Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

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      Avdiivka: The Death Throes of a Ukrainian City

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      Even from a few miles away, the death rattle of another Ukrainian city echoed through the mist and fog. Russian warplanes were dropping more thousand-pound bombs on Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, reducing an already battered city to rubble and ashes.Since Jan. 1, President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces have dropped around one million pounds of aerial bombs on an area encompassing just 12 square miles, according to estimates by Ukrainian officials and British intelligence.Avdiivka fell to the Russians on Saturday, after some of the most horrific and destructive fighting of the two-year-old war. In the end, Russia’s superior firepower and manpower overwhelmed Ukrainian forces over many months, even as Russia incurred a staggering number of casualties.The Ukrainians withdrew under withering bombardment, fighting intense battles across ruined streets to break out of Russian attempts to encircle them. Russian warplanes bombed the hulking coke-processing plant on Avdiivka’s northern outskirts, using incendiary munitions to blow up fuel tanks at the plant, unleashing a toxic smog, according to Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the plant.“Avdiivka is a constant barrage of aviation bombs,” Maksym Zhorin, deputy commander of the 3rd Special Assault Brigade, said on Friday. “It feels like the largest number of air bombs on such a stretch of land in the entire history of humanity. These bombs completely obliterate any positions. All buildings, structures, after just one airstrike, turn into craters.”Ihor Fir, a former mechanic at the Avdiivka coke processing plant, bringing food, water and medicine to refugees evacuated from the city because of Russia’s intense bombardment. More

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      A Stunned Russian Opposition in Exile Considers a Future Without Navalny

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      The death of Aleksei A. Navalny in a Russian prison has been a blow to an opposition movement in which he was the figurehead. But it has also raised hopes of a united front against President Vladimir V. Putin.The death of Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader, has stunned Russian dissidents. But it is also spurring some hope that in its desperate moment, the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin will be able to unite like never before.Doing so will be a challenge, given the often aloof approach of Mr. Navalny’s movement and the disparate assembly of other leading opposition Russian figures: nearly all of them in exile, and none with his broad national appeal.Among them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch who fell out with Mr. Putin, spent 10 years in prison and in London became one of his most prominent opponents in exile. Then there is Maxim Katz, a YouTube influencer and a former poker champion, who is based in Israel. There is also Ilya Yashin, a longtime liberal politician who is serving an eight-year sentence for publicizing Russian atrocities in Ukraine.Beyond these figures who are trying to speak for the whole of Russia is a plethora of small antiwar groups focused on particular Russian regions, social issues or ethnic minorities. Some of their demands — like a reckoning with Russia’s imperial history — have clashed with the more conservative position of Mr. Navalny, who had flirted with Russian nationalism in order to gain a broader following.Many operate their own YouTube channels, or use other social media like Telegram and podcasts, to beam their messages to millions of viewers in Russia despite the Kremlin’s tightening its control of information.But looming over all of them will be Mr. Navalny, even after his death in a Russian prison on Friday. As of Sunday, Mr. Navalny’s family has still not been able to locate his body, according to his team.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Administration Blames Congress for Fall of Avdiivka in Ukraine

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      As a bill with $60.1 billion in military aid for Kyiv languishes in the House, a spokeswoman pointed to Avdiivka’s fate as “the cost of congressional inaction.”The Biden administration said Saturday that the Ukrainian military withdrawal from Avdiivka was the result of Congress failing to provide additional money to support Kyiv’s war effort.Ukraine ordered the withdrawal from the eastern city of Avdiivka before dawn on Saturday, the country’s first major battlefield loss since the fall of Bakhmut last year.“This is the cost of congressional inaction,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “The Ukrainians continue to fight bravely, but they are running low on supplies.”The Senate passed an emergency aid bill including $60.1 billion for Ukraine this week, but the measure faces an uncertain fate in the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated he does not intend to put it to a vote. The Biden administration has spent months pushing for additional funding, arguing that Ukraine is running out of artillery, air defense weaponry and other munitions.Ms. Watson said the House needed to pass the Senate measure.“It is critical that the House approve additional Ukraine funding without delay so that we can provide Ukraine with the artillery ammunition and other critical equipment they need to defend their country,” she said.Supporters of the aid are exploring ways to force a vote on the Senate bill, which also includes aid to Israel and Taiwan as well as humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in a package totaling $95 billion, or to create a package that might win Mr. Johnson’s approval.On Thursday, John F. Kirby, a senior national security official, said Ukraine’s struggles in Avdiivka were the result of shortages of artillery ammunition.The U.S. could not send additional artillery shells to Ukraine because Congress had not authorized more funding, Mr. Kirby said. As a result, Ukraine’s forces were not able to successfully counter the waves of troops Russia was sending into the city.Mr. Kirby said that without additional aid to Ukraine, the Russian advances being seen in Avdiivka would be repeated in other parts of the front. American officials have also warned that by March, air defense ammunition supplies will be strained, allowing more Russian missiles and Iranian drones to hit their targets in Kyiv and other population centers.It is not clear whether the losses in eastern Ukraine will be enough to move Republicans skeptical of sending additional funding to Kyiv. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have said they have not heard a plan for Ukraine to turn the tide on the battlefield, even if its supplies were replenished.Administration officials concede that even with more arms, it will be difficult for Ukraine to reclaim all of the land it has lost. But, they added, a well-supplied Ukraine could put more pressure on Russia and eventually be in a better position for peace negotiations. More

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      ‘Dictators Do Not Go on Vacation,’ Zelensky Warns Washington and Europe

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back against skepticism of a Ukraine victory, calling on world leaders not to ask when the war would end, but why Russia was still able to wage it.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called on world leaders not to abandon his country, citing the recent death of a Russian dissident as a reminder that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of would continue to test the international order, and pushing back against the idea of a negotiated resolution to the war.Mr. Zelensky, speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, said that if Ukraine lost the war to Russia, it would be “catastrophic” not only for Kyiv, but for other nations as well.“Please do not ask Ukraine when the war will end,” he said. “Ask yourself why is Putin still able to continue it.”The two topics that have loomed over nearly every discussion at the yearly meeting of world leaders have been Russia and the potential weakening of trans-Atlantic relations, amid an increasingly pessimistic assessment of Kyiv’s ability to beat Moscow.Mr. Zelensky’s speech on Saturday came as Ukrainian forces retreated from a longtime stronghold, Avdiivka, giving Russian troops their first significant victory in almost a year.And it came a day after attendees of the conference were shaken by the news that the prominent dissident Aleksei A. Navalny had died in a Russian Arctic penal colony. It was a stark reminder, Mr. Zelensky warned, of how Moscow would continue to test the Western-backed international rules-based order.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Fall of Avdiivka: What to Know

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      Russia’s capture of a city that had been a stronghold of Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk region is a strategic and symbolic blow.Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the eastern frontline city of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Saturday, allowing Moscow to score its largest territorial advance in months and dealing a blow to Ukraine’s stretched and outgunned forces as the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches.General Syrsky said he had ordered the retreat “in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen.” Avdiivka — once a city of 30,000 people before being reduced to ruins — sat in a pocket surrounded by Russian troops to the north, east and south. In recent months, they had been slowly advancing through relentless assaults, in a pincer movement.“The ability to save our people is the most important task for us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. He added that Ukrainian troops had been hindered by a shortage of ammunition because of declining Western military assistance.Here’s what to know about the fall of Avdiivka.How did the battle unfold?Avdiivka is a suburb of the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, which has been on a front line since a Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The city held through eight years of often low-intensity war in the east and then nearly two years of full-scale assaults by the Russian Army after it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.The big offensive against Avdiivka began in October, with Russia launching several battalions against the edges of the city and shelling the area day and night. After being held on the outskirts of the city for months, Russian troops broke into residential areas in late January, bypassing Ukrainian fortifications by crawling through tunnels under the streets of the southeastern part of Avdiivka. Earlier this week, they cut off Ukraine’s main supply road into the city and then advanced near a coke plant that had been a bastion of resistance.In keeping with Russia’s scorched-earth tactics in Ukraine, Moscow bombed the place to ruins and then sent in wave after wave of troops in assaults that left thousands of dead and wounded, according to military experts. Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday that for every Ukrainian soldier killed, seven Russian soldiers had been killed. His assertion could not be confirmed independently.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukraine, Struggling on Land, Claims to Deal Blow to Russia at Sea

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      The Ukrainian military says it has sunk a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea, although Ukrainian troops inland find themselves in a precarious position.As outgunned Ukrainian soldiers struggle to hold back bloody Russian assaults on land, Ukraine said on Wednesday that its forces had struck yet another powerful blow against the Russians at sea, sinking a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea before dawn.The Ukrainian military released footage of the strike, which it said had resulted in the sinking of the 360-foot-long landing ship Caesar Kunikov, its fourth-largest landing ship taken out of action in the war, possibly complicating Russia’s logistical efforts in southern Ukraine.The Ukrainian claims could not be immediately confirmed, but when NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was asked about the attack, he called Ukraine’s campaign on the Black Sea a “great achievement.”“The Ukrainians have been able to inflict heavy losses on the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” he said at a news conference in Brussels. Russia has lost more than a third of its fleet since the war began, according to Ukrainian officials and military analysts.Russia declined to comment on the attack.At the same time, however, Ukrainian ground forces find themselves in perhaps their most precarious position since the opening months of the Russian invasion.“The enemy is now advancing along almost the entire front line, and we have moved from offensive operations to conducting a defensive operation,” Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the German outlet, ZDF, in his first interview since being promoted to the post last week.The epicenter of the current fighting is around the battered city of Avdiivka, a longtime Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have broken through Ukraine’s defenses to enter the city in multiple locations and are threatening to cut off the main supply line for Ukrainian defenders.Kyiv has dispatched reinforcements, but soldiers fighting there have said it is unclear how long they can hold out. A growing shortage of ammunition has forced local commanders to ration their fires, making it more difficult to push back the Russian advance. More

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      Russian Drone Strike on Kharkiv Causes Deadly Fire

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      Seven people from two families died in the inferno in Kharkiv on Friday night, as burning oil flowed like lava. “People were doomed,” an official said.The attack hit a fuel depot, causing a fire that quickly spread to several nearby homes.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesFirefighters were digging through the burned remains of a house Saturday morning searching for the body of a child, the last member of a family killed in a catastrophic fire caused by a Russian drone attack.Four bodies already lay in bags in the yard. Investigators had found the charred remains of the father in a corridor and the mother and two children in the bathroom.Seven people in total died when Russian drones struck a fuel depot late Friday night in one of the most calamitous attacks yet on Kharkiv, the northeastern city that has suffered a series of missile strikes in recent weeks. Burning fuel poured down the street from the destroyed depot, setting a line of houses ablaze so quickly that two families were burned alive in their homes.“The family was held hostage by the fire inside their own house,” Serhii Bolvinov, chief police investigator of Kharkiv, said after firemen and investigators dug for hours through the smoldering debris. “All of them were very badly burned, and DNA examination will be needed for the final conclusions.”A home destroyed in the fire after a fuel depot was struck on Friday night. Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesOleksandr Kobylev, head of the Kharkiv regional police war-crimes department, said the Russians attacked with Iranian-supplied Shahed drones that struck shortly before 11 p.m.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden and Germany’s Scholz Meet at White House and Push for Ukraine Aid

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      The message came as congressional lawmakers were working on a package with billions in assistance but an uncertain fate.President Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany used a meeting at the Oval Office on Friday to pressure Congress to pass billions more in aid for Ukraine, as legislative dysfunction and opposition among some Republicans have left the critical package in limbo.“Hopefully Congress, the House, will follow you and make a decision on giving the necessary support because without the support of the United States and without the support of European states, Ukraine will not have a chance to defend its own country,” Mr. Scholz said in opening remarks before their meeting.Mr. Biden had a more blunt assessment of the congressional gridlock.“The failure of the United States Congress, if it occurs, not to support Ukraine is close to criminal neglect,” Mr. Biden said. “It is outrageous.”The joint pressure amounted to another maneuver in the high-stakes battle over funding for Ukraine as it tries to fight off Russia’s invasion, a debate that could ultimately help determine the course of the war and, much of Europe worries, security across the continent.The message comes after Senate Republicans blocked a broad bipartisan deal this week that would have provided billions in funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as stringent restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border. Senators are now inching ahead with legislation would provide $60.1 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel and $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in global conflicts.Senators were planning to work into the weekend on the bill, and it appeared to be on track for passage in the Senate within days. But it faces stiff opposition from many Republicans in the G.O.P.-led House.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More