Russian Invasion of UkraineWhat Happened on Day 78 of the War in Ukraine

Neutral Finland’s leaders unequivocally said they intended to seek membership in the alliance, with Sweden expected to do the same, inviting new threats from Moscow.

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Ukrainian soldiers atop a captured Russian tank on Thursday in the village of Hrushuvakha, on the front lines of fighting with Russian forces in the Kharkiv region. Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

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Pinned

Finland moves to join NATO, upending Putin’s war aims.

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A convoy of Ukrainian armored vehicles near the frontlines in the Donetsk region on Thursday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

BRUSSELS — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has said stopping NATO’s expansion helped drive him to invade Ukraine. But on Thursday, Finland declared its unequivocal intention to join, not only upending Mr. Putin’s plan, but also placing the alliance’s newest prospective member on Russia’s northern doorstep.

The declaration by Finland’s leaders that they will join NATO — with expectations that neighboring Sweden would soon do the same — could now reshape a strategic balance in Europe that has prevailed for decades. It is the latest example of how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 11 weeks ago has backfired on Mr. Putin’s intentions.

Russia reacted angrily, with Mr. Putin’s chief spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, saying the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO would not make Europe safer. Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, appeared to go further, saying in an interview with a British news site he posted on Twitter that as NATO members, the two Nordic countries “become part of the enemy and they bear all the risks.”

Finland, long known for such implacable nonalignment that “Finlandization” became synonymous with neutrality, had been signaling that Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine was giving the Finns a reason to join NATO. But Thursday was the first time Finland’s leaders said publicly that they definitely intended to join, making it all but certain that Russia would share an 810-mile border with a NATO country.

The addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO carries significant risks of elevating prospects of war between Russia and the West, under the alliance’s underlying principle that an attack on one is an attack on all.

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Finnish soldiers during a military exercise in Niinisalo, Finland, last week.Credit...Alessandro Rampazzo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But the Finnish leaders, President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin, said that “NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security,” adding that “as a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defense alliance.”

Mr. Putin has offered a range of reasons for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but it was intended in part to block the eastern expansion of NATO and was premised on what he apparently had assumed would be a fractious European response. Instead, the invasion has united the West and helped to isolate Moscow.

With the likely redrawing of Europe’s security borders, Western officials also moved to reshape Europe’s economic infrastructure by taking steps to establish new transport routes from Ukraine, which is under a Russian naval embargo. Russia, meanwhile, found itself further ostracized from the global economy as Siemens, the German electronics giant, became the latest company to pull out of Russia, exiting after 170 years of doing business there.

The European Union announced a set of measures on Thursday to facilitate Ukraine’s exports of blocked food products, mainly grain and oilseeds, in a bid to alleviate the war’s strain on the Ukrainian economy and avert a looming global food shortage.

The Russian navy has blocked exports by Ukraine — a major global supplier of wheat, corn and sunflower oil before the invasion — at the country’s Black Sea ports. The long-term goal of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, is to establish new transport routes from Ukraine into Europe, circumventing the Russian blockade by using Polish ports — although creating new routes could take months, if not years.

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A motorist passing an unexploded Russian rocket near Kuhari, northwest of Kyiv, on Thursday.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

On the ground in Ukraine, where the Russian invaders are still facing strong resistance from Western-armed Ukrainian forces and the prospect of a prolonged war, the Kremlin redeployed troops to strengthen its territorial gains in the Donbas, the eastern region where the fighting has been fiercest.

Ukrainian and Western officials say that Russia is withdrawing forces from around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, where it has been losing territory — a pullback that Britain’s Defense Ministry on Thursday described as “a tacit recognition of Russia’s inability to capture key Ukrainian cities where they expected limited resistance from the population.”

By contrast, in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which together make up the Donbas, the Russians now control about 80 percent of the territory. In Luhansk, where Russian shelling rarely relents, “the situation has deteriorated significantly” in recent days, according to the regional governor, Serhiy Haidai.

“The Russians are destroying everything in their path,” Mr. Haidai said on Thursday in a post on Telegram. “The vast majority of critical infrastructure will have to be rebuilt,” he said, adding that there was no electricity, water, gas or cellphone connection in the region, where most residents have fled.

Russia’s withdrawal from Kharkiv represents of one of the bigger setbacks Moscow has confronted since its retreat from areas near Kyiv, the capital — where the costs of Russian occupation became clearer on Thursday.

The bodies of more than 1,000 civilians have been recovered in areas north of Kyiv that were occupied by Russian forces, the United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said on Thursday. They included several hundred who were summarily executed and others who were shot by snipers, Ms. Bachelet said.

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Valentyna Nechyporenko, 77, mourning at the grave of her son, Ruslan, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine, last month. He was killed by Russian forces in March.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

“The figures will continue to increase,” Ms. Bachelet told a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, the second in two weeks, focusing on abuses uncovered by investigators in Bucha, Irpin and other suburbs of Kyiv that were seized by Russia’s forces in the invasion’s early stages. Russia has denied committing any atrocities in Ukraine.

The announcement by Finland’s leaders to apply for membership in NATO had been widely expected. Public opinion in Finland has shifted significantly in favor of joining the alliance, from 20 percent six months ago to nearly 80 percent now, especially if Sweden, Finland’s strategic partner and also militarily nonaligned, joins as well.

“Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay,” the Finnish leaders said in a statement. “We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days.”

A parliamentary debate and vote were expected on Monday.

The debate in Sweden is less advanced than in Finland, but Sweden, too, is moving toward applying to join NATO, perhaps as early as next week.

Mr. Putin has cited NATO’s spread eastward into Russia’s sphere of influence, including to former Soviet states on its borders, as a national threat. He has used Ukraine’s desire to join the alliance to help justify his invasion of that country, though Western officials have repeatedly said that the possibility of Ukrainian membership remains remote.

One reason is that NATO would be highly unlikely to offer membership to a country entangled in a war.

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Swedish soldiers during a training exercise on Gotland Island, Sweden, on Wednesday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

If Ukraine were to become a NATO member, the alliance would be obligated to defend it against Russia and other adversaries, in keeping with the application of NATO’s Article 5 that an attack on one member is an attack on the entire alliance.

Even without the geopolitical risks, Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that has struggled with endemic corruption since gaining independence, would find it difficult to meet several necessary requirements to join NATO, including the need to demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law.

Sweden and Finland, in contrast, have developed over decades into vibrant and healthy liberal democracies.

Still, NATO members would have to act if Finland and Sweden were attacked by Russia or others, raising the risks of a direct confrontation between nuclear powers.

Mr. Putin was likely to try to rally support for the Ukraine invasion by portraying the moves by Finland and Sweden as fresh evidence that NATO is growing increasingly hostile.

If Finland and Sweden apply, they are widely expected to be approved, although NATO officials are publicly discreet, saying only that the alliance has an open-door policy and any country that wishes to join can request an invitation. Still, even a speedy application process could take a year, raising concerns that the two countries would be vulnerable to Russia while outside the alliance.

Besides a long border, Finland shares a complicated, violent history with Russia. The Finns fended off a Soviet invasion in 1939-40 in what is known as “The Winter War.”

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Smoke rising over the village of Velyka Komyshuvakha, Ukraine, on the front lines of fighting with Russian forces in the Kharkiv region on Thursday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The Finns eventually lost, gave up some territory and agreed to remain formally neutral throughout the Cold War, but their ability to temporarily hold off the Soviet Union became a central point of Finnish pride.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland moved to join the European Union in 1992, becoming a member in 1995, while remaining militarily nonaligned and keeping working relations with Moscow.

Finland has maintained its military spending and sizable armed forces. Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace program along with Sweden in 1994 and has become ever closer to the alliance without joining it.

Steven Erlanger reported from Brussels, and Norimitsu Onishi from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Cora Engelbrecht from London, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, Monika Pronczuk from Brussels and Dan Bilefsky from Montreal.

Victoria Kim
May 12, 2022, 11:03 p.m. ET

Ukrainians are negotiating to evacuate badly wounded soldiers from the Mariupol steel plant.

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Maria Zimareva, whose brother is a soldier trapped in a steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, joined a protest in Kyiv, the capital, on Thursday to demand a rescue operation.Credit...Carlos Barria/Reuters

Ukrainian officials say they are in talks to get the most badly wounded fighters out of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol in exchange for Russian prisoners, as relatives of the soldiers trapped in the besieged factory complex continue to make public pleas for their safety.

Officials are negotiating for the evacuation of 38 soldiers who are unable to walk, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereschuk said in a post on Facebook. In recent weeks, a couple of hundred civilians have managed to leave the plant with international assistance after sheltering there for weeks with dwindling food, water and medicine.

Families of the fighters still trapped at Azovstal protested this week in the capital, Kyiv, trying to bring attention to their fate. The wives of two of the soldiers met with Pope Francis on Wednesday at the Vatican to ask for his help in getting their husbands out alive.

One of them, Yulia Fedosiuk, 29, told The New York Times that as many as 3,000 soldiers may still be in the sprawling plant, the last flicker of resistance in Mariupol, a city that is otherwise under Russian control. About 600 of the soldiers are injured, she said.

In her post, Ms. Vereschuk sought to dampen expectations for the negotiations, saying that the talks were difficult and that officials were taking it a step at a time. She said that only the 38 severely wounded fighters were under discussion, with no negotiations yet about the hundreds of other soldiers in the plant.

A regional governor said this week that the plant was still being subjected to near-constant bombardments from air and artillery shelling.

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Alyssa LukpatEmily Cochrane
May 12, 2022, 7:58 p.m. ET

Rand Paul holds up $40 billion in aid for Ukraine.

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People receive humanitarian aid supplies in the eastern city of Kharkiv, on Thursday.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on Thursday single-handedly delayed a bipartisan effort to quickly send $40 billion in aid to Ukraine, which Congress had tried to fast-track amid the escalating brutality of Russia’s war.

The Senate needed unanimous consent to waive procedural hurdles and approve the humanitarian and military aid package, which the House passed 368-to-57 on Tuesday. Mr. Paul, a Republican and a libertarian who generally opposes U.S. spending on foreign aid, objected, halting what had been an extraordinary effort to rapidly shepherd the largest foreign aid package through Congress in at least two decades.

Mr. Paul had sought to alter the bill to include a provision requiring that an inspector general monitor the spending, and was not satisfied with a counteroffer from party leaders to have a separate vote on that proposal. In his objection on the Senate floor, Mr. Paul cited concerns about inflation and rising energy and gas prices.

“My oath of office is to the U.S. Constitution, not to any foreign nation,” he said, adding, “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S. economy.”

The Senate is still expected to approve the aid package, but Mr. Paul’s objection will delay a vote until at least next week.

Any changes to the legislation would require a second vote in the House and potentially invite other lawmakers to force their own changes, delaying agreement on the legislation. Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said lawmakers in both parties had concerns with the proposal.

“If every member held every bill in exchange for every last little demand, it would mean total and permanent paralysis for this chamber,” he warned. Mr. Schumer pointedly added: “When you have a proposal to change a bill, you have to convince members to support it. The junior senator from Kentucky has not done that.”

With Russia’s campaign growing more violent as the war drags into an 11th week, some Democratic and Republican lawmakers have set aside their skepticism over entangling the United States — at least financially — in a foreign war. The $40 billion package would allow President Biden to authorize the transfer of up to $11 billion of American weapons, equipment and military supplies, as well as send billions of dollars to support the Ukrainian government and refugees from the country.

Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, and Lloyd J. Austin III, the defense secretary, warned Congress this week in a letter that the package needed to become law before May 19 “to provide uninterrupted critical military support to our Ukrainian partners.”

David E. Sanger
May 12, 2022, 7:43 p.m. ET

News Analysis

Finland and Sweden Move Toward NATO Membership. But What About Ukraine?

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The Finnish Parliament on Thursday. The White House welcomed the announcement by Finnish leaders that their country should “apply for NATO membership without delay.”Credit...Mauri Ratilainen/EPA, via Shutterstock

[May 13: After this article was published, Sweden announced early Friday its plans to join NATO.]

WASHINGTON — In embracing Finland’s, and soon Sweden’s, move to join NATO, President Biden and his Western allies are doubling down on a bet that Russia has made such a huge strategic mistake over the past three months that now is the time to make President Vladimir V. Putin pay a major price: enduring the expansion of the Western alliance he sought to fracture.

But the decision leaves hanging several major questions. Why not allow Ukraine — the flawed, corrupt but also heroic democracy at the heart of the current conflict — to join as well, enshrining the West’s commitment to its security?

And in expanding NATO to 32 members, soon with hundreds of additional miles of border with Russia, is the military alliance helping ensure that Russia could never again mount a vicious, unprovoked invasion? Or is it only solidifying the divide with an isolated, angry, nuclear-armed adversary that is already paranoid about Western “encirclement”?

The White House welcomed the announcement on Thursday by Finland’s leaders that their country should “apply for NATO membership without delay.” Sweden’s government signaled on Friday that it could soon follow suit, after weeks of consultations with senior U.S. and European officials.

Russia, not surprisingly, objects to the moves. In response to Finland’s announcement, it said on Thursday that Moscow would take “retaliatory steps,” including a “military-technical” response, which many experts interpreted as a threat to deploy tactical nuclear weapons near the Russian-Finnish border.

To Mr. Biden and his aides, the argument for letting Finland and Sweden in, and keeping Ukraine out, is fairly straightforward. The two Nordic states are model democracies and modern militaries that the United States and other NATO nations regularly conduct exercises with, working together to track Russian subs, protect undersea communications cables and run air patrols across the Baltic Sea.

In short, they have been NATO allies in every sense except the formal one — and the invasion of Ukraine ended virtually all of the debate about whether the two countries would be safer by keeping some distance from the alliance.

“We have stayed out of NATO for 30 years — we could have joined in the early ’90s,” Mikko Hautala, the Finnish ambassador to the United States, said on Thursday as he was walking the halls of the U.S. Senate, drumming up support for his country’s sudden change of course. Trying to avoid provoking Mr. Putin, he said, “hasn’t changed Russia’s actions at all.”

Ukraine, in contrast, was at the core of the old Soviet Union that Mr. Putin is trying to rebuild, at least in part. And while it altered its Constitution three years ago to make NATO membership a national objective, it has been considered too full of corruption and too devoid of democratic institutions to make membership likely for years, if not decades, to come.

Key members of NATO — led by France and Germany — have made clear they are opposed to including Ukraine. It is a view that has hardened now that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government is engaged in an active shooting war in which the United States and the other 29 members of the alliance would be treaty-bound to enter directly if Ukraine were a full-fledged member, covered by its core promise that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Mr. Zelensky understands this dynamic, and weeks into the conflict, he dropped his insistence that Ukraine be ushered into NATO. In late March, a month after the Russian invasion and a point when there still seemed some prospect of a diplomatic solution, he made clear that if it would bring about a permanent end to the war, he was prepared to declare Ukraine a “neutral” state.

“Security guarantees and neutrality, nonnuclear status of our state — we are ready to go for it,” he told Russian journalists, a line he has repeated several times since.

Those statements were a relief to Mr. Biden, whose first objective is to get the Russians out of Ukraine, irreversibly, but whose second is to avoid World War III.

By that, he means staying clear of direct conflict with Mr. Putin’s forces and avoiding doing anything that risks escalation that could quickly turn nuclear. If Ukraine were ushered into NATO, it would reinforce Mr. Putin’s contention that the former Soviet state was conspiring with the West to destroy the Russian state — and it could be only a matter of time until that direct confrontation broke out, with all its perils.

Under that logic, Mr. Biden declined to send MIG fighters to Ukraine that could be used to bomb Moscow. He rejected a no-fly zone over Ukraine because of the risk that American pilots could get into dogfights with Russian pilots.

But his once-clear line has grown fuzzier over the past few weeks.

As Russia’s military weaknesses and incompetence became clear, Mr. Biden approved sending the Ukrainians heavy artillery to frustrate Russia’s latest drive in Donbas, and he has sent missiles and Switchblade drones that have been used to hit Russian tanks.

When the administration denounced reports last week that the United States was providing Ukraine with intelligence that helped it sink the Moskva, the pride of Mr. Putin’s naval fleet, and target mobile Russian command posts and the Russian generals sitting inside them, the reason for the upset was clear. The revelations showed how close to the line Washington was getting in provoking Mr. Putin.

The question now is whether expanding NATO risks cementing a new Cold War — and perhaps something worse. It is a debate similar to the one that took place during the Clinton administration when there were warnings about the dangers of NATO expansion. George F. Kennan, the architect of the post-World War II “containment” strategy to isolate the Soviet Union, called the expansion “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Last week, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the chief executive of the New America think tank, warned that “all parties concerned should take a deep breath and slow down.”

“The threat of Russia invading either Finland or Sweden is remote,” she wrote in The Financial Times. “But admitting them to the military alliance will redraw and deepen Europe’s 20th-century divisions in ways that will probably preclude far bolder and braver thinking about how to achieve peace and prosperity in the 21st.”

That is the long-term concern. In the shorter term, NATO and American officials are concerned about how to assure that Russia does not threaten either Finland or Sweden before they are formal members of the alliance. (That assumes no current member of the alliance objects; many believe Mr. Putin will lean on Hungary and its prime minister, Viktor Orban, to reject the applications.) Only Britain has been explicit on the issue, signing a separate security pact with the two countries. The United States has not said what security assurances it is willing to give.

But it has blamed Mr. Putin for bringing NATO expansion upon himself by invading a neighbor. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, loosely quoted Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, who made clear that Ukraine had forced the Finns to think differently about their security.

“You caused this,” Mr. Niinisto said of Mr. Putin. “Look at the mirror.”

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Anushka Patil
May 12, 2022, 6:18 p.m. ET

Ukraine’s Eurovision presenter broadcasts from a bunker as its band is favored to win the final.

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Ukraine’s participants in the Eurovision contest, Kalush Orchestra, are favored to win the contest with their song “Stefania.”Credit...Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

As Europe gears up for the final round of the glimmering, camp-filled extravaganza that is the Eurovision Song Contest, Ukraine’s commentator for the show has been broadcasting from a place far less glamorous — a bomb shelter.

A photo posted by the Ukrainian public broadcasting company, Suspilne, showed the veteran presenter, Timur Miroshnychenko, at his work space for Tuesday’s semifinal: a desk in a bunkerlike room, surrounded by computers, wires, a camera and eroding walls that revealed patches of brick underneath. It was not clear what city he was in.

The bunker had been prepared to prevent any disruptions from air raid sirens, Mr. Miroshnychenko told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“Nothing is going to interrupt the broadcast of Eurovision,” he said, adding that Ukrainians love the annual contest and were “trying to catch any peaceful moment,” even if it was only two hours in one evening.

Several bookmakers have said Ukraine is by far the presumptive favorite to win this year. Winners are determined based on votes from national juries and viewers at home.

Ukraine’s entry is the song “Stefania,” from Kalush Orchestra, a band that blends traditional Ukrainian folk music with rap and hip-hop. The group brought the semifinal audience in Turin, Italy, to its feet on Tuesday with a rousing performance that sent them through to Saturday’s Grand Final.

The anthemic song was originally written to honor the mother of the frontman Oleh Psiuk, but since the war, it has been taken as a tribute to Ukraine as a motherland. The song includes lyrics that roughly translate to, “You can’t take my willpower from me, as I got it from her,” and “I’ll always find my way home, even if the roads are destroyed.”

The band traveled for Eurovision with special permission to bypass a martial law preventing most Ukrainian men from leaving the country, according to Suspilne.

Mr. Psiuk said in March that while he was volunteering for relief efforts, his girlfriend was miles away making Molotov cocktails, and another band member was serving in a territorial defense unit. The group also organized a fund-raising tour before the competition.

Alyssa Lukpat
May 12, 2022, 5:22 p.m. ET

In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that, since the war started, Russian forces had destroyed 570 health care facilities and 101 hospitals. He added that some schools had been “struck” on Thursday night near the city of Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine.

Anushka Patil
May 12, 2022, 5:02 p.m. ET

Finland and Sweden joining NATO would make them “part of the enemy,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, a deputy Russian ambassador to the U.N. said in an interview posted online Thursday. “If there are NATO detachments in these territories, these territories will become a target or possible target for a strike — in the same way that Russian territory becomes possible target for a strike the moment NATO detachments are introduced” nearby, he told the website UnHerd.

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Farnaz Fassihi
May 12, 2022, 4:54 p.m. ET

Children are paying a heavy price in Ukraine war, a UNICEF official says.

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A sign reading “children” was taped to the bullet-ridden windshield of a car left abandoned near a bridge spanning the Irpin River last month.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Nearly 100 children were killed in Ukraine in April in the raging war, which has created a crisis for safeguarding children and their rights, a top official for the U.N.’s agency for children told the Security Council on Thursday.

The real number of children killed in conflict could be considerably higher, the official, Omar Abdi, said. The Security Council convened the meeting to discuss the impact of the war in Ukraine on children and education.

“Children and parents tell us of their ‘living hell,’ where they were forced to go hungry, drink from muddy puddles, and shelter from constant shelling and bombardments, dodging bombs, bullets, and land mines as they fled,” said Mr. Abdi, who is the deputy executive director of UNICEF.

Children make up half of the 14 million Ukrainians uprooted in the war and are at risk of exploitation and long-term trauma because of displacement, separation from family and the disruption of childhood routines, like attending school.

Mr. Abdi offered a grim update on the state of education in Ukraine. He said schools were being used for other purposes, serving as military bases, supply hubs, shelters and information centers.

Since the conflict began in late February, at least 15 of the 89 schools supported by UNICEF in eastern Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed, and hundreds of schools across Ukraine have been hit with heavy artillery or airstrikes, Mr. Abdi said.

The United States, which assumed the Security Council’s rotating presidency for the month of May, said that an average of 22 schools were struck every day, and that there had been 200 attacks on health care facilities in Ukraine.

Richard Mills, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said children have been deported to Russia along with their families and processed through so-called “filtration camps.” He noted that Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvov-Belova, had recently said the process for Russians to adopt a Ukrainian child was being fast-tracked.

Barbara Woodward, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, said the damage being done to Ukraine’s children was immense. “There is now a very real risk of a lost generation, and the continuation of a cycle of violence,” she said.

Finbarr O'Reilly
May 12, 2022, 3:24 p.m. ET

Reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine

Life continued to return to the streets of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, as people shopped at a market in a northern suburb for hardware supplies and flowers. “The city is alive again now,” said a rose vendor, Zoya, 63, who proudly said the price of the flowers she grows has remained the same as before the Russian bombardment of the city over the past 10 weeks. “Life must go on and flowers are a beautiful reminder of this.”

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Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
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Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
Dan BilefskySteven Erlanger
May 12, 2022, 1:52 p.m. ET

Why do Finland and Sweden appear headed toward swift NATO membership while Ukraine is not?

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Swedish Army soldiers listening to instructions during training in Gotland Island, Sweden, in May.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

With Finland and Sweden racing toward NATO membership, the now very real prospect of the two Nordic countries joining the seven-decade-old Atlantic alliance is raising a pressing question in Kyiv and beyond: Why them and not Ukraine?

While the wealthy, previously nonaligned countries could potentially join NATO in less than a year, Ukraine’s prospects of joining the alliance any time soon — if ever — are very unlikely. For one thing: NATO, an alliance predicated on the doctrine of mutual defense, would be highly unlikely to admit a country ensnared in war.

Ukraine, battling a fierce Russian invasion, would benefit immensely from NATO’s defining credo, which says that “an armed attack” against any NATO ally is considered an attack against them all. But President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to justify his invasion by saying that Ukraine’s potential NATO membership threatens Russia, and Washington and its European allies do not want to further antagonize Russia and risk transforming the conflict into an expanded war.

Even without the high-stakes geopolitical risks, Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that has struggled with endemic corruption since gaining independence, would find it difficult to meet several necessary requirements to join NATO, including the need to demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law. Sweden and Finland, in contrast, have developed over decades into vibrant and healthy liberal democracies.

And any decision to admit a country to NATO requires unanimous consent from all of NATO’s 30 member states, which Ukraine is very unlikely to secure.

Here’s why Ukraine faces an uphill struggle to join one of the century’s most-vaunted security clubs:

Mired in war, Ukraine has set aside the goal of joining NATO.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has signaled Ukraine might have to accept never joining NATO.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace program along with Sweden in 1994 and has become ever closer to the alliance without joining it. Finland’s leaders have declared their support for joining NATO, and those in Sweden are expected to do the same within a matter of days.

But for Ukraine, being mired in an all-out war with Russia makes its NATO aspirations far more complicated. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine stressed the ambition to join NATO, an aspiration fixed in Ukraine’s constitution since 2019. But this March, as war with Russia raged, Mr. Zelensky backed down from that hope, signaling that his country needed to accept that it may never join NATO.

The comments appeared to be a nod to the Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine give up the aim of joining NATO as a precondition to stopping the war. That intention was reiterated during peace talks in late March in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia, during which Ukrainian officials said their country was ready to declare itself permanently neutral — forsaking the prospect of joining NATO, a key Russian demand.

Even if Ukraine still wanted to join NATO, it may not meet the requirements.

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Ukrainian Army soldiers scrambled as Russian artillery shells hit near their position in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine on Wednesday.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

To meet one of the three main criteria for entry into NATO, a European nation must demonstrate a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law. While Ukrainian leaders say they have met that threshold, some American and European officials argue otherwise.

In a 2020 analysis, Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index, lower than any NATO nation at the time.

Some Western officials also question whether Ukraine could meet another criterion to contribute to the collective defense of NATO nations, even though Ukraine sent troops to the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has also shown its military prowess during the Russian invasion.

Whatever Ukraine’s military capabilities, there are other geopolitical hurdles. The alliance wants to avoid greater Russian hostility, and Ukraine would almost certainly have trouble meeting the third criterion: winning approval from all of NATO’s members. France and Germany have in the past opposed Ukraine’s inclusion, and other European members are skeptical — a likely dealbreaker if Ukraine wanted to join.

The United States has been lukewarm about Ukraine joining NATO.

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While President Biden has repeatedly sent weapons packages to Ukraine, he has not appeared ready to welcome the nation into NATO.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Vladimir V. Putin’s insistence that he needed to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO appeared to be a pretext for the war. But the United States has also been deeply wary of Ukraine joining the alliance.

In 2008, NATO promised Ukraine and Georgia that they could someday become members, without specifying a date. But the alliance has done little to make that promise a reality.

American officials say they will not appease Mr. Putin by undermining a policy enshrined in NATO’s original 1949 treaty, which grants any European nation the right to ask to join. The White House insists it will not allow Moscow to quash Kyiv’s ambition to join the alliance.

Nevertheless, in January, a month before Mr. Putin launched his full-scale invasion, difficult negotiations between the United States, Russia and European members of NATO made it clear that the Biden administration had no immediate plans to help bring the former Soviet republic into NATO.

President Biden, wary of expanding U.S. military commitments, has been reluctant to support Ukraine’s membership. Analysts say two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have cooled his fervor for expanding NATO.

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Jason Horowitz
May 12, 2022, 1:05 p.m. ET

Finland, which once waged fierce battles against the Russians, says it is prepared for a fight.

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Finnish soldiers during an international training exercise in Niinisalo, Finland, last week. Finland’s army is arguably the most powerful in the northern Baltic region.Credit...Alessandro Rampazzo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In February, only weeks before Russia attacked Ukraine, President Sauli Niinisto of Finland sent a message to Russia about the steep price of invading his country.

“Everybody understands that there is a threshold, if you try to come to Finland uninvited — it’s very expensive,” Mr. Niinisto, who has a reputation of speaking bluntly to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said in an interview in the Presidential Palace.

Mr. Putin knows “from history that Finns are very stubborn, and we have lot of Sisu,” he added, translating the Finnish word loosely as “double guts.”

On Thursday, Mr. Niinisto announced that Finland is in favor of rapidly applying for NATO membership. But for decades his country has made clear that it would not shy from a fight brought by Russia.

Finland knows the feeling of Russian aggression first hand. In 1939 and 1940, it fought fierce battles against Russian soldiers in what is known as the Winter War. The Finns eventually lost, and gave up some of their territory, but their ability to temporarily hold off the Soviet Union became a central point of Finnish pride.

Now, Finland is well armed, recently purchasing 64 F-35 fighter jets from the United States. Their compatibility with NATO and American defense systems has put teeth behind its warnings to Russia that it could join NATO. There are also plans ready to protect Helsinki, the capital, if necessary by planting mines in shipping lanes, blowing up bridges and scrambling those jets to take out roads.

Finland’s army, 180,000 strong, is arguably the most powerful in the northern Baltic region and about 80 percent of the population says it is willing to take up arms if necessary.

Essentially since World War II ended, Finns have been preparing for the next invasion. While other countries stopped requiring men to take military training after the Cold War, Helsinki kept up the practice, and refrained from the defense budgets cuts of its neighbors in the 1990s and 2000s. About a third of adults, some 900,000 people, are trained members of its military reserves, the Civilian Defense of Finland. As part of their training, some men go into the woods and participate in war game exercises, including learning how to shoot down phantom Russian planes.

The country has at least six months of emergency reserves of all major fuels and strategic stockpiles of grains. Pharmaceutical companies are required to keep months worth of medicines on reserve. The country’s buildings are equipped with bomb shelters. Those without access to shelters can make use of car garages and ice skating rinks.

Petri Toivonen, the secretary general for Finland’s Secretariat for the Security Committee, recently said in an email that Finland has a “long tradition of preparedness.” The country regularly tests alarms and has “been continuously constructing shelters,” he said, with capacity for about four million people in about 50,000 shelters.

Finns are less proud of their Cold War policy, later known as Finlandization, a shorthand for staying out of NATO and conceding political autonomy to the Soviets for survival. Part of the impressive military prowess and preparedness of a country deeply embedded in the European Union and the West is rooted in a resistance to returning to such a terrible compromise. Mr. Niinisto and other Finns have made it clear they have no interest in returning to such an arrangement.

“Having strong military forces,” Mr. Niinisto said in February, was critical “if something happens.”

Rick Gladstone
May 12, 2022, 11:50 a.m. ET

According to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday, Russian forces have used at least six types of cluster munitions in Ukraine since the invasion began, in attacks that have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and damaged civilian homes, hospitals and schools. Evidence indicates that Ukrainian forces have also used cluster munitions at least once, the report said. Neither Russia or Ukraine joined an international treaty that went into force in 2010 banning cluster munitions, which spread small bomblets that kill and maim indiscriminately.

Ivan Nechepurenko
May 12, 2022, 11:15 a.m. ET

Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia

Russia sees Finland’s membership in NATO as a national threat.

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Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said Russia’s response to NATO’s expansion would be determined by “the extent to which military infrastructure moves closer to our borders.”Credit...Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Russia on Thursday warned that Finland’s potential membership in NATO was a threat and said that it was prepared to “balance the situation,” characterizing any steps it takes in response as a necessary reaction forced on it by the alliance’s continued expansion.

President Vladimir V. Putin has cited NATO’s spread eastward to countries on its borders as the primary national threat to Russia and has used Ukraine’s desire to join the alliance to justify his invasion of that country. Mr. Putin has accused the United States and its allies of fighting a “proxy war” by arming Kyiv’s forces.

Russian officials continued to harp on that theme after Finnish leaders expressed support for quickly applying for NATO membership, suggesting that Mr. Putin is likely to spin the move as evidence that the alliance is growing increasingly hostile.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, appeared to take a measured tone, telling reporters that Russia wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with the alliance. But, when asked about whether Finland’s joining NATO would pose a direct threat to Russia, he said, “Definitely. NATO expansion does not make our continent more stable and safe.”

He warned that Moscow’s response would be determined by how “NATO’s expansion plays out, the extent to which military infrastructure moves closer to our borders.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry later warned that if the Finns join NATO, it would force Moscow to “make retaliatory steps of military-technical and other character.”

Mr. Putin has insisted that he needed to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO — which has grown in recent years to include a host of ex-Soviet states, though the Biden administration says it has no immediate plans to help bring Ukraine into the alliance. If Ukraine were a NATO member, the alliance would be obligated to defend it against Russia and other adversaries.

So far, Mr. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has been a rallying point for NATO as it unites around a common cause. The decision by Finland, which shares a 810-mile-long border and a long and complicated history with Russia, has prompted criticism from Mr. Putin’s political opponents.

“Putin builds his militarism on the confrontation with NATO, that we cannot allow NATO toward our borders,” Ivan Zhdanov, a close associate of Aleksei A. Navalny, an imprisoned Russian opposition leader, said in a video on Thursday. “In the end, because of Putin’s policies, NATO appeared along the entirety of Russia’s western border.”

Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s former liberal-minded president and now a top Kremlin hard-liner, returned to a familiar theme on Thursday. Underlining the Kremlin’s message that Western countries are waging a proxy war against Moscow, he said a potential direct conflict between Russia and NATO “risks turning into a full-scale nuclear war.”

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Cora Engelbrecht
May 12, 2022, 10:57 a.m. ET

Russia may redeploy forces from Kharkiv to shore up operations elsewhere in the east, officials say.

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A disabled Russian multiple launch rocket system in Ruska Lozova, a small town just north of Kharkiv, last week. Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Ukrainian and Western officials say that Russia is reportedly withdrawing forces from around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, where it has been losing territory, and will likely redirect troops to the southeast, where Moscow’s troops are having greater success.

Britain’s Defense Ministry on Thursday called the Russian pullback from the northeastern city of Kharkiv “a tacit recognition of Russia’s inability to capture key Ukrainian cities where they expected limited resistance from the population.” Ukraine’s success there represents one of the bigger setbacks Moscow has confronted since its retreat from Kyiv, the capital.

After taking time to reconstitute its depleted forces, Russia will likely redeploy them to southeastern Ukraine, the ministry said, toward the banks of the Seversky Donets River, to protect its “main force concentration” and “supply routes for operations” around the Russian-controlled city of Izium.

Izium, almost two hours southeast of Kharkiv, was captured by Russian forces in April and has become an important base of operations as Moscow battles to seize more territory in the eastern region known as Donbas, where the fighting is fiercest.

A pro-Russian media outlet, Readkova, reported that a Ukrainian counterattack was attempting to cut off Russian supply lines to Izium earlier this week. The report could not be independently verified. But Ukrainian forces have destroyed several pontoon bridges over the Seversky Donets that the Russian forces were using to transport supplies and military equipment, according to photos posted to Telegram by local Ukrainian officials.

Despite the defeats surrounding Kharkiv, Russian forces have reportedly made gains in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which together comprise the Donbas, and where Moscow now controls about 80 percent of the territory. In Luhansk, where Russian shelling rarely relents, “the situation has deteriorated significantly,” in recent days, according to the regional governor, Serhiy Haidai.

Russia

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By The New York Times

“The Russians are destroying everything in their path,” Mr. Haidai said on Thursday in a post on Telegram. “The vast majority of critical infrastructure will have to be rebuilt,” he said, adding that there is no electricity, water, gas or cellphone connection in the region, from which most residents have fled.

Fighting was fiercest in Sievierodonetsk, he said, where nine high-rise buildings were destroyed overnight. No casualties were immediately reported. Most of the approximately 15,000 residents who remain in the city are hiding in underground shelters, he added, as Russian artillery has targeted the city in a brutal assault.

A strip of highway that runs southwest from the city remains under intense fire, Mr. Haidai said, halting efforts to transport aid into the region or evacuate civilians looking to flee.

Monika Pronczuk
May 12, 2022, 10:34 a.m. ET

Europe takes steps to help Ukraine’s grain and oilseed exporters get around the Russian blockade.

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Ukrainian soldiers inspected a grain warehouse in Novovorontsovka that was damaged by Russian shelling last week.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

The European Union announced a set of measures on Thursday to facilitate Ukraine’s exports of blocked food products, mainly grain and oilseeds, in a bid to alleviate the war’s strain on the Ukrainian economy and avert a looming global food shortage.

Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was a major global food exporter: it produced 12 percent of the world’s wheat, 15 percent of its corn, and 50 percent of its sunflower oil. The war has disrupted global supply chains and sent prices for agricultural goods soaring, exposing several countries, especially in Africa, to food shortages.

The Russian Navy has blocked Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, where 90 percent of the country’s grain was exported, leaving 40 million tons of grain stranded in the country. Ukraine is “sitting on 8 billion euros worth of wheat right now” that cannot be shipped abroad, Werner Hoyer, the president of the European Investment Bank, told reporters earlier this week.

Adina Valean, the bloc’s transport commissioner, acknowledged the complexity of the challenge. “The problem we are trying to solve is in no way regional or European, but global,” she said on Thursday. “The task before us is gigantesque.”

The long term goal of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, is to establish new transport routes from Ukraine into Europe, circumventing the Russian blockade. Speaking in Poland on Tuesday, the bloc’s agriculture commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, told reporters that the main solution was to establish “corridors to Baltic Sea ports,” specifically mentioning Poland’s seaside cities of Gdansk and Gdynia.

But creating new routes could take for months, if not years, and according to the commission 20 million tonnes of grain have to be urgently transported out of Ukraine in the next three months before the next harvest.

Ms. Valean told reporters on Thursday as she presented the measures that the European Commission cannot substitute for E.U. operators or for Ukraine’s grain sellers. “But what we can do is to help put the two in touch and design new links between Ukraine’s borders and E.U. ports,” she said.

To ramp up exports through existing routes, the commission said on Thursday it would work with producers on increasing availability of equipment, such as train wagons, barges and lorries, as well as mobile grain loaders. The bloc’s executive branch also called on national governments to give priority to Ukrainian freight trains and simplify custom procedures for Ukrainian products. It also promised to expand storage capacity for Ukrainian products inside the bloc.

In the absence of the Black Sea route, Ukrainian grain and oilseeds are now being exported through existing road and rail connections into Poland and Romania. But these routes are not fit for transporting such large volumes of produce, which creates a series of complex logistical challenges for transport companies and national authorities, both inside the bloc and in Ukraine.

One major obstacle is the difference in the gauge of railway tracks between Ukraine and E.U. countries, forcing producers to change trains every time they cross the border. Currently, the average waiting time for wagons transporting goods from Ukraine into the bloc is 16 days, going up to 30 days at certain border crossings.

The U.N. secretary general said on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned” about the consequences of Russian aggression on global food supply, warning of the risk of hunger becoming “widespread in different parts of the world.”

An independent group, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, raised a similar alarm in a report last week, calling the war “another perfect storm” that could cause a significant global food crisis.

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The New York Times
May 12, 2022, 9:35 a.m. ET

Siemens, the German technology giant, leaves Russia after 170 years.

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Siemens has 3,000 employees in Russia and has done business there for well over a century.Credit...Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

The German electronics giant Siemens is exiting Russia after about 170 years of business there, the latest in a long list of companies to pull out of the country since its invasion of Ukraine in February.

The company, which has 3,000 employees in Russia, said on Thursday that it was winding down all its industrial operations and business. In an accompanying financial statement, Siemens said that in its second quarter it took a hit of 0.6 billion euros, or about $625 million, after Russian sanctions.

Siemens had announced in March that it was pausing its business in Russia while the company analyzed “the full implication of all sanctions” that had been placed on the country by Western governments. But at the time it said it would continue local service and maintenance for that business.

The conglomerate is among the Western companies with longtime business ties to Russia: Both Siemens and Deutsche Bank have been operating there since the late 19th century.

In a statement on Thursday, Roland Busch, the president and chief executive of Siemens, said that it was “not an easy decision” to leave Russia, given the company’s responsibility to its employees in the country and its “long-standing customer relationships, in a market where we have been active for almost 170 years.”

Nick Cumming-Bruce
May 12, 2022, 8:34 a.m. ET

More than 1,000 bodies have been found in Kyiv suburbs, the U.N. says.

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Valentyna Nechyporenko, 77, in April in Bucha, Ukraine, at the grave of her 47-year-old son Ruslan. Ruslan was killed by Russian soldiers in March while delivering humanitarian aid to his neighbors.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

GENEVA — The bodies of more than 1,000 civilians have been recovered in areas north of Kyiv, Ukraine, that were occupied by Russian forces, the United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said on Thursday, including several hundred who were summarily executed and others who were shot by snipers.

“The figures will continue to increase,” Ms. Bachelet told a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, the second in two weeks, focusing on abuses uncovered by investigators in Bucha, Irpin and other suburbs of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, that were seized by Russia’s forces in the early stages of its invasion before its focus shifted east.

Russia did not attend the meeting. It withdrew from the council shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted last month to suspend its membership and snubbed the opportunity to address a special session.

Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s ambassador in Geneva, instead released a statement dismissing the council’s debate as a “stunt” organized by the West to defame Russia.

A resolution backed by all but two of the council’s 47 members urged commission of inquiry to examine the events that unfolded in areas occupied by Russia with a view to holding people responsible for human-rights abuses to account. The commission was set up by the United Nations in March as allegations of war crimes began to emerge from Ukraine.

China told the council that the rising civilian casualties in the conflict were “heart-wrenching” and urged a negotiated end to the war, but it voted against the resolution on the ground that it lacked balance and would only inflame tensions. The only other country to oppose the resolution was Eritrea.

Belarus, a Kremlin ally, abstained from the vote after calling for a speedy end to the fighting and saying the war has turned into a lucrative business for American arms manufacturers. Other allies of Russia in the council, including Cuba and Venezuela, followed suit.

The United Nations, meanwhile, estimates that thousands of civilians have been killed in Russia’s assault on the southeastern port city of Mariupol, Ms. Bachelet told the session, expressing shock at the scale of destruction and the “unimaginable horrors” inflicted on its residents. “A once flourishing city lies in ruins,” she said.

Wounded and sick Ukrainian combatants in the Azovstal steel mill, the last bastion of resistance to Russia in Mariupol, “must be allowed” to evacuate and receive medical care, she said.

Emine Dzhaparova, Ukraine’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, addressed the council by video link from Kyiv. She accused Russia of trying to turn newly occupied areas around Kherson — the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Russian forces — into a “people’s republic” satellite of Moscow and of killing Ukrainians who refused to cooperate with newly appointed Russia-backed authorities.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin signaled that it could annex the strategically important region, a move that comes as its forces have stepped up repressive efforts amid a flurry of local protests.

In addition to the killings and destruction, Ms. Dzhaparova spoke of “women raped in front of their children, children raped in front of their mothers.”

The United Nations is investigating Russian troops’ sexual violence against women, girls, men and boys, Ms. Bachelet said. “Women and girls are the most frequently cited victims,” she said, “however, reports of men and boys being affected are starting to emerge.”

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Steven Erlanger
May 12, 2022, 8:32 a.m. ET

Reporting from Brussels

The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, welcomed Finnish leaders’ support for applying for NATO membership. “Should Finland decide to apply, they would be warmly welcomed into NATO, and the accession process would be smooth and swift,” he said.

Shashank Bengali
May 12, 2022, 7:02 a.m. ET

Reporting from London

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “commended the readiness” of Finland to apply for NATO membership, after a phone call with Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto.

Ivan Nechepurenko
May 12, 2022, 6:37 a.m. ET

Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Thursday that Finland’s possible accession to NATO was “definitely” a threat and that Russia would “analyze and take necessary measures to balance the situation and ensure our security.” Russia, which shares an 810-mile border with Finland, said its response would be determined by how much the alliance’s infrastructure advances toward its borders.

May 12, 2022, 6:24 a.m. ET

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.

As Russia’s grinding war pulverizes eastern Ukraine and eats away at the global economy, it is also creating unintended consequences for President Vladimir V. Putin, whose aggression is bringing more European nations closer to NATO’s fold and strengthening Western ties, the very thing the Russian leader had hoped to weaken.

Finland’s leaders announced on Thursday that their country should “apply for NATO membership without delay,” while Swedish leaders were expected to do the same within days. It is a remarkable shift by two nations on Russia’s doorstep that had long remained nonaligned militarily — but where public opinion has lurched strongly toward joining the alliance in the 11 weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Kremlin said that Finnish membership in NATO was “definitely” a threat, and that it was prepared to “balance the situation” to ensure Russia’s security.

NATO’s secretary general promised Finland a “smooth and swift” accession process if it applied, but that could take a year or longer, leaving it and Sweden vulnerable to Russian retaliation while not covered under the alliance’s collective defense pact. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain sought on Wednesday to fill that gap, committing Britain, one of Europe’s strongest militaries, to defending Finland and Sweden if attacked — even if they ended up not joining NATO.

But the hardening of Western resolve has not persuaded Russia to ease its assault, which has occupied large chunks of southern and eastern Ukraine. It could also help Mr. Putin — who has described NATO’s eastward expansion as one of the reasons he was compelled to send troops into Ukraine — reinforce his argument to Russians that it is the West, not Russia, that is driving the conflict.

In other developments:

  • Ukrainian and Western officials say Russia is reportedly withdrawing forces from around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where it has been losing territory. They say it may redirect troops to the southeast, where Russian troops are making greater progress.

  • The U.S. Congress is likely to approve $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, the latest package of support intended to help Ukrainian forces bring the fight to the invading Russians.

  • The United Nations human rights chief said that the bodies of more than 1,000 civilians had been recovered in Kyiv suburbs that were occupied by Russian forces, and that “the figures will continue to increase.”

  • New York Times journalists visited a volunteer unit of Ukrainian fighters on the front line in the east, where they are fighting to hold back Russian forces pushing down from their stronghold in the occupied city of Izium.

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Stanley Reed
May 12, 2022, 6:01 a.m. ET

Reporting from London

Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, said Thursday that it had agreed to sell its Russian retail station network and lubricants business to Lukoil, a large Russian oil company. Included in the sale are 411 retail stations and a plant for blending the lubricants. Shell said more than 350 employees would move to Lukoil when the sale was completed.

Cora Engelbrecht
May 12, 2022, 5:58 a.m. ET

Russian troops are withdrawing from the northern region of Kharkiv after taking heavy losses from Ukraine’s “highly motivated” counteroffensive, according to the British Defense Ministry’s latest assessment. The forces will most likely redeploy to the Seversky Donets River, close to the city of Izium, to protect Russian’s “main force concentration” and “supply routes for operations” in the east, the ministry said.

Steven Erlanger
May 12, 2022, 5:06 a.m. ET

Reporting from Brussels

Putin’s war moves nonaligned Finland closer to an alliance he disdains.

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A border patrol guard at the crossing between Finland and Russia in Vaalimaa, Finland. The countries share an 810-mile border with Russia, as well as a complicated history dating back to World War II.Credit...Giulio Paletta/UCG/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images

BRUSSELS — With Finland’s leaders declaring their support for joining NATO, and those in Sweden expected to do the same within days, the prospect of two militarily nonaligned Nordic countries entering into the alliance is another sign of how Russian threats and aggression have heightened security concerns in Europe and forced nations to choose sides.

It would also be another example of the counterproductive results of President Vladimir V. Putin’s war. Instead of dividing NATO and blocking its growth, the Russian leader has united an alliance that he has described as a threat to his nation.

Moscow has repeatedly warned Finland and Sweden against joining NATO, threatening “serious military and political consequences.” Asked on Wednesday if Finland would provoke Russia by joining NATO, Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, said that Mr. Putin would be to blame.

“My response would be that you caused this — look at the mirror,” Mr. Niinisto said.

If Finland and Sweden both apply, they are widely expected to be approved, although NATO officials are publicly discreet, saying only that the alliance has an open-door policy and any country that wishes to join can ask for an invitation.

But even a speedy application process could take a year, raising concerns that the two countries would be vulnerable to Russia while they are outside the alliance, whose members are covered by a mutual defense guarantee. On Wednesday, Britain announced new security pacts with Sweden and Finland, agreeing to provide support to the nations during any accession process to NATO, when they could be particularly vulnerable to Russian retaliation, or if they decided not to join.

Finland shares an 810-mile border with Russia, as well as a complicated, violent history. Finland and the Soviet Union were on opposing sides in World War II, with the Finns fending off a Soviet invasion in 1939-40 in what is known as “The Winter War.”

But in the final peace deal, Finland lost 10 percent of its territory to Moscow and agreed to remain formally neutral throughout the Cold War. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland moved to join the European Union in 1992, becoming a member in 1995, dropping its neutrality but remaining militarily nonaligned and keeping working relations with Moscow. But it kept up its military spending and sizable armed forces.

Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace program along with Sweden in 1994 and has become ever closer to the alliance without joining it.

Stephen Castle contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 
May 12, 2022

An earlier version of this post incorrectly described the position held by Sauli Niinisto of Finland. He is the president, not the prime minister.

How we handle corrections

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Steven Erlanger
May 12, 2022, 3:30 a.m. ET

Reporting from Brussels

Finland’s leaders urge applying for NATO membership ‘without delay.’

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Prime Minister Sanna Marin, left, and President Sauli Niinisto in February. On thursday they announced their support for Finland to join NATO, in Helsinki on Thursday.Credit...Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via Shutterstock

BRUSSELS — Finland’s prime minister and president announced their support on Thursday for the nation to apply to join NATO.

President Sauli Niinisto, who is mostly responsible for Finland’s foreign policy, has helped orchestrate Finland’s move away from a long history of military nonalignment, prompted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay,” they said. “We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days.”

NATO member countries in Europe

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Note: NATO also includes Canada and the United States. The New York Times

Note: NATO also includes Canada and the United States.

The New York Times

The announcement had been widely expected. Public opinion in Finland has shifted significantly in favor of joining NATO, from some 20 percent in favor six months ago to nearly 80 percent now, especially if Sweden, Finland’s strategic partner and also militarily nonaligned, also joins.

The debate in Sweden is less advanced than in Finland, but Sweden, too, is moving toward applying to join NATO in tandem with Finland, perhaps as early as next week.

In their statement, Mr. Niinisto and Sanna Marin, the prime minister, said that they agreed that “NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security.”

They added that “as a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defense alliance.”

The political parties in Parliament will now finalize their own opinions, with a parliamentary debate and vote expected on Monday.

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