment later. “How many people were killed, how many peaceful cities were destroyed?”
He repeated his appeal for warplanes, though the White House and the Pentagon have said that supplying them could give Russia a pretext for drawing NATO into a direct conflict. “You have thousands of fighter jets! But we haven’t been given any yet,” Mr. Zelensky said. “To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance — without restrictions.”
For NATO leaders, the high stakes of their meeting were evident in the joint statement issued at its conclusion. The 72-year-old alliance warned Russia against deploying “chemical, biological and nuclear weapons” in Ukraine, signaling a growing concern that Mr. Putin is willing to use them to advance his aggression or to falsely implicate Ukraine’s government.
Mr. Biden was cautious Thursday in his response to questions about the warning. He declined to say whether the United States or NATO would respond militarily if Russia used chemical weapons, which are banned by international treaty.
“We would respond if he uses it,” Mr. Biden said. “The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.”
But in warning about the threat from weapons of mass destruction, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the organization was “enhancing allies’ preparedness and readiness for chemical, biological and nuclear threats.” It will provide detection equipment, protection and medical support to Ukraine, he said, along with training for decontamination and crisis management to deal with the impact of any use of weapons of mass destruction.
The alliance’s top military commander, Gen. Tod D. Wolters, “has activated NATO’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements,” Mr. Stoltenberg added, placing on increased alert NATO teams that specialize in detecting and responding to contamination after a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack. Member nations are taking similar steps.
Mr. Stoltenberg noted that the use of such weapons inside Ukraine could contaminate neighboring NATO countries.
“Many people fear that Russia will use such weapons and accuse Ukraine of doing it, so it is important to precisely determine who, where and when did it so there’s no ambiguity,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The United States hit Russia with a new round of sanctions on Thursday, targeting more than 300 members of its Parliament and dozens of defense companies, while moving to restrict Russia’s ability to use gold reserves to prop up its currency. It also imposed sanctions on Herman Gref, a Putin ally and the president and chairman of Sberbank, one of Russia’s largest banks; the bank itself was sanctioned last month.
The economic actions, which came in conjunction with new sanctions from Western allies, were the latest attempt to inflict economic pain on Mr. Putin. The United States also moved to curtail Russia’s ability to evade existing restrictions on its central bank and major financial institutions, responding to concerns that Russia was finding ways to stabilize the ruble and rebuild its foreign currency reserves.
The Treasury Department is taking aim at alternative assets that Russia could use to support its economy. It issued new guidance on Thursday to make clear that transactions involving Russia’s $130 billion of gold reserves were also subject to U.S. sanctions. Russia built up its gold war chest in recent years to help blunt the impact of earlier sanctions by using the precious metal to buy currency or secure loans.
The U.S. is working to close that loophole by threatening penalties for anyone who facilitates such transactions.
Mr. Biden and European Union leaders are expected to announce an agreement to provide significant amounts of American liquefied natural gas to Europe this year, according to two European diplomats. They said the shipments could limit Europe’s reliance on Russian energy in the near term, and boost confidence in its ability to become less dependent over time.
“The question of course isn’t whether Europe has enough oil and gas for right now, but what happens next winter,” said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
In addition to accepting 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, Mr. Biden announced that the United States would donate $1 billion to help European countries deal with the surge of people fleeing Russia’s invasion, White House officials said on Thursday.
A senior administration official said special efforts were being made to welcome Ukrainians who have family members in the United States.
An estimated four million Ukrainians have poured into Poland and other countries as Mr. Putin’s forces have bombarded civilian areas across Ukraine. Mr. Biden’s commitment would significantly increase the United States’ role in dealing with the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
On the battlefields, Ukrainian fighters have had some success this week in pushing Moscow’s much larger forces farther away from Kyiv and other cities, according to Western intelligence agencies, even as the bloody siege gripping the port of Mariupol has tightened. But many Ukrainian claims of gains have been impossible to verify, and brutal street fighting still echoes through some towns that Ukrainian forces claim to have recaptured.
Russia did not immediately comment on Ukraine’s claim to have destroyed a warship in Berdyansk, whose port Moscow has used to funnel reinforcements to Mariupol and across Ukraine’s eastern front. But British and U.S. officials confirmed that it was a strike by Ukrainian forces, and videos and photos reviewed by The New York Times confirmed that a Russian ship was ablaze in the port, and showed smoke rising from others.
“The destroyed ship in Berdyansk could carry up to 20 tanks, 45 armored personnel carriers and 400 paratroopers,” the Ukrainian deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, said in a statement on Thursday. “This is a huge target that was hit by our military.”
The United Nations says that the war has forced more than 10 million Ukrainians, about one-fourth of the population, from their homes, including the “internally displaced” who have fled to safer parts of the country — Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. The U.N. children’s agency reported on Thursday that they include 4.3 million children, more than half the children in Ukraine.
On Friday, Mr. Biden is expected to travel to Poland, in part to witness the surge of people taking refuge there. In his remarks to reporters, Mr. Biden hinted that he might travel to the border with Ukraine — something that officials have been unwilling to confirm.
“I’m not supposed to say, but anyway,” he said. “I hope I get to see a lot of people.”
Michael D. Shear and Matina Stevis-Gridneff reported from Brussels. Reporting was contributed by Alan Rappeport from Washington, Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine, Michael Levenson from New York, Haley Willis from Berlin, Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Monika Pronczuk from Brussels and Ivan Nechepurenko from Istanbul.
Reporting from Warsaw, Poland
A view from Warsaw, where the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge was lit up with Ukraine's national colors in support of the country during the war.
Russia and Ukraine carried out their first prisoner exchanges since the invasion a month ago, according to a top Ukrainian official. In the first, Ukraine and Russia each returned 10 soldiers who had been captured. In the other, 11 Russian civilians captured near Odessa were returned in exchange for 19 Ukrainian civilians, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk of Ukraine said on Telegram.
News Analysis
BRUSSELS — As President Biden and 29 other leaders of NATO walked into the alliance’s sprawling Brussels headquarters Thursday morning, they passed a graffiti-sprayed remnant of the Berlin Wall, a monument to Europe’s belief that it had won a permanent victory over the nuclear-armed, authoritarian adversary that challenged the West throughout the Cold War.
Now, exactly one month into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mood permeating the extraordinary NATO summit meeting was a mix of both fear and opportunity.
The fear is that the aftermath of the invasion has rapidly transformed Europe into two armed camps once again, though this time the Iron Curtain looks very different. The opportunity is that, 30 days into a misbegotten war, Russia has already made so many mistakes that some of the NATO leaders believe that, if the West plays the next phase right, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may fail at his apparent objective of taking all of Ukraine.
That does not mean the Ukrainians will win. Their country is shattered, millions are dispersed and homeless, and among leaders who gathered in Brussels there was a sense of foreboding that the scenes of destruction and violence could go on for months or years. No one saw an outcome in which Mr. Putin would withdraw. Instead, there was concern he could double down, reaching for chemical, or even tactical nuclear, weapons.
But there was a surprising tenacity about taking on Mr. Putin — a sense that did not exist broadly across Europe until the invasion began, and that has only intensified since.
“I don’t think we have any choice,’’ Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, said as Mr. Biden moved from NATO headquarters to the headquarters of the European Union in his day of emergency meetings. “We know that any indecision or any differences will be exploited by Putin and his allies.”
Twice during the series of meetings, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine beamed in from his command post in Kyiv, telling the others that no matter how proud they are of how they have stood up to Mr. Putin, they have not done enough. Ukraine, he suggested, was fighting a war for Europe — and one that Europeans, as much as Ukrainians, could not afford to lose, because Mr. Putin would not stop at Ukraine’s borders.
Mr. Zelensky reminded them that a month ago — to the day — “I addressed you with a perfectly clear, logical request to help close our skies. In any format. Protect our people from Russian bombs and missiles.”
But “we did not hear a clear answer,” he said, not sugarcoating his critique. “And you see the consequences today — how many people were killed, how many peaceful cities were destroyed.”
The meeting was Mr. Biden’s idea, and it took some European diplomats by surprise, because they had to quickly devise initiatives — from new sanctions to a declaration that they would provide chemical and biological protection equipment to Ukraine — to signal that they did not just talk about a problem.
Mr. Biden, speaking to reporters later, said his real purpose was to ensure that the pressure he has built against Russia does not fade.
“Look, if you are Putin, and you think that Europe is going to crack in a month, or six weeks, two months — they can take anything for another month,” Mr. Biden said. But he said “the reason I asked for the meeting is we have to stay fully, fully, fully” agreed on constant pressure.
He even suggested expelling Russia from the Group of 20 industrial economies, an organization that encompasses China, among others, and mixes democracies and authoritarian states. Even if Russia could not be removed, he suggested, Ukraine should be added to the meetings, a move that would enrage Mr. Putin.
Yet it is the early success of that pressure campaign that is also creating the danger.
While the ostensible purpose of the sanctions is to force Mr. Putin to withdraw from Ukraine, no leader who spoke on the edges of the meeting sounded as if there was much confidence that would happen. Quite the opposite: the concern permeating NATO is that frustration, isolation and international criticism will prompt Mr. Putin to intensify the war.
That is why so much time was spent inside NATO headquarters debating how NATO might respond to an escalation — especially the use of chemical weapons, perhaps to force Mr. Zelensky to abandon Kyiv, the capital. Mr. Biden, asked repeatedly after the meeting about that response, dodged the question.
Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, has over the past two days described the urgent need to provide protective gear to the Ukrainians, and he said that NATO nations would go on high alert for any atmospheric signals that chemical weapons are being released.
“Our top military commander General Wolters has activated NATO’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements,’’ Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters, referring to Gen. Tod D. Wolters, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, “and allies are deploying additional chemical and biological and nuclear defenses.” That has not happened on this scale in modern memory, military experts say.
Officials will not say what intelligence underlies the warnings that Mr. Putin might now turn to unconventional weapons — other than the reality that he has done so before, against exiled spies and dissidents. And the possibility is being discussed in public to deter Mr. Putin from acting.
Few anticipated this danger just a month ago. Then again, most assumptions from mid-February have crumbled.
Before the invasion, NATO officials assumed the Russians were unstoppable, that they would surge across Ukraine in 30 days, seizing the southeast and the capital, according to their own war plan. Now, while few believe that Ukrainian forces can win, there is a widespread assumption that they might fight Russia to a stalemate — stopping its advances around the capital.
The accepted preinvasion wisdom in Washington and some European capitals was that Mr. Putin was a master tactician, and that he had “sanction-proofed” his economy. Today it is clear he left himself highly vulnerable, and is surviving on one major revenue stream: Europe’s addiction to Russian fossil fuel, the one import the continent has declined to block so far.
A month ago President Biden’s talk of making democracy prevail over autocracy seemed like a gauzy ideological sheen surrounding his plans to take on China. Today, as Mr. Biden got the leaders to endorse a new program to bolster other fragile democratic states worried that they will be in Mr. Putin’s cross hairs next, it has a different meaning.
Mary K. Brooks contributed research.
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Continue reading the main storyMegan Specia and
Russian forces kidnapped a prominent Ukrainian theater director on Wednesday, ransacking his home in southern Ukraine and holding him for hours as his family and friends were left unsure if he was alive or dead.
The director, Oleksandr Knyga, was released later in the day, and on Thursday, in an interview with The New York Times by phone after he had returned home, Mr. Knyga gave insights into the reality of life in Russian-held cities in the south of the country.
He described how nine vehicles had arrived at his house in the town of Oleshky, across the Dnipro River from the city of Kherson, in the early hours of Wednesday.
“Lots of people with guns and balaclavas burst into the house and started searching it,” Mr. Knyga, 63, said. “It was very stressful for me and my family. My wife and children were there.”
Mr. Knyga has been the artistic director of the Mykola Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater for the past three decades and is known for founding an acclaimed international theater festival — Melpomene of Tavria — which brought theater companies from around the world to the city annually.
The news of his abduction spread quickly around the international theater community on Wednesday, as they raised the alarm and advocated for his release.
Mr. Knyga, who is also a member of Kherson’s regional government, said the Russian forces told him they were detaining him for organizing protests.
“I tried to explain that in this country no one organizes them,” Mr. Knyga said. “We have protests during every local parliament session because people don’t like something, but they don’t seem to be able to understand it.”
He was taken to the police station, where he said he was locked in a cell for the day, though Mr. Kynga said he was lucky that he wasn’t threatened or physically harmed. He said the Russian forces left him in the street with his bag on Wednesday evening. Since it was far from his home, and he was worried he would not make it back before an 8 p.m. citywide curfew, he stayed with friends.
They dropped him off at the theater in the morning, where he took a picture to share with colleagues and friends the world over who had worried about his fate. He eventually made it home to his family on Thursday afternoon, where he said he was safe and happy to have a hot meal.
His account of his abduction on Wednesday was confirmed by the mayor of Kherson and a number of people close to Mr. Knyga who spoke of their distress during the hours that he was missing.
Oleksandr Moudryi, an actor who has worked at the theater with Mr. Knyga, said he had heard the news of his friend’s abduction on Wednesday, but could not understand why he would be taken.
But, he noted, the detention of people who have been strong and vocal opponents of the Russian invasion has been on the rise in the area in recent days.
“Maybe they want people to be scared to show their position,” Mr. Moudryi said. “I don’t know any other reason for this.”
In the city of Kherson, located in the south of the country, residents have been publicly protesting the occupation of their city for weeks after the area was one of the first to be overtaken by Russian forces.
But in the last few days, they have been met with much more brutality, said Mr. Moudryi, who has regularly attended the demonstrations and said soldiers are increasingly using tear gas and even shooting at protesters. Videos verified by The New York Times showed soldiers opening fire on protesters there on Monday.
On Wednesday, the mayor of Kherson, Ihor Kolykhaiev, said in a post on his Facebook page that the City Council had created a section on their website for residents to file missing persons cases.
Two Russian missiles struck a military base in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine, late Thursday, a local rescue service said in a statement. Several buildings were severely damaged, the statement said, adding that there was no available information about potential casualties.
BRUSSELS — NATO has activated a special defense task force to deal with the fallout from a chemical, biological or nuclear attack, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Thursday, in a sign of how seriously the alliance takes the threat of Russia using weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters after a NATO summit on Thursday that the alliance would provide Ukraine with specialized equipment and training to deal with such an attack. In addition, he said, the alliance’s top military commander, Gen. Tod D. Wolters, “has activated NATO’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements.” He added that “allies are deploying additional chemical and biological and nuclear defenses.”
The activation of the NATO defense task force means that experts and advanced technological equipment on standby in allied nations are now at NATO’s disposal, ready to be deployed should an attack take place.
“It is a very meaningful step,” said Ian Lesser, head of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. “They are being trained for it all the time, but it is very unusual that the task force is actually being activated.”
“It suggests that NATO is taking this very seriously,” he added.
The task force has 2,000 to 3,000 members at its full capacity, said William Alberque, director of strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
It is currently under French leadership and consists of experts and equipment from Bulgaria, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
Its members are trained to detect nuclear, biological and chemical attacks by measuring the levels of radiation and chemical isotopes on the ground and in the air, and to help with decontamination and damage control. Mr. Stoltenberg pointed out that the use of such weapons inside Ukraine could contaminate neighboring NATO members.
If such an attack occurs, the task force can support local authorities in managing the crisis. “They can help the local population to survive, clean up, and move back in, if it is safe,” Mr. Alberque said.
The NATO experts are also tasked with gathering evidence to determine when and where an attack with weapons of mass destruction was carried out and who was responsible. There are concerns that Russia might try to use weapons of mass destruction and blame Ukraine for an attack, said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.
The defense force was created in 2003 and has never been used before. Its activation is intended to send a strong signal to Russia, experts said.
“This is the right time to activate it,” Mr. Alberque said. “It sends a strong deterrence signal, but it also tells Russia that we can attribute it.”
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KYIV, Ukraine — A month into a war that began with widespread expectations of a quick Russian rout, Ukraine’s military has begun a counteroffensive that has altered the central dynamic of the fighting: the question is no longer how far Russian forces have advanced, but whether the Ukrainians are now pushing them back.
Ukraine has blown up parked Russian helicopters in the south, and on Thursday claimed to have destroyed a naval ship in the Sea of Azov. Its forces struck a Russian resupply convoy in the Northeast.
Western and Ukrainian officials also have claimed progress in fierce fighting around the capital, Kyiv.
The asserted gains in territory are hard to quantify, or verify. In at least one crucial battle in a suburb of Kyiv, where Russian troops had made their closest approach to the capital, brutal street fighting still raged on Thursday and it was not clear that Ukraine had regained any ground.
But even this muddied picture of Ukrainian progress is helpful for the country’s messaging to its citizens, and to the world — that it is taking the fight to a foe with superior numbers and weaponry, and not just hunkering down to play defense. And it underscores the flawed planning and execution that has bedeviled Russian forces from the start, including supply shortages and demoralizing conditions for its soldiers. Those missteps have enabled Ukraine to unexpectedly go on the offensive.
In particular, by preventing Russian troops from capturing Irpin, a suburban town about 12 miles from the center of Kyiv, Ukraine showed that its strategy of sending small units out from the capital to engage the Russians, often in ambushes, has had success, at least for now.
Western governments have issued cautiously optimistic assessments of the counteroffensive. In an intelligence report released Wednesday, the British Ministry of Defense said the Ukrainian moves were “increasing pressure” on the Russians to the east of Kyiv, and that Ukrainian soldiers “have probably retaken Makariv” and another small town directly north of the capital.
While noting the inconclusive state of the battle, the report raised what it called a “realistic possibility” that the Ukrainian counteroffensive could succeed in encircling and cutting the supply lines of the Russian invasion force in the area, in what would be a clear tactical victory for Ukraine. At the least, it said, “the successful counter attacks by Ukraine will disrupt the ability of Russian forces to reorganize and resume their own offensive toward Kyiv.”
In the counteroffensive around Kyiv, the Ukrainian military ordered lower-level commanders to devise strategies for striking back in ways appropriate to their local areas. In many cases, this involved sending small units of infantry on reconnaissance missions to find and engage Russian forces that had fanned out into villages near Kyiv, a soldier on one such mission said over the weekend.
In the battles to the northwest of the capital, time is likely on Ukraine’s side, analysts say. Russian columns have run low on fuel and ammunition, intercepted radio transmissions suggest. Soldiers have been sleeping in vehicles for a month, in freezing weather.
And military analysts see this axis of the Russian advance, though it came the closest to the center of Kyiv, as the most troubled by logistical failures and setbacks in combat.
Still, without knowing now which army is actually advancing in the contested towns and villages, the war here is in a state of uncertainty, said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Va.
More broadly, throughout the country, time is also on Ukraine’s side in at least stalling the initial Russian invasion force. But this may shift. An initial upswelling of patriotism could wane as the war’s grim reality sets in or as civilians begin to grasp Ukraine’s military losses, about which little is known.
“Our understanding of where we are now in this war is very incomplete, and we have to be honest about this,” said Mr. Kofman. “If you don’t know who controls what, you don’t know who has the momentum on the ground.”
By Thursday, the intensive fighting had set so many fires in towns around Kyiv that the city was shrouded in an eerie, white haze of smoke. But signs of actual, on the ground progress were elusive. Ukrainian forces have been unable to demonstrate they control villages or towns previously held by the Russian army.
“They are fighting day and night and everything is burning,” said Olha, 33, a saleswoman who escaped from Irpin Wednesday evening, and who was not comfortable providing her full name. She was interviewed at an aid station for displaced civilians where a continuous, cacophonous rumble of explosions could be heard from the fighting nearby.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kyiv’s mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, told a news conference that Ukrainian forces had in fact pushed back Russian troops and that “almost the whole of Irpin is in Ukrainian hands.” Other Ukrainian and Western officials have also offered more optimistic accounts than could be verified from witnesses.
The deputy police chief of Irpin, Oleksandr Bogai, said Russian soldiers were still in the town, occupying several districts and fighting Ukrainian forces. That is essentially the same situation that has persisted for nearly the entire month of the war. “There are huge explosions and a lot of smoke,” he said by telephone. “Civilians are holed up in basements. I don’t know exactly what is happening.”
In Makariv, another battleground town to the west of Kyiv that Ukrainian officials claimed to have recaptured this week, the fighting was also ongoing, Vadym Tokar, the mayor, said in a telephone interview.
“I don’t understand where this nonsense came from,” he said of reports his town had been liberated. “It is not true. We have shelling and we have Russian tanks shooting into the town right now.”
To be sure, some Western and Ukrainian official accounts have also offered more measured assessments. The head of the Kyiv regional military administration, Oleksandr Pavliuk, said Thursday that the counteroffensive had managed to “improve positions” in Irpin and Makariv, but did not assert control.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, announced the counteroffensive on March 16, after it became clear the Russian armored columns had become bogged down, plagued by logistical and communications glitches and taking losses in ambushes.
Russian forces have continued to make advances in eastern Ukraine, where its military claimed on Thursday to have captured Izyum, a provincial town in the Kharkiv region that had been under attack for weeks. Ukraine denied it was captured. Neither account could be independently confirmed.
In the fighting around Kyiv, civilians evacuating from the combat zone painted a picture, not so much of liberated towns but of chaotic, lethal violence.
Vladimir, 66, a retired furniture factory worker who declined to offer his last name, walked out of Irpin Thursday morning after his home burned down overnight.
“Nobody is putting out the fires,” he said. “My neighbor’s home burned and I saw sparks on my roof and then my house started to burn.”
Lacking water to fight the fire, he could only watch. “We should never surrender,” he said. “We will never live under the Russians again.”
There were also few signs the Ukrainian government had established even rudimentary civilian services in the towns it is attempting to recapture.
A woman who also offered only her first name, Elena, arrived at an aid station on the evacuation route out of Irpin in tears, saying neighbors had helped her bury her adult son in her backyard because no authorities were collecting the dead.
“I just hope his grave will not be destroyed” in the artillery shelling, she said. “The men dug a grave in the garden between the roses, and put stones around it, and a cross over it.”
Still, in one sign the counteroffensive has pushed into areas previously controlled by Russian troops, a Ukrainian unit that retrieves military dead from the battlefield has now also been finding the bodies of Russian soldiers in the towns around Kyiv, according to Serhiy Lysenko, the unit’s commander.
He declined to say in which towns he had been working. For now, he said in a telephone interview, they are leaving the Russian dead in place, not wanting to take additional risks to retrieve them.
Mr. Kofman, from the CNA research institute, said “It’s clear Russia cannot achieve its initial political objectives in this war now.” He said Russia must shift its goals or alter its military strategy “if it wants to sustain this war on scale beyond the coming weeks.”
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
A woman looked back toward Ukraine on Thursday while waiting to cross into Poland at the no-man’s land between the two countries. It has been one month since Russian invaded Ukraine, and people continue to flee Ukraine for Poland and elsewhere; the United Nations estimates that more than three million people have fled the country.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution addressing the dire humanitarian situation in Ukraine on Thursday, passing the measure in an overwhelming vote that underscored Russia’s isolation.
The resolution, drafted by France and Mexico and sponsored by over 90 countries, was approved by 140 countries — nearly two-thirds of the General Assembly’s members. It blames Russia for creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in Europe in decades and demands that Moscow abide by humanitarian laws, including the protection of civilians and infrastructure, safe passage for humanitarian aid and an end to the war.
“It just shows, again, that when the international community is asked to take a stand, Russia is isolated,” said Olof Skoog, the European Union’s ambassador to the U.N. “The appeal today of the General Assembly is directed primarily towards Russia,” he added, “and we just hope that this time they will heed that call.”
Russia, Syria, North Korea, Eritrea and Belarus voted against the resolution. Among the 38 countries that abstained were China, India, South Africa, Iran and Pakistan.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, slammed the measure as a “pseudo-humanitarian resolution” brought by Ukraine and its allies to “put different labels on Russia” and to present a “one dimensional” view of the conflict. Russia has consistently tried to block efforts to hold it accountable for waging war on Ukraine, using its veto as a permanent member of the Security Council to halt a resolution calling for it to withdraw its troops.
The resolution is the second the General Assembly has adopted related to Russia’s invasion. On March 2, a week after the invasion began, the body overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution condemning Russia and demanding that it withdraw its troops.
A U.N. spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, warned on Thursday that “Ukraine was one of the most rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crises of modern times.”
“The main humanitarian challenge remains to secure safe access into areas where civilians are trapped in ongoing fighting, such as Mariupol, and safe passage out,” he added.
The U.N. Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, said on Thursday that more than half of Ukraine’s estimated 7.5 million children had been displaced in the last month. The World Health Organization said the conflict had devastated the country’s health care system and had restricted Ukrainians’ access to health care, especially for trauma and chronic conditions.
Human Rights Watch said that, in light of the vote condemning Russia for violations of international law, U.N. member states should “consider concrete steps to hold Russia accountable for any war crimes its forces are responsible for.”
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Continue reading the main storySince the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last August, more than 74,000 Afghans have been given permission to live in the United States, at least temporarily. Most were among the tens of thousands that flocked to Kabul’s international airport in August and were airlifted out of the country by the U.S. military.
But now that the Biden administration has announced plans to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the country, many are wondering what this means for those Afghans who made it the United States and the thousands more who were left behind in Afghanistan.
In the months since the frenzied evacuation effort, the Biden administration has faced a barrage of criticism over its handling of Afghan refugees. Many of them in the United States have struggled to navigate an immigration system that U.S. officials concede was unprepared to help them.
Thousands remain in a handful of processing centers overseas waiting to come to the United States. Many more who qualify for the Special Immigrant Visa, or S.I.V., program that makes them eligible for resettlement in the United States are still trapped in Afghanistan, losing hope they will ever be able to leave.
“Right now, Ukraine’s people can go freely to European countries, but where do we flee?” said Najeeb, a former interpreter for U.S. forces who asked to go by only his first name for fear of retribution.
Najeeb worked with American troops for five years and, in 2014, applied for the S.I.V. program, which is intended for Afghans who face threats because they worked for the U.S. government. For years, he waited for his application to move through a system that was severely backlogged even before the United States announced it would withdraw troops.
When the Taliban seized power in August, Najeeb sent frantic messages to his former American supervisor — terrified the Taliban would carry out revenge killings against those connected to the U.S. government — and went into hiding in Kabul where he remains today. Now, he says, he has lost all hope that he will ever be able to leave.
Even for those who made it to the United States, their future is far from certain. Most Afghans who were evacuated were granted a temporary protection status known as humanitarian parole, which allows them to stay in the country for two years.
American officials estimate that around 40 percent qualify for S.I.V.s, which would enable them to eventually receive a green card and citizenship. But that process already takes years, and has only been worsened after the abrupt arrival of large numbers of evacuees caused the processing backlogs to balloon.
Those in the United States who don’t qualify for the S.I.V. program will be required to apply for asylum, and risk the possibility of being rejected.
“I worked day and night and endured hardships and worked alongside American troops,” said Najeeb, who is still in Afghanistan. “But they abandoned me.”
Others have expressed frustration at the disparity between how those fleeing from Ukraine and Afghanistan have been treated by the United States.
“It is good that America cares about the displaced people of Ukraine, but we are all human beings and we should be treated the same,” said Ahmad Rezakhail, 34, a former prosecutor in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rezakhail, his wife and his two children were evacuated from Kabul in August and are among many Afghans stuck at a sprawling refugee compound in the Emirati desert. In recent months, many have complained that resources at the camp, which is essentially a collection of makeshift hotels, are strained and the conditions are increasingly unpleasant.
“Our children are sick here and it is very sad that America has imprisoned us,” Mr. Rezakhail said in a phone interview. “America should treat everyone equally.”
President Biden faces intensifying pressure at home four weeks into the war, with a solid majority of Americans expressing doubt that he has done enough to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, according to a poll by The Associated Press and NORC released Thursday.
Some 56 percent of Americans — and 43 percent of Democrats — said Mr. Biden, who was meeting on Thursday with European leaders, had not been “tough enough” in his response. About one-third said his handling the crisis was “just right,” according to the poll, which surveyed 1,082 U.S. adults between last Thursday and Monday, more than three weeks into the war.
Just 6 percent of Americans, barely more than the poll’s 4 percent margin of error, thought Mr. Biden has been “too tough” on Moscow.
The survey reflected a rapid swing of public opinion — from a decade-long national aversion to conflict to a far more aggressive position, spurred by images of indiscriminate Russian attacks on civilians. Support for a major U.S. role in Ukraine has grown to 40 percent, from 26 percent just before Russia’s invasion in February.
That sudden shift puts added pressure on Mr. Biden, who is in Brussels huddling with European allies. Mr. Biden has tried to chart a middle course between punishing Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and provoking a direct military confrontation that could start a war between two nuclear superpowers.
The poll also reflected the hyperpartisan stasis of American politics. Mr. Biden’s overall approval rating remains mired at 43 percent, virtually unchanged since the war began, with Republicans overwhelmingly rejecting his presidency and disapproving of his actions on Ukraine.
Democrats are also uneasy. Rachel Collins, 41, a schoolteacher from Chicago, summed the sense of agitation and anger that Mr. Putin’s actions have spurred among her fellow Democrats, who opposed President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
“I understand he’s between a rock and a hard place,” Ms. Collins told the pollsters, speaking of Mr. Biden’s dilemma. “It just feels like Putin’s not going to stop at Ukraine.” And that, she said, made her believe that a direct confrontation with Russia was “inevitable.”
Republicans, reflecting a near-universal disdain for Mr. Biden among the party’s rank-and-file, were reluctant to support military action — yet also convinced the president was not “tough enough” to deter Mr. Putin. Only 12 percent of Republicans approved of Mr. Biden’s actions, the poll found.
But there was one area of agreement across party lines. Strong majorities in both parties approved of Mr. Biden’s efforts to marshal international support for crippling economic sanctions against Mr. Putin and his allies, with 70 percent of Americans backing a total U.S. ban on oil imports from Russia.
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Continue reading the main storyDmitriy Khavin and
Craters, debris and scorch marks blot a once serene neighborhood. A family finds refuge from shelling in a barely lit basement. A resident digs a grave for a 5-year-old girl.
These are just a few of the harrowing scenes in several videos shared with The New York Times that offer a rare close-up look at life under siege in a neighborhood of Mariupol, a southern Ukrainian city that has been under relentless attack by Russian forces. The city, which has no electricity and water, has become a potent emblem of the humanitarian crisis buffeting the country.
The footage was filmed by Artur Detkov, a local resident of Mariupol and former bartender, between March 14 and 17. Some has been posted to public Telegram channels; other footage has been shared with The Times for the first time. Mr. Detkov began working as a journalist before the war — but only decided to start documenting life with his video camera once Russia’s invasion began.
Mr. Detkov said it took on average 25 minutes to upload a 30-second clip from Mariupol, which has been without power and internet for weeks. He was nevertheless able to access enough connectivity at the top of a nine-story building to upload the video and shared the footage with a friend, Andrey Lavdanskiy, a business owner who has since escaped Mariupol and sent it to The Times.
The video footage covers an area of about one-square mile in the Primorsky district, and mostly centers on a neighborhood called Cheryomushki, where Mr. Detkov said he has lived for 20 years.
In Cheryomushki, the scars of war are visible on and around apartment buildings and the small shops underneath. As Mr. Detkov films in the neighborhood, which has a school and two kindergartens, the sound of explosions can be heard nearby. Grocery stores in the area have been completely cleaned out, and residents cook what little food they have in small makeshift stoves outside their homes, sometimes surrounded by rubble.
Though it’s only one small slice of life in Mariupol, the experience of residents in the neighborhood offers a disturbing glimpse of what people in other parts of the city, many under more severe Russian control, are experiencing.
Mr. Detkov films a woman who says a grave is being prepared for her 5-year-old daughter. “Is this your husband?” he asks, as he points the camera at the grave next to the one being dug.
In Mariupol, the situation is so dire that virtually every neighborhood has been upended by the fighting. In another video, a person explains that they have moved to Cheryomushki from the even harder-hit Left Bank neighborhood, after it was attacked by Russian forces and separatists carrying out a campaign in the area. The Russian-backed separatists released a video showing the extent of the destruction on Wednesday.
Another woman speaks from a basement where Mariupol residents have been hiding for weeks.
“We are on the edge of survival,” she says. “This is simply torture. We don’t have information. We don’t know anything.”
Reporting from Brussels
President Biden arrived at his third and final summit of the day, this one with the 27 E.U. leaders. He said his objective was to build “total, complete unity” with the world’s democracy, and added that Vladimir V. Putin’s intention since “the very beginning” has been “to break up NATO.”
Reporting from Istanbul
The biggest headline out of Biden’s news conference appears to have been his declaration that Russia should be excluded from the Group of 20 club of leading economies — a group that includes not only democracies but also authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia and China.
Reporting from Brussels
The news conference by President Biden at NATO has now concluded. He will make his way across Brussels, just as the sun sets, to join European Union leaders for another summit, and dinner.
Reporting from Washington
“Sanctions never deter,” Biden says, claiming he never said the economic penalties would have that effect. But on Feb. 11, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said that “the president believes that sanctions are intended to deter.” Six days later, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he was at the United Nations “not to start a war, but to prevent one.”
Reporting from Brussels
Biden is making the case that the sanctions against Russia, which are hugely painful for Europe, will be long-lasting. He says part of the point of Thursday’s extraordinary meetings is to get European and other allies to agree and understand that the sanctions are for the long term.
Reporting from Istanbul
The real question on sanctions is whether the Russians blame Putin for that pain — or buy into the Kremlin narrative that sanctions are all about the West trying to bring Russia down.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden, wrapping up his news conference, says: “Sanctions never deter.” They’re to create pain, and if they are sustained over time, “that will stop him,” he said, referring to Putin, whom he called “this brute.”
Reporting from Washington
A German reporter suggests that a right-wing populist like Donald Trump could be elected in 2024, and undo the rebuilding work he had done on NATO. Biden responds by recalling his revulsion at Trump’s reaction to the riot in Charlottesville — and said he is “too long in the tooth” to give up fighting for democracy. Then he compared the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol to storming of the Bundestag, an indirect but unmistakable reference to the Nazi attack on the German legislature in the 1930s.
Reporting from Washington
Biden says he would be “lucky” if Republicans chose Trump as their nominee in 2024.
Reporting from Washington
“The United States is one of the leaders in the international community and has an obligation to be engaged,” Biden says. But the U.S. is still struggling to process thousands of Afghans stuck in processing centers overseas and has processed only 6,500 refugees in the first five months of this fiscal year. A challenge facing the Biden administration is rebuilding a refugee system left with fewer resources by the Trump administration.
Reporting from Brussels
Asked if meeting refugees on Friday in Poland would change his views about engaging directly with the Russian military in Ukraine, Biden says no, that he’s seen war damage and refugees before, and it will enhance his sense of responsibility “to ease the suffering and pain” of those in Ukraine and “those who have made it across the border.”
Reporting from Brussels
Biden lets slip that he hopes to meet with Ukrainian refugees, then stops himself from saying more. “I guess I’m not supposed to say where I’m going to be,” he jests, to some laughter in the room.
Reporting from Washington
Biden deferred to Ukraine’s leadership, but it is noteworthy that he said he didn’t think Ukraine would have to give up territory in a peace deal.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden, pressed again on potential use of chemical, biological and other weapons of mass destruction, says Russia’s deploying such weapons in Ukraine would trigger “a response in kind,” but adds what that looked like would be a matter to decide when and if it happened.
Reporting from Istanbul
Asked whether Ukraine should give up territory to stop the war, Biden says, “It’s their judgment to make.” Russia and Ukraine have been negotiating even as the fighting has continued.
Reporting from Istanbul
Asked whether Russia should be removed from the Group of 20 club of leading economies, Biden says: “My answer is yes.”
Reporting from Washington
“It’s going to be real,” Biden says of food shortages. “The price of these sanctions is not just imposed on Russia.” The White House in recent weeks has been blunt about the ripple effects of sanctions against Russia, including higher gas prices for Americans. The White House’s strategy has been to blame Putin’s aggression for the higher prices around the world.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden notes how important Russia and Ukraine are to food and grain production, and says that the United States is ready to help alleviate any shortages.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden says China understands that its economic future is more tied to the West than to Russia and references the coming European Union-China summit, planned for April 1, as the next flashpoint in the discussion over China’s role.
Reporting from Washington
Biden says NATO needs to “set up” an organization to investigate and punish countries that violate sanctions against Russia.
Reporting from Istanbul
Biden says he noted to Xi that many Western companies had stopped doing business in Russia after Putin’s “barbaric” invasion. Those companies include McDonald’s, Ikea, Visa and Mastercard — moves that already have had an impact on daily life in Russia.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden says he spoke to Xi Jinping, the leader of China, a week or so ago and told him he would put his economic aims at jeopardy if China supported Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Reporting from Washington
Biden said the response to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be proportional to the scale and type of weapons Putin deployed.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden sidesteps a question on what specific intelligence NATO has on the likelihood of Russia's use of chemical weapons but says NATO “would respond.” This has been a key question over the past 24 hours, where discussion of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons has become more prominent among NATO allies.
Reporting from Washington
President Biden’s announcement of plans to welcome up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine will not be easy. The administration admitted just 11,400 refugees in the fiscal year 2021, despite the setting a target of 125,000 refugees.
Reporting from Istanbul
“Putin was banking on NATO being split,” Biden says. Indeed, many signs point to the Kremlin having been taken aback by the force of the Western response, in particular by the intensity of the sanctions.
Reporting from Washington
Biden said his decision to allow 100,000 refugees from Ukraine into the U.S. is aimed at “reuniting” families separated by the conflict.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden says Putin is getting the opposite of what he intended when he went into Ukraine: Western cohesion.
Reporting from Washington
Biden starts off his remarks with a message we have heard from him throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine: unity. The White House has waited for European allies to make the first move before issuing sanctions. And now the administration says it will accept up to 100,000 refugees after Poland, Moldova and other nations welcomed those fleeing Ukraine.
Reporting from Istanbul
Biden says the sanctions were meant to “cripple” Russia’s economy. The full effect of the sanctions hasn’t been felt yet inside Russia, but the ruble has already cratered and tens of thousands of Russians stand to lose their jobs as Western companies pull out.
Reporting from Brussels
Biden says “our weapons are flowing into Ukraine as we speak.”
Reporting from Paris
Asked how the West might retaliate if Russia launched a chemical attack in Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron of France said, “We are preparing, we are conducting work, but I will not make any red lines explicit on this topic.” He was speaking at a news conference in Brussels after the meetings of NATO and G7 members.
President Vladimir V. Putin’s demand on Wednesday that “unfriendly countries” like the United States, Britain and the European Union members pay for Russian natural gas in rubles has raised questions as to whether such a move would lead to renegotiation of some contracts.
Robert Habeck, the German minister for the economy and climate, responded by saying that the demand amounted to a breach of contract. And Francesco Giavazzi, an economic adviser to Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, said at a Bloomberg Capital Market Forum in Milan: “My view is that we pay in euros because paying in rubles would be a way to avoid sanctions, so I think we keep paying in euros.”
Mr. Putin’s demand would blunt the effectiveness of sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine that are directed at undermining the value of Russia’s currency. Requiring buyers to pay in rubles would mean an increase in the demand for the currency, which, in turn, would help prop up its value.
The sanctions have driven down the value of the ruble as people have frantically rushed to turn their rubles into a more stable currency, like the dollar or the euro.
Vinicius Romano, a senior analyst at the consulting firm Rystad Energy, wrote in a market note on Thursday that “Putin has raised issues that go beyond the energy sector. With this he attempts to challenge the dominance of the euro and U.S. dollar currencies.”
“Nevertheless, it is unlikely that alternative currencies will be implemented in existing contracts,” he added. “Requiring payments in rubles will force Western companies to negotiate with sanctioned banks.”
David L. Goldwyn, who served as a State Department special envoy on energy during the Obama administration, said, “The Russians are playing a bit of a game of chicken in order to force gas buyers to prop up the ruble.”
“Buyers could refuse, and the Russians would be forced to give up sales or accept payment in the currency provided by the contract,” he added. “But it’s a serious risk for the buyers as well to refuse.”
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The United States hit Russia with a new round of sanctions on Thursday, targeting more than 300 members of its Parliament and dozens of defense companies, while moving to restrict Russia’s ability to use gold reserves to prop up its currency.
The actions, which came in conjunction with new sanctions from Western allies, were the latest attempt to inflict economic pain on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his invasion of Ukraine. In addition to imposing new sanctions, the U.S. moved to curtail Russia’s ability to evade existing restrictions on its central bank and major financial institutions. There had been concerns that Russia was finding ways to stabilize the ruble and rebuild its currency reserves.
“The United States, with our partners and allies, is striking at the heart of Russia’s ability to finance and carry out its warfare and atrocities against Ukraine,” Janet L. Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said in a statement.
The sanctions were announced as President Biden met with world leaders at summits in Brussels focused on the war in Ukraine.
Senior Biden administration officials said on Thursday that the sanctions had taken a severe toll on Russia’s economy and cited forecasts projecting that the Russian economy would contract by 15 percent this year, wiping out 15 years of gains. They also pointed to estimates that more than 200,000 people had left Russia in the last month, accelerating a “brain drain.”
The new sanctions target 328 members of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Federal Assembly. They also include Russian defense companies such as Tactical Missiles Corporation JSC, which makes weapons systems.
As part of the effort to put financial pressure on Mr. Putin’s allies, the U.S. said it was sanctioning Herman Gref, the president and chairman of Sberbank, one of Russia’s largest banks. The U.S. imposed sanctions on Sberbank last month.
The Treasury Department is taking aim at alternative assets that Russia could use to support its economy. It issued new guidance on Thursday to make clear that transactions involving Russia’s $130 billion of gold reserves were also subject to U.S. sanctions. Russia built up its gold war chest in recent years to help blunt the impact of sanctions by allowing its central bank to use the precious metal to buy currency or secure loans.
The U.S. is working to close that loophole by threatening sanctions on anyone that facilitates such transactions. The Treasury Department guidance included anyone “determined to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in” the circumventing of sanctions, including through assets like gold.
The Biden administration officials said they had seen reports that suggested that Russia was trying to use its gold reserves to prop up the ruble, and that the U.S. and its allies were shutting down Russia’s ability to use gold to circumvent sanctions.
The warning came a day after Ms. Yellen spoke with a bipartisan group of senators about proposed legislation to impose sanctions on Russian gold. They said that Russia was laundering money through gold by buying and selling it for high-value currency.
The senators Ms. Yellen had met with — Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine; Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas; Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee; and Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire — praised the move by the Treasury on Thursday.
“In order to limit the effects of Russia’s billions in gold assets, we must keep up the pressure and close any possible escape hatch Putin and his cronies will use to help fund their unconscionable war,” they said in a joint statement. “It is important that the Treasury Department has heeded our calls and taken action to help prevent Russia from selling off its gold.”
The three groups President Biden is meeting with in Brussels on Thursday all play key roles in global power politics, with overlapping aims, memberships and histories.
Here’s a quick guide to how they fit together.
NATO and the European Union both have their headquarters in Brussels and their origins in the years after World War II, but the differences between them are important. NATO was built as a military bulwark against Soviet power, while the European Union is a political and economic bloc that grew from efforts to unite the formerly warring nations of Western Europe through trade.
Twenty-one countries now belong to both, including a swath that once fell under the Soviet sphere of influence. But the 27 E.U. members include several countries that have stayed outside NATO, often because of traditions of neutrality, like Austria, Ireland and Sweden. The 30 NATO members include the United States, by far its dominant military partner, and Canada, alongside several countries that have left or declined to join the European Union (Britain, Iceland, Norway) or have applied to join it (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Turkey).
The Group of 7, the other group holding a summit on Thursday, was formed during the economic upheavals of the 1970s to facilitate discussions between the leaders of the most powerful market economies; it now includes European Union leaders, alongside those from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
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Continue reading the main storyPope Francis said that the “shameful war” in Ukraine was the result of “the old logic of power that still dominates so-called geopolitics.” He called increased defense spending by Western nations “madness,” saying that more arms and sanctions wouldn't solve the conflict and urging a different kind of international relations built on caring rather than on economic and military power.
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Fierce fighting continued in Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, and civilian evacuations continued with it. At an aid station on the outskirts of Kyiv, evacuees were inspected by Ukrainian security forces and treated for medical issues. They then boarded buses heading toward Kyiv’s main train station.
BRUSSELS — NATO allies agreed to provide Ukraine with equipment and training to deal with the fallout from a possible Russian attack using chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons, and the alliance was increasing its own preparedness for any such event, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday.
Mr. Stoltenberg, who was speaking to reporters after a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday, said that the alliance was worried Russia might deploy chemical or biological weapons — which are banned by international treaty — because it appeared that Moscow was creating a false narrative that the West was about to use them.
“We are concerned partly because we see the rhetoric and we see that Russia is trying to create some kind of pretext accusing Ukraine, the United States and NATO allies for preparing to use chemical and biological weapons,” he said, “and we have seen before that this way of accusing others is actually a way to create a pretext to do the same themselves.”
President Biden attended the NATO summit, the first in a series of back-to-back summits with allies in Brussels on Thursday.
Mr. Stoltenberg said that the alliance would offer Ukraine detection equipment, protection and medical support, as well as training for decontamination and crisis management to deal with the impact of any use of weapons of mass destruction. Such efforts would include civilian and military experts measuring radiation or chemical isotopes levels.
“We are also enhancing allies’ preparedness and readiness for chemical, biological and nuclear threats,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.
The alliance’s top military commander, Gen. Tod D. Wolters, “has activated NATO’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements,” he added, “and allies are deploying additional chemical and biological and nuclear defenses.”
That step means that NATO teams expert in detecting and dealing with contamination after a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack are placed on increased alert, from previously being on standby, to facilitate early detection should such an attack take place. Mr. Stoltenberg pointed out that the use of such weapons inside Ukraine could contaminate neighboring NATO members.
“Many people fear that Russia will use such weapons and accuse Ukraine of doing it, so it is important to precisely determine who, where and when did it so there’s no ambiguity,” said Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.
After shutting down for almost a month, the Russian stock market reopened for limited trading on Thursday. Just 33 companies, all listed in the benchmark MOEX index, were allowed to trade on the Moscow Exchange for four hours and 10 minutes.
The MOEX index rose 4.4 percent, but it was probably buoyed by significant government policies intended to avoid a sell-off, including a measure to bar foreigners from selling stocks.
The Russian central bank said on Wednesday that there would be a ban on short selling the stocks, a type of trade involving a bet that a company’s share price will fall. Previously, the government said it would instruct its sovereign wealth fund to channel up to $10 billion into local stocks to stop their prices from plummeting. And in late February, the central bank barred brokers from executing sell orders by foreigners.
The White House called the partial reopening “a Potemkin market opening.”
It was the first opportunity for local stock trading since Feb. 25. The day before trading was halted, the index dropped to a record low after Russia invaded Ukraine. It then partly rebounded.
On Thursday, the index rose as much as 11.8 percent shortly after trading began, but then lost most of that gain. Just 33 of the 50 stocks in the benchmark index were tradable.
“This is not a real market and not a sustainable model — which only underscores Russia’s isolation from the global financial system,” Daleep Singh, the U.S. deputy national security adviser for international economics, said in a statement on Thursday. “The United States and our allies and partners will continue taking action to further isolate Russia from the international economic order as long it continues its brutal war against Ukraine.”
Shares in oil and gas companies rose on the Russian exchange: Gazprom gained 13 percent, Rosneft about 17 percent and Novatek 19 percent. The mining companies En+ Group and Norilsk Nickel also climbed, by about 3 percent and 10 percent respectively. Shares in VTB, a bank that has recently come under sanctions, fell nearly 6 percent. Shares in Aeroflot, the Russian airline, dropped 16 percent.
Overseas, Russian stocks have been ejected from indexes after losing most of their value.
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BRUSSELS — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made another urgent plea for help to President Biden and members of the NATO alliance on Thursday, telling them in a closed-door session that his country was under siege, trapped “in the ‘gray zone’ between the West and Russia,” according to a transcript of his remarks released by the Ukrainian government.
Mr. Zelensky spoke via video link from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as alliance members gathered here for the first of three back-to-back summits designed to bolster the world’s unity of opposition to Russia's monthlong invasion of the country.
He argued that NATO should come to Ukraine’s defense even though his country is not a formal member of the defensive alliance set up after World War II.
“Yes, we are not in the alliance. And I do not make these claims. But Ukrainians never thought that the alliance and the allies were different,” he said. He said he understood the position, often expressed by Mr. Biden, that American troops would not be sent to Ukraine to fight directly with Russians.
“I am sure you already understand that Russia does not intend to stop in Ukraine,” he said. “Does not intend and will not. It wants to go further.”
A senior U.S. administration official who watched the address described Mr. Zelensky’s remarks as “eloquent” and noted that Ukraine’s president did not call for a no-fly zone or admission to the NATO alliance.
But Mr. Zelensky did refer to his previous requests for a no-fly zone and did not mince words in his remarks, according to the transcript.
“On Feb. 24, I addressed you with a perfectly clear, logical request to help close our skies,” he said, referring to previous requests for the allies to impose a no-fly zone over his country to keep Russian planes away. “In any format. Protect our people from Russian bombs and missiles. We did not hear a clear answer.”
“And you see the consequences today,” he added a moment later. “How many people were killed, how many peaceful cities were destroyed?”
Mr. Zelensky has become more and more pointed in his criticism of the restraint from the United States and other countries as Russian forces have savaged many Ukrainian cities, especially in the south.
On Thursday, he criticized the allies for failing to provide fighter jets that Ukraine could use to defend against the air attacks. The White House and the Pentagon have said such support would not prove especially effective, and could be used by Russia as a pretext to draw the United States into a more direct conflict.
But Mr. Zelensky waved aside such concerns.
“Ukraine asked for your planes. So that we do not lose so many people. And you have thousands of fighter jets! But we haven’t been given any yet,” he said. “To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance — without restrictions.”
The senior Biden administration official said that after Mr. Zelensky’s remarks the NATO members engaged in a conversation about the possibility of providing anti-ship missile systems to Ukraine.
But that could take time, and Mr. Zelensky closed his remarks with a plea for immediate action.
“NATO has yet to show what the alliance can do to save people,” he told the leaders. “To show that this is truly the most powerful defense union in the world. And the world is waiting. And Ukraine is very much waiting. Waiting for real actions. Real security guarantees. From those whose word is trustworthy. And whose actions can keep the peace.”
BRUSSELS — The United States will accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the country and will donate $1 billion to help European countries deal with the surge of migrants fleeing Russia’s invasion, the White House said on Thursday.
More than three million Ukrainians have poured into Poland and other countries as the forces of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have bombarded civilian areas in cities across Ukraine.
United States officials have repeatedly said they expect that most Ukrainian refugees will want to stay in Europe, close to their homes. But President Biden, who is in Brussels for three back-to-back summits with allies, is expected to announce that the administration will accept 100,000 refugees who want to come to America.
It is not clear what legal path those refugees will take. Officials said some might be welcomed under the United States’ formal refugee program. Others may be given visas or be granted “humanitarian parole,” a form of entry often given to people fleeing violence or war in countries around the world.
A senior administration official said special efforts were being made to expand and develop new programs with a focus on welcoming Ukrainians who have family members in the United States.
The announcement by Mr. Biden would significantly increase the United States’ role in dealing with the unfolding humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, which has displaced millions of people in a matter of weeks.
Last September, Mr. Biden capped total refugee admissions from around the world to 125,000 for the fiscal year ending in September. But the administration has not taken in anywhere close to that number, and has already worked around the cap by bringing tens of thousands of Afghan refugees into the United States after the end of the war there.
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