Russian Invasion of UkraineWhat Happened on Day 58 of the War in Ukraine

Ukrainian officials said Russia had seized dozens of small towns in Ukraine’s east in recent days, as fighting intensified along a front stretching more than 300 miles.

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Varta, 82, arrived in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Friday after a four-day journey from the besieged city of Mariupol.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Follow our live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war.

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Here’s the latest on the war in Ukraine.

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Bombs struck shopping and residential areas on Friday afternoon in the Saltivka neighborhood of Kharkiv, Ukraine.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Ukrainian officials acknowledged Friday that Russian forces had taken more than three dozen small towns in their initial drive this week to seize eastern Ukraine, offering the first glimpse of what promises to be a grinding brawl by the Kremlin to achieve broader territorial gains in a new phase of the two-month-old war.

The fighting in the east — along increasingly fortified lines that stretch across more than 300 miles — intensified as a Russian commander signaled even wider ambitions, warning that the Kremlin’s forces aimed to take “full control” of southern Ukraine all the way to Moldova, Ukraine’s southwest neighbor.

While it seemed unlikely that the commander, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekayev, would have misspoken, his warning still drew skepticism, based on Russia’s probable difficulty in starting another broad offensive and the general’s relatively obscure role in the hierarchy. But his threat could not be ruled out.

The broader war aims that he outlined at a defense industry meeting in a Russian city more than 1,000 miles away from the fighting would be far more ambitious than the downscaled goals set out by President Vladimir V. Putin in recent weeks, which have focused on gaining control of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Some political and military experts suggested the general’s statement could have been part of Russia’s continuing efforts to distract or confuse Ukraine and its allies. General Minnekayev’s official job involves political propaganda work and does not typically cover military strategy.

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Ukrainian soldiers on Friday in the Zaporizhzhia region, in Donbas, in an area about two to three miles from where Russian soldiers are fighting.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

On Friday, fierce fighting was underway across a band of southeastern Ukraine, engulfing communities on the banks of the Dnipro River. While Ukrainian officials acknowledged that Russia had taken control of 42 small towns and villages in recent days, they said those same places could be back in Ukrainian hands before long.

Western analysts said Russia’s forces, in both the slow but largely successful fight for the southern city of Mariupol and the unsuccessful battle for Kyiv, had been battered and weakened. But rather than resting, reinforcing and re-equipping the forces, Moscow is pressing forward in the east.

The Russian military appears to be trying to secure battlefield gains — including capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, or oblasts — ahead of May 9, when Moscow holds its annual celebration of its World War II victory.

“They’re not taking the pause that would be necessary to re-cohere these forces, to take the week or two to stop, and prepare for a wider offensive,” said Mason Clark, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “They’ll likely be able to take some territory. We do not think they’re going to be able to capture the entirety of the oblasts in the next three weeks.”

In his remarks on Friday, General Minnekayev asserted that one of Russia’s goals was “full control of the Donbas and southern Ukraine.”

He said that would allow Russia to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, “through which agricultural and metallurgical products are delivered” to other countries. Still, despite repeated attacks, Russia has failed to seize those ports, including Odesa, a fortified city of 1 million people.

“I want to remind you that many Kremlin plans have been destroyed by our army and people,” Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on social media in response to General Minnekayev’s remarks.

General Minnekayev also issued a veiled warning to Moldova, where Moscow-backed separatists seized control of a 250-mile sliver of land known as Transnistria in 1992.

“Control over the south of Ukraine is another connection to Transnistria, where there is also evidence of oppression of the Russian-speaking population,” the general said, echoing false claims of a “genocide” against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine that Mr. Putin used to help justify the Feb. 24 invasion.

The Moldovan government later summoned the Russian ambassador to complain, saying that General Minnekayev’s comments were “not only unacceptable but also unfounded” and led to “increased tension.”

Transnistria has never been recognized internationally — not even by Russia. But Russia keeps 1,500 soldiers there, nominally to keep the peace and guard a large Soviet-era munitions cache.

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Russian troops at the entrance of the village of Varnita, part of a 1,500-member force in Transnistria ostensibly for peacekeeping.Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

A poor country of 2.6 million, Moldova is considered vulnerable to further Russian incursions. It is not a member of NATO or the European Union, but it hastily applied for E.U. membership last month.

Yuri Fyodorov, a Russian military analyst, said that the broader aims detailed by General Minnekayev “from the military standpoint are unreachable.”

“All of Russia’s combat-ready units are now concentrated in the Donbas, where Russia failed to achieve any significant advances over the past five days,” Mr. Fyodorov said in an interview. General Minnekayev’s rank, he said, would generally not allow him to make such sweeping policy statements that also contradict what has been said by the country’s top leaders.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, declined to comment on General Minnekayev’s remarks.

As Western allies race to arm Ukraine with increasingly heavy, long-range weapons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, on a visit to India on Friday, said his country was considering sending tanks to Poland so that Warsaw could then send its own tanks to Ukraine. The Biden administration said this month that it would also help transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry, in its first statement on casualties from the April 14 sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, said that one crew member had died, 27 were missing and 396 had been evacuated. Relatives of at least 10 Moskva crew members had voiced frustration over the Kremlin’s silence, which was turning into a test of its strong grip on information that Russians receive about the war.

Ukraine said it had sunk the Moskva with two missiles — an assertion corroborated by U.S. officials — while Russia claimed that an onboard fire had caused a munitions explosion that doomed the ship.

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This photograph provided by the Russian military shows the missile cruiser Moskva near the Syrian coast in 2015.Credit...Russian Defense Ministry Press

As Russia hardened its crackdown on any domestic opposition to the war, it opened a criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian pro-democracy activist and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, for spreading “false information,” his lawyer said Friday.

Mr. Kara-Murza, 40, arrested earlier this month, faces 10 years in prison, according to the official decree against him posted online by his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov.

It said he was being investigated for remarks he had made before Arizona lawmakers on March 15. Mr. Kara-Murza told a local news outlet in Phoenix that month that Russia was committing “war crimes” in Ukraine but that “Russia and the Putin regime are not one and the same.”

“Americans should be infuriated by Putin’s escalating campaign to silence Kara-Murza,” Fred Ryan, the publisher of The Post, said in a statement.

Mr. Putin, who has become increasingly vilified in the West over the war, has not completely rejected diplomatic engagement. On Friday, he agreed to meet with the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, in Moscow next week, a stark change from his refusal to even take Mr. Guterres’s phone calls. Still, the meeting did not signal a softening of Mr. Putin’s views on Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that he has said should not even be a sovereign country.

Ukraine’s government said the fighting had made it too dangerous to organize any evacuations from a war that Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called a “horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians.

After another attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Friday, residents watched as smoke rose over shops. In the ruined port of Mariupol, hundreds of civilians and the last organized Ukrainian fighters remained trapped in a sprawling steel plant, issuing urgent pleas for help from underground bunkers. Newly released satellite images of the city showed hundreds of hastily dug graves, lending credibility to Ukrainian claims that Russia was trying to cover up atrocities.

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And in the Zaporizhzhya region of south-central Ukraine, Ukrainian troops were dug in about two miles from Russian forces that were trying to push north in an effort to fortify a land bridge connecting Russian territory with the Crimean Peninsula, which Mr. Putin annexed in 2014.

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Lt. Olena Petyak, second in command of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, near the front lines in the Zaporizhzhya region.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The Ukrainian army’s 128th Separate Mountain Assault brigade, armed with anti-tank missiles provided by the Americans and the British as well as other advanced weapons systems, claimed to have destroyed two Russian T-72 tanks that had strayed too close to its positions.

“We are on our own land,” Captain Vitaliy Nevinsky, the brigade’s commander, said. “We are defending ourselves and knocking out this horde, this invasion of our territory.”

Anton Troianovski reported from Hamburg, Germany, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Michael Levenson from New York. Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Michael Schwirtz from Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, Tyler Hicks from Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, Julian E. Barnes from Washington, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Sameer Yasir from New Delhi.

Alexandra Petri
April 22, 2022, 10:22 p.m. ET

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal of Ukraine has wrapped up days of meetings in Washington, where he discussed support for Ukraine and its recovery with President Biden and other U.S. officials and international organizations. On his last day, Shmyhal met with Samantha Power, the administrator for U.S. Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., who announced an additional $131 million in development assistance for Ukraine.

Andrea Kannapell
April 22, 2022, 9:40 p.m. ET

Following reports that a Russian general had said Russia’s goal of taking control of southern Ukraine would create “yet another point of access” to a pro-Russian Moldovan enclave where he alleged Russian-speakers were oppressed, the Moldovan government summoned the Russian ambassador to complain, saying the comments were “not only unacceptable but also unfounded” and led to “increased tension.”

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Alexandra Petri
April 22, 2022, 9:07 p.m. ET

The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, called for the immediate release of a Russian pro-democracy activist, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was arrested earlier this month, and then charged with “spreading false information” under a new law that effectively criminalizes any public opposition to or independent news reporting about the war against Ukraine. Kara-Muzra faces 10 years in prison. Blinken called charges “preposterous” and “yet another cynical attempt to silence those who speak the truth.”

Alexandra E. Petri
April 22, 2022, 9:00 p.m. ET

‘Ukraine was intended only as a beginning’: Zelensky responds to a Russian claim of broader war aims.

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Credit...Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, via Associated Press

The wider ambitions a Russian general expressed on Friday — to take southern Ukraine all the way to Moldova, Ukraine’s southwest neighbor — reveal larger truths about Moscow’s agenda, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Friday.

“This only confirms what I have said many times,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine was intended only as a beginning, then they want to capture other countries.”

His comments referred to remarks by Gen. Rustam Minnekayev of Russia, who in a defense industry meeting on Friday said that the Kremlin’s forces aimed to take “full control of the Donbas and southern Ukraine.” According to Russian news agencies, the general said that would cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, allowing Russia to gain “yet another point of access” to a pro-Russian Moldovan enclave, Transnistria.

General Minnekayev also claimed that there was “evidence of oppression of the Russian-speaking population” in Transnistria, echoing false allegations of a “genocide” against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, used to help justify the Feb. 24 invasion.

Since the onset of the invasion, Mr. Zelensky has stressed the country’s need for heavier weapons, including armored vehicles, tanks and missiles, at times expressing frustration that getting them has been so time-consuming. In his nightly address on Friday, Mr. Zelensky praised allies’ deliveries of military equipment, saying the matériel would help save thousands of lives. Equipping Ukrainian forces has been “the Number One task for our state,” he said. “I am grateful to our partners who finally heard us.”

He thanked Britain for deciding to reopen its embassy in Kyiv, saying that it was the 21st country to do so. Britain closed its doors in Kyiv in February, relocating its staff to the western city of Lviv.

Mr. Zelensky also highlighted the return to normalcy in parts of the country from which Russia has retreated, where access to gas, electricity, water, mobile and medical services has been restored in recent days.

Alexandra Petri
April 22, 2022, 8:55 p.m. ET

In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky noted the coming Eastern Orthodox Easter weekend, saying that Good Friday was “one of the most sorrowful days of the year” for Christians. (Zelensky is Jewish.) Good Friday, Zelensky said, is a “day when death seems to have won," but, he added, "We hope for a resurrection.”

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Farnaz Fassihi
April 22, 2022, 8:47 p.m. ET

Reporting from New York

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, will meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday in Ukraine, two days after meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, to try to negotiate a peace deal. Guterres will also meet with the staffs of U.N. agencies working in Ukraine to discuss how to increase humanitarian aid to the country.

Julian E. Barnes
April 22, 2022, 5:10 p.m. ET

Military analysts forecast that the problems bedeviling Russia’s forces will continue in the east.

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A disabled Russian tank in Bucha, near Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Russia’s forces were battered and weakened in the unsuccessful battle for Kyiv.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

The problems that beset the Russian military in its failed attempt to seize Kyiv are likely to continue into the next phase of the war, according to independent analysts, giving the Ukrainian military a chance to drive back the invading force.

Big militaries fight with tight organization and strict hierarchy, with multiple levels of command ensuring that large forces can move in a coordinated way, but during the current invasion, analysts and U.S. officials have said, the Russian military has abandoned that structure. It has formed 800-person-strong battalion tactical groups, and to fill them out it has combined units that had not previously worked together, and gutted the middle layers of its battlefield command structure.

Those choices contributed to the logistics and communication problems that hampered the Russian military, leading to its defeat in the battle for Kyiv, and exposed deep weaknesses in its forces, outside analysts said.

Both allied governments and independent analysts had seen the Russian military perform well in large-scale military exercises that Moscow conducts each year. But those turned out to be scripted and rehearsed events, not actual drills meant to improve the military.

“The Russian military appears to have been a Potemkin army in the sense that it was really optimized to look good on training exercises rather than to fight well,” said Frederick W. Kagan, a military expert with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project.

Russia’s forces, in both the slow but largely successful fight for the southern city of Mariupol and the unsuccessful battle for Kyiv, have been battered and weakened. But rather than resting, reinforcing and re-equipping the forces, Moscow is pressing forward to try and make gains in the east.

Some Russian forces are beginning a drive to encircle Ukrainian Army forces that are in entrenched positions in the eastern area known as Donbas. The Russian military appears to be trying to secure battlefield gains — including capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, or oblasts — ahead of May 9, when Moscow holds its annual celebration of victory in World War II.

“They’re not taking the pause that would be necessary to re-cohere these forces, to take the week or two to stop, and prepare for a wider offensive,” said Mason Clark, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “They’ll likely be able to take some territory. We do not think they’re going to able to capture the entirety of the oblasts in the next three weeks.”

While the terrain in eastern Ukraine is more open, the soft muddy ground will likely force Russian tanks onto existing roads, much as occurred during the march toward Kyiv, making their movements more predictable and easier to thwart.

If Western supplies continue to flow to Ukraine, its military may be able to mount counterattacks against the Russians, Mr. Kagan said

“It is quite possible for the Ukrainian military, if properly resourced over time, to drive the Russian Army back a long way,” he said.

Scott Reyburn
April 22, 2022, 4:22 p.m. ET

Ukraine’s war shakes the Venice Biennale out of its reverie.

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The Russian artist Vadim Zakharov protested in front of Russia’s shuttered pavilion at the Venice Biennale.Credit...Gus Powell for The New York Times

VENICE — “What happened to free speech in Italy?” shouted one of the 50 or so onlookers on Wednesday morning as a security guard stood in front of a lone antiwar protester at the Venice Biennale, trying to block out his message.

The Berlin-based Russian artist Vadim Zakharov had just unfurled a banner in front of the shuttered national pavilion where he represented his country at the 2013 Biennale. The two artists and curator who were set to present work for Russia in this year’s edition pulled out in February after Russia invaded Ukraine. The pavilion has been closed ever since.

Standing still and silent, Zakharov, a member of the radical Moscow Conceptualist art movement in the late 1970s, held a handwritten message that read in part: “I protest against Russia’s propaganda and the Russian invasion.”

The Italian guard, a member of the Biennale’s own security services, immediately called for backup. The banner was confiscated, but, after polite negotiations, the protester was allowed to conduct interviews with reporters for about 20 minutes, then left.

This year’s Venice Biennale, which opens to the public Saturday and runs through Nov. 27, is the first since 1942 to be held while a war of foreign aggression rages in Europe. The main exhibition was inspired by 20th century Surrealism, and there was certainly a surreal feel to the event: While the cool contemporary art crowd strolled among the exhibits, Ukraine was being pummeled by missiles, and there was hardly a Russian in sight. But curators, collectors, dealers and artists were staging plenty of events to support Ukraine, and a passionate personal address by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, finally shook the Biennale out of its reverie.

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Michael Schwirtz
April 22, 2022, 3:48 p.m. ET

Dug in on the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers fight to repel the Russian onslaught.

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First Lt. Olena Petyak, with the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, talked with other troops near the front line in the Zaporizka region of Ukraine on Friday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
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Junior Lt. Andtii Zadorozhniy, 32, and Major Yaroslav Galas, 51, Ukrainian officers, waited inside a house in a village in the Zaporizka region as a Russian drone flew overhead on Friday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
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Capt. Vitaliy Nevinsky, 25, with the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, at a position near the front line.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

ZAPORIZKA REGION, Ukraine — The day after the war began, after their unit was nearly wiped out in a missile strike, Ukrainian Sgt. Oleksandr Gorvat presented his girlfriend and commanding officer, First Lt. Olena Petyak, a ring he had twisted together from wire and asked for her hand in marriage.

“Officially we’re not supposed to serve together, but we are not officially married,” he explained on Friday, amid the whoosh of Grad rockets being fired at nearby Russian positions. “That is for after the war. As soon as we win.”

Together with their unit, the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, the couple, both 25, were dug into a frontline position in the Zaporizka region of south-central Ukraine, east of the Dnipro River and only about two miles from where Russian forces were attempting to overrun more territory.

Fierce fighting was underway on Friday across a band of southeastern Ukraine, in and around major towns like Polohy, Orikhiv and Vasylivka, which is on the banks of the Dnipro. It fell to the troops of the 128th to prevent Russian forces from pushing farther north toward the important industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, just 20 miles north of Vasylivka on the river.

The Kremlin has achieved one of its strategic goals, seizing a strip of land along the Azov Sea, linking the Donbas region in the east, now the focus of the war, with Crimea, the peninsula President Vladimir V. Putin invaded and annexed in 2014. The only significant pocket of resistance remaining is a sprawling steel mill complex in the ruined port city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters and civilians are in underground bunkers, under heavy bombardment.

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Our cameras captured life on the front lines in southeast Ukraine, where Russian shelling is relentless and it feels like the war is inching closer every day.CreditCredit...By Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Mark Boyer and Benjamin Foley

But the Russians were attempting this week to expand that ribbon of territory, pushing north from the coast toward Zaporizhzhia. Other Russian forces were pushing west through Donbas, where on Friday some of the heaviest combat was being waged around the city of Sievierodonetsk and the town of Popasna. Moscow’s army was also advancing southward from the city of Izium. Altogether, the front line is about 300 miles long.

Moscow’s separatist proxies in Donbas, backed by Russian equipment and troops, have held part of the region since 2014, and Russia has said that it aims to expand its territory there. How far Mr. Putin will go is unclear, but the Kremlin appears intent on trapping much of the Ukrainian military in a pincer and destroying it.

Lieutenant Petyak, who is second in command of the brigade, said the goal in the Zaporizhzhia region — the southwestern part of that front line — was not just to hold the Russians at a standstill but to push them back.

“The enemy is constantly firing with artillery, tanks, Grads, and aviation in our direction,” she said. “They want to knock out this section, but they won’t be able to do it because we’re here. On the contrary they are going to have to give up their positions because I’m certain that sometime soon we will push forward and take the remainder of the land that they’ve been able to temporarily occupy.”

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It fell to the troops of the 128th to prevent Russian forces from pushing farther north toward the important industrial city of Zaporizhzhia.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

That may prove a challenge, even for the Ukrainian forces, which have surprised military analysts and professional soldiers with their fierce and effective defense since the start of the war.

After Mr. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces based in the Crimean Peninsula, some of the country’s most skilled and well-equipped, lunged north, gobbling up territory in southern Ukraine both in the direction of Kherson, west of the Dnipro, and east toward Mariupol.

Early in the morning of Feb. 24, the soldiers of the 128th brigade learned the war had begun when a Russian cruise missile hit their base, just missing the barracks where they slept. The troops were able to escape into the nearby woods.

It was the next day, as they scrambled to regroup and join the combat against the invading Russians, that Sergeant Gorvat proposed.

At first the brigade was deployed in the vicinity of Melitopol, a southern city about midway between Crimea and Zaporizhzhia. But they have been pushed back nearly 70 miles to the north. They are now entrenched in a patch of woods wedged between wheat fields that are bright green with spring growth.

Ukrainians who live in the coastal territory that Russia has seized continue to surge north seeking refuge in Ukrainian-held lands. Convoys of cars and buses, laden with suitcases, arrive regularly at the parking lot of a home goods store in Zaporizhzhia. Many arrive with unsettling tales of the Russian occupation.

“It’s total lawlessness,” said Natalya Gorbova, who arrived in Zaporizhzhia on Thursday with her 17-year old son, Egor. They had fled Melitopol, whose mayor was kidnapped by Russian forces and dragged from his office with a bag over his head. He was only released after Ukraine agreed to a prisoner swap.

“If you stay home, it’s fine,” Ms. Gorbova said, “but there are these guys walking around with guns who do whatever they want.”

In Ukrainian territory, she said, “it’s easier to breathe.”

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A woman arrived in Zaporizhzhia on Friday after a four-day journey from the besieged city of Mariupol.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Ukraine’s front line positions buzz with surveillance drones that Russian forces use to target their artillery. At one point on Friday, Capt. Vitaliy Nevinsky, the commander of the 128th, dispersed a group of soldiers chatting close together around a campfire, lest a drone direct an artillery strike into the middle of their gathering.

The first weeks of the war were a baptism by fire for the 128th. At one point, Captain Nevinsky explained, his forces were surrounded and had to punch their way through the Russian lines. Captain Nevinsky, 25, said he was riding on a tank, covering the unit’s escape when it was hit by a shell. He suffered shrapnel wounds and a concussion, but returned to the front lines two weeks later.

His brigade is better equipped now, he said, with antitank missiles provided by the Americans and the British, as well as Stinger antiaircraft missiles and other advanced weapons systems. These have helped slow the Russian forces down, he said. This week, he said, the brigade has taken out two Russian T-72 tanks that strayed too close to their positions.

“We are on our own land,” he said. “We are defending ourselves and knocking out this horde, this invasion of our territory.”

Ivan Nechepurenko
April 22, 2022, 3:45 p.m. ET

Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia

The Russian defense ministry issued its first statement on casualties from the April 14 sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet. One serviceman died, 27 were missing and 396 crew members were evacuated, the statement said. Ukraine said the ship sank after it had been hit by its two missiles – an assertion corroborated by U.S. officials – while Russia claimed the catastrophe was caused by a fire that led to a munitions explosion. At least 10 families of the Moskva's crew members have voiced frustration over the uncertainy of their fate.

Farnaz Fassihi
April 22, 2022, 3:09 p.m. ET

Reporting from New York

The United Nations said that satellite imagery collected by its Satellite Center confirmed massive destruction of civilian infrastructure around Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Around 77 percent of the Horenka, 71 percent of Irpin, and 58 percent of Hostomel, all city areas, were damaged or destroyed as of the end of March, according to Eri Kaneko, an associate U.N. spokesperson.

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Anton Troianovski
April 22, 2022, 3:07 p.m. ET

Russia opens a criminal case accusing a pro-democracy activist of spreading ‘false information’ about the war.

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Vladimir Kara-Murza at the site where the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed, on the sixth anniversary of his death last year.Credit...Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

Russian authorities opened a criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian pro-democracy activist and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, for spreading “false information” about the war in Ukraine, his lawyer said on Friday, making him one of the most prominent targets to date in the Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition to the war.

Mr. Kara-Murza, 40, who was arrested earlier this month, faces 10 years in prison, according to the official decree opening a case against him that was posted online by his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, on Friday. It says the activist is being investigated for remarks he made at the Arizona State Legislature on March 15.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s remarks, the decree says, concerned Russian bombardment of civilian targets in Ukraine and were made “with motives of political hatred.” The activist told a local news outlet in Phoenix that Russia was committing “war crimes” in Ukraine but that “Russia and the Putin regime are not one and the same.”

A Moscow judge on Friday ordered Mr. Kara-Murza to be placed in pretrial detention until June 12, citing “the nature of the suspicions” against him, according to Mr. Prokhorov.

Mr. Kara-Murza, seeking to avoid being detained before trial, said at a hearing on Friday that he had no plans to leave Russia. He has a residence in Northern Virginia where he lives with his family, according to the Post, but makes frequent trips to Russia and has an apartment in Moscow.

“I am a Russian politician and I have to stay in Russia,” he said, according to the Russian news outlet Mediazona.

Mr. Kara-Murza’s case shows how the Kremlin is moving aggressively to stamp out any opposition to the war among Russians — even comments made outside Russia and not in Russian.

Mr. Kara-Murza was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader slain near the Kremlin in 2015. He himself was poisoned twice in recent years with undetermined toxins that put him in comas that lasted days and left him with neurological damage.

Many activists and journalists have fled Russia since the war in Ukraine began, fearing prosecution. But Mr. Kara-Murza remained. He said in recent interviews that it would be too demoralizing for all opposition figures to leave the country, that he belonged inside Russia and that leaving would be exactly what the Kremlin hoped he would do.

“The night, as you know, is darkest just before the light,” Mr. Kara-Murza wrote in a Post column from jail last week. “Russia will be free. I’ve never been so sure of it as I am today.”

Mr. Kara-Murza was initially arrested earlier this month on suspicion of disobeying the police and sentenced to 15 days in jail. But he is now being investigated under the law criminalizing “false information” about the war in Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin signed on March 4. The Kremlin said the law was “proportionately harsh” given the “information war that has been unleashed against our country” by the West.

“Americans should be infuriated by Putin’s escalating campaign to silence Kara-Murza,” Fred Ryan, the publisher of The Post, said in a statement on Friday. “And everyone who values press freedom and human rights should be enraged by this injustice and join in demanding Kara-Murza’s immediate release.”

OVD-Info, a rights group, says at least 35 criminal cases have been launched in Russia under the new law. Another 1,258 cases have been launched under the lesser charge of “discrediting” Russia’s armed forces, often resulting in fines, the group says.

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from Istanbul.

Julian E. Barnes
April 22, 2022, 2:50 p.m. ET

‘Kamikaze’ drones are well suited to the fight in Ukraine, the manufacturer says.

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This image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps shows a Switchblade 300 10C drone system being used as part of a training exercise at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., in 2021.Credit...Cpl. Alexis Moradian/U.S. Marine Corps, via Associated Press

The “kamikaze” drones the Pentagon is sending to Ukraine will be particularly effective in the current phase of the fight against Russian forces, the chief executive of the company that makes the weapon said Friday.

Switchblade drones, made by California-based AeroVironment, were designed to attack either soldiers or tanks. But the technology is versatile: Larger versions can take out artillery tubes, crater runways and destroy radar installations. Smaller versions can target the drivers of vehicles, or individual officers if they are detected.

“It is almost a perfect type of conflict for Switchblade,” said Wahid Nawabi, the chief executive of AeroVironment.

Military officials call the weapons “kamikazes” because they can be flown directly at a target and are destroyed when they hit the target and explode.

Had Ukraine had Switchblades early in the war, Mr. Nawabi suggested, it could have used the weapon to easily — and safely — destroy the long convoy of trucks that at one point was slowly moving toward Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

There are questions about how quickly military aid, including the Switchblades, are reaching frontline troops. American officials in Washington have played down problems, but former American officials in Ukraine have said weapons are not moving fast enough from warehouses in Ukraine to troops in the field. Citing security concerns, Mr. Nawabi declined to comment on logistics issues.

Russia is now firing artillery at Ukrainian military positions from greater distances, presenting fewer targets for Ukrainian soldiers armed with anti-tank missiles. But, Mr. Nawabi said, “If you know that there are some Russian artillery or tanks 10, 20, 30, 40 kilometers away in one direction, you can launch Switchblade and go there and look for it.”

The company says the larger version can fly up to 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, and then has 40 minutes in which to locate a target, according to the company. And Switchblades are relatively cheap; while AeroVironment does not disclose the price, the smaller versions are under $10,000 each, according to people briefed on the cost.

The Switchblades that the Pentagon has sent forward came from existing stocks, including some that had previously been sent to Afghanistan. But the company will need to build more drones in order to continue supplying Ukraine’s army, Mr. Nawabi said.

He was in Washington last week speaking to members of Congress about how to ramp up production. While AeroVironment has a factory in California capable of quickly producing thousands of the drones, a microchip shortage and other supply chain problems are slowing output.

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Kate CongerDavid E. Sanger
April 22, 2022, 2:46 p.m. ET

Hackers claim to target Russian institutions with a barrage of cyberattacks and leaks.

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Red Square outside the Kremlin in Moscow. The Ukrainian government appears to have begun a parallel effort to punish Russia by publishing the names of Russian soldiers and agents of the F.S.B., a major Russian intelligence agency.Credit...Maxim Shipenkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

Hackers claim to have broken into dozens of Russian institutions over the past two months, including the Kremlin’s internet censor and one of its primary intelligence services, leaking emails and internal documents to the public in an apparent hack-and-leak campaign that is remarkable in its scope.

The hacking operation comes as the Ukrainian government appears to have begun a parallel effort to punish Russia by publishing the names of supposed Russian soldiers who operated in Bucha, the site of a massacre of civilians, and agents of the F.S.B., a major Russian intelligence agency, along with identifying information like dates of birth and passport numbers. It is unclear how the Ukrainian government obtained those names or whether they were part of the hacks.

Much of the data released by the hackers and the Ukrainian government is by its nature impossible to verify. As an intelligence agency, the F.S.B. would never confirm a list of its officers. Even the groups distributing the data have warned that the files swiped from Russian institutions could contain malware, manipulated or faked information, and other tripwires.

Some of the data may also be recycled from previous leaks and presented as new, researchers have said, in an attempt to artificially increase the hackers’ credibility. Or some of it could be manufactured — something that has happened before in the ongoing cyberconflict between Russia and Ukraine, which dates back more than a decade.

But the hacking effort appears to be part of a campaign by those opposing the Kremlin to help in the war effort by making it extremely difficult for Russian spies to operate abroad and by planting a seed of fear in the minds of soldiers that they could be held to account for human rights abuses.

Dmitri Alperovitch, a founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington think tank, and the former chief technology officer at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said there was reason to maintain a healthy skepticism about the reliability of some of the leaks.

But he added that the hacking campaign “once again may prove that in the age of pervasive cyberintrusions and the generation of vast amounts of digital exhaust by nearly every person in a connected society, no one is able to hide and avoid identification for egregious war crimes for long.”

The leaks also demonstrate Ukraine’s willingness to join forces with amateur hackers in its cyberwar against Russia. In early March, Ukrainian officials rallied volunteers for hacking projects, and the Ukrainian government has been publishing information about its opponents on official websites. A channel on the messaging platform Telegram that lists targets for the volunteers to hack has grown to more than 288,000 members.

American intelligence officials say they believe that hackers operating in Russia and Eastern Europe have now been split into at least two camps. Some, like Conti, a major ransomware group that was itself hacked in late February, have pledged fealty to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Others, mostly from Eastern Europe, have been offended by the Russian invasion, and particularly the killings of civilians, and have sided with the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

Some of the online combatants have shifted away from tactics used earlier in the conflict. In the first phase of the war, Ukrainian hackers focused on attacks intended to knock Russian websites offline. Russian hackers targeted Ukrainian government websites in January, ahead of the invasion, installing “wiper” malware that permanently clears data from computer networks. More recently, Russian hackers appear to have mounted attacks that could have turned off electricity or shut down military communications. (Several of those efforts were foiled, American officials say.)

But the disclosure of personal data is more akin to information warfare than cyberwarfare. It has echoes of Russia’s tactics in 2016, when hackers backed by a Russian intelligence agency stole and leaked data from the Democratic National Committee and from individuals working on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Such hacks are intended to embarrass and to influence political outcomes, rather than to destroy equipment or infrastructure.

Experts have warned that the involvement of amateur hackers in the conflict in Ukraine could lead to confusion and incite more state-backed hacking, as governments seek to defend themselves and strike back against their attackers.

“Some cybercrime groups have recently publicly pledged support for the Russian government,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned in an advisory on Wednesday. “These Russian-aligned cybercrime groups have threatened to conduct cyberoperations in retaliation for perceived cyberoffensives against the Russian government or the Russian people.”

Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, the nonprofit organization publishing many of the leaked materials, was founded in 2018 and has published material from U.S. law enforcement agencies, shell companies and right-wing groups. But since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the group has been flooded with data from Russian government agencies and companies. It currently hosts more than 40 data sets related to Russian entities.

“There has been a lot more activity on that front since the start of the war,” said Lorax B. Horne, a member of DDoSecrets. “Since the end of February, it hasn’t been all Russian data sets, but it has been an overwhelming amount of data that we’ve been receiving.”

DDoSecrets operates as a clearinghouse, publishing data it receives from sources through an open submission process. The organization says that its mission is transparency with the public and that it avoids political affiliations. It is often described as a successor to WikiLeaks, another nonprofit group that has published leaked data it received from anonymous sources.

On March 1, the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda published names and personal information that it said belonged to 120,000 Russian troops fighting in Ukraine. The information came from the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian security think tank, the news outlet reported. In late March, Ukraine’s military intelligence service leaked the names and personal data of 620 people it said were officers with Russia’s F.S.B.

And in early April, the military intelligence service published the personal information of Russian soldiers it claimed were responsible for war crimes in Bucha, a suburb where investigators say Russian troops waged a campaign of terror against civilians.

“All war criminals will be brought to justice for crimes committed against the civilian population of Ukraine,” the military intelligence service said in a statement on its website that accompanied the Bucha data dump. (Russia has denied responsibility for the Bucha killings.)

Russian state-backed hackers have also carried out a number of cyberattacks in Ukraine since the war began, targeting government agencies, communications infrastructure and utility companies. They have largely relied on destructive malware to erase data and disrupt the operations of critical infrastructure companies, but they have occasionally used hack-and-leak tactics.

In late February, a group calling itself Free Civilian began to leak personal information that supposedly belonged to millions of Ukrainian civilians. Although the group posed as a collective of “hacktivists,” or people using their cyberskills to further their political ends, it actually operated as a front for Russian state-backed hackers, according to researchers at CrowdStrike. The hack-and-leak operation was intended to sow distrust in Ukraine’s government and its ability to secure citizens’ data, the researchers said.

Hackers affiliated with Russia and Belarus have also targeted news media companies and Ukrainian military officials in an effort to spread disinformation about a surrender by Ukraine’s military.

But much of Russia’s hacking efforts have focused on damaging critical infrastructure. Last week, Ukrainian officials said they had interrupted a Russian cyberattack on Ukraine’s power grid that could have knocked out power to two million people. The G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence unit, was responsible for the attack, Ukraine’s security and intelligence service said.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned American companies that Russia could carry out similar attacks against them and have urged them to harden their cyberdefenses. The governments of Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have issued similar warnings.

In early April, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. announced that they had acted in secret to pre-empt a Russian cyberattack by removing malware from computer networks around the world. The move was part of an effort by the Biden administration to put pressure on Russia and discourage it from launching cyberattacks in the United States. Last month, the Justice Department charged four Russian officials with carrying out a series of cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the United States.

But so far, the Russian activity directed at the West has been relatively modest, as Chris Inglis, the national cyber director for the Biden administration, acknowledged on Wednesday at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It’s the question of the moment — why, given that we had expectations that the Russian playbook, having relied so heavily on disinformation, cyber, married with all other instruments of power, why haven’t we seen a very significant play of cyber, at least against NATO and the United States, in this instance?” he asked.

He speculated that the Russians thought they were headed to quick victory in February, and when the war effort ran into obstacles, “they were distracted,” he said. “They were busy.”

Ivan Nechepurenko
April 22, 2022, 1:01 p.m. ET

Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia

Skepticism greets a bold Russian claim about war aims, based on its source.

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President Vladimir V. Putin holding an online meeting of Russia’s Security Council in Moscow, on Thursday.Credit...Mikhail Klimentyev/Agence France-Presse, via Sputnik/Afp Via Getty Images

When Gen. Rustam Minnekayev made a sweeping statement on Friday that Russia’s next military aim would be to seize Ukraine’s entire southern coast, many analysts were skeptical, based not only on the claim, but on its source.

Why would a relatively obscure military figure announce such a major shift in policy, rather than President Vladimir V. Putin, who usually makes such pronouncements, or Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu, or Gen. Aleksandr V. Dvornikov, the chief Russian commander for the war in Ukraine?

General Minnekayev’s official job is the organization of political propaganda work in the army’s central district, which comprises a vast territory from the Volga basin to eastern Siberia. His duties normally would not involve formulating military strategy.

Yet he told a gathering of arms industry representatives in Yekaterinburg — more than 1,000 miles away from the fighting — that Russia was seeking to capture a swath of Ukrainian territory from the Donbas region to Moldova. That would cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, General Minnekayev said, according to Russian news agencies, allowing Russia to “influence critical elements of the Ukrainian economy” and gain “yet another point of access” to the pro-Russian enclave of Moldova known as Transnistria.

According to the defense ministry’s website, General Minnekayev, who is stationed in Yekaterinburg, has been mostly involved in projects unrelated to the invasion, such as discussing the construction of an Orthodox cathedral with the clergy or indoctrinating the country’s youth.

“One of our main goals is the work with the veterans and patriotic upbringing of the new generation,” General Minnekayev told Red Star, the defense ministry’s official newspaper, last April. “We need to tell the youth the truth about the war that our ancestors have not been fighting in vain.”

Yuri Fyodorov, a Russian military analyst, said that, on paper, General Minnekayev’s main line of work is “brainwashing” Russian servicemen. But in reality, he said, the general’s main job is to “collect information about the officers: their views and moods.”

General Minnekayev manages “a system of political control of officers which exists in parallel to military counterintelligence,” Mr. Fyodorov said in an interview.

In Mr. Fyodorov’s view, the commander was probably sanctioned by his superiors to make such a statement, which was then reported by TASS, a state-run news agency.

“Looks like fighting is ongoing among various groups in the higher echelons of power,” he said.

Tatyana Stanovaya, a founder of the political consultancy R. Politik, said that General Minnekayev “is not the person who is supposed to make such statements,” and that it is possible he made it “for propaganda reasons.”

Moscow could not deny the statement, she said in a social media post, because it would make the Russian conservative faction “enraged.” In a regular briefing, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, declined to comment on whether General Minnekayev’s comments reflected Mr. Putin’s thinking.

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Tyler Hicks
April 22, 2022, 12:43 p.m. ET

Reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine

Residents looked on as shops burned in the Saltivka neighborhood of Kharkiv, which was attacked on Friday.

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Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Anton Troianovski
April 22, 2022, 12:09 p.m. ET

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will meet with António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, in Moscow on April 26, the Kremlin said. Mr. Guterres made a request earlier this week for a meeting with Mr. Putin to “discuss urgent steps to bring about peace.”

Marc Santora
April 22, 2022, 12:00 p.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

Russia’s military paid a high price for the Kremlin’s ‘victory’ in the ruined city of Mariupol.

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Russian-backed troops in front of a steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit...Chingis Kondarov/Reuters

As soldiers and civilians trapped in bunkers beneath a sprawling steel plant in Mariupol issued desperate pleas for help on Friday, military analysts said that it might take days or even weeks for the heavily battered Russian forces who now control most of the city to regroup and join Moscow’s offensive in the eastern Donbas region.

The Kremlin on Thursday declared “victory” in the now ruined city even though Ukrainian forces still held the Azovstal steel plant near Mariupol’s port. President Vladimir V. Putin ordered his forces not to storm the plant but rather to block it “so that a fly cannot pass through.”

A final assault on the plant would have almost surely resulted in further casualties for Russia in a campaign that military analysts and Ukrainian officials say has already taken a heavy toll.

Mariupol, a strategic port city, was targeted on the first day of Russia’s invasion two months ago. It has been surrounded by Russian forces for some 50 days and been the scene of some of the most intense fighting of the war.

While the defenders of the city are now confined to the steel plant, Ukrainians and western military analysts said that in weeks of fighting they killed high-ranking Russian soldiers and many members of elite Russian fighting units.

Even as the city around them was reduced to rubble, Ukrainian soldiers continued to ambush and attack Russians entering the city. It is impossible to know exactly how many Russian soldiers were killed in the battle but the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think-tank, said they suffered “high casualties.”

“Russian forces involved in the battle of Mariupol are likely heavily damaged and Ukrainian forces succeeded in tying down and degrading a substantial Russian force,” according to the group’s analysis.

The British military defense intelligence agency said on Friday that the decision to blockade the Azovstal plant “likely indicates a desire to contain Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol and free up Russian forces to be deployed elsewhere in eastern Ukraine.”

Western military officials estimate that there were about 12 Russian battalion tactical groups in the city at the start of the week. At full strength, the battalions consist of between 700 to 1,000 soldiers. It is highly unlikely the Russian battalions who fought in the city remain at full strength, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Some portion of the Russian forces will be needed for missions outside the eastern offensive.

The raging fight in Mariupol has left an estimated 95 percent of the structures in the city destroyed or so damaged that they will likely need to be torn down, and Russia will need soldiers to secure the ruins and clear out any remaining pockets of resistance. Other soldiers might be needed to maintain control of southern Ukraine.

And despite the Kremlin’s claim of victory, the Russians must now maintain their siege of the steel plant.

Iryna Vereshchuk, the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, said Friday that the Russian army had made it clear that they would not let civilians leave the plant unless the soldiers inside surrender first. She estimated that around 1,000 civilians, many of them “women, children and the elderly,” were still inside the plant. While Russia opened a corridor for soldiers to surrender, she said, it has not guaranteed safe passage out for civilians.

“The Russians refuse to open a corridor for civilians, cynically pretending that they do not understand the difference between a corridor for the military to surrender and a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the civilians,” she wrote on Telegram. “But they do understand it all. It’s just that they are trying to lay extra pressure on our military.”

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Sameer Yasir
April 22, 2022, 11:30 a.m. ET

India and Britain have called on Russia to declare an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India told reporters in New Delhi that in a meeting with his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, the two discussed the situation in Ukraine and underscored the importance of diplomacy.

Jeffrey Gettleman
April 22, 2022, 11:25 a.m. ET

The world’s largest airplane is among the casualties of the war in Ukraine.

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Oleksandr Halunenko, the first pilot of Mriya, surveying damage to the world's largest cargo aircraft at the Antonov airfield in Hostomel, near Kyiv.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

BUCHA, Ukraine — The day war broke out, one of Ukraine’s most decorated pilots stepped onto the balcony of his three-story home and felt a pain in his heart.

A battle was raging at a nearby airport, and from where he was standing, the pilot, Oleksandr Halunenko, could see the explosions and feel the shudders. The Russians were invading his country and something very specific worried him.

Mriya.

The plane.

In a hangar a few miles away rested the world’s largest airplane, the Antonov An-225, so special that only one was ever built, in the 1980s. Its name is Mriya, pronounced Mer-EE-ah, which in Ukrainian means The Dream.

With its six jet engines, twin tail fins and a wingspan nearly as long as a football field, Mriya hauled gargantuan amounts of cargo across the world, mesmerizing crowds wherever it landed. It was an airplane celebrity, aviation enthusiasts say, and widely beloved. It was also a cherished symbol of Ukraine.

Mr. Halunenko was Mriya’s first pilot and loved it like a child. He has turned his home into a Mriya shrine — pictures and paintings and models of the aircraft hang in every room.

But that morning, he had a terrible feeling.

“I saw so many bombs and so much smoke,” he said. “I knew Mriya could not survive.”

Finbarr O’Reilly
April 22, 2022, 10:27 a.m. ET

The Lviv bus and train station is a scene of reunions and farewells, as some flee the country and many more return.

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Pavlo, 38, with his daughter Eva, 6, and his wife Marianna, 37, and their dog Gucci, returning to Lviv, Ukraine, after spending a month in Poland.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

The main train and bus station in Lviv bustled with people displaced by the Russian invasion on Friday, most of them women and children, but after nearly two months of war, many of those passing through the transportation hub were returning to their hometowns and villages after initially fleeing the war.

Some families were happily reuniting after weeks apart while remaining unsettled by the continued fighting, particularly in the country’s east. Pavlo, 38, embraced his daughter Eva, 6, after she returned with his wife Marianna, 37, and their dog Gucci. They had spent a month in Poland.

The train station has a shelter for women and children. Svitlana, 25, who was traveling with her two children, rested there as she prepared to return home to Zaporizhzhia. She had spent several weeks as a refugee in Poland.

Most people in the stations were going back to their homes, even if it meant returning to places like Kharkiv and Dnipro that are still being hit with airstrikes and artillery barrages.

Others were going the opposite direction after weeks of war. At the bus station next door, Alina Shabalina, 28, boarded a bus going to Poland with her daughter Avrora, 5, and sister Yulia Taranenko, 19. They had fled the eastern city of Sumy.

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Svitlana, 25, at a shelter for women and children at the main train station in Lviv as she prepares to return home to Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine after several weeks in Poland.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
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Alina Shabalina, 28, and her daughter Avrora, 5, left, and her sister Yulia Taranenko, 19, who fled the eastern city of Sumy, on a bus departing for Poland in Lviv, Ukraine, on Friday.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

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Rick Gladstone
April 22, 2022, 9:55 a.m. ET

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, will lead an expert mission to Ukraine’s defunct but dangerous Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, the U.N.’s nuclear monitoring agency said Friday. In a statement, it said Mr. Grossi would be helping “step up efforts to help prevent the danger of a nuclear accident during the current conflict in the country.”

Claire Moses
April 22, 2022, 9:31 a.m. ET

The Netherlands is planning to end its dependence on fossil fuels from Russia by the end of this year, the Dutch climate minister said. European Union officials have already started drafting an embargo on Russian oil, which will likely be put up for negotiation in the coming weeks.

Nick Cumming-Bruce
April 22, 2022, 9:15 a.m. ET

The U.N. details a ‘horror story’ of abuses in Ukraine.

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Volunteer cemetery workers loaded a large truck with 65 bodies to be taken for further forensic investigation in Bucha, Ukraine, this month.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

GENEVA — The United Nations on Friday detailed a “horror story” of possible war crimes and abuses unfolding in Ukraine, citing indiscriminate shelling, hundreds of summary executions and the widespread devastation of civilian lives.

“International humanitarian law has not merely been ignored but seemingly tossed aside,” Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

She called the strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, which killed more than 50 civilians and injured scores, “emblematic of Russian forces’ indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets” that may amount to war crimes.

“Our work to date has detailed a horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians,” she said in the statement.

While Ukrainian forces have committed abuses, including ill-treatment or torture of prisoners of war, “the vast majority” of alleged abuses were attributed to Russian armed forces, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office, told a news briefing in Geneva.

She said U.N. human rights monitors in Ukraine had documented the summary execution of 50 civilians in Bucha, a few miles west of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Monitors are investigating allegations involving the killings of more than 300 civilians in other areas that had been controlled by Russian forces, and also 75 cases of sexual violence, Ms. Shamdasani added.

The latest U.N. data show that 2,435 killed civilians have been confirmed killed in the fighting since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but the true toll is likely far higher.

“There already has been a bloodbath,” Ms. Shamdasani said. “We are very worried about what’s coming next.”

The U.N. estimates that at least 3,000 civilians have died because they were unable to access medical care or due to strenuous conditions — which includes being forced to shelter in basements or apartments for days or weeks on end, Ms. Bachelet’s statement said.

It cited widespread detention of civilians by Russian forces — with monitors confirming 155 cases — including of local officials, journalists and human rights activists. Some were reportedly tortured or ill-treated and left without food or water, the statement added.

“Those in command of armed forces must make it clear to their fighters that anyone found to have been involved in such violations will be prosecuted and held accountable,” Ms. Bachelet said.

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Sameer Yasir
April 22, 2022, 9:04 a.m. ET

Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters in New Delhi that Britain is considering sending tanks to Poland so that Warsaw can send its own to Ukrainian forces fighting against Russia. “We are looking at sending tanks to Poland to help them as they send some of their T-72s (tanks) to Ukraine,” he said.

Sameer Yasir
April 22, 2022, 8:42 a.m. ET

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, who is on a two-day visit to India, told reporters in New Delhi that the war in Ukraine may drag on until the end of next year. He said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has made a “catastrophic blunder” by ordering his troops to invade Ukraine.

Melissa Eddy
April 22, 2022, 8:37 a.m. ET

Germany’s economy is expected to contract under a Russian gas embargo.

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The Kasimovskoye underground gas storage facility, operated by Gazprom in Russia.Credit...Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

An embargo on Russian natural gas could cause Germany’s economic output to drop as much as 5 percent this year, the Bundesbank warned on Friday, potentially driving the country into a recession while pushing up already high consumer prices.

The central bank’s predictions, largely in line with those of several economic institutes, also served as a warning of the danger that Europe’s largest economy could face if Russia decides to cut off gas exports to Europe.

The central bank said its predictions were couched in uncertainty, given the unpredictable nature of the crisis surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But its economic modeling showed that cutting off Russian natural gas, which before the war accounted for 55 percent of Germany’s supplies, would cause gross domestic product for the year to shrink 2 percent instead of growing by 3 percent.

“Natural gas prices are likely to rise the most, as Russian deliveries are difficult to replace in the short term,” the bank said. Roughly a third of all natural gas is used for industrial production, including steel and chemicals.

This week, the International Monetary Fund warned that the war in Ukraine would drag down the eurozone economy. It downgraded its forecast of economic growth to 2.8 percent from the 3.9 percent it had predicted in January.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen also warned that a ban on Russian gas could have a “counterintuitive” effect and harm Europe’s economy more than Russia’s by driving up the global price of fuel.

“Europe clearly needs to reduce its dependence on Russia with respect to energy,” Ms. Yellen told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “But we need to be careful when we think about a complete European ban.”

The European Union has banned Russian coal and is preparing a plan to embargo Russian oil. Although Germany has said it is working to end imports of Russian oil this year, it has been reluctant to move more quickly. Last year, Germany imported about a third of its crude oil from Russia.

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Marc Santora
April 22, 2022, 7:41 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

The United Nations human rights office on Friday called the war in Ukraine “a horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians.” “Over these eight weeks,” Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement, “international humanitarian law has not merely been ignored but seemingly tossed aside.”

Marc Santora
April 22, 2022, 6:59 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

Law enforcement officials in Ukraine’s capital said that they have found the bodies of 1,084 civilians, with as many as three in four killed by small arms fire, suggesting they were killed at close range. “These are civilians who had nothing to do with territorial defense or other military formations,” Andriy Nebytov, the police chief for the Kyiv region, told a national broadcaster.

Anton TroianovskiIvan Nechepurenko
April 22, 2022, 6:57 a.m. ET

Russia has broader aims in Ukraine, a top commander says, but it’s not clear if that’s official policy.

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A hotel building that was destroyed last month after shelling in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, as seen on Thursday.Credit...Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

Russia aims to take “full control” of southern Ukraine, a senior Russian military commander said on Friday, though it was not immediately clear whether the surprise announcement amounted to an official policy shift in the Kremlin’s stated goals for the war.

The commander, Gen. Rustam Minnekayev, told a defense industry meeting that Russia was seeking to win control of a swath of territory extending to Moldova, Ukraine’s southern neighbor. That would cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, General Minnekayev said, according to Russian news agencies, allowing Russia to “influence critical elements of the Ukrainian economy” and gain “yet another point of access” to the pro-Russian Moldovan enclave, Transnistria.

Those are far more ambitious goals than those set out by President Vladimir V. Putin in recent weeks, which have focused on gaining control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. And they also don’t appear to be realistic, at least for now, since military observers question whether Russia has enough troops and equipment to win the grinding battle for the Donbas — let alone for southern Ukraine, which is home to Odesa, a fortified city of a million people.

“I want to remind you that many Kremlin plans have been destroyed by our army and people,” Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s president, wrote on social media in response to General Minnekayev’s remarks.

It wasn’t clear whether the general’s statement reflected Mr. Putin’s plans for the war — or was instead meant to distract or confuse Ukraine as fighting in the Donbas intensifies. When asked in a regular conference call with reporters whether General Minnekayev had disclosed wider Russian war goals than previously announced, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, declined to comment.

In his remarks on Friday, General Minnekayev said that a “second phase” of the war had started two days earlier. “One of the goals” of that phase, he said, “is to take full control of the Donbas and southern Ukraine.” He said that would allow Russia to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, “through which agricultural and metallurgical products are delivered” to other countries.

The commander also issued a veiled warning to Moldova. A Russian regiment already is stationed in Transnistria.

“Control over the south of Ukraine is another connection to Transnistria, where there is also evidence of oppression of the Russian-speaking population,” General Minnekayev said.

Yuri Fyodorov, a Russian military analyst, said that the broader aims detailed by General Minnekayev “from the military standpoint are unreachable.”

“All of Russia’s combat-ready units are now concentrated in the Donbas, where Russia failed to achieve any significant advances over the past five days,” Mr. Fyodorov said in an interview. General Minnekayev’s rank would generally not allow him to make such sweeping policy statements that also contradict what has been said by the country’s top politicians, Mr. Fyodorov added.

“It might signal a divergence of positions, perhaps a significant one, among the military top brass and the political elite,” he said.

Since launching the war in Ukraine, Mr. Putin has used false claims of a “genocide” against Russian speakers in the eastern part of the country as a justification for the invasion.

On Thursday, Russia claimed it had taken control of Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov. It has been the last pocket of serious resistance in the “land bridge” the Kremlin has created between territory it already holds in the Donbas region, in the east, and the Crimean Peninsula, in the south, which Russia annexed in 2014.

What is known as southern Ukraine lies beyond Crimea, to the peninsula’s south and west, and includes the Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Russia claims it has full control of Kherson, but its attempts to advance into the areas around Mykolaiv in March were repelled by Ukrainian forces.

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Elisabetta Povoledo
April 22, 2022, 6:50 a.m. ET

Pope Francis condemns the war in Ukraine (again), but doesn’t name Putin (again).

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Pope Francis last week during Good Friday celebrations at the Colosseum in Rome.Credit...Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

Pope Francis has defended his decision to not directly name President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in his repeated condemnations of the war in Ukraine, and said that he was ready to do “everything” so “there will not be one more death.”

“A pope never names a head of state, much less a country, which is superior to its head of state,” Francis said when asked directly about it for an interview that was published on Thursday by the Argentine newspaper La Nacion.

In the wide-ranging interview, the pope said that the Vatican’s behind-the-scenes efforts to stop the war were continuous. “I cannot tell you the details because they would no longer be diplomatic efforts,” Francis said “But the attempts will never cease.”

Francis has repeatedly expressed abhorrence of the war. On Feb. 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, he visited Alexander Avdeev, the Russian ambassador to the Holy See, to voice his concern.

Since then, Francis has used his weekly public speaking engagements — the Sunday Angelus prayers and general Wednesday audiences — to plea for a cease-fire, for renewed peace negotiations and for humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians safe passage out of besieged areas.

Francis has condemned the “violent aggression against Ukraine” for which there is “no justification,” and during a visit to Malta this month, he blamed the war on a “potentate sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests.” In the Nacion interview, he said, “All war is anachronistic in this world and at this stage of civilization.”

And he has sent two of his top advisers to Ukraine to bring aid and to show his closeness to the Ukrainian people.

But Francis has been criticized for studiously avoiding naming Mr. Putin, or even Russia, as the aggressor, and for not challenging Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church for his open support of the war.

The Vatican has defended Francis’ approach in opinion articles in its daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. In one, in March, Andrea Tornielli, an influential Vatican official, wrote that popes did not name aggressors “not out of cowardice or an excess of diplomatic prudence, but in order not to close the door, in order to always leave open a crack to the possibility of stopping the evil and saving human lives.”

Pontiffs have also traditionally avoided choosing sides in conflicts, at least in the 20th century, said Alberto Melloni, the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna.

Behind closed doors, though, “popes won’t hold back,” said Mr. Melloni, citing a meeting between Pope Paul VI and President Lyndon B. Johnson during which the pope is said to have told the president that the war in Vietnam was undermining the moral authority of the United States.

But in public, “they often speak in general terms,” Mr. Melloni said. In some cases, he added, the strategy that has backfired on the church, as it did with Pius XII’s use of generic language about the horrors of World War II. “The church has paid dearly for that error,” Mr. Melloni said.

In the case of the war in Ukraine, Francis has tried to carve out a role as a unifier and peacemaker, Mr. Melloni said, adding that the pope was not about to deliver “spiritual sanctions” on anyone.

This month, Reuters reported that Francis’ diplomatic efforts might include a visit in Jerusalem with Patriarch Kirill in June after a two-day visit to Lebanon. The Vatican has not officially announced the trip, though it has been confirmed by the Lebanese presidency.

But in the Nacion interview, Francis said that while his relations with Patriarch Kirill were “very good,” his plans to meet with the patriarch had been suspended because Vatican diplomats “understood that a meeting between the two at this time could lend itself to many confusions.”

It would have been their second meeting. Francis and Patriarch Kirill met in 2016 in Havana, where Francis became the first pontiff to meet a patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, an ecumenical and diplomatic coup that had eluded his predecessors. The roots of the East-West split in Christianity can be traced to the Schism of 1054, and Francis has spent years courting Patriarch Kirill to mend that split.

Francis also spoke to Patriarch Kirill last month in a video call, the Vatican said, a conversation that it said was motivated by a desire to promote peace.

On the flight to Malta, Francis told reporters that a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, was “on the table.” But in the Nacion interview, Francis said that he had not yet gone to Kyiv, as some Western leaders have, because he feared jeopardizing “higher objectives, which are the end of the war, a truce or at least a humanitarian corridor.”

“What would be the use of the pope going to Kyiv if the war continues the next day?” he said.

Francis, 85, has had a series of health setbacks in recent weeks that have caused him to cancel or modify several appointments. The Vatican said on Friday that the pope had canceled his public engagements for the day so that he could undergo medical checks on his right knee, which has been causing him pain when he stands or walks.

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