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      Russia Presses Attacks in Northeast Ukraine, Seeking Buffer Zone on Border

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      Advances by Russian forces have raised fears that they could bring their artillery in range of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.Russian forces continued to press a grinding advance on Saturday into northeastern Ukraine, moving closer to a village about 10 miles from the outer ring of Kharkiv and raising fears that the city, Ukraine’s second largest, could soon be within range of Russian artillery.The Ukrainian Army said on Saturday that Russian troops had tried to break through its defenses near the village of Lyptsi, which lies directly north of Kharkiv. It said the attacks had been repelled, but maps of the battlefield compiled by independent groups analyzing publicly available video of the fighting showed that Russian troops had almost reached the outskirts of the village.Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade, which is defending Lyptsi, posted a video on Telegram on Friday afternoon that it said showed Russian soldiers advancing on the village on foot, and attacking in small groups between tree lines. The brigade said it had targeted the Russians with rockets, forcing them to withdraw.Russian troops opened a new front in Ukraine’s northeast a week ago, surging across the border and quickly capturing about 10 settlements in what Ukrainian officials and military analysts described as an attempt to stretch Ukraine’s already outnumbered forces.The Khartia Brigade, for example, has been redeployed from another hot spot on the front, around Ocheretyne, a village in the southeast. Russian forces captured Ocheretyne last month, creating a breach in Ukrainian defenses.But experts say that another, perhaps more immediate, goal for Russia could be to advance deep enough into Ukrainian territory to push Kyiv’s forces away from the border, creating a buffer zone that would prevent the Ukrainians from targeting Russian towns and cities with artillery. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Friday that that was the goal of the current offensive.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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      Rafael Grossi of the IAEA Acts as the West’s Mediator With Putin and Iran

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      Rafael Grossi slipped into Moscow a few weeks ago to meet quietly with the man most Westerners never engage with these days: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Grossi is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, and his purpose was to warn Mr. Putin about the dangers of moving too fast to restart the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been occupied by Russian troops since soon after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.But as the two men talked, the conversation veered off into Mr. Putin’s declarations that he was open to a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine — but only if President Volodymyr Zelensky was prepared to give up nearly 20 percent of his country.A few weeks later, Mr. Grossi, an Argentine with a taste for Italian suits, was in Tehran, this time talking to the country’s foreign minister and the head of its civilian nuclear program. At a moment when senior Iranian officials are hinting that new confrontations with Israel may lead them to build a bomb, the Iranians signaled that they, too, were open to a negotiation — suspecting, just as Mr. Putin did, that Mr. Grossi would soon be reporting details of his conversation to the White House.In an era of new nuclear fears, Mr. Grossi suddenly finds himself at the center of two of the world’s most critical geopolitical standoffs. In Ukraine, one of the six nuclear reactors in the line of fire on the Dnipro River could be hit by artillery and spew radiation. And Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear-armed state.“I am an inspector, not a mediator,” Mr. Grossi said in an interview this week. “But maybe, in some way, I can be useful around the edges.”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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      Antony Blinken plays Rockin’ in the Free World in Kyiv bar – video

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      The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, performed Neil Young’s 1989 Rockin’ in the Free World at a bar in Kyiv during a visit on Wednesday night. He was called on stage by the frontman of Ukrainian rock group 19.99, before he played guitar. Young’s song was written in 1989 after he was denied an opportunity to perform in the Soviet Union and was released as the Berlin Wall came down. The song choice underscored Blinken’s support for Ukraine as Russia steps up attacks on the city of Kharkiv

      Before the performance, in a message to Ukrainians, Blinken said: ‘So much of the world is with you. And they’re fighting, not just for a free Ukraine, but for the free world. And the free world is with you too. So maybe we can try something.’ Blinken is known for combining ‘music with diplomacy’, and launched an initiative in 2021 through the state department to realise that goal More

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      Russian Forces Push Deeper Into Northern Ukraine

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      A Ukrainian military unit said that its troops were forced to retreat from several positions and that one settlement had been captured by Russian forces.Russian forces continued their advance across northeastern Ukraine on Sunday, seizing a number of small settlements along the border and forcing Ukrainian troops to retreat from some positions, according to the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, as well as aid workers.Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its troops had captured four more settlements — all but one located directly north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city — as they pressed ahead with a new offensive launched on Friday. Aid workers confirmed that Russian troops had advanced deeper inside Ukrainian territory and were now threatening several small towns on the outskirts of Kharkiv.A Ukrainian military unit fighting in the area said the Russian forces were pushing hard from the Russia-Ukraine border toward Kharkiv.“Today, during heavy fighting, our defenders were forced to withdraw from a few more of their positions, and today, another settlement has come completely under Russian control,” said a video statement released on Saturday night by Hostri Kartuzy, a Ukrainian special forces unit. “The Russians are dying in droves. But they are pressing on regardless and succeeding in some areas.”Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, said that the situation in the Kharkiv region had “significantly worsened” this past week, but that Russian attempts to break through Ukrainian defensive lines had been unsuccessful so far.A Ukrainian tank on Sunday near a damaged car in the Vovchansk district of the Kharkiv region.Roman Pilipey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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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      ‘They Are Erasing Streets’: Russian Attacks Bring War Nearer Kharkiv

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      Russia’s latest offensive has expanded the battlefield along Ukraine’s northern border, and sent thousands of civilians fleeing to the closest large city.After all-night air raid alarms, a weary Kharkiv woke up Saturday morning to a heavy gray sky and the disconcerting news that the Russian Army continued to press its advance on nearby Ukrainian territory.All night, dull explosions from battlefields 40 miles away echoed across Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. On Saturday morning, a day after Russian forces seized several villages along the border and Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the area, the ghostly wail of air raid sirens continued to drift over the city’s deserted parks and long, empty boulevards.Thousands of people are fleeing the border areas and arriving at shelters in Kharkiv.Tetiana Novikova is one of them.Until Friday, she had spent her entire 55 years in Vovchansk, a small town near the Russian border. She was born there, married there, worked in a factory there and raised two children there.But the shelling became so terrifying that she and her family made the painful decision to abandon the home they had lived in for decades. On Friday evening, she arrived with her elderly parents, shaken, hungry and a bit lost, at a Kharkiv school that has been turned into a displaced persons’ reception center.The only people left in Vovchansk, Ms. Novikova said, “are the old and the disabled, and they can’t move.”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 Says It Foiled Russian Plot to Kill Zelensky

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      The Ukrainian security services arrested two Ukrainian colonels and accused them of spying for Russia. They said the plot also targeted top Ukrainian intelligence officials.Ukraine’s security services said on Tuesday that they had foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top military and political figures. Two Ukrainian colonels accused of participating in the plot have been arrested on suspicion of treason.The Ukrainian domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U., said in a statement that the plot had involved a network of agents — including the two colonels — that was run by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the main successor agency to the K.G.B. According to the Ukrainian agency, the agents working at Russia’s direction were tasked with identifying people close to Mr. Zelensky’s security detail who could take him hostage and later kill him.The agency’s statement said the other top Ukrainian officials targeted in the plot included Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the S.B.U., and Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified.It is not the first time that Ukraine has reported a potential assassination attempt aimed at its top leaders. Mr. Zelensky himself said in an interview with an Italian television channel earlier this year that his security services had told him of more than 10 such attempts.Ukraine’s security services offered few details about previous assassination plots. But this time, the agency went to some length in its statement to describe how the Ukrainian officials were to be killed.The services said the two colonels accused in the plot belonged to the State Security Administration, which protects top officials. They had been recruited before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement, which identified three F.S.B. members — Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Oleksiy Kornev — as running the operation from Moscow.The assassination of General Budanov, the services said, was planned to take place before Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated on May 5. The F.S.B.’s network of agents in Ukraine was tasked with observing and passing on information about General Budanov’s whereabouts, the Ukrainian security services said. Once his location had been confirmed and communicated, he would have been targeted in a rocket and drone attack.Weapons for the attack were provided to one of the colonels, including attack drones, ammunition for a rocket launcher and anti-personnel mines, according to the security services and Ukraine’s prosecutor general. The colonel was to pass the weapons to other agents to carry out the attack, the Ukrainian statement said.General Budanov’s wife was poisoned late last year, according to the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, in an incident that led to widespread speculation that Russia was stepping up efforts to target Ukraine’s senior leadership.The S.B.U. also reported last month that it had arrested, in cooperation with Polish security services, a Polish man who it said had offered to spy for Russia as part of a plot to assassinate Mr. Zelensky.Russia made no immediate comment about Tuesday’s allegations. More

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      In Meeting With Xi, E.U. Leader Takes Tough Line on Ukraine War

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      Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Commission president, pushed Beijing to help rein in Russia’s war in Ukraine after meeting with the Chinese and French leaders in Paris.Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, put pressure Monday on China to help resolve the war in Ukraine, saying Beijing should “use all its influence on Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine.”She spoke after accompanying President Emmanuel Macron of France in a meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, who began his first visit to Europe in five years on Sunday. Ms. von der Leyen has persistently taken a stronger line toward China than has Mr. Macron.With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia again suggesting he might be prepared to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, she said Mr. Xi had played “an important role in de-escalating Russia’s irresponsible nuclear threats.” She was confident, Ms. von der Leyen said, that Mr. Xi would “continue to do so against the backdrop of ongoing nuclear threats by Russia.”Whether her appeal would have any impact on Mr. Xi was unclear, and describing the conflict as Russia’s “war of aggression” in Ukraine seemed likely to irk the Chinese leader. Beijing has forged a “no limits” friendship with Russia and provided Moscow with critical support for its military effort, including jet fighter parts, microchips and other dual-use equipment.“More effort is needed to curtail delivery of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way to the battlefield,” Ms. von der Leyen said of China. “And given the existential nature of the threats stemming from this war for both Ukraine and Europe, this does affect E.U.-China relations.”It is relatively unusual for a top European official to describe the war in Ukraine as an “existential threat” to the European continent. Doing so may reflect Mr. Putin’s renewed talk of the use of nuclear weapons.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