Kyiv May 16, 5:39 p.m.
Moscow May 16, 5:39 p.m.
Washington May 16, 10:39 a.m.
Ukraine Live Updates: Setbacks in East Force Russia to Scale Back Ambitions
Independent analysts and Ukrainian officials say Russian forces are focusing on securing a smaller portion of eastern Ukraine. As NATO holds military drills on Russia’s doorstep, the alliance is looking to fast-track admission for Finland and Sweden.
In a sign of Russian forces’ struggles on the battlefield, military analysts have said that Moscow appears to be further scaling back its objectives even in eastern Ukraine, where it has recently been focusing its devastating firepower, and may be targeting a takeover only of part of the Donbas region on its border.
Off the battlefield, Ukraine and its Western allies continued to put pressure on Moscow on Monday as NATO held a large military exercise on Russia’s doorstep in Estonia. Although planned long before the invasion of Ukraine, the drills were a show of might by the alliance, which was further strengthened over the weekend when both Finland and Sweden confirmed that they would cast aside decades of strategic neutrality and apply for membership.
Ukrainian forces, buoyed by Western weapons and financial support, have mounted a fierce counteroffensive in the northeast of the country, pushing Russian forces away from the city of Kharkiv and allowing thousands of residents to return.
Although Russian forces continue to hold territory north of the city and have not fully withdrawn from the area, the Ukrainian military scored a symbolic victory on Sunday when it released a video purporting to show a detachment of troops at the Russian border outside Kharkiv. They erected a pillar in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian national flag.
Russia has refocused on the Donbas region to the southeast — where its forces have been fighting since 2014 — after failing in the early weeks of the war to seize the capital of Kyiv and other cities in northern Ukraine. But even in Donbas, its efforts to encircle Ukrainian forces have faltered amid heavy losses and battlefield reversals, and Moscow is now likely to be narrowing its ambitions and instead focusing on securing only the Luhansk region, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said on Sunday.
In other developments:
In Luhansk, Russian forces fired artillery barrages on Sunday at the city of Sievierodonetsk, killing two people and damaging a chemical plant, a school, a hospital and homes, according to the regional military administration.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, declared support for Finland’s and Sweden’s moves to join NATO, saying that “the United States ought to be first to ratify the treaty for both these countries to join.” NATO’s secretary general said the alliance would grant fast-track membership to both nations, whose parliaments were holding debates on membership on Monday and were widely expected to approve the applications.
McDonald’s is selling its Russian business. Its move to leave Russia completely, after 32 years there, is a significant departure for a brand whose growth across the world became a symbol of globalization and even the basis of a peace theory.
NATO countries started a large-scale military exercise in Estonia on Monday, a long-planned drill made more significant by the country’s proximity to Russia and because of the participation of Finland and Sweden, two countries seeking to join the alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The drill, called Hedgehog, is one of the largest in Estonia since it became independent in 1991. It involves 15,000 personnel from 14 countries and the U.S. Navy Wasp-class landing ship Kearsarge, according to a statement from NATO.
A NATO spokesman, Matthias Eichenlaub, confirmed that Finland and Sweden were participating and said that Estonia was taking a lead in the exercise. A spokeswoman for Estonia’s defense ministry, Eleka Rugam-Rebane, said the exercise was “technically a multinational exercise run by Estonia, but with many NATO countries taking part.”
Sweden and Finland, which have long cooperated closely with the alliance while maintaining traditions of formal neutrality, have both said that they intend to apply for full membership. NATO has promised to expedite their applications.
NATO said it was currently conducting exercises in eight European countries, including Poland and Lithuania. “Exercises like these show that NATO stands strong and ready to protect our nations and defend against any threat,” a spokeswoman for the alliance, Oana Lungescu, said.
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President Vladimir V. Putin met with his five closest allies on Monday. Only one of them spoke up to support him on Ukraine.
In a gilded hall at the Kremlin, Mr. Putin hosted a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is Russia’s answer to NATO. An alliance of six post-Soviet states, the C.S.T.O. was marking the 30-year anniversary of its founding. But what was supposed to be a celebratory meeting quickly turned into a demonstration of Mr. Putin’s isolation, even among Russia’s neighbors.
Speaking first in the televised portion of the summit, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus — who has supported Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine but has not sent troops — criticized other members of the alliance for insufficiently backing Russia and Belarus in the face of Western sanctions.
He noted how the C.S.T.O. had sent forces to Kazakhstan in January to prop up the country’s government in the face of protests — yet had left Russia largely on its own amid the war in Ukraine.
“Are we just as connected by bonds of solidarity and support now?” he asked, after mentioning the alliance’s support of the Kazakh government. “Maybe I’m wrong, but as recent events have shown, it seems the answer is no.”
Kazakhstan has said that it would not help Russia circumvent international sanctions. In a United Nations vote on March 2 condemning the invasion of Ukraine, Belarus was the only post-Soviet country to take Russia’s side.
“Look at how monolithically the European Union votes and acts,” Mr. Lukashenko said at Monday’s summit, sitting at a round table with the other leaders. “If we are separate, we’ll just be crushed and torn apart.”
As if to confirm Mr. Lukashenko’s point, the leaders of the other four C.S.T.O. members — Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — did not even mention Ukraine in their televised remarks.
The Ukraine invasion has put those countries in a tough spot. They all have close economic and military ties to Russia, but Mr. Putin’s invasion of a sovereign neighbor sets a foreboding precedent for countries looking to diversify their foreign policy beyond Moscow.
Mr. Putin, speaking at the summit, again tried to justify his invasion by falsely claiming that “neo-Nazism has long been rampant in Ukraine.” But he took a more measured tone in discussing the likely accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO — the latest evidence that Mr. Putin appears to be trying to limit, for now, an escalation of his conflict with the West.
“Russia, I would like to inform you, dear colleagues, has no problem with these states,” Mr. Putin said, adding that NATO’s expansion to include Sweden and Finland poses “no direct threat to us.”
“But the expansion of military infrastructure to this territory will certainly cause our response,” he continued. “We will look at what that will be based on the threats that are created.”
Reporting from Paris
American and E.U. officials said that their nations will exchange information on exports of critical U.S. and E.U. technologies to ensure Russia and “potential sanctions evaders” are not able to buy or sell technologies that appear on export control lists. The announcement followed meetings of the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council in Saclay, France.
Ukrainian officials warned on Monday that Russia was stopping desperately needed humanitarian assistance from reaching hundreds of thousands of people in the occupied region of Kherson, where they said hospitals were running low on critical supplies.
The region borders Crimea, a part of Ukraine that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. It covers some 11,000 square miles, and fell largely under Russian control in the first days of the war.
The Ukrainian ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, appealed to the United Nations to intervene in the situation there, saying that local officials in Kherson had reported that they could completely run out of medicine for chronically ill patients in two weeks.
“Significant need for medicines exists in all districts of Kherson without exception,” she said in a statement.
An estimated 500,000 people still live in the region, half the prewar population. As witnesses have escaped in recent days, they have painted an increasingly dire picture of life under Russian rule.
Ms. Denisova said it was becoming increasingly difficult for people to leave the region or even to move around within the Russian-controlled territory. She said witnesses had reported that Ukrainian goods were being exported to Russia and that a large number of pharmacies and grocery shops had been looted.
The Russians, she said, were distributing food items to local stores and medicine to pharmacies that had long since passed their expiration date.
Her claims could not be independently verified: Russia has barred independent journalists and international observers from areas under its control. But they are consistent with accounts given by witnesses who have escaped the region to The New York Times and other Western news media.
Volodymyr Leontyev, a pro-Russian Ukrainian who was appointed as the administrator of the occupied city of Kherson, said in a statement this week that residents were returning to their homes and that the situation was stabilizing. But over the past week, people who have managed to flee north to areas controlled by the Ukrainian government have relayed accounts in interviews that contradict his claims.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command said in a statement on Monday that the Russians “continue to fortify themselves on the occupied frontiers” but had not conducted any recent offensive operations.
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Continue reading the main storyPresident Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is meeting at the Kremlin with the leaders of the Collective Treaty Security Organization, an alliance that also includes five other former Soviet states. President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, speaking first, criticized some of the allies for insufficient solidarity with Russia and Belarus amid Western sanctions.
Putin says Russia has “no problem” with Sweden and Finland, and that their accession to NATO will not create a “direct threat” to Russia. But, he says, the expansion of NATO military infrastructure in those countries “will necessarily trigger our response.”
RAS LAFFAN INDUSTRIAL CITY, Qatar — As the United States and its European allies seek to deprive Russia of its oil and gas income during the war in Ukraine, the West has looked to Qatar as an alternative source of fuel to warm European homes, cook food and generate electricity.
That promises even greater clout for this tiny Persian Gulf state, which over the past quarter century has used its natural-gas resources to amass profound wealth and acquire a geopolitical importance it would otherwise lack.
European countries received nearly half of their gas imports from Russia last year. Qatar says it cannot immediately ship much extra gas to the continent because 85 percent of its production is already under contract, but it is investing tens of billions of dollars to increase production by about two-thirds by 2027.
About half of that gas could go to Europe, Saad Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs and the head of the state-owned QatarEnergy petroleum company, said in an interview.
“The stars are all aligned for Qatar to become a very significant L.N.G. exporter to Europe,” said Cinzia Bianco, a Gulf research fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, referring to liquefied natural gas, a shippable form of the commodity.
In January, as fears rose of a Russian invasion, President Biden declared Qatar a “major non-NATO ally” and hosted Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Qatar’s emir, at the White House, the first Gulf head of state given such a welcome by Mr. Biden. Energy issues were high on the agenda.
After the war began, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain called Sheikh Tamim to discuss “ensuring sustainable gas supplies” and other issues, and senior European leaders flew to Qatar to discuss energy, including Josep Borrell Fontelles, the top E.U. diplomat. So did Robert Habeck, Germany’s minister for the economy and climate change.
Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said he’d spoken with the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd J. Austin III, about the situation on the battlefield. Austin tweeted that they’d discussed Ukraine’s military needs and said he’d briefed Reznikov on his call with Russia’s defense minister.
After more than three decades in Russia, McDonald’s — an icon of U.S. lifestyle and capitalism — has put its Russia business up for sale as it works to leave the country completely.
The move is a significant departure for a brand whose growth across the world became the symbol of globalism and even the basis of a peace theory. As global aspirations have fractured in recent years amid the coronavirus pandemic and geopolitical tensions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced many companies that hoped to operate as normal to take action.
Under growing employee and consumer pressure, brands and restaurant chains have partly — or fully — paused their operations in Russia. But few have left entirely because of concerns over the welfare of employees and the difficulties of re-entering after a departure.
McDonald’s, which employs 62,000 people in Russia, said in March that it would temporarily close its operations there, as did several other chains, including Starbucks and Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut. Many employees and activists have pushed for a full retrenchment.
“This is a complicated issue that’s without precedent and with profound consequences,” Chris Kempczinski, the chief executive of McDonald’s, wrote in a message to franchises, employees and suppliers that was obtained by The New York Times.
He added: “Some might argue that providing access to food and continuing to employ tens of thousands of ordinary citizens is surely the right thing to do. But it is impossible to ignore the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. And it is impossible to imagine the Golden Arches representing the same hope and promise that led us to enter the Russian market 32 years ago.”
McDonald’s plans to sell its business, which includes 850 restaurants, some run by franchisees, to a local buyer. It will “de-arch” those restaurants, meaning they will no longer use the McDonald’s name, logo or branding. McDonald’s said in a statement that its “priorities include seeking to ensure the employees of McDonald’s in Russia continue to be paid until the close of any transaction and that employees have future employment with any potential buyer.”
As result of the move, McDonald’s will record a write-off of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion and recognize “foreign currency translation losses,” the company said in the statement.
McDonald’s entree into Russia began at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Mr. Kempczinski wrote in his memo to franchises, employees and suppliers, when the chain allowed the Russian Olympic team to use its Big Mac Bus. Fourteen years later, in January 1990, McDonald’s opened in Moscow.
“In the history of McDonald’s, it was one of our proudest and most exciting milestones,” Mr. Kempczinski wrote. “After nearly half a century of Cold War animosity, the image of the Golden Arches shining above Pushkin Square heralded for many, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the beginning of a new era.”
McDonald’s, which has 39,000 restaurants in over 100 countries, has since invested billions of dollars across its supply chain and restaurants in Russia.
“This was not an easy decision, nor will it be simple to execute given the size of our business and the current challenges of operating in Russia,” Mr. Kempczinski wrote. “But the end state is clear.”
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Reporting from London
Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, met in Helsinki with a group of Senate Republicans headed by the minority leader, Mitch McConnell. Niinisto tweeted that he was grateful for their firm support of NATO membership for Finland.
An important meeting at an exceptional moment. Grateful for the firm support for Finland’s NATO membership by Senators @LeaderMcConnell, @SenJohnBarrasso, @SenatorCollins and @JohnCornyn visiting Helsinki. pic.twitter.com/hQ6ol2x3Fs
— Sauli Niinistö (@niinisto) May 16, 2022
PARIS —
The French automaker Renault announced Monday that it was exiting Russia in a deal negotiated with the Russian government that would allow Renault the option of resuming business in the country at a future date.
Under the agreement, Renault will sell its 68 percent stake in AvtoVAZ, Russia’s biggest carmaker, to a Moscow-based automotive research institute known as NAMI. Renault did not disclose the price, but a person with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not made public, said the automaker was paid the symbolic sum of 1 ruble.
NAMI would continue to operate AvtoVAZ’s two sprawling auto factories and pay its employees. Renault could then repurchase the stake within six years, Renault said in announcing the deal.
“Today, we have taken a difficult but necessary decision, and we are making a responsible choice towards our 45,000 employees in Russia,” said the French automaker’s chief executive, Luca de Meo.
Renault did not immediately disclose how much it is receiving for the stake. The company said it would take a 2.2 billion euro ($2.3 billion) financial hit in the first half of the year because of the sale, and has sharply lowered its financial outlook for 2022.
Russia’s deal with Renault offers a window into how the Kremlin is trying to create openings for Western companies to return to doing business there whenever the dust settles from President Vladimir V. Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Western firms have come under immense pressure to divest from Russia, and hundreds of them have suspended operations or exited ventures with Russian partners, heaping pressure on the Russian economy. On Monday, McDonald’s said it would sell its business in Russia to a local buyer.
Russia’s industry and trade minister, Denis Manturov, has previously said that AvtoVAZ, the maker of Lada, Russia’s best-selling car, would probably be handed over to NAMI for care taking “with the possibility of a buyback, if our colleagues decide to return.”
The Kremlin has maintained since the start of the war that Western companies were pulling back from Russia primarily because of political and social pressure, rather than economic rationale.
But while Mr. Putin has threatened to nationalize Western companies that leave, the government is also employing other mechanisms, such as the one negotiated with Renault, that could encourage companies to eventually come back in.
Russia is Renault’s second biggest market for cars after France, comprising around 10 percent of global sales. In 2008, Carlos Ghosn, Renault’s chief executive at the time, agreed to partner with AvtoVAZ with the direct blessing of Mr. Putin, who wanted a foreign partner to help improve quality and viewed Mr. Ghosn as the man who could get the job done.
Renault’s partnership with AvtoVAZ added to Mr. Ghosn’s hefty salary at the time, drawing scrutiny from some Renault shareholders. Yet the deal eventually made Renault Russia’s largest automaker, annually rolling 500,000 Ladas and Renault-branded cars off its assembly lines for an increasingly affluent cadre of Russian consumers.
In March, however, Renault announced it was stopping operations at a plant in Moscow and reassessing its partnership with AvtoVAZ, after Western sanctions blocked the import of computer chips and other parts needed for cars. The announcement was made hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, addressing the French Senate, called on Renault and other French multinationals to leave Russia.
Renault had initially tried to keep its Russian factories running, even as Russia bore down on Ukraine, citing the need to continue producing for the local market. In closed-door meetings early in the conflict, French government officials urged top executives to avoid making hasty decisions to leave.
The French state owns a 15 percent stake in Renault and holds a seat on the board. President Emmanuel Macron said during a news conference in March that French companies should be “free to decide for themselves” whether to stay in Russia.
Renault, like other Western firms, also needed to keep paying its employees — especially after Moscow said it would penalize foreign firms that stopped paying workers.
But the Western limits on shipping parts to Russia soon made it impossible to keep operating the two factories.
Western sanctions targeting Russian oligarchs close to Mr. Putin also took a toll.
Renault’s partner in AvtoVAZ is Russian Technologies Corporation, known as Rostec, which holds a 32 percent stake in the venture through a Dutch holding company. Rostec is run by Sergei Chemezov, who was targeted by Western sanctions after Russia’s invasion. Mr. Chemezov is reported to be a former KGB agent who worked with Mr. Putin in East Germany before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Chemezov, who was a key interlocutor with Mr. Ghosn on the 2008 deal between Renault and AvtoVAZ, has vigorously defended Russia’s war in Ukraine as “necessary.” Among other things, Rostec also makes Russia’s Kalashnikov assault rifles, as well as ammunition, military equipment and aircraft engines.
With Russia’s economy facing a steep economic downturn as international sanctions bite, Moscow appears eager to mute the pain. Under the arrangement, Renault’s factory in Moscow will continue to produce cars. Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, announced Monday on his blog that the city would take over the plant, which will build passenger cars under the Moskvich brand so that thousands of employees would “not be left without work.”
Renault considered the option of being able to buy back its stake in AvtoVAZ, an important part of any deal, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. But any future buyback would depend on geopolitical circumstances at the time and the state of Western sanctions against Russia, the person added.
Renault officials did not make further comment. But Mr. Ghosn has not hesitated to speak out. In an interview with France’s BFM TV last month from his home in Lebanon, where he is living as a fugitive after escaping in 2019 from a criminal inquiry in Japan for alleged financial misconduct as head of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi auto alliance, he said that the political pressures that had built up on Renault to exit Russia were “a pity.”
“Russia is not going to disappear,” he said. “It is a great country going through a difficult phase today. Obviously, Ukraine even more so. But the market will stay and one day or another, the situation will normalize.”
Reporting from Krakow, Poland
Russian forces on Sunday fired around a dozen shells at part of a hospital in the city of Sievierodonetsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region, according to the regional military administration. There were no details on casualties, but 200 of the hospital’s 300 beds are no longer usable.
Russia has likely run out of combat-ready reservists, forcing it to integrate forces from private military companies and militias with its regular army, the Institute for the Study of War reported.
The Institute for the Study of War reports that Russian forces have likely abandoned their goal of encircling tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers from Izium in the north to the city of Donetsk in the south, and will instead focus their struggling eastern campaign on capturing the province of Luhansk.
Zelensky said he also plans to address the Davos Forum later this month to discuss the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. “We are doing our best to fully gather the support of the world, and participation in the Davos Forum is one of the best opportunities for that.”
In his nightly address, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he will be speaking to more than 60 U.S. universities and two Canadian universities on Monday, part of his effort to keep the world focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He plans a separate address to Stanford University at the end of May.
NATO could provide an interim security guarantee to Sweden and Finland to deter a potential threat and even agree to intervene militarily on their behalf while they go through the application process for membership, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, said on Sunday.
Finland’s government announced on Sunday that the nation would pursue membership, while Sweden’s governing party also said it supported joining the alliance. Acceptance by NATO’s 30 members is widely expected, and NATO leaders say they would accelerate the membership bids, but the process could take a year and Russia has threatened retaliation if they join.
As a result, the interim period before they come under the umbrella of NATO’s mutual security pact could leave both Sweden and Finland vulnerable.
“For NATO to decide to provide a security guarantee or to even intervene militarily does not require an Article Five commitment,” said Mr. Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a research institute. He was referring to the element of NATO’s treaty that spells out the principle of collective defense.
A decision to offer a security guarantee “doesn’t need a treaty commitment” or need to apply to a treaty ally, he said, adding that it would require consensus among alliance members.
The security of the two countries is a concern because of Russia’s argument that its invasion of Ukraine was, in part, to prevent the possible eastward expansion of NATO on its borders. Finland shares a border with Russia, and, on Saturday, a Russian energy company halted the export of electricity to the country.
Mr. Daalder said that Moscow’s retaliation against Helsinki and Stockholm was likely to take the form of spreading disinformation and suspending energy supplies.
The United States could on its own offer a security guarantee to the countries, as Britain did on Wednesday through a mutual security declaration with each country, and NATO could also become involved potentially through the European Union, he said.
Finland and Sweden are members of the European Union and under the mutual defense clause of the E.U.’s Lisbon Treaty, Article 42.7, member countries, including NATO members Germany and France, are obligated to come to their aid in the event that they are attacked.
“The fact that you have an E.U. commitment to defend these countries can rapidly evolve into a NATO contingency,” Mr. Daalder said.
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The Russian military losses are mounting, the economy is under pressure from Western sanctions and NATO troops may soon be expanding their presence along Russia’s borders.
But to many Russians, defeat in the war in Ukraine remains inconceivable.
The majority of Russians, especially the older generations and the working classes, believe state propaganda, which fills their television screens with images of seemingly unstoppable columns of Russian tanks advancing through Ukrainian countryside and virulent talk shows that paint the conflict as a new chapter in their country’s struggle against Nazism.
Even among the more educated and younger Russians, unease about the economy and military failures has yet to crystallize into a sense of national catastrophe, said a half-dozen residents in Russia’s capital, Moscow, and provincial Siberia. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of laws that criminalize any criticism of, or use of the term war, to describe what their country is doing in Ukraine.
Western and Ukrainian officials say that thousands of Russian soldiers have already died in the conflict. But reports about deaths have been heavily censored by the state and concentrated among working-class families, precluding local tragedies from coalescing into national grieving.
The Russian government’s ability to shield the population thus far from the worst impact of the increasingly draconian economic sanctions is another major reason why the vague unease has not spilled into panic or sustained protests, according to those interviewed.
Prices are rising steadily, but despite the pullout of many Western firms from Russia, basic goods remain widely available. Currency controls introduced by the government have artificially shored up the ruble, creating a sense of stability even as Russia heads toward economic isolation.
The longer the war goes on, the stronger the ruble becomes, one small business owner in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk said, referring to the Russian central bank’s emergency measures that propped up the ruble by making foreign currency exceedingly difficult to obtain.
Much of Europe’s airspace is closed to Russian aircraft, and Russian banks have been disconnected from Western payment systems. But after the initial pause, wealthier Russians have found ways to resume vacationing in popular destinations such as France and Italy, compounding an apparent sense of normalcy.
And even some Russians who say they initially opposed the invasion are now saying their country has been left with no choice but continue fighting until victory, even if that raises the risk of nuclear war.
Many Russians believe the war is no longer against Ukraine, but has morphed into a proxy conflict with the United States and NATO, who, they say, are exploiting the conflict to destroy their nation.
Emboldened by Western support and successful counterattacks, Ukrainian officials are increasingly calling for the expulsion of Russian forces from all of Ukraine’s territory — including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014 and which most in Russia view as an integral part of their state. At the same time, NATO is poised to expand along Russian borders after Finland’s decision to apply for membership in the Western military alliance.
This has allowed Kremlin propaganda to begin portraying the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a defensive war for the survival of the Russian state, an emotive theme in a nation that has prided itself on coming together to repel foreign aggressors over the centuries.
If pushed into a corner, Russia will always fight on, said another resident of Novosibirsk, who opposed the invasion.
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
The village of Andriivka, near Kyiv, was heavily destroyed when Russian forces occupied the area and were then pushed out under Ukrainian bombardment. Nadiia Kataieva and her husband Oleksander made the journey from Kyiv to help her mother, Nina, try to clear out her destroyed home.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on Sunday that he would support a Biden administration move to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism as President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has urged.
The top Senate Republican also declared support for Finland’s and Sweden’s moves to join NATO, telling reporters in a conference call from Stockholm that “the United States ought to be first to ratify the treaty for both these countries to join.”
Mr. McConnell’s comments came after he led a small delegation of Senate Republicans on a surprise visit to Ukraine. The delegation, which included Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Cornyn of Texas, and Susan Collins of Maine, is expected to head to Helsinki next, before returning to Washington.
The delegation met with Mr. Zelensky while in Ukraine and sought to affirm bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia, Mr. McConnell said, though he said it was up to the Ukrainians to define victory in the war.
“It’s a decision for the Ukrainians to make — my definition of victory is whatever Zelensky and the Ukrainians conclude is a satisfactory end,” he said. He added, “Territorial integrity, I think, is the goal of the Ukrainians. Obviously, that would mean that the Russians need to go back to Russia.”
Pressed further about what that meant for American involvement, Mr. McConnell added, “it’s not a blank check. On the other hand, we ought not to be imposing a settlement that Ukrainians don’t want.”
The visit also came as the Senate is moving to approve a $40 billion emergency humanitarian and military aid package for Ukraine this week, after a single Republican blocked an effort to expedite its passage on Thursday.
Mr. McConnell said he was confident that the Senate would approve that legislation this week with an overwhelming bipartisan vote, even as a growing number of Republicans express opposition to sending billions of dollars abroad when the United States is struggling to counter inflation and supply chain issues.
“I think it’s important for the United States to help, important for the free world to help, important for the Ukrainians to win and hopefully, not many members of my party will choose to politicize this issue,” he said, pointing out that the majority of House Republicans, including party leaders, backed the $40 billion package.
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Reporting from Prudyanka, Ukraine.
In recent days, Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian troops back from the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, but civilians in frontline villages are still under fire and short of supplies.
Volunteers on Sunday raced into these villages, situated just a few miles from Russian lines in northeastern Ukraine.
“We live in the cellar and cook in the garden,” said Valentina, 48, as volunteers unloaded food parcels into her yard for the neighborhood. Her parents had also stayed in the village, with her father narrowly escaping injury when a shell hit the garden.
“Why should we leave? It’s our home,” Valentina said.
She said the recent Ukrainian counterattack had not seemed to bring any respite from the Russian artillery fire.
“We did not see it getting any better,” she said.
Within minutes, the volunteers were gone to the next village, as soldiers urged them not to stay long.
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