Russia-Ukraine WarWhat Happened on Day 13 of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

President Biden banned U.S. imports of Russian oil, and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola suspended operations in Russia. A humanitarian corridor allowed thousands to escape fighting in one Ukrainian city, but many more nationwide remained trapped in miserable conditions.

Follow the latest updates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Ukrainian civilians being evacuated from Irpin as fighting continued between Russian and Ukrainian forces on Tuesday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Isabella Kwai
March 9, 2022, 5:04 a.m. ET

Reporting from London

Hong Kong organizations in Britain on Wednesday called on Priti Patel, Britain’s home secretary — who has in the past been criticized for tough measures against asylum seekers — to waive visas for Ukrainians fleeing the war. In 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced a visa program that has allowed thousands of Hong Kong residents worried about a sweeping Beijing national security law to work and live in Britain.

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Credit...Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament, via Reuters
Marc Santora
March 9, 2022, 3:23 a.m. ET

Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine

The Ukrainian government said it would resume efforts to evacuate thousands of people from Sumy in eastern Ukraine. The government also said that it had set up “humanitarian corridors” to move people out of areas of heavy fighting around Kyiv. A train will shuttle children and women out of the Kyiv area at 11 a.m.

Yu Young Jin
March 9, 2022, 3:21 a.m. ET

Reporting from Seoul

Ken Rhee, a former special warfare officer in the South Korean Navy and a YouTuber, could face criminal charges for leaving the country to fight as a volunteer soldier in Ukraine, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday. The South Korean government has barred its citizens from traveling to Ukraine without permission.

Steven Lee Myers
March 9, 2022, 3:13 a.m. ET

China’s foreign ministry announced that it would provide the equivalent of nearly $800,000 in humanitarian aid to Ukraine and that the first shipments had already begun. China has faced criticism for not condemning Russia’s invasion and defending President Putin’s security demands.

Julie Creswell
March 9, 2022, 2:58 a.m. ET

Food diplomacy is put on hold as companies halt their operations.

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Waiting to enter a McDonald’s in Moscow’s Pushkin Square in 1990.Credit...Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG, via Getty Images

When McDonald’s opened its doors in Moscow’s Pushkin Square in 1990, it was welcomed by more than 30,000 Russians who happily waited hours in line, eager to spend a sizable chunk of their daily wages for a taste of America.

Through burgers and fries, a food diplomacy was forged, one that flourished over the past three decades as corporations like McDonald’s and PepsiCo, private investment firms, and individuals plunged billions of dollars into building factories and restaurants to bring food, culture and good-old American capitalism to Russia. It was perestroika and glasnost sandwiched between two buns.

“McDonald’s was more than the opening of a simple restaurant,” Marc Carena, a former managing director of McDonald’s Russia, told Voice of America in 2020 when the Golden Arches celebrated the 30th anniversary of its first location in what was the Soviet Union. “It came to symbolize the entire opening of the U.S.S.R. to the West.”

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed everything, and food companies and restaurant chains have struggled with how to respond. Amid mounting pressure to act, McDonald’s announced on Tuesday that it was temporarily closing its nearly 850 locations in Russia and halting operations in the country.

Soon after the McDonald’s announcement, other prominent food companies and restaurants followed. Starbucks said it, too, was closing all of its locations in Russia, where they are owned and operated by the Kuwaiti conglomerate Alshaya Group. Coca-Cola said it was halting sales there.

McDonald’s, which has invested millions of dollars into building restaurants in Russia and is a symbol of American culture, has felt the impact of geopolitics before. In 2014, when the United States and other nations imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea, the authorities suddenly closed down a number of McDonald’s locations in Russia, including in Pushkin Square, citing sanitary conditions. The Pushkin Square location reopened 90 days later.

Ivan Nechepurenko
March 9, 2022, 2:48 a.m. ET

In an effort to prop up the ruble, Russia’s Central Bank told Russians they can only withdraw as much as $10,000 in foreign currency from their accounts. The ruble has lost about 35 percent of its value since the invasion of Ukraine.

Mike Ives
March 9, 2022, 2:38 a.m. ET

Reporting from Seoul

Heineken’s chief executive, Dolf van den Brink, said in a statement that the company would stop producing, advertising and selling beer in Russia. Heineken had previously announced a halt on new investments and exports to the country.

Alexandra Stevenson
March 9, 2022, 2:34 a.m. ET

Oil prices climbed Wednesday, and gold soared to nearly a 19-month high as investors looked for safe havens. Asian stocks initially rose but were later weighed down by regional news. European and U.S. stocks were expected to gain following a volatile Tuesday.

Mike Ives
March 9, 2022, 2:10 a.m. ET

Reporting from Seoul

Kamala Harris travels to Poland amid questions over NATO’s response in Ukraine.

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Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to discuss assistance to Ukraine with the leaders of Poland and Romania.Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Vice President Kamala Harris will begin a three-day trip to Poland and Romania on Wednesday, as the United States and its NATO allies try to find a way to help Ukraine defend itself without getting pulled into a wider war against Russia.

NATO countries have been sending antitank missiles, surface-to-air missiles and other weapons into Ukraine at a furious pace since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. That is risky, even if no NATO soldier ever crosses into the country, because the arms supplies will likely be seen by the Kremlin as a not-so-disguised intervention into the war.

NATO members have already rejected the possibility of directly intervening against Russian forces, including by imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

They are still considering whether to send Soviet-era fighter jets into the country, as President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has requested. The United States and Poland, however, publicly disagree on how that should be done.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States was exploring the idea of supplying jets to Poland should Warsaw choose to send its own to neighboring Ukraine. But Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland said his country would not send fighter jets to Ukraine, though it does “significantly help in many other areas,” his office said on Twitter.

On Tuesday, Poland’s Foreign Ministry said the country was ready to deploy its Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to a United States air base in Germany, and that it requested other owners of such jets within NATO to “act in the same vein.”

But Victoria Nuland, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, told lawmakers at a hearing on Ukraine that the Polish proposal had caught her off guard. The Pentagon also said the proposal was not “tenable.”

The White House announced Ms. Harris’s trip to Poland and Romania last week, before American and Polish officials publicly aired their disagreement on the fighter jet question.

The announcement said that Ms. Harris planned to discuss “security, economic, and humanitarian assistance” to Ukraine with the leaders of Poland and Romania. It did not elaborate or provide any details about military assistance.

Even if no fighter jets are sent to Ukraine, Poland will remain a critical part of NATO’s efforts to help Ukraine and contain Russia. It is a major recipient of Ukrainians fleeing the war and hosts thousands of American soldiers.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that it was sending two Patriot antimissile batteries to Poland from elsewhere in Europe, as a way to guard against “any potential threat to U.S. and allied forces and NATO territory.”

But it was careful to add that such systems have been used for years to protect American troops in the Middle East and “will in no way support any offensive operations.”

Aurelien BreedenMarina Harss
March 9, 2022, 12:57 a.m. ET

Aurelien Breeden and

The Kyiv City Ballet is exiled in Paris while war rages in Ukraine.

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The director of Théâtre du Châtelet, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, center, after he met with members of the Kyiv City Ballet on Saturday.Credit...Yoan Valat/EPA, via Shutterstock

PARIS — When Ivan Kozlov landed in France with the Kyiv City Ballet on Feb. 23, the drumbeat of a possible Russian attack on Ukraine was growing louder. But he still didn’t think that President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces would invade.

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it would happen,” said Mr. Kozlov, 39, who has directed the company since its creation in 2012. “I thought he was trying to scare us by putting soldiers at the border, that’s it.”

But the day after the company’s arrival in Paris, hours before its first performance, the troupe’s 30 or so dancers woke in the pre-dawn hours to news of airstrikes and troop movements flashing across their phones. War had broken out.

That made it nearly impossible for the company to return to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, after the end of its French tour, in mid-March.

“Every one of us was in shock,” Daniil Podhrushko, 21, one of the dancers, said through a translator. “We were in disbelief.”

Two million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the war, according to the United Nations. Like their compatriots, Ukrainian ballet dancers have found themselves caught in the middle of the conflict — trying to flee or stuck abroad on tour or forced to remain in Ukraine. Now, theaters and opera houses around Europe are scrambling to offer help, shelter or work.

In Paris, City Hall stepped in to help the stranded Kyiv City Ballet by giving it a temporary residency at the Théâtre du Châtelet, one of the city’s most famous stages, where the dancers will have access to dressing rooms and rehearsal spaces and may even put on shows.

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris and the Socialist candidate in France’s upcoming presidential election, said Ukraine needed weapons to fight and diplomatic support from the international community. But Ukrainian artists also need help, she said.

“You can only create when you are free, and we need to hear what they are expressing, so that’s what we are offering them today,” Ms. Hidalgo told reporters at the Théâtre du Châtelet on Saturday after chatting with members of the ballet company on the stage. “They will be here for as long as it takes; I am absolutely not setting any deadline.”

Mike Ives
March 9, 2022, 12:09 a.m. ET

Reporting from Seoul

The International Atomic Energy Agency said its director general had “indicated” that the agency was no longer receiving data from monitoring systems at the former Chernobyl nuclear plant, north of Kyiv. The agency did not elaborate, saying only that it was “looking into the status” of similar monitoring systems around Ukraine. Russian forces took control of the plant last week.

Mike Ives
March 8, 2022, 11:33 p.m. ET

Reporting from Seoul

Bumble’s parent company said it was discontinuing operations in Russia and removing its apps from Apple and Android platforms there and in Belarus. The company said those countries, along with Ukraine, accounted for about 2.8 percent of its revenue last year. Nearly all of its revenue in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine came from its dating app Badoo.

Mike Ives
March 8, 2022, 10:13 p.m. ET

Reporting from Seoul

Vice President Kamala Harris will begin a three-day trip to Poland and Romania on Wednesday, amid questions over how the United States and NATO allies will help Ukraine fight Russia without getting pulled into a wider war. The Pentagon is sending two Patriot anti-missile batteries stationed in Europe to Poland, but it has rejected an offer from the Polish government to send its MiG-29 fighter planes to a U.S. air base in Germany for eventual use by Ukraine.

Ada Petriczko
March 8, 2022, 9:32 p.m. ET

Pentagon says Poland’s fighter jet offer is not ‘tenable.’

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A MIG-29 fighter jet of the Polish Air Force in Radom, Poland, in 2013.Credit...Michael Walczak/European Pressphoto Agency

The Pentagon on Tuesday rejected an offer from the Polish government to send its MiG-29 fighter planes to a United States air base in Germany for eventual use by Ukraine, a rare note of disunity between two NATO allies as they confront Russia.

The disagreement underscored the pressures the United States and its allies are under as they seek to provide military aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia without getting pulled into a wider war.

Ukraine has been pleading for more warplanes, and American officials have raised the possibility that Poland could supply Ukraine with its older Soviet-era fighters in return for U.S. F-16s to make up for the loss. Ukrainian pilots are trained on the Russian aircraft.

Poland’s minister of foreign affairs said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that the country was ready to deploy its MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they would be placed at the disposal of the U.S. government. In return, Poland expected the U.S. to provide it with used aircraft of comparable capabilities, the statement said.`

But a Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said Poland’s proposal to send the planes to a U.S. base in Germany, which caught American diplomats by surprise, was not workable. In a statement, he said the prospect of fighter jets departing from a U.S.-NATO base in Germany and flying into “airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.”

“We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one,” he said.

The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, speaking at a news conference in Oslo on Tuesday, said that while his country was prepared to hand its fleet of jet fighters over to the United States military at Ramstein, Poland will not act unilaterally to give the warplanes directly to Ukraine.

“Any decisions on delivering offensive weapons have to be taken by the entire NATO and on a unanimous basis,” he said. He added that Poland was not a party to the war.

Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelensky, has pleaded with the NATO allies to establish a no-fly zone over the country, but so far the alliance has rejected the proposal because it would almost certainly lead to a wider war between the allies and Russia.

The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Friday that a no-fly zone could cause a “full-fledged war in Europe involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering.”

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry had warned neighboring countries against holding Ukrainian military aircraft, saying that it “could be considered as those countries’ engagement in the military conflict.”

Poland has become a critical piece in NATO’s efforts to help Ukraine and contain Russia. More than 10,000 American soldiers are now stationed there as part Washington’s attempt to shore up the alliance’s eastern flank. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have crossed the Polish border.

It is a measure of the importance of Poland’s position on issues like the MiG-29 fighter planes that Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the country on Wednesday on a trip that will also include a stop in Romania. Ms. Harris will discuss with the leaders of both countries how NATO can support Ukraine through security, economic, and humanitarian measures “in the face of Russian aggression,” according to a White House statement.

Eric Schmitt
March 8, 2022, 9:17 p.m. ET

The U.S. is sending Patriot antimissile systems to Poland.

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Military equipment from the U.S. Army at the Port of Gdynia in Gdynia, Poland, last month.Credit...Omar Marques/Getty Images

The United States is sending two Patriot antimissile batteries stationed in Europe to Poland to protect U.S., Polish and other allied troops in the country, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Sending Patriot systems reflects an increasing fear in Warsaw and in Washington that Russian missiles, fired deliberately or inadvertently from the war in neighboring Ukraine, could come whistling Poland’s way at a time when the country is not only receiving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Moscow’s invasion but has also become a major staging area for Western arms and equipment being shipped into Ukraine.

“This defensive deployment is being conducted proactively to counter any potential threat to U.S. and allied forces and NATO territory,” the military’s European Command said in a statement.

The statement added that the deployment of the defensive missile systems that have been used for years to protect American troops deployed to the Middle East “will in no way support any offensive operations.”

Nearly 10,000 American troops are now stationed in Poland as part of the Biden administration’s commitment to reassure NATO allies on the alliance’s eastern flank and in the Baltics that Washington will stand up to any further aggression by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The New York Times
March 8, 2022, 8:20 p.m. ET

Photographs of another day of anguish in Ukraine.

Russian forces hit a warehouse complex in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, where vegetables were stored; several thousand refugees at the Shehyni border crossing between Ukraine and Poland; civilians evacuated from the town of Irpin, Ukraine, and the central bus station in Chisinau, Moldova, which was built during the Soviet era. Here’s what photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations saw on Tuesday.

Megan Specia
March 8, 2022, 8:00 p.m. ET

Ukrainian refugees fleeing war face a new challenge on their way to Britain: red tape.

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Ukrainian refugees in Palanca, Moldova, after crossing over from Ukraine on Sunday.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

LONDON — The Russian attack on Ukraine has triggered the fastest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, with more than 2 million Ukrainians fleeing since Feb. 24, and many more are expected to follow, according to the United Nations.

While much of Europe has allowed the refugees to enter without visas, Britain has required visas and an application process that is confusing many and slowing the arrival of Ukrainians into Britain.

Among them are the grandparents of Charlotte Shevchenko-Knight, 25, of England.

“It should just be: ‘You’re fleeing a war. We can welcome you,’” Ms. Shevchenko-Knight said. Her grandparents fled Kyiv and entered Romania. Now, her grandparents and an aunt are trying to get to England.

The website for information and applications has crashed or stalled repeatedly. On Tuesday, the government said it had issued visas to 500 Ukrainians so far.

Under Britain’s program, extended family members of permanent British residents are eligible to enter the country. But they must submit an online form, then go to a visa center for biometrics. Once a visa decision is made, they receive documents to travel to Britain.

Many other European countries have welcomed thousands without visas, the bulk of refugees fleeing to Ukraine’s neighbors. Poland has taken in more than 1.2 million people.

The only functioning application center in Ukraine was in the western city of Lviv near the Polish border, which had been inundated with people trying to flee the country. But the center closed suddenly over the weekend.

Both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, the home secretary, have heralded the program, claiming that up to 200,000 Ukrainians could eventually come to Britain. The government said that 17,700 applications had been started.

While opposition lawmakers and the British public have joined calls for dropping the visa requirement altogether, Mr. Johnson has so far rejected the idea, telling reporters on Monday that Britain was already a “very generous country,” but needed to vet the newcomers.

France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, criticized what he called a “lack of humanity” in Britain’s response — one of many barbs that the French and British governments have traded in recent years over the issue of migrants crossing the English Channel.

Thomas Daines, 32, of England, is trying to get visas for his wife’s parents and grandparents in Kyiv. He said that most people he speaks with don’t seem to understand that it is British citizens, like him and his wife, who have to bear the pain of being separated from family.

“I think these have probably been the worst weeks of our lives,” Mr. Daines said. “If we were in a neighboring country, we could just get in our car and bring them back.”

Farnaz Fassihi
March 8, 2022, 7:17 p.m. ET

The U.N. finds itself in the middle of a controversy over the word ‘war.’

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Conditions in Ukraine also have been the subject of an information war. Above, a checkpoint near Irpin, Ukraine, outside of the capital, Kyiv.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

All wars are also wars of words. The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is no exception. At the center of the information battle is the word “war” itself.

Russia has banned the use of the words “war” and “invasion” in media reports with a law that penalizes violators with up to 15 years in prison. Instead, Russia insists it is conducting a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

In the world of diplomacy, the use of the word “war” signals where a country stands in the current lineup of supporting or condemning Russia. China, for example, has avoided the word in official speeches and its media reporting, while the U.S. and Western allies say cities getting shelled, millions displaced and civilians shot dead is nothing but a war.

So where does the United Nations stand?

Secretary General António Guterres and other high-ranking U.N. officials have referred to the conflict as a “war” and labeled Russia’s actions as an “invasion” in both speeches and Twitter messages.

“The war in Ukraine not only has a dramatic impact on the lives of civilians but also has global repercussions,” Mr. Guterres posted on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon in what appears to be a public reiteration that he indeed calls the conflict a war.

The uproar started when a regional office of the U.N. located in western Europe sent an email to its staff without coordinating with headquarters and demanded that they refrain from using the words “war” and “invasion” when referring to the Ukrainian conflict, confirmed Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman on Tuesday. The controversy was first reported by The Irish Times.

This appeared to play right into Russia’s hands in trying to control the narrative of the war in Ukraine.

The U.N. immediately repudiated the email, saying that the regional office had acted on its own and that the email did not reflect the policy of the organization, said Mr. Dujarric.

“It is simply not the case that staff have been instructed not to use words like ‘war’ and ‘invasion’ to describe the situation,” Mr. Dujarric said.

The U.N. did send an email to its global staff on Friday asking that “they frame any communications on Ukraine in a manner that is consistent with the positions of the organization and statements of the secretary general,” and “to remember their rights and duties as international civil servants, which require us to act independently and impartially,” according to a copy that the U.N. shared with The New York Times.

Mr. Dujarric said sending a note to staff when big world events are unfolding is routine. “It’s the kind of email that gets sent out to U.N. staff whenever there is a big issue because people get emotion and it’s normal,” said Mr. Dujarric. “It’s just to remember who you work for.”

Andrew E. Kramer
March 8, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET

Overwhelmed and under fire, hospitals in Ukraine’s war zones struggle to tend to the wounded.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — A grim scene awaited Dr. Oleksandr Sherbina as he made the rounds of Clinical Hospital No. 7, a medical facility that once specialized in treating strokes but is now suddenly immersed in the atrocities of war. As he passed the operating theater, surgeons were amputating the lower leg of a wounded Ukrainian soldier.

The hospital is near a combat zone in a northwestern suburb of Kyiv, where the booms of incoming artillery can be heard inside the building amid a scramble of activity as triage nurses greet the ambulances arriving every few minutes. In a hallway, an orderly used a rag to wash blood off stretchers.

“The flow of wounded is growing,” said Dr. Sherbina, a surgeon who is the hospital’s director.

In recent days the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces has crept from outlying towns to the edge of Kyiv, and closer to his hospital. Even as he and fellow doctors treat patients ravaged by the shrapnel that whistles off mortars and artillery shells, they know they are at risk of suffering the same type of wounds.

“This is what I am most afraid of, because we are close to the fighting,” he said. “I am hoping that the walls defend us.”

Around Ukraine, as Russian bombings have grown more indiscriminate, hospitals have become increasingly perilous places to work. They have been hit by heavy artillery, and doctors and nurses have been killed while performing their duties. The Ukrainian Ministry of Health reported that 34 medical facilities had been damaged and that at least 10 doctors had been killed.

The ministry said seven ambulances had been fired on, killing four emergency medical technicians in separate incidents, and that two others were killed while traveling in civilian cars to treat the wounded.

The most dire conditions are in cities partially or wholly surrounded, such as Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, where three medical facilities have been damaged by artillery.

A surgeon working in the military hospital in Kharkiv, who said military rules prohibited her from speaking publicly, said the hospital receives 60 to 80 wounded people per day.

Yevheniy Ilin, a surgical oncologist, was working in the city’s oncology hospital on Feb. 28 when a bomb landed nearby, blowing in all the windows on one side of the building, he said in a telephone interview. The heat and electricity went out in the hospital, he said, so he moved to the city’s military hospital. Many other doctors gave up working in the city and joined the flow of displaced people headed west.

“We are coping,” he said. “You just go and sleep any free moment you have. Whether it is 15 or 30 minutes. You never know when the next shelling will be and if you’ll get to sleep at night.”

March 8, 2022, 6:59 p.m. ET

Venezuela releases imprisoned Americans after talks with the U.S.

Venezuela’s authoritarian government on Tuesday released at least two imprisoned Americans, a potential turning point in the Biden administration’s relationship with Russia’s staunchest ally in the Western Hemisphere.

The release followed a rare trip by a high-level U.S. delegation to Venezuela over the weekend to meet with President Nicolás Maduro, part of a broader Biden administration agenda in autocratic countries that may be rethinking their ties with President Vladimir V. Putin in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The talks with Venezuela, which has enormous proven oil reserves, assumed new urgency after President Biden announced Tuesday that the United States would ban Russian oil and gas imports because of the invasion. That move is expected to further tighten the availability of crude oil on the global market, and could raise gas prices at a moment when inflation has climbed at its fastest pace in 40 years.

“This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States,” Mr. Biden said of the ban on Russian oil.

American officials said that the prisoner release was not part of a deal with Venezuela to restart oil sales to the United States, which were banned under the Trump administration. For weeks, American business people who have worked in Venezuela have had back-channel discussions about resuming America’s oil trade with Mr. Maduro’s government.

Venezuela could eventually help make up some of the shortfall caused by the ban on Russian oil. But industry experts warned that Venezuelan oil supplies would do little to tame American gas prices and inflation quickly. Increasing the country’s production may take time after the years of mismanagement and underinvestment that have decimated the country’s energy sector.

Prominent members of Congress have also come out against efforts to thaw relations with Mr. Maduro, whose government has been accused by the United Nations of systematic human rights violations.

“Nicolás Maduro is a cancer to our hemisphere and we should not breathe new life into his reign of torture and murder,” Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday in a statement.

The released men are Gustavo Cárdenas, an executive at the American branch of Venezuela’s state oil company who was detained in 2017, and Jorge Alberto Fernández, Mr. Biden said in a statement.

“These men are fathers who lost precious time with their children and everyone they love, and their families have suffered every day of their absence,” he said, adding, “We also remember the names and the stories of every American who is being unjustly held against their will — in Venezuela, in Russia, in Afghanistan, Syria, China, Iran and elsewhere around the world.”

Mr. Fernández, a Cuban American, was a tourist who was accused of terrorism for bringing a drone into Venezuela in February 2021, according to his lawyer.

At least eight other U.S. nationals remain jailed in Caracas on charges ranging from embezzlement to terrorism.

The purpose of the American officials’ visit to Venezuela was to discuss “energy security” and the status of imprisoned Americans, the White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a news conference.

Mr. Maduro said he received the American delegation at the presidential palace and called the meeting “respectful, cordial, very diplomatic.” The talks, he said, would continue. He also said he would restart talks with the country’s opposition.

The Venezuelan government wants to resume oil sales to the United States to take advantage of high oil prices and to replace the revenues from trade channels it built through the Russian financial system that have been frozen by Western nations to punish Russian aggression against Ukraine, according to officials and oil businessmen in the country.

Selling directly to the United States would also allow Mr. Maduro to reap full profits from the highest oil prices in more than a decade, instead of selling the crude at deep discount to a network of middlemen used to bypass the U.S. ban, they said.

Before that ban, Venezuela exported most of its oil to the United States, whose Gulf refineries were built to process the country’s heavy crude.

In 2017, Venezuelan security forces arrested six executives from Citgo Petroleum, the American branch of the state oil company, after the Maduro government summoned them to meetings in Caracas. The State Department has said that all six detainees are U.S. nationals.

The executives were charged with financial crimes and jailed. Their former boss, Nelson Martínez, the head of the state oil company, was detained soon after them and died in custody a year later.

The executives’ families and their lawyers have said that the men, who have come to be known as the Citgo 6, are innocent and that they were lured to Caracas to be used by Mr. Maduro as pawns in his negotiations with the United States.

Venezuela’s treatment of the executives varied as U.S.-Venezuelan relations warmed and cooled. Sometimes the detainees were held in prison, other times in house arrest. Since last year, they have been held in a single cell in the Venezuela’s secret police’s underground prison, where the United Nations has documented irregularities and human rights abuses in the case of at least one of them.

Among the other Americans held in Venezuela is Matthew Heath, a Marine veteran who was detained in Venezuela’s northern state of Falcon in 2020. The Venezuelan government claims he was spying on critical infrastructure. Mr. Heath’s family and the U.S. government said that he was innocent and that he was detained because of his nationality.

Two other Americans still detained, former Special Forces members Airan Berry and Luke Denman, were arrested in 2020 after they tried to invade Venezuela by boat as part of a failed plot to overthrow Mr. Maduro.

The Trump administration cut off diplomatic relations with Venezuela in 2019, closing the United States Embassy in Caracas and imposing the ban on Venezuelan oil. A year later, the Justice Department indicted Mr. Maduro and more than a dozen other Venezuelan officials on drug trafficking charges, accusing them of facilitating cocaine shipments to the United States.

Mariana Martínez and Isayen Herrera contributed reporting in Caracas, Venezuela.

The New York Times
March 8, 2022, 6:58 p.m. ET

On International Women’s Day, these Ukrainian refugees were greeted by volunteers with flowers as they crossed the border into Romania.

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Emily Cochrane
March 8, 2022, 6:12 p.m. ET

Lawmakers close in on agreement to provide nearly $14 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

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Senator Mitch McConnell, center left, the minority leader, in Washington on Monday.Credit...Shawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock

Lawmakers are close to finalizing a deal for almost $14 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine as the country battles a Russian invasion, more than double the initial request from the White House, as they scramble to finish a sprawling catchall spending package before government funding lapses on Friday.

The White House initially asked for $6.4 billion for Ukraine, but quickly increased the amount to $10 billion as Russian forces continued to bomb the country and millions of refugees fled. In that request, the administration proposed economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukrainians, money to enforce some of the economic penalties imposed by the Biden administration and nearly $5 billion in additional funds for the Pentagon.

But as of Tuesday, lawmakers were coalescing around a $13.6 billion package, according to lawmakers and aides familiar with the negotiations, just days after an emotional virtual meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who pleaded for more assistance and additional weapons. Details of the spending had yet to be unveiled as of Tuesday evening.

The increase in emergency money demonstrates an increased urgency in Washington to help Ukraine and underscores how the war has rallied support for increased military spending in Congress.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, complained that “it’s been like pulling teeth” to reach a bipartisan agreement on the amount.

“We’ve been slow, much too slow,” he added. “It needs to be passed, and it needs to be passed quickly.”

It remains unclear when Congress will approve the legislation. It is set to be included in a broader government funding package, which must pass both chambers and become law before Friday in order to avoid a government shutdown.

March 8, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

‘They keep firing.’ Video shows a residential area of Mariupol destroyed.

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A video posted to social media on Tuesday shows flattened homes in Mariupol, a key port city in southern Ukraine that Russian forces have surrounded. Information coming out from the city has been limited because of a loss of electricity.

The video was verified by The Times, and was likely filmed in recent days. A photo posted on Sunday shows the same scene of destruction.

“They keep firing, you see. They’re not stopping,” the person who filmed the video says.

Previous reporting by The Times showed the residents of Mariupol living in dire conditions. Planned evacuations in Mariupol have been hampered for several days.

“May God provide us wisdom so we can evacuate people,” the filmer says.

Sarah Gearhart
March 8, 2022, 5:26 p.m. ET

An Olympic marathoner’s journey from Kenya to the front lines in Ukraine.

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Mykola Nyzhnyk on a training run on Moiben road in Kenya.Credit...Courtesy Matt Fox

ITEN, Kenya — The Ukrainian marathoner Mykola Nyzhnyk was asleep in the Kenyan countryside on Feb. 24 when he received a call from his pregnant wife, Olga. Alone in their apartment in Brovary, roughly 13 miles from Kyiv, she’d heard two explosions, so strong that the windows were shaking, she said. Ten minutes later, a third blast drowned out the piercing siren of car alarms, and she described a growing cloud of smoke in the distance.

Nyzhnyk told his wife to gather their documents and whatever essentials she could fit into a backpack. By the time Olga left their home 30 minutes later to go to a friend’s place in Kyiv, she heard a fourth explosion.

The conversation would change everything for Nyzhnyk, who would soon begin a 5,000-mile journey from the hard-packed dirt roads of Iten, Kenya, to his home in Ukraine, where he is answering his country’s call to serve in the war against Russia.

Nyzhnyk, 26, had arrived in Iten on Jan. 27 to train at high altitude in preparation for the upcoming racing season. Nyzhnyk, a professional runner who competed at the Tokyo Olympics, was planning to stay in Kenya until mid-March as he prepared to compete for next month’s Hannover Marathon in Germany.

His life in Iten, 7,800 feet above sea level, had been calm and peaceful. He woke up each day with the Great Rift Valley sunrise and ran for miles on auburn dirt roads that sliced through vast farmland. Afternoon naps were followed by a second training session, a routine that amounted to 124 miles of running a week.

When Russia’s ground invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, he said he was too angry, too devastated, too distracted to train.

His training partner, Roman Fosti, a two-time Olympian from Estonia, tried to encourage him to run, hoping it would help him cope. But “he was so broken,” Fosti said.

When the war began, Nyzhnyk received a phone call from the National Guard and was ordered to return to Ukraine. The country’s airspace is closed to civilian flights, so it took Nyzhnyk more than a week to navigate a maze of travel logistics and border restrictions. He left Iten on March 4.

“It’s my duty,” said Nyzhnyk, who is a first sergeant in the National Guard of Ukraine, part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “I am very motivated to defend my country.”

Nyzhnyk voluntarily joined the National Guard in 2016, and he represents its sports club in domestic racing competitions. The club comprises 150 of the country’s top athletes, 32 of whom competed at the Tokyo Games. In times of peace, Nyzhnyk doesn’t actively serve, “but in conditions of war, we must defend our country like all military,” he said.

To get from Kenya to Ukraine, Nyzhnyk flew from Nairobi to Budapest, where volunteers in Hungary helped him cross the border. A friend met Nyzhnyk in Khmelnytskyi and took him to a train bound for Kyiv so he could retrieve important documents and his car at his apartment on the outskirts of the city before meeting Olga. He had hesitated with the decision on arrival in Ukraine.

“It is unknown when we will be able to return there again,” he said, referring to his home outside Kyiv. “I thought about the route while I was still in Kenya, but changed it when I was traveling to Ukraine because the situation here is not simple and difficult to plan everything.”

“I’m not nervous, and I do everything without panic,” Nyzhnyk said on Sunday, as he sat in a crowded yet eerily quiet metro station turned shelter while he waited for curfew to end at 7 a.m.

When he left Brovary for Lviv on March 6, he drove two women and a 2-year-old boy who were escaping Kyiv for a more secure region. The route, which should take six hours, turned into a 26-hour journey through 12-mile-long traffic jams. He stopped several times to sleep in his car.

“I’m very tired,” Nyzhnyk wrote in a text exchange late on Monday. “For the last four days, I slept only three to four hours on average.”

He was reunited with Olga, who is 32 weeks pregnant, for one day in Lviv. Olga, who is also a professional runner and competed at the 2012 London Olympics in the 10,000 meters, opted not to leave Ukraine to be close to family. And, she said, “this is my homeland. I don’t want to run away.”

Nyzhnyk will report to his military unit on March 8, and he is prepared to resist Russian forces for as long as required. “If I need to take up arms I will do it,” he said. “Ukrainians will cope with everything. We will not lose hope and will fight to the end.”

He hopes turmoil will have ceased by the time his wife gives birth to their first child in mid-April.

“I would like to give her the name of Myroslava,” Nyzhnyk said of his future daughter. “It means peace.”

Neil MacFarquhar
March 8, 2022, 4:50 p.m. ET

Here is how Russian news broadcasts are covering the war in Ukraine.

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President Vladimir V. Putin met with female crew members from Aeroflot on Saturday, as seen in this photograph made available by Russian state media. Most independent Russian media have been forced to close, and the state-run enterprises show a very different version of the war in Ukraine.Credit...Mikhael Klimentyev/Sputnik

To spend several days watching news broadcasts on the main state channels, as well as surveying state-controlled newspapers, is to witness the extent of the Kremlin’s efforts to sanitize its war with the Orwellian term “special military operation” — and to make all news coverage align with that message.

Words like “war” or “invasion” to describe the actions of the Russian military are forbidden under a new law that President Putin signed on Friday. The law mandates up to 15 years in prison for any coverage the state deems “false information” about the military campaign.

“It is not a war on Russian TV,” said Stanislav Kucher, a veteran Russian television host and former member of the presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. Mr. Kucher moved to the United States after his shows were repeatedly shuttered.

“You will not see explosions, you will not see strikes on neighborhoods where civilians live, you will not see a lot in terms of troops, soldiers, heavy armored vehicles or anything like that,” he added.

News bulletins are fairly uniform from one television channel to the next. The “operations” in Ukraine are basically described as a peacekeeping mission by the military to rescue the Russian-speaking residents of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk from the terrible war crimes perpetuated on them by the Ukrainian government. The West is described as completely unsympathetic to their plight.

The vast destruction visited on the city of Kharkiv and many smaller towns in the northeast usually merits at best a passing reference, or is blamed on Ukrainian forces.

The 2 p.m. News on Saturday on Channel One, one of the two most popular channels along with Rossiya-1, was typical in this tale of two wars.

It started with the anchor quoting Mr. Putin, saying that the “special operation’’ was proceeding as planned. The destruction of the military infrastructure will be completed soon, he added.

Christoph Koettl
March 8, 2022, 4:25 p.m. ET

Satellite imagery provides new details about an attack on an airport in western Ukraine.

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Credit...Capella Space

New radar satellite imagery of Vinnytsia Airport in western Ukraine collected on Monday shows damage to air traffic control towers and an aircraft. Russian cruise missiles struck the airport on Sunday. The airport is not near any areas of current ground fighting, but it does have some Ukrainian military presence, including aircraft.

There is no apparent damage to the runway, similar to other airfields that have been hit by missiles in Ukraine, according to Steven De La Fuente from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who analyzed the image, which was collected by Capella Space, a commercial U.S. company.

“We have noticed very little damage to airport runways throughout Ukraine,” Mr. De La Fuente said. “Many airports or airfields have noticeable missile damage, however, they seem to be targeting munitions caches, fuel storage, air traffic control facilities and stationary aircraft.”

The analysis adds details to previous reporting by The Times that identified damage to both civilian and military areas of the airport.

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