Kyiv April 14, 5:36 p.m.
Moscow April 14, 5:36 p.m.
Washington April 14, 10:36 a.m.
Ukraine Live Updates: Russian Warship ‘Seriously Damaged,’ in Setback to Moscow’s Forces
Ukraine said it had struck the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet with missiles, while Russia claimed that the damage was caused by a fire. As Moscow moves to escalate its offensive in the east and south, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine praised the U.S. for sending more military aid.
Michael Schwirtz and
Russia’s flagship in its Black Sea fleet was “seriously damaged” on Thursday and its crew forced to abandon it, in a symbolic blow to Russian forces that could also have strategic consequences for the war.
The event quickly became caught up in the conflict’s parallel information war, with Ukraine claiming to have struck the vessel, Moskva, with Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles and Russia saying that an onboard fire had caused the damage.
Although analysts said the possible loss of the ship would not alter the course of the war, an attack by the Neptune missile systems, if confirmed, would be a significant sign of Ukraine’s military capability and could serve as a deterrent to Russian naval attacks. It would also be the first successful Ukrainian attack on a major Russian warship at sea rather than at port.
The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea said that two anti-ship missiles had hit the warship, in what would be a morale boost to Ukraine. But the Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said the United States had not yet determined what caused the fire aboard the vessel, which it believed was still afloat.
The damage to the warship came as the United States and Western allies are bolstering Ukraine with new military aid before an expected intensification of Russia’s assault on the east. The military aid included President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday of an additional $800 million in armored vehicles, helicopters, radar systems and other U.S. assistance.
Here are other major developments:
The United States is considering whether to send a high-level official to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the coming days as another sign of support for the country.
Russia is continuing to target southern Ukraine, where it hopes to complete a “land bridge” connecting Crimea to its forces in the east.The main remaining obstacle to that goal is the besieged southern city of Mariupol, which analysts say could fall within days.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s former prime minister, said Moscow would be forced to “seriously strengthen” its defenses in the Baltics if Finland and Sweden joined NATO, as the two countries are considering.
“Ukraine is a crime scene,” the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said after visiting Bucha, outside Kyiv, where the authorities are working to exhume bodies from communal graves. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has called the evidence of atrocities a “fake” that has been elaborately staged by the West.
Ukrainian officials say that departing Russian soldiers have laced large swaths of the country with buried land mines and jury-rigged bombs — some hidden as booby traps inside homes.
Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said on Thursday that taking out the Moskva, Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea, would be more than a symbolic victory for Ukrainian forces.
The successful use of Ukrainian-made Neptune missile systems, which have never been used in combat, would serve as a deterrence to Russian naval forces and make them reconsider plans to conduct amphibious assaults along the Ukrainian coast, General Hodges said in an interview.
“This is a big deal, because it shows that the Ukrainians have some capability,” he said. “This will be a huge boost to them and will also increase deterrence. Russian ships will be hesitant to get too close.”
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Reporting from Warsaw
John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said on CNN that the United States had not yet determined what caused the fire aboard Russia’s Black Sea flagship. He also said the Pentagon’s understanding was that the vessel was still afloat.
Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia
Russia said there would be “no more talk of a nuclear-free Baltics” if Sweden and Finland decided to join NATO. Former President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who is now a senior security official, said Moscow would be compelled to “seriously strengthen” its ground and air defense forces in the area, and potentially deploy nuclear-equipped warships “at arm’s length” from the two countries.
The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet suffered catastrophic damage on Thursday that a senior Ukrainian official said was the result of a missile strike by Ukrainian coastal defense forces, though Russia claimed that the damage was caused by an onboard fire.
The crew of the Russian guided-missile cruiser, the Moskva, abandoned ship after a fire detonated ammunition aboard, Russia’s defense ministry said. It said in a statement that the fire aboard the cruiser had been contained, but the Ukrainians said the ship had sunk.
The governor of the Odesa region along the Black Sea, Maxim Marchenko, said on Telegram that the country’s forces had struck the ship with anti-ship Neptune missiles. The senior Ukrainian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe an active military engagement, said that it was the first time the Ukrainian-developed Neptune missile had been used in the war.
There was no independent visual confirmation of the vessel’s status, and the statement about the Neptune could not be independently verified.
Whatever the cause of the ship’s possible demise, it was a potent symbolic victory for the Ukrainian military, an embarrassment for Moscow and — if a Neptune was used — a demonstration of the power that new weapons could have in shaping the war. It would be the first successful Ukrainian attack on a major Russian warship at sea rather than at port.
Ships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet have been offshore since the start of the war, periodically launching rocket or missile attacks against targets inside Ukraine. The fleet has cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, removing a key economic lifeline.
The potential loss of the Moskva provides a morale boost to Ukrainian forces, but it is unlikely to change the course of the war. Russian forces are on the verge of taking the strategic port city of Mariupol, which would pave the way for the creation of a “land bridge” between Russian territory and the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
The Moskva, with a crew of almost 700, is the pride of the Russian naval fleet in the Black Sea. It was originally built in the Soviet era in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv — the city where Ukrainian forces last month mounted a spirited defense that stopped the Russian advance toward Odesa.
The Ukrainians have long had the ability to strike Russian ships parked near their territorial waters, but the Neptune gives the nation’s territorial defense forces far greater range. The missile, which is based on the Soviet AS-20 “Kayak” anti-ship missile and is similar to the U.S.-built Harpoon missile, can reach targets as far as 200 miles offshore.
As the Russian Navy positioned its fleet in menacing fashion on the Black Sea in the weeks before the war, Ukraine raced to prepare defenses and its military described the Neptune as a vital weapon being added to its arsenal.
It is unclear how many Neptune missiles Ukraine’s Navy has. But if it was a Neptune that hit the Moskva, it would be a demonstration of the weapon’s effectiveness. The Ukrainians have called on the West to deliver sophisticated anti-ship weapons since the war began.
The Pentagon estimates that the Russian Navy has “a couple of dozen ships” in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and Ukraine has had a hard time countering Russia’s naval dominance.
In March, Ukraine’s military said it had destroyed a Russian ship at the southern Ukrainian port of Berdiansk, which is under Russian occupation, and videos and photos reviewed by The New York Times confirmed at the time that a Russian ship was on fire at the port.
Lt. Cmdr. Jason Lancaster, a U.S. Navy surface warfare officer, said the threat posed by missiles like the Neptune “changes operational behavior” of an opponent.
Writing for the Center for International Maritime Security this month, he said that “these behavioral changes limit Russia’s ability to utilize their fleet to their advantage,” and that “the added stress of sudden combat increases fatigue and can lead to mistakes.”
The flagship vessel entered service in the early 1980s, was renamed the Moskva in 1996 and was partially refitted in 2020, according to the Russian news media. It was an integral part of the Russian advance in this war.
It was also the vessel that Ukrainian troops famously told off as it approached a Ukrainian garrison on Snake Island on the Black Sea.
According to an audio exchange made public in late February, a Russian officer told the Ukrainians to surrender. “This is a Russian military warship,” the officer said. “I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and needless casualties. Otherwise, you will be bombed.”
A Ukrainian soldier offered a simple, if obscene, refusal, using words that have become a rallying cry around Ukraine.
Reporting from Warsaw
Almost one million Ukrainians who fled the country after the Russian invasion have returned, according to Andriy Demchenko, the spokesman of the State Border Guard Service. More than 4.5 million people left or were evacuated from Ukraine into neighboring countries in less than two months of fighting, according to the United Nations. Another 7.1 million people have been internally displaced.
Cade Metz and
In early March, days after Russia invaded Ukraine and began cracking down on dissent at home, Konstantin Siniushin, a venture capitalist in Riga, Latvia, helped charter two planes out of Russia to help people flee.
Both planes departed from Moscow, carrying tech workers from the Russian capital as well as St. Petersburg, Perm, Ekaterinburg and other cities. Together, the planes moved about 300 software developers, entrepreneurs and other technology specialists out of the country, including 30 Russian workers from start-ups backed by Mr. Siniushin.
Thousands of other Russian tech workers fled to Armenia in the weeks after the invasion. Thousands more flew to Georgia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and other countries that accept Russian citizens without visas.
By March 22, a Russian tech industry trade group estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 tech workers had left the country and that an additional 70,000 to 100,000 would soon follow. They are part of a much larger exodus of workers from Russia, but their departure could have an even more lasting impact on the country’s economy.
The exodus will fundamentally change the Russian tech industry, according to interviews with more than two dozen people who are part of the tightknit community of Russian tech workers around the world, including many who left the country in recent weeks. An industry once seen as a rising force in the Russian economy is losing vast swaths of its workers. It is losing many of the bright young minds building companies for the future.
“Most Russian tech workers are part of the global market. Either they work for global companies or they are tech entrepreneurs trying to build new companies for the global market,” Mr. Siniushin said through an interpreter from his office in Riga. “So they are leaving the country.”
The recent exodus reverses 10 to 15 years of momentum in the Russian tech industry, said Konstantin Sonin, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, who immigrated from Russia to the United States. “It is now like the ‘90s, when whomever was able to move moved out of the country,” he said.
Tech is a small part of the Russian economy compared with the energy and metals industries, but it has been growing rapidly. The loss of many young, educated, forward-looking people could have economic ramifications for years to come, economists said.
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Continue reading the main storyThe United Nations has offered devastating details of the global effects of the war in Ukraine, a “three-dimensional crisis” upending the flow of food, energy and money around the world.
“We are now facing a perfect storm that threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries,” said António Guterres, the organization’s secretary general.
In its first official report on the war’s impact, the U.N. said the war in Ukraine was having “alarming cascading effects” on a global economy already “battered” by the pandemic and climate change.
The report said that up to 1.7 billion people — a third of whom are already living in poverty — now face food, energy and finance disruptions. With energy prices rising as much as 50 percent for natural gas in recent months, and with inflation growing and development stalled, many countries risk defaulting on their debts, according to the report.
“These are countries where people struggle to afford healthy diets, where imports are essential to satisfy the food and energy needs of their populations, where debt burdens and tightening resources limit government’s ability to cope with the vagaries of global financial conditions,” the report said.
It said that 107 countries had severe exposure to at least one the three dimensions of the crisis, and that of those nations, 69 had severe exposure to all three dimensions.
Ukraine and Russia provide about 30 percent of the world’s wheat and barley, according to the report.
The war has sent commodity prices to record highs — with food prices 34 percent higher than this time last year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and crude oil prices up by around 60 percent.
“Vulnerable populations in developing countries are particularly exposed to these price swings,” the report said, adding that “the rise in food prices threatens knock-on effects of social unrest.”
But the report said that swift action, coupled with political will and existing resources, could soften the blow — recommending that countries not hoard food supplies, and that they offer help to small farmers, keep freight costs stable and lift restrictions on exports, among other things.
The report called on governments to make strategic fuel reserves available to the global market and reduce the use of wheat for fuel.
Anushka Patil and
A Russian warship in the Black Sea was “seriously damaged” on Wednesday, according to a Ukrainian military official and Russian state news agencies, though each claimed a different cause for the destruction.
The head of Odesa’s military forces, Maxim Marchenko, said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had struck the ship with anti-ship Neptune missiles. He claimed it was the same vessel that was famously and obscenely told off by Ukrainian troops in February, saying it went “exactly where it was sent by our border guards on Snake Island!”
Hours later, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that ammunition had exploded on the ship, a missile cruiser called the Moskva, as a result of “a fire,” according to the state news agency Tass. The agency reported that the crew had evacuated from the ship and that the cause of the fire was under investigation.
Neither account could be independently confirmed. If Mr. Marchenko’s claims are correct, the damage to the warship would mark a notable military triumph for Ukraine — the formidable Moskva is the flagship vessel of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The ship, which is more than 600 feet long, first entered service in the early 1980s with the Soviet Navy and carries 16 Vulkan missile launchers with a strike range of more than 400 miles, Russian news agencies have reported. It was deployed off the coast of Syria in 2015 to provide air defenses and patrolled the coast of Georgia during a conflict with Russia in 2008.
Ukraine has repeatedly claimed to have destroyed Russian warships since the start of the war, but its reports have not always been independently verified.
In March, Ukraine’s military said it had destroyed a Russian ship at the port of Berdiansk, under Russian occupation in southern Ukraine, and videos and photos reviewed by The New York Times confirmed that a Russian ship was on fire at the port.
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The United States is considering whether to send a high-level official to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the days ahead as a sign of support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made high-profile visits over the past month to countries neighboring Ukraine as the war raged. And other top American officials have made similar visits, some coming close to the border. But no American official has publicly visited Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in late February.
It is highly unlikely that Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris would go to Kyiv, according to the person familiar with the deliberations. The security requirements for the president or vice president in a war zone are enormous and would require a huge number of American personnel and equipment to make the trip.
But it is possible that another official — perhaps a cabinet secretary or senior member of the military — could make the trip safely with a smaller security entourage.
Top officials — including some world leaders — from other nations have made official visits to the Ukrainian capital since the war began. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Britain, made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday. The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia visited Kyiv on Wednesday.
A possible visit by a senior U.S. official, which was earlier reported by Politico, would be intended as another show of solidarity with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But it would also be a high-risk mission, putting Americans in harm’s way and potentially risking a direct confrontation with Russian forces that Mr. Biden has repeatedly vowed to avoid.
No decision has been made, and the administration is unlikely to announce a visit in advance, given concerns about security. Previous visits by senior American officials to other war zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, were typically not announced until after the official had arrived in the country — and sometimes not even until after the official had left.
Oleg Synegubov, the head of the Kharkiv regional state administration, says Russian shelling has killed four civilians and injured 10 others in residential areas of Kharkiv.
A Russian warship in the Black Sea was “seriously damaged,” according to both a Ukrainian military official and Russian state news agencies. The head of Odesa’s military forces, Maxim Marchenko, said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces struck the ship with missiles. Hours later, Russia’s Defense Ministry said a fire had caused ammunition to explode on the ship, the Moskva, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. It said the crew was evacuated and the cause of the fire was under investigation.
The Russian government has imposed “tit-for-tat” sanctions on 398 members of the U.S. Congress, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. It cited a statement from Russia’s Foreign Ministry, saying the move was in response to U.S. sanctions against 328 members of the State Duma. The report did not name the lawmakers.
Reporting from Warsaw
President Biden told President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States would send an additional $800 million worth of military and other security aid to Ukraine. Mr. Biden said in a statement that the “new package of assistance will contain many of the highly effective weapons systems we have already provided and new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine.”
In the days after the Russian withdrawal from the outskirts of Kyiv, a driver named Oleg Naumenko opened the trunk of an abandoned car and it exploded, killing him instantly.
The car had been booby-trapped, and his family and local authorities blamed Russian soldiers. “I died with him in that moment,” Mr. Naumenko’s wife, Valeria, said between sobs.
As ordinary Ukrainians emerge from basements and bunkers into the ruins of their hometowns, many are being confronted with a new horror: thousands of mines and unexploded bombs left behind by retreating Russian troops.
Residents and authorities say that departing Russian soldiers have laced large swaths of the country with buried land mines and jury-rigged bombs — some hidden as booby traps inside homes. The explosives now must be found and neutralized before residents can resume a semblance of normal life.
Some of the explosives have been attached to washing machines, doorways, car windows, and other places where they can kill or injure civilians returning to their homes, according to residents and Ukrainian officials. Some were even hidden under hospital stretchers and corpses.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine this week called his country “one of the most contaminated by mines in the world,” and said that authorities were working to clear thousands in the areas from which Russian armies had retreated in recent weeks. He accused Russian soldiers of leaving the explosives in their wake “to kill or maim as many of our people as possible.”
He said that the tactic was a war crime and that Russian soldiers must have been acting on instructions from top officials, adding: “Without the appropriate orders, they would not have done it.”
Human Rights Watch and The New York Times have reported that Russian forces in Ukraine appear to be using advanced land mines in the eastern city of Kharkiv. Several local officials have also said that bomb squads in their districts have found explosive devices left behind in homes.
Anti-personnel mines, which are designed to kill people, are banned by an international treaty signed by nearly every country in the world, including Ukraine; Russia and the United States have declined to join.
Ukraine’s emergency services agency has deployed a small army of about 550 mine specialists to clear the areas recently occupied by Russian forces. The teams have been working to remove about 6,000 explosives per day, and since the start of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, they have found more than 54,000 explosive devices, the agency reported on Tuesday.
“Wherever the occupiers stayed overnight, they would set up tripwires,” Ukraine’s interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, said during a televised interview on Sunday. “Explosives have been found under helmets, attached to doors, in the washing machine, and in cars.”
The placement of explosives in Ukrainian homes could not be independently verified.
Mr. Naumenko, who was killed on April 4, worked as a driver in the village of Hoholiv, about 40 miles outside of Kyiv. But his talent lay in repairing cars. After Russian forces retreated from a nearby village, neighbors found an abandoned vehicle and turned it over to him.
His wife learned of his death the next day in Poland, where she had fled with their 7-year-old son and her mother at the start of the war. She returned to their village as soon as she got the news. “What was left was the car, with the door still open and a pool of blood,” Ms. Naumenko, 28, said, “and a big emptiness.”
Her account was confirmed through photos and by the Kyiv regional police, who posted a report about the incident on their Facebook page, cautioning returning residents to “not touch objects and things that are not previously tested by experts.”
Other local officials are urging residents to call emergency services before entering their homes.
Retreating armies often bury land mines in order to slow the advance of enemy armies. But experts say Russian forces have a well-earned reputation for booby-trapping areas they have vacated in order to kill and maim returning civilians.
Human Rights Watch has documented Russia’s use of antipersonnel mines in more than 30 countries where Moscow’s forces were involved, including conflicts in Syria and Libya. In Palmyra, during the Syrian war, booby traps surfaced after the Russians vacated the town.
“Leaving behind little presents for the civilians when they return — like hand grenades, trip wires, unexploded shells, pressure plates — it’s in the Russian military tradition to do that,” said Mark Hiznay, the senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again,” he said.
Mr. Hiznay said “putting a land mine in someone’s freezer” was a tactic that has no utility other than to terrorize civilians. Ukraine will be dealing with the consequences of land mines “one civilian leg at a time,” he added, explaining that it can often take years, and possibly decades, to clear all the ordnance.
“The presence of these devices denies civilians their terrain and forces them to make hard choices: take the sheep out to graze or risk stepping on a mine in the pasture,” he said.
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