Many Ukrainians are relying on the Telegram app during war. (Published 2022) (2024)

Pinned

Here’s the latest on the war in Ukraine.

“Of course, getting control of such an important center in the south as Mariupol is a success,” Mr. Putin was shown telling Mr. Shoigu, though the city is not yet fully under Russian control. “Congratulations.”

The fight for Mariupol carries enormous significance for both sides. It is 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. It is also home to much of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, filled with far-right fighters who give a sheen of credibility to Mr. Putin’s false claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis and that he is “denazifying” the country.

The battle for the city also illustrates both the brutality of the Russian invasion and its struggles — truths that have galvanized much of the world but that Moscow has worked hard to conceal from its own people. Mariupol has been under siege for more than a month, much of it lies in ruins, and satellite images show a growing mass grave on the city’s outskirts. Roughly three-quarters of the residents have fled and, according to Ukrainian officials, about 20,000 civilians there have been killed — yet it is still not fully conquered.

Russia is shifting the focus of the war to gaining territory and wiping out Ukrainian forces in Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine since 2014. Britain’s Defense Ministry said Thursday in an intelligence assessment that the Kremlin is eager to make swift gains that it can trumpet on May 9, at the annual celebrations of victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.

At the White House, President Biden said the fight for Donbas was “going to be more limited in terms of geography but not in terms of brutality,” compared to the early phase of the war. But, he added, Russia will “never succeed in dominating and occupying all of Ukraine.”

Mr. Biden announced another $800 million package of weapons for Ukraine, including dozens of heavy howitzers, 144,000 shells for them, and tactical drones, bringing total military aid this year to well above $3 billion. The weapons supplied by NATO nations are becoming increasingly heavy and sophisticated, reflecting an expected shift in the nature of combat as the war pivots to Donbas, but the president said some of the armaments will remain secret.

“We won’t always be able to advertise everything that we, that our partners are doing,” Mr. Biden said. Referring to the U.S.-made antitank missile that Ukrainians have used to devastating effect, he added, “To modernize Teddy Roosevelt’s advice, sometimes we will speak softly and carry a large Javelin.”

Mr. Biden also banned ships tied to Russia from U.S. ports, and announced $500 million in economic aid to the country, though President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine later told the World Bank that it needed up to $7 billion in support per month. The White House also detailed plans for accepting up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine, saying that U.S. citizens can begin applying to sponsor the immigrants on Monday.

The war in Ukraine took center stage in the French presidential campaign in a televised debate Wednesday night between President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger, Marine Le Pen, who has in the past praised Mr. Putin. She spoke against arming Ukraine and said Mr. Macron’s efforts to cut imports of Russian energy would hurt France economically. He replied, “you are, in fact, in Russia’s grip,” noting that Ms. Le Pen’s party had borrowed from a Kremlin-linked bank.

The Kremlin worked quickly to portray the battle for Mariupol as a success. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, told reporters that there was now “an opportunity to start establishing a peaceful life” in Mariupol and start “returning the population to their homes.”

Mr. Peskov described the Azovstal steel plant — an immense Soviet-era complex near the city center — as “a separate facility” with no impact on life elsewhere in the city. Ukrainian fighters have been hiding for weeks in the plant’s underground bunkers, along with about 1,000 civilians, amid rising concerns they lack food and water.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, said on Wednesday that his troops would soon help Russia capture the Azovstal plant in its entirety. In Thursday’s televised meeting, Mr. Shoigu told Mr. Putin that it would take three to four days to clear the plant.

But Mr. Putin responded by calling the storming of the plant “impractical,” and added, “I order it to be canceled.”

It was not clear what that would mean on the ground; shelling and rocket attacks on the steel mill complex continued on Thursday, Staff Sgt. Leonid Kuznetsov of the Ukrainian National Guard, one of the soldiers there, said via text message. He said that shortly before he heard about Mr. Putin’s public order, Russian troops had attempted to storm the plant, coming within about 20 meters of his hide-out. The Ukrainians, he said, were running out of ammunition.

In directing Mr. Shoigu on a national broadcast, Mr. Putin, who made the decision to go to war, presented himself as a rational and humane leader. “This is the case when we must think — that is, we must always think, but even more so in this case — about preserving the life and health of our soldiers and officers,” he said. “There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities.”

Implicit in his statement was a potential credibility challenge for Mr. Putin, stemming from his unwillingness to admit setbacks and blunders in the war to his own people. The government and military have not acknowledged the deaths of Russian sailors on the missile cruiser Moskva, pride of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which was sunk last week, but information about missing troops is increasingly circulating online.

Coming after Russia’s decision last month to abandon its stalled campaign in the north of Ukraine, the sinking of the Moskva — Ukraine claims to have hit it with two missiles — and the morass in Mariupol, once a thriving industrial and shipping hub, underscore the systemic weaknesses bedeviling the Russian military.

But costly as Mariupol has been for Russia, it is far costlier for Ukraine. Civilian casualties are high, though for now there are only rough estimates, and nearly all the vital infrastructure — including some of Ukraine’s biggest export-oriented enterprises — have been destroyed. Hospitals, theaters, schools and homes have been reduced to rubble.

President Zelensky said on Thursday that he would trade Russian soldiers who had been taken prisoner for the civilians sheltered at Azovstal, but he said that Russia had not yet responded to the offer.

Agreements to evacuate civilians en masse or bring in vital aid have mostly been thwarted, and have sometimes turned deadly, largely because Russian units have halted or fired on aid convoys. But day by day, people have managed to escape, on their own or in small groups.

On Thursday, a yellow bus carrying dozens of people from Mariupol arrived in the central Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, where passengers described weeks hiding in basem*nts, cold and hungry, amid endless shelling. They escaped in a harrowing, all-night drive through Russian-held territory, past countless checkpoints manned by jumpy Russian soldiers.

“In the city everything is destroyed, it’s terrifying,” said Matvei Popko, 10, who had fled with his mother, father and grandmother. “At any moment your home could get hit and collapse. For a little more than a month we lived in the basem*nt.”

Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of civilians, including a large number from the Mariupol area, to Russian territory, for use as propaganda fodder and a bargaining chip. Russia denies the charge, which is a potential war crime.

The weeks of heavy fighting in Mariupol tied up a significant chunk of Russia’s combat power; at one point the battle was estimated by military analysts to include roughly 10 percent of all the Russian forces in Ukraine.

On Thursday, a Russian video news report from the scene showed a convoy of armored vehicles moving out of Mariupol. Seymon Pegov, a pro-Kremlin reporter embedded with the Russian forces in the city, interviewed Timur Kurilkin, a commander of a separatist battalion from Donetsk, a city in separatist-held eastern Ukraine.

“We are going home, to Donetsk,” said Mr. Kurilkin, walking past the vehicles. “Our next battle is tomorrow,” he said, without specifying where.

In Mariupol, Russia is already seeking to establish authority over civilian life. Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, promised high school seniors that they would receive diplomas certified by the separatist entity.

On Wednesday, Andrei Turchak, a top official in Mr. Putin’s party, visited a school in Mariupol, which has already switched to Russian-language curriculum. In a video of his visit, posted to social media, he said, “Many textbooks have already been delivered and these deliveries will continue.”

Anton Troianovski reported from Hamburg, Germany, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York. Reporting was contributed by Michael Schwirtz from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, David E. Sanger and Zach Montague from Washington, Neil MacFarquhar from Istanbul, Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London, Alan Yuhas from New York, and Cora Engelbrecht from Krakow, Poland.

Ukraine needs up to $7 billion in support per month, Zelensky says.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Mr. Zelensky said, Russian troops have destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of houses and more than 1,100 educational institutions, as well as hospitals and businesses. An initial analysis found that Ukraine has suffered $550 billion in losses, he said.

“Together we are able to implement solutions that will not only stop the aggressive intentions of the Russian Federation, not only support Ukraine in this war, but also inevitably show all the potential aggressors of the world that creating problems for other states, for other nations, means creating problems for themselves,” Mr. Zelensky said, speaking virtually from Ukraine. “Because if we do not do this, millions and millions of people in the world will repeatedly suffer from the aggressive actions of individual states.”

In the United States, Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, met with the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to call for additional support for his country.

Mr. Shmyhal said on Twitter after meeting with Ms. Pelosi that he was “convinced” that Ukraine would receive increased economic, humanitarian and military support. Mr. Shmyhal also joined the World Bank meeting that Mr. Zelensky addressed virtually.

In his address, Mr. Zelensky said that five steps were needed to stop Russia from realizing “any of their aggressive goals”: immediate support for Ukraine, excluding Russia from all international financial institutions, creating a special tax on the war, blocking the assets of the “Russian elite,” and national preparations around the globe “for the possible complete severance of any relations with Russia.”

“No one should depend on the political mood of the leadership of this state,” Mr. Zelensky said of Russia. “If the world is ready to isolate Russia completely, the Russian leadership will have a motive to avoid any war.”

While Russia has been increasingly excluded from the world economy through sanctions and other methods, U.S. officials and foreign leaders have been weighing whether their success in isolating Russia might prompt President Vladimir V. Putin to take even more provocative actions. Such concerns grew on Wednesday when Russia test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile, which Mr. Putin said was a warning to those in the West who “try to threaten our country.”

Still, Mr. Zelensky told the World Bank, Russia must “feel punishment for this war.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Zelensky tells the Venice Biennale that art has a role in Ukraine’s struggle for freedom.

“There are no tyrannies that would not try to limit art because they can see the power of art,” he said, in a clear reference to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “Art can tell the world what cannot otherwise be shared. It is art that conveys feelings.”

No words, television news story or economic report could adequately capture the suffering in Ukraine, he said in the brief address, citing as examples the pain of a girl writing a letter to a mother killed by shelling in the besieged city of Mariupol, the revulsion felt by Ukrainian soldiers discovering civilian corpses in a suburb of the capital after Russian forces left, and the loss faced by people who have fled their homes.

The speech was the latest in a series of video addresses by Mr. Zelensky since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, all aiming to rally international support for Ukraine’s cause.

He has been adept at tailoring his message to his audience. He told U.S. lawmakers that he had a dream, invoking Martin Luther King Jr. to describe Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion. He told the British Parliament that his country would fight until the end, in forests and fields, a vow resonant of Winston Churchill’s exhortations against Nazism. To members of the German Parliament he spoke of a new wall dividing Europe, echoing the Berlin Wall of the Cold War.

“Support this fight with your art, but also support it with your words and your influence,” he told the audience on Thursday.

The artist Pavlo Makov’s sculpture, titled “Fountain of Exhaustion,” is on display at the Ukrainian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which opens to the public on Saturday and runs through Nov. 27.

Isabella Kwai contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

The next phase of the war will be pivotal, U.S. officials say.

Reflecting the renewed sense of urgency, President Biden announced on Thursday that the United States would send Ukraine an additional $800 million in military aid, the second such package in just over a week.

Mr. Biden said the latest aid package sent “an unmistakable message” to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: “He will never succeed in dominating and occupying all of Ukraine.”

In remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden said that while the United States would announce many details of the arms it is shipping to Ukraine, some of the weaponry would be kept secret. The president borrowed, and modified, a famous line by Theodore Roosevelt, saying that the United States would “speak softly and carry a large Javelin,” a reference to the antitank weapon that the Ukrainians have used effectively against Russian armor.

Determined to move swiftly, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with allies around the world this week and characterized the next month as pivotal.

If Russia can push through in the east, Mr. Putin will be better positioned at home to sell his so-called “special military operation” as a limited success and claim he has secured protection for Ukraine’s pro-Russia minority, American officials said. He might then seek a cease-fire but would be emboldened to use the Donbas as leverage in any negotiations, they said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

But if the Ukrainian military can stop Russia’s advance in the Donbas, officials say Mr. Putin will be faced with a stark choice: commit more combat power to a fight that could drag on for years or negotiate in earnest at peace talks.

The first option might mean a full national mobilization, officials say, and is politically risky for the Russian leader.

The next phase of the war “will be critically important,” said Peter Maurer, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who visited Ukraine in March. “The escalation of hostilities in Donbas, and all areas affected by the armed conflict, is of utmost concern.”

At the Pentagon this week, both Mr. Austin and General Milley have had nonstop phone calls and meetings with allies centered on one topic: weapons. Mr. Austin spoke with his Romanian counterpart on Monday and with the Spanish defense minister on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he met with the Polish defense minister, and on Thursday, he huddled with his Czech counterpart.

With all four, the discussions were the same, officials said: how to ship more powerful weapons to Ukraine in the coming weeks.

After weeks of focusing on antitank and antiaircraft weaponry like Javelins and Stingers, the new shipments over the last week have included long-range artillery, tactical vehicles and mobile radar systems to help the Ukrainians detect and destroy Russian artillery positions.

Other countries are sending tanks, more artillery and anti-ship missiles.

General Milley’s phone log this week looks like a roll call of countries with heavy artillery and weaponry: Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey.

A senior Defense Department official described the next month as a crucial turning point for both Russia and Ukraine. This phase of the battle ostensibly favors Russia to some degree, as Russian troops move over more open terrain as opposed to getting bogged down in cities.

But the official said the Pentagon believed that with the right weapons and a continuation of high morale and motivation, the Ukrainian forces might not only stop the Russian advance, but also push it back.

“The Russians are in a weakened state from which they may well be able to recover given enough time and new conscripts,” said Evelyn N. Farkas, the top Pentagon policy official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. “Therefore, it is paramount to strike at them now with everything we can give the Ukrainians.”

Current and former U.S. military commanders with experience in Ukraine and Europe agreed.

“It is make or break for Ukraine in that they must stop the Russian advance to seize all of the Donbas,” Maj. Gen. Michael S. Repass, a retired former commander of U.S. Special Operations forces in Europe who has been involved with Ukrainian defense matters since 2016, wrote in an email.

If Mr. Putin succeeds in seizing the east and establishes a land corridor to Crimea, General Repass said that Moscow would have a stronger position in any negotiated settlement.

“In another month, I anticipate exhaustion on both sides without a military decision/outcome either way,” General Repass wrote. “A stalemate means Putin wins, and if Putin ‘wins’ we are in for a rough ride.”

To try to prevent such an outcome, current and former American commanders say Ukraine’s army will seek to disrupt Russia’s military buildup around the eastern city of Izium and other important staging areas with long-range artillery and armed drone attacks.

“It is also about disrupting the Russians while they are still in reconstitution and preparation mode, before they can really get back up on their feet,”said Lt. Gen. Frederick B. Hodges, a former top U.S. Army commander in Europe who is now with the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Even as Moscow narrows its goals and consolidates its army in southern and eastern Ukraine, the outcome of the war remains unclear at best, military analysts said. Indeed, the underlying weaknesses in the Russian force, which were exposed in the early weeks of the conflict, have not necessarily gone away, they said.

For instance, the thousands of Russian reinforcements pouring into Ukraine — including mercenaries, conscripts and troops pulled from far eastern Russia and Georgia — have not trained together, analysts said.

The battered units that retreated from northern Ukraine will also need time to regroup. Some will be replenished and sent back to the fight. But others are so damaged that their remaining pieces will be patched together into one new unit, analysts said.

“They don’t have many options for generating new forces if the current units face too much attrition,” said Rob Lee, a Russian military specialist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and a former U.S. Marine officer.

“Once this offensive begins in earnest, Russia will face more losses,” Mr. Lee said. “At a certain point, attrition will be too great and will limit the Russian military’s ability to effectively conduct offensive operations.”

As Russian forces push into the Donbas, they will extend their supply lines and could confront the same logistics shortfalls that bedeviled them before, officials said.

“We’ll see in the next few weeks how much they’ve learned and how much they’ve fixed,” General Hodges said.

Even if Russian forces prevail in the next month or so, the specter of that army then advancing on western Ukraine or beyond Ukraine’s borders — a real fear at the start of the war — now seems far-fetched, several officials said.

“Win, lose or draw, the Russian military is likely to be a spent force after this next phase,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Va.“Russia would be hard-pressed to sustain any campaign beyond the Donbas.”

But the senior Defense Department official warned that for Mr. Putin, all of Ukraine — not just the Donbas — has always been the ultimate prize.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

A possible upset in France’s presidential race could strain Biden’s efforts to unite Europe against Russia.

Ms. Le Pen is a populist agitator who, in the style of former President Donald J. Trump, scorns European Union “globalists,” criticizes NATO and views President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as an ally.

Her victory could complicate Mr. Biden’s effort to isolate Russia and aid Ukraine. But the very real prospect of a nationalist leading France is also a reminder that the recent period of U.S.-European solidarity on political and security issues like Russia and democracy may be fragile. Poland and Hungary, both NATO members, have taken authoritarian turns. And Germany’s surprisingly strong response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is already drawing domestic criticism.

“To have a right-wing government come to power in France would be a political earthquake,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown who was the Europe director of the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “It would send a troubling signal about the overall political health of the Western world.”

He added: “This is a moment of quite remarkable European unity and resolve. But Le Pen’s election would certainly raise profound questions about the European project.”

Mr. Macron was unable to command more than a small plurality of support against several opponents in the first round of voting on April 10. Ms. Le Pen, who finished second, is his opponent in the runoff election on Sunday. Polls show Mr. Macron with a clear lead, but analysts say a Le Pen victory is completely plausible.

An immigration hard-liner and longtime leader of France’s populist right, Ms. Le Pen has campaigned mainly on domestic issues, including the rising cost of living. But her foreign policy views have unsettled U.S. officials. Last week, she renewed vows to scale back France’s leadership role in NATO and to pursue “a strategic rapprochement” with Russia after the war with Ukraine has concluded. Ms. Le Pen also expressed concern that sending arms to Ukraine risked drawing other nations into the war.

In a debate on Wednesday, Mr. Macron reminded voters that Ms. Le Pen’s party had taken a loan from a Russian bank. “You depend on Mr. Putin,” he told her.

Ms. Le Pen insisted she was “an absolutely and totally free woman” and said she sought foreign cash after French banks refused to lend to her. She also sought to deflect charges that she was sympathetic to Russia’s war aims, declaring her “absolute solidarity” with the Ukrainian people.

Ms. Le Pen has also pledged to curtail the influence of the European Union, which the Biden administration sees as a vital counterweight to Russia and China.

One senior U.S. official noted that France has a recent history of right-wing candidates striking fear into the political establishment before falling short. That was the case five years ago, when Mr. Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen in a runoff.

But recent elections in the West have been prone to upsets, and analysts warned against complacency in Washington, especially given the stakes for the United States.

One sign of how much the Biden administration values its partnership with Mr. Macron was the minor sense of crisis after France withdrew its ambassador to Washington in September after the disclosure of a new initiative between the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear submarines.

Mr. Macron’s government blamed the Biden administration for the loss of a lucrative submarine contract it had with Australia and was especially angry to learn about the arrangement through a leak to the news media. Biden officials expressed profuse support for France in a flurry of meetings and phone calls, and Mr. Biden called the episode clumsy. France was an “extremely, extremely valued” U.S. partner, he said.

If Ms. Le Pen were to win, Mr. Biden’s national security team would be forced to reassess that relationship.

The most pressing question would be the status of economic sanctions against Russia, in which the European Union plays a crucial role. During the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Le Pen said she supported sanctions against Russia’s financial system and oligarchs but opposed banning imports of Russian oil and gas, saying that the French people should not have to suffer.

“I don’t imagine Marine Le Pen going to see Vladimir Putin two weeks after getting elected and talking about a great reset in relations,” said Martin Quencez, the deputy director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund.

“Rather, it would be more like Le Pen, as president, making it more difficult for the E.U. and the U.S. to agree on a new posture — a new package of sanctions, and to agree within NATO on what we need to do on the eastern flank,” he added.

For the Biden team, the fallout from a Le Pen victory would extend well beyond policies toward Russia and deal a blow to his project of bolstering democracy against authoritarianism worldwide, said Daniel Baer, the acting director of the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Biden sees this moment as a contest between democracy and autocracy,” he said. “Over the longer term, certainly having one of the world’s most revered, advanced democracies elect an illiberal person would be a setback for the cause of democracy writ large.”

Mr. Kupchan noted that the vigorous European response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had papered over simmering concerns in Washington about autocracy in countries like Poland and Hungary, whose right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, was comfortably re-elected last month.

“Everything we were worried about before Feb. 24,” the date of the Russian invasion, “is still lurking beneath the surface,” Mr. Kupchan said. “And if Le Pen did win, it would mean that illiberalism — the politics of racism, of protectionism, would be on the surface.”

He added: “In some ways, all the domestic trials and tribulations are in suspended animation. But they’re still with us. And the French election shines a bright light on that.”

People who escaped from Mariupol describe the flight from its ruins: ‘The city is gone.’

Wearing a green velour jumpsuit and black combat boots, Ms. Popko spoke on Thursday in the parking lot of a large home goods store here in the central Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, having just stepped off a yellow bus that had transported her and dozens of evacuees from Mariupol the night before. It was a harrowing all-night drive through Russian-controlled territory with countless checkpoints manned by jumpy Russian soldiers who could have quickly put an end to their flight.

Ms. Popko traveled with her husband, mother and 10-year-old son, Matvei, along with a grumpy 16-year-old cat named Marta. She and other evacuees described how their once vibrant seaside city had been turned into an apocalyptic hellscape after the Russian invasion, forcing them to spend weeks in basem*nts and to risk their lives amid the constant barrage of rockets and artillery. Days were broken up only by quick dashes to the surface to cook paltry meals on open fires in the courtyard, amid never ending shelling.

“The city is gone, the city is destroyed,” said one of the evacuees, who gave her name as Sasha. Like others, she was reluctant to provide her full name.

“There are only a few homes that haven’t burned down or been bombed,” she said. “There are a few schools.”

She said she, her mother, young son and their dog, Chara, would have left earlier but their neighborhood had been cut off after some of the bridges had been bombed and others were mined. For a while they thought about leaving on foot, she said.

“Everything is in ruins, glass, wires and bodies,” said her mother, Olga. “They bury them by the schools and apartment buildings because there’s nowhere else. You go along and there’s a body, there’s a body, there’s a body. They lie there for three weeks.”

“Everything you’re going to write,” she said to a reporter, “will constitute a fifth of the reality.”

Mariupol, a port in Ukraine’s south on the Sea of Azov, is a largely Russian-speaking city. Some of the evacuees said they had once been ambivalent about some of the more enthusiastic displays of Ukrainian national pride that have become common throughout the country since 2014, when Russia snatched away the Crimean Peninsula and instigated a separatist war in the east.

But the war has changed their minds.

“I was getting tired of all the Ukrainian flags and the vyshyvanka,” said a 32-year-old evacuee named Aleksandr, referring to the traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts. “But after all of this with Russia, seeing my own native flag flying, it’s like I’ve returned home.”

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Satellite images show what appears to be a growing mass grave near Mariupol.

The first rows of pits appeared in images captured between March 23 and March 26. Satellite images captured two weeks later, on April 6, show a dramatic expansion of the site, with more than 200 freshly dug holes encompassing nearly an acre of land. Each pit shows dimensions of about 3 by 7 feet.

“These are huge graves, and they were dug for our dead civilians from Mariupol,” said Pyotr Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor who released the coordinates for the site in a Telegram post on Thursday. “You can see from the images how big this area is — these graves are not meant for a small village like Manhush.”

Mr. Andryushchenko said in an interview that Mariupol residents told him about the grave site after they were recruited by Russian forces to collect black plastic body bags from the streets of the city and drive them in trucks to the site in Manhush. Some had looked inside the bags to confirm that they held bodies, and they estimated that thousands of bags had already been transported to the site, he said.

“We believe that these bags hold civilians, since our military has been working to clear the streets of fallen soldiers,” Mr. Andryushchenko said. The City Council of Mariupol said on Telegram on Thursday that Russian forces had buried as many as 3,000 to 9,000 people in Manhush.

The Times could not independently confirm the details of Mr. Andryushchenko’s or the council’s account, nor the identities of the witnesses, which he would not disclose for security reasons.

The U.S. will outfit five artillery battalions for Ukraine and provide new drones that explode on impact.

Representatives from 14 nations, including Ukraine, have posted liaison officers to a task force in Stuttgart that takes requests from the government in Kyiv and arranges for weapons and supplies from different countries to be delivered, said one of the officials, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the effort to arm Ukraine against Russia.

The existence of the task force, called European Command Control Center Ukraine, has not previously been disclosed.

The new drone that will soon head to the region, called Phoenix Ghost, is a previously-unknown design that “was developed rapidly by the Air Force” after discussions with Ukrainian troops about what kinds of weapons they need, the second official said.

It is roughly similar to the Switchblade drone already being sent to Ukraine, in that it is capable of surveillance but ultimately used to crash into a target and explode on impact, the officials said. Such “tactical drones” are useful in destroying high-value targets because they fly directly into them.

“It provides the same sort of tactical capability that Switchblade does,” the second official said. “It is clearly designed to deliver a punch.”

For the expected battle between large Ukrainian and Russian forces over the Donbas region, the United States is providing a significant new flush of artillery weapons: dozens of 155-millimeter howitzers.

Five new Ukrainian artillery battalions will be outfitted, each with 18 guns and nearly 37,000 rounds. Weapons of this type can generally fire three to five times per minute, according to military documents, striking targets about 25 miles away with 90-pound shells.

The howitzers, which have to be towed into position and then can be moved again after firing, are able to maintain a steady stream of fire that can be used to force Russian forces to duck into trenches while Ukrainian infantry troops advance.

“We think it could have significant additional firepower for the Ukrainians,” one of the senior defense officials said. “If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t have moved forward with that many howitzers and that many more rounds.”

The decision was made, the official said, in consultation with the Ukrainian military.

“We think it will be a significant contributor, and a meaningful contributor to their ability to continue to defend themselves in the Donbas,” the official added.

Some of the first batch of 18 howitzers have already arrived in Ukraine, having been drawn from U.S. Army and Marine Corps inventories in the United States, the Pentagon said.

Additional howitzers will arrive over the weekend, when more than 50 Ukrainian artillery soldiers are expected to complete their training on the new American guns at an undisclosed location outside their country, and then return to the fight against the Russians.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Biden announces $800 million in new military aid and questions Russia’s hold of Mariupol.

Modifying Theodore Roosevelt’s famous line, he said the United States would “speak softly and carry a large Javelin,” a reference to the antitank weapon that has been remarkably effective against Russian armor.

Mr. Biden made the announcement, appropriately, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and did his best to put his spin on Russia’s recent advances in the south and east, including its siege of Mariupol, the Ukrainian port that for nearly two months has suffered an unrelenting assault from Russian forces.

While reports from the ground suggest that the city is under Russian control except for a steel plant where some Ukrainian forces are still holding out, Mr. Biden said “there is no evidence yet” the city has completely fallen.

In fact, there is little hope that Ukrainian forces can hold on to any part of Mariupol, and defenders of the steel plant have acknowledged that they are essentially out of supplies to withstand a blockade. President Volodymyr Zelensky this week sought an exchange to ensure the safe passage for the civilians and troops trapped there.

Mr. Biden also announced an accelerated program to allow 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States and $500 million in direct economic aid to the Ukrainian government, making official a pledge made several weeks ago.

While the White House has announced a series of packages to Ukraine, it is now running out of funds for more — unless Congress acts.

In his capacity as president, Mr. Biden can authorize the transfer of military equipment from U.S. stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency, and Congress earlier this year approved $3 billion in new funding to explicitly encourage Mr. Biden to do so as part of a $13.6 billion proposal approved in March. The package also included funds to shore up sanction enforcement and humanitarian aid, in addition to the defense funds.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said earlier this month that he planned to pursue a bipartisan international aid package, which would include both money for the global vaccination effort and additional funds for Ukraine.

The administration will have to outline a request in order to jump-start talks on Capitol Hill, and a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they expected to receive the request next week, when Congress returns from a two-week recess.

“The speaker hopes to bring the request to the floor as soon as possible with strong bipartisan support,” the spokesman, Drew Hammill, said.

Republican aides, who had pushed to increase the military funds in the initial package, said a stand-alone aid package for Ukraine would not meet resistance in their conference. But it is unclear how a broader package like the one outlined by Mr. Schumer would pass the Senate, given that Republicans have resisted the additional pandemic aid Democrats have sought.

Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Many Ukrainians are relying on the Telegram app during war.

Ms. Koreiko, 40, and her mother, 67, joined several public Telegram groups that were helping connect refugees with drivers, and posted their request. Then, Ms. Koreiko said, “I had to sit there constantly, monitoring different announcements.”

Now safe in Vienna, Ms. Koreiko’s mother has joined local Telegram groups for Ukrainians and refugees. “Many people are posting, ‘Here’s where you can get humanitarian help, here are stores where you can get discounts on food products,’” Ms. Koreiko said.

Downloads of Telegram in Ukraine from the beginning of the war to early April were up by about 70 percent compared to the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower, an analytics firm.

Though the app has been criticized for its lax policy toward misinformation and hate speech, it has acquired a new sheen for many as a critical wartime resource. Users in Ukraine have harnessed its broadcasting feature to share information about Russian assaults, organize humanitarian efforts and receive news from millions of refugees abroad. (Use of Telegram has also surged in Russia, but for different reasons: There, it has become the largest remaining outlet for unrestricted information.)

On Ukraine NOW, the Ukrainian government’s channel, subscribers receive updates on the war, such as which areas are occupied by Russian forces or where attacks are happening, in 13 languages. On his personal channel, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, posts encouraging words and video messages for 1.4 million followers.

The City Council of the capital, Kyiv, continues to share updates about daily life — farmers’ markets and public transportation schedules — but now includes air-raid alerts, as well.

Volunteers in Ukraine and abroad have turned Telegram into an informal organizing network. They post lists of the supplies they need, share information about wait times at the border and help those fleeing the country find shelter.

Ms. Koreiko, as her family evacuated Ukraine, reached a coordinator named Polina, who did not want to share her last name out of concern for the safety of her parents, who are in Russia. Polina is a volunteer in Austria, unattached to any organization. By using Telegram to connect with those in need and other volunteers, Polina said she has been able to help hundreds of people fleeing Ukraine.

One week, she and her colleagues managed to transport around 200 people from Ukraine’s border to other countries, Polina said in an interview. She estimated that she helps around 50 people a week with research.

“Right now I’m looking for someone to drive a woman out of Melitopol,” she said, referring to a city in southeastern Ukraine. “I go into groups like ‘Evacuations to Poland’ or ‘Help with Ukrainians in Germany.’” She is a member of about 50 groups, which she uses to search for information and passes that on to those who need it.

“There are groups for everything, for bulletproof vests, for transporting people with disabilities,” she said.

Inside the Azovstal plant, a Ukrainian sergeant prays for rescue.

Even if the shelling that has been their constant companion for weeks comes to an end with Vladimir V. Putin’s order on Thursday to end the assault on the factory, the Russian president’s decision to blockade the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance “so that a fly can’t get through” could be a death sentence.

“I’m alive and healthy for now, but the situation is very difficult,” said Sergeant Kuznetsov, who is 25. “We’re at the end of our food and water. We have about 1,000 civilians at the factory. I can’t say how many soldiers we have. There are many, many wounded and not enough medicine. The smallest injury can be fatal; there are not even simple bandages.”

The Russian military’s destruction of Mariupol will be recorded in history as one of the singular calamities of Mr. Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. A vivacious seaside town of about half a million people has been turned to a charred and pockmarked hellscape, the bodies of soldiers, civilians and their pets littering the once leafy avenues.

On Thursday, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced to Mr. Putin that the ruined city was now fully under Russian control, save for the besieged steel plant. There are few buildings left standing and most of the city’s residents, those who have not been killed in weeks of nearly incessant shelling, have fled.

The zone of Ukrainian control in Mariupol has narrowed to suffocating bunkers under the steel plant like the one where Sergeant Kuznetsov and his fellow soldiers remain, running out of everything, including reserves of hope.

“We’re hoping for help,” he said. “If we don’t get it, we won’t make it out of this factory. We will die here with weapons in our hands defending Ukraine.”

Sergeant Kuznetsov communicated with a reporter by text using the chat app Telegram, and sent a short video of himself sitting in the bunker with a few fellow soldiers nearby. He has an internet connection thanks to Starlink, the satellite internet provider created by Elon Musk.

Sergeant Kuznetsov chose to join the military after college because he thought that was what a man was supposed to do, his wife, Maria Kuznetsova said in an interview. “It’s his character,” she said. “He thinks that a man must serve to protect his family.”

Ms. Kuznetsova, 23, said she met her future husband when they were students at Mariupol State University. They married a few years later and now have a year-old son named David. Sergeant Kuznetsov served for three years, then retired in December and filed an application to become a police officer.

Then, on Feb. 24, the war broke out.

Ms. Kuznetsova said she repeatedly begged her husband not to rejoin the military, and initially thought she had talked him out of it.

“It’s difficult to let your beloved man go,” she said. “But every day he talked about it, and then quickly gathered up his things and went.”

Sergeant Kuznetsov said he was posted to different regions in the city before eventually being assigned to the Azovstal steel plant. For weeks it served as both a military base and a refuge for the families of soldiers and steel workers, as Ukrainian defenders in other parts of the city were killed or forced to retreat.

With no one else left to fight, Russian forces turned their entire might against the factory in recent days, pummeling it day and night with airstrikes, artillery and rockets.

Sergeant Kuznetsov said more than 500 people were suffering from various injuries and there were many, many dead. A number of people sheltering inside have been killed by cave-ins caused by the shelling, he said.

He estimated that he and his fellow soldiers could hold out for another day, perhaps two.

“I ask the whole world to do everything possible to stop the military aggression against independent Ukraine,” he said. “Punish everyone who is responsible for the military action on our territory.”

Ms. Kuznetsova accused the Ukrainian government of abandoning the troops left in the factory complex, though rescuing them would require resources Ukraine can ill afford to spare as its army tries to withstand a new Russian offensive in the east.

Surrender to the Russian forces, Ms. Kutnetsova said, was also out of the question. “It’s a big risk. They could just shoot him.”

Ms. Kuznetsova was able to evacuate with their son on March 20 and is now living in the relative safety of western Ukraine. When they spoke, on Wednesday, she said he had made it clear that the situation was dire.

“He has no way out,” she said. “He hopes that everything will turn out all right, but he told me to be prepared for any outcome.”

On Thursday evening, Sergeant Kuznetsov, who had not sent a message in 24 hours, finally texted. The situation was grim. Despite Mr. Putin’s order, he said, Russian forces had moved to within 20 meters of where he and his comrades had taken refuge, and continued to pound their location from the air.

“We have a day or two if the fight isn’t that intense,” he said. “If it is, it all may end within 12 hours.”