Putin denounces the U.S. as a fading world power.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday reprised his critique of the United States as a declining power that treats its allies as colonies, while declaring itself exceptional and “the messenger of the Lord on Earth.”
“If they are exceptional, then that means that everyone else is second-class,” Mr. Putin said of the United States in an address that the Kremlin had billed as “extremely important” at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum — an annual business conference once known as “Russia’s Davos.”
Mr. Putin, whose remarks were delayed by over an hour after the Kremlin cited “large-scale” distributed denial-of-service cyberattacks on the conference’s computer systems, spoke for more than 70 minutes but barely touched on the war in Ukraine. Instead, he focused on how he claimed Russia’s economy could flourish despite Western sanctions. He promised environmental and regulatory reforms as well as government initiatives to support demand for Russian businesses.
“Russia is entering the approaching epoch as a powerful, sovereign country,” Mr. Putin said. “We will certainly use the new, colossal opportunities that this era is opening in front of us and will become even stronger.”
The Russian leader said the European Union had imposed sanctions against Russia on orders from Washington despite the damage to its own economy, saying that “the European Union has completely lost its political sovereignty.”
He claimed that Western politicians were falsely blaming inflation in their countries on the war in Ukraine to distract the public from what he described as the real reasons: excessive Western government spending and loose monetary policy. “We all hear about so called Putin inflation in the West,” Mr. Putin said. “When I see this, I always think: Who’s this meant for, this stupidity? For someone who doesn’t know how to read or write.”
And he warned that inflation threatened to cause “hunger in the poorest countries,” adding, “This will be fully on the conscience of the United States and Euro-bureaucracy.”
On the domestic front, Mr. Putin insisted that the Russian economy would remain open to foreign investment and cooperation. “Russia, while our Western friends literally dream of this, will never take the path of isolation and autarky,” Mr. Putin said.
He vowed to cut the red tape plaguing what remains of Russia’s market economy, pledging to reduce the frequency of audits and the jailing of executives in pre-trial investigations. And he issued a plea to Russian business tycoons to keep their money at home, pointing to this year’s sanctions as proof that they should cut ties with the West.
“Real, solid success and the feeling of dignity and self-respect will only come when you tie your future and your children’s future to your Motherland,” Mr. Putin said as the state television feed of his speech cut to two oligarchs in the audience, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg.
“Those who didn’t want to hear this obvious message lost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in the West,” he said.
— Anton Troianovski and Adam Satariano
British prime minister pays a second surprise visit to Kyiv.
LONDON — Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, on Friday paid a second, surprise, visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, offering a training program for the country’s military in a fresh show of support for Ukraine’s government just a day after key European leaders made a similar trip.
During the visit, Mr. Johnson promised a new package of help with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days and to provide the “strategic endurance” required to drive out Russian forces.
Britain has already provided extensive military support to Ukraine. At a news conference, Mr. Johnson said that Britain would help the Ukrainian military “to do what I believe Ukrainians yearn to do and that is to expel the aggressor from Ukraine.”
Mr. Johnson said that each Ukrainian soldier would spend three weeks on a course that would provide training in frontline battle skills, medical techniques, cybersecurity and tactics for countering explosives.
The two leaders also discussed how Britain could help to end a Russian naval blockade that is preventing the export of grain, Downing Street said, without providing any further details. There has been speculation that Britain might provide ships, though so far the government says it has taken no decisions.
Having recently survived a no-confidence vote among his own lawmakers, Mr. Johnson might hope that a visit to Kyiv could boost his own popularity after more bad news headlines this week.
Mr. Johnson, who has been one of the world’s most voluble supporters of the Ukrainian government, has cultivated strong ties with the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and visited in April.
Although not the first foreign leader to make the journey to Ukraine after the Russian invasion, he was among the earliest, and was given a warm reception in Kyiv on a trip that was seen as a diplomatic success.
Mr. Johnson’s government has offered weapons as well as diplomatic support to Ukraine, and has been singled out by the Russian government as being hostile to Moscow. Inside Ukraine, the prime minister’s unflagging support for the war effort has made him something of a folk hero in contrast to his position at home, where he has been fighting for political survival. (A street in Odesa and a special pastry in Kyiv have been named after him.)
Mr. Johnson’s visit follows that of President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy. They offered their support for Ukraine to become a candidate for European Union membership, an issue that will be considered by the 27 leaders of the bloc next week. Referring to a decision by the European Commission on Friday to recommend approval of that step, Mr. Zelensky described it as a “historic moment” for his country.
Britain has left the European Union, so its assistance to Mr. Zelensky is more focused on supplying weaponry and other support.
Though Mr. Johnson’s visit was a surprise, rumors began to spread when he unexpectedly canceled a potentially more fraught speaking engagement with some of his own lawmakers — a significant minority of whom last week tried unsuccessfully to oust him — without giving a reason.
— Stephen Castle
Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine WarHistory and Background: Here’s what to know about Russia and Ukraine’s relationship and the causes of the conflict.
How the Battle Is Unfolding: Russian and Ukrainian forces are using a bevy of weapons as a deadly war of attrition grinds on in eastern Ukraine.
Outside Pressures: Governments, sports organizations and businesses are taking steps to punish Russia. Here are some of the sanctions adopted so far and a list of companies that have pulled out of the country.
Stay Updated: To receive the latest updates on the war in your inbox, sign up here. The Times has also launched a Telegram channel to make its journalism more accessible around the world.
The Dutch intelligence service says it prevented a Russian spy from infiltrating the International Criminal Court.
It has all the elements of an espionage thriller: An accused Russian spy who concocted an identity as a Brazilian. The creation of an elaborate cover story. And what Dutch authorities said appeared to be a foiled plot to gain access to the International Criminal Court as it investigates Russian war crimes.
Those details emerged this week in a real-life case in which Dutch officials said 36-year-old Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov spent years building an identity as a Brazilian citizen, polishing a résumé that got him an internship at the International Criminal Court in The Hague before Dutch officials blew his cover.
According to Dutch intelligence, Mr. Cherkasov pretended to be a Brazilian named Viktor Muller Ferreira, and got an internship at the court using a detailed cover story that hid his ties to the Russian military intelligence agency, the G.R.U.
Mr. Cherkasov was due to start working at the court, but was denied entry to the Netherlands at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in April after the AIVD, the Dutch intelligence agency, tipped off immigration officials. He was sent back to Brazil and declared an “undesirable alien,” intelligence officials said in a statement Thursday. Officials did not say how they identified him as a spy.
The International Criminal Court is investigating potential war crimes by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, as well as the Russian-Georgian war in 2008.
“If this person had gotten the chance to really work at the I.C.C., he could have gathered information, could have spotted sources (or recruited them) and could have gained access to the digital systems,” the Dutch intelligence service said in a statement. The G.R.U. has been blamed for cyberattacks on the U.S. and Ukraine.
The Dutch intelligence agency published a document that it said Mr. Cherkasov probably wrote in 2010, laying out a cover story that included specific details about the purported background of Mr. Ferreira, including which high school he attended and how many students were at the school; health information about his aunt; a crush he had on a teacher; and how much rent he paid for an apartment in Brasilia.
It can be hard to know what is true from such cover stories, because they are often a mixture of true and false information, including personal observations that are hard to disprove, Dutch intelligence said.
The document blacks out the names of institutions and other details, though he appeared to have a connection to Johns Hopkins University.
Eugene Finkel, a Ukraine-born associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Cherkasov had been in his class and that he had written him a recommendation letter: “A strong one, in fact. Yes, me. I wrote a reference letter for a GRU officer. I will never get over this fact.” Mr. Finkel declined a request for comment.
Johns Hopkins, in a statement, said it had “confirmed that a person of this name graduated from our institution in 2020” and was monitoring developments but had “no further information to share at this time.”
The International Criminal Court said that it was “very thankful to the Netherlands for this important operation and more generally for exposing security threats.”
— Claire Moses
Foreign fighters in Ukraine, many in motley groups, face perils if captured.
Over the last few weeks, a number of the thousands of foreign volunteers who flocked to join the fight against Russia have gone missing or have been captured.
Last week, two Britons and a Moroccan who were taken prisoner while fighting for the Ukrainian armed forces were sentenced to death in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, after being accused of terrorism.
This week, two Americans fighting with a group of foreign soldiers went missing in action near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is about 25 miles from the Russian border. Their families fear they have been captured, having disappeared after the platoon came under fire.
The missing and captured fighters have focused attention on the thousands of largely unregulated volunteers in Ukraine, only some of whom have been accepted into the Ukrainian Army’s International Legion.
The platoon that the missing Americans belonged to was one of dozens of loosely organized volunteer outfits that have absorbed foreign veterans, including many Americans. The volunteers have proved to be both valuable assets and at times an unruly problem for Ukraine, and present a potentially difficult challenge for their home governments if they are caught or captured.
On Friday, President Biden said that he had been briefed on the two Americans reported to be missing in Ukraine, and that the administration does not know of their current location.
“I want to reiterate: Americans should not be going to Ukraine now,” he said.
The International Legion, formed after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine issued a call in late February for foreigners to help fight, is considered the most selective of the foreign groups.
Damien Magrou, a French-Norwegian lawyer who is the spokesman for the Ukrainian military’s International Legion, said in an interview in April that he felt the war had “struck a chord” among many American veterans.
“There are also a lot of American vets who feel they can make a difference because the U.S. has been involved in a lot more conflicts in the last 20 years than European countries,” he said.
Mr. Magrou, a corporal in the legion’s structure, said accepted volunteers were now required to have combat experience, no records of dishonorable behavior, and no membership in extremist groups. Other groups are not as selective, he said.
Mr. Magrou said he encouraged volunteers rejected by the legion to take a shuttle bus provided by the military back to the Polish border. But, he added, “they are legally in the country and we can’t force them to do anything.”
Russia maintains that some of foreign fighters it has captured are mercenaries and not entitled to protection as prisoners of war under international law. A local court in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region found that the two British and one Moroccan fighters, who had immigrated to Ukraine, were guilty of “training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities” and that they undertook their activities “for a fee.”
It remains unclear what missions were carried out by the group whose American members went missing, or who in the Ukrainian armed forces or the government oversaw them and gave them orders.
The American veterans who are missing are Alex Drueke, 39, a former U.S. Army staff sergeant who served in Iraq, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, a former Marine, family members said. They disappeared when their platoon came under “heavy fire” in a village on June 9, leading all its members to fall back except for the two of them, according to a statement sent by Mr. Drueke’s family. Reconnaissance by foot and drone did not turn up any sign of the two soldiers, the statement said.
The Geneva Conventions, which govern the law of war and which Russia has signed, specify that captured volunteer fighters can also be considered prisoners of war. The primary definition of a mercenary under international law is someone fighting primarily for financial gain who is paid substantially more than local armed forces.
Those who join the International Legion are paid the same amount as their Ukrainian military counterparts. They receive a basic salary, equaling about $630 a month, with bonuses that can reach several thousand dollars a month.
Some fighting with other groups are given one-time payments to defray their expenses, while others are unpaid.
Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, an associate professor of law at the University of Bristol, said that even volunteer fighters not embedded in the Ukrainian military would be entitled to P.O.W. protection if they are openly carrying arms while fighting.
Maham Javaid contributed reporting.
— Jane Arraf and James C. McKinley Jr.
The State Department says a third American fighter may be missing in Ukraine.
The State Department statement came a day after two U.S. veterans fighting Russia’s invasion were reported missing. The department said it had not contacted Russia about those two men, but would if it had “credible reason” to think they were in its custody.CreditCredit...Pool photo by Andrew Harnik
A third American who traveled to Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion may be missing in action, the State Department said on Thursday, a day after the families of two U.S. veterans fighting in Ukraine said the two men had disappeared together as their platoon came under fire this month.
The possible third missing person was identified in recent weeks, a State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said in a briefing. “Unfortunately, we don’t know the full details of that case,” he added.
The families of the two American veterans identified them on Wednesday as Alex Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, and expressed fears that they may have been captured by Russian forces.
As of Thursday afternoon, the United States had not been in contact with Russia about the two men, Mr. Price said, confirming earlier comments from a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman that were reported by Russian state news outlets.
“If we had credible reason to believe that these individuals were in Russian custody, we would pursue it,” he added, saying that State Department officials would reach out to Russia if they felt it would “be productive.”
The United States has discussed the issue with British partners and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr. Price said.
The men were members of a small team of international volunteers working for the Ukrainian intelligence service and had joined the team less than a day before going on the mission that ended in their captivity, said Chris Bowyer, a member of the unit who left Ukraine in late May after being wounded in combat but who has received regular updates from the remaining team in Kharkiv.
“It was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission,” Mr. Bowyer said. “They were briefed that the village was secure, that the Russians had been thrown out of it, and then they showed up in the middle of a Russian assault.”
The disappearance of volunteer fighters has underscored the peril facing thousands of people from across the world who have traveled to Ukraine to take up arms on behalf of Kyiv. The risk for foreign fighters was called into sharp relief last week after two Britons and a Moroccan man were convicted of being mercenaries and terrorists seeking to overthrow the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic and sentenced to death by a court in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine.
International human rights experts, the U.S. State Department and British officials say the men are entitled to be treated as prisoners of war, since they were part of Ukraine’s armed forces and are thus protected under the Geneva Conventions. But Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Friday that the Britons sentenced to death were not defined as combatants under international law and were therefore not entitled to prisoner of war status.
If captured, Mr. Drueke, Mr. Huynh and the third person possibly missing would be the first Americans known to have become prisoners of war during the conflict.
Asked about the three men sentenced to death last week, Mr. Price reiterated the United States’ position that “anyone who is fighting with Ukraine’s armed forces should be treated as a prisoner of war,” regardless of whether Moscow considers them prisoners of war.
— Anushka Patil
Russians breach Ukrainian cities, not with troops, but with propaganda.
LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine — Gesturing to the artillery shell lodged in the ground and a rocket protruding from the wall, Maksym Katerynyn was in a rage. These were Ukrainian munitions, he shouted. And it was Ukrainian artillery that struck his home the day before and killed his mother and stepfather.
“The Russians are not hitting us!” Mr. Katerynyn barked. “Ukraine is shelling us!”
But that was next to impossible: There were no Russian soldiers for the Ukrainians to shell in the eastern city of Lysychansk, and it was clear that the projectiles had come from the direction of Sievierodonetsk, a neighboring city, much of which has been seized by Russian forces.
The fact that Mr. Katerynyn believed this, and that his neighbors nodded in agreement as he careened through his neighborhood condemning their country, was a telling sign: The Russians clearly already had a foothold here — a psychological one.
It was not always like this in Lysychansk, an industrial city with a prewar population of 100,000. Now it is isolated from most of the world, with no cell service, no pension payments and intensifying Russian shelling. But some residents have turned into receptive audiences of Russian propaganda — or they have taken to spreading it themselves.
— Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Natalia Yermak and Tyler Hicks
The European Commission recommends E.U. candidacy for Ukraine and Moldova, but not Georgia.
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive branch recommended on Friday that Ukraine be granted candidate status in the country’s bid to become a member, the first formal step in a process that normally lasts longer than a decade.
Becoming part of the Union would moor the former Soviet state to the world’s biggest trading bloc. Beyond the economic benefits, Ukraine would also gain a bigger voice on the global stage if it succeeds in joining a giant union that includes Europe’s largest economies like Germany, France and Italy. The political stability of being anchored to a large group of countries also helps draw foreign investment.
The European Commission also recommended a similar status for Moldova — which applied for membership to the bloc soon after Ukraine, spurred by concerns about Russian aggression in the region — but not for neighboring Georgia, which was deemed not ready for E.U. candidacy.
The European Union’s offer of membership has been one of its greatest foreign policy tools in the post-Cold-War world, pushing aspiring countries to make difficult political and economic changes required to join. The prospect forced Bulgaria and Romania to try to tackle corruption and accelerated the arrest of war criminals in Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.
Ukraine’s candidacy took on an air of inevitability on Wednesday, when the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania announced their support during a visit to Kyiv. And Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, opened Friday’s meeting of E.U. commissioners in Brussels wearing a blue shirt and a yellow blazer, Ukraine’s national colors.
Still, the ultimate decision about making Ukraine a candidate will be in the hands of European Union leaders meeting June 23 and 24 in Brussels to tackle the thorny question.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the Commission’s recommendation would help his country’s efforts to stave off Russian aggression. “It’s the 1st step on the EU membership path that’ll certainly bring our Victory closer,” he wrote on Twitter.
In St. Petersburg, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Friday that his country does not oppose Ukraine joining the European Union, even though it has gone to war with Ukraine in large part over its desire to join the NATO military alliance. Mr. Putin said that, unlike NATO, the E.U. is “not a military organization,” and joining it is “the sovereign decision of any country.”
“We were always against military expansion into Ukrainian territory because it threatens our security,” Mr. Putin said. “But as for economic integration, please, for God’s sake, it’s their choice.”
Russia, in fact, opposed Ukraine’s trade agreement with the European Union that Kyiv was negotiating in 2013. Ukraine then backed away from the pending deal under Russian pressure, a move that sparked the country’s pro-Western uprising the following year.
The European Commission stressed that Ukraine’s and Moldova’s candidate statuses are tied to overhauls on the rule of law, justice and anti-corruption. The need to make difficult changes will be especially pronounced in Ukraine, a country that has struggled with corruption and will eventually have to grapple with the war’s aftermath.
“Starting accession negotiations is further down the line,” Oliver Varhelyi, the bloc’s top official for enlargement, told reporters. “Today it’s not about that. Once conditions are met, then we’ll have to come back to it and reflect.”
The steps that Ukraine is required to take include strengthening the fight against corruption and against oligarchs, legislation on the selection of judges to the country’s top court and protection of minorities.
The Commission said it would assess the progress at the end of this year, leaving the war-battered country less than seven months to introduce a number of complex and costly reforms.
Tess Felder contributed reporting from London.
— Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Monika Pronczuk and Dan Bilefsky
Weighing Ukraine’s possible E.U. membership is about more than just the country itself.
The question of whether to consider Ukraine for European Union membership is not just one about the country’s readiness. It is also one about the bloc’s perceived ability to “digest” new members.
The bloc has grown away from its original free-trade concept to become more of a geopolitical entity, but the process has been incomplete and, at times, dramatic.
Britain’s departure has been of particular significance, not least because it caused the bloc to shrink for the first time. But it is also because Britain had been the biggest advocate of a bigger and shallower European Union — covering more territory but with fewer regulatory strictures. Analysts say that the trauma of Brexit and the absence of that strong pro-enlargement voice both play a role in any current hesitancy toward expansion.
There are additional issues. Two nations in the Western Balkans, Albania and North Macedonia, have been waiting for years to open negotiations for membership. They, too, are strategically important to the European Union, not to mention vulnerable to Moscow’s sphere of influence. Granting Ukraine candidate status without unblocking their bids for membership could be problematic.
Ukraine’s neighbors Moldova and Georgia also applied for E.U. membership soon after Ukraine lodged its application, spurred by concerns about Russia’s threats in the region.
Moldova was also approved to be an applicant to the bloc on Friday, with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, saying at a news conference that the country was “on a real pro-reform, anti-corruption and European path.”
“It still has a long way to go, but we believe it has the potential to live up to the criteria,” she said.
President Maia Sandu of Moldova called the decision “a strong signal of support for #Moldova & our citizens.” She wrote on Twitter, “We’re committed to working hard &count on @EUCouncil’s support.”
But the commissioners deemed Georgia to be not ready for E.U. candidacy. “To succeed, the country must now come together politically to design a clear path towards structural reform and the European Union,” Ms. von der Leyen said, adding that the Commission would come back to Georgia’s application in the future to assess its progress.
“The door is wide open,” she said of Georgia’s application. “It is up to Georgia now to take the necessary steps to move forward.”
The Commission recommended granting Georgia a European perspective, which means the country is considered a potential candidate, a status meant to encourage further changes.
— Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Monika Pronczuk
Internal challenges like corruption pose challenges in Ukraine’s bid to join the E.U.
KYIV, Ukraine — A majority of Ukrainians and the country’s political elite have for years favored joining the European Union and yet the country has stumbled on most major governance overhauls needed to do so.
Many Ukrainians, in making their case, point out that they are the only Europeans who have fought and died for the cause of aligning with the union, noting that Russia’s military interventions began in 2014 in response to street protests demanding a free-trade agreement with Europe.
But whatever the sympathy for Ukraine in Europe, nobody is waiving the rules for joining, which include cracking down on corruption. For the country, a pluralistic democracy with sharp-elbowed politics and, until the war at least, an oversized role for the business elites known as oligarchs, meeting the requirements will be a tough row to hoe. Interlinked and deeply ingrained problems of political and business influence on the courts are a central obstacle.
Politicians who are also businessmen pull strings to appoint judges, who in turn rule in their favor in commercial disputes. As recently as two years ago, the prime minister in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government at the time resigned in part to protest how a politically connected businessman was able to profit from the electrical utility serving Kyiv, the capital. Mr. Zelensky has denied granting the businessman, Ihor Kolomoisky, any special favors.
The European Commission has made Ukraine’s candidate status conditional on seven main overhauls in the country’s judicial system and government. Ukraine will have to guarantee an independent judiciary, weed out high-level corruption, adopt laws on the media, limit the influence of oligarchs and improve legislation on money laundering and protecting minorities, the commission said.
In some ways, the war appears to have eased these tasks. The status of the oligarchs has plummeted, as some fled and others lost assets and revenue in the fighting, while for the foreseeable future the economy will rely more on foreign aid than oligarchic-controlled commodity exports.
The security services, once in part controlled behind the scenes by business titans, solidified their positions defending the country as a whole, not business interests.
In other ways, the war created new obstacles for Ukraine’s European aspirations, beyond the obvious threat of the country being conquered by Russia.
Under martial law, opposition television stations were excluded from a national cable system. If the war and martial law persist for months or years, it is unlikely regularly scheduled elections will be held.
“The government deserves only applause” for winning Ukraine’s long-sought acceptance as a candidate for E.U. membership, Volodymyr Ariyev, a member of Parliament in the opposition European Solidarity party, said in an interview. “But we need to maintain our development in a democratic way, or we could lose our candidate status.”
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kyiv.
— Andrew E. Kramer
Ukraine attacks Russian forces on land, air and sea in southern areas controlled by Moscow.
While outgunned Ukrainian soldiers held off Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine on Friday and fighting raged in the ruined industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, the Ukrainian military said that its forces carried out successful strikes on Russian targets on land, air and at sea in the occupied south.
The Ukrainian Air Force said it struck three clusters of enemy soldiers in the Kherson region; Ukraine’s volunteer force said its soldiers shot down a Russian helicopter; and the Ukrainian Navy said that it sank a Russian tugboat transporting ammunition, weapons and personnel to Snake Island, a tiny but strategically important piece of Ukrainian land off the coast of Odesa.
Some of the Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified, but several of the strikes — including the downing of the helicopter — were captured on video. The New York Times has not authenticated the veracity of the videos, but military analysts said they appear to be authentic.
While Ukraine did not report any new territorial gains in the south, its soldiers have been conducting counterattacks across the region, hoping to set the stage for a broader offensive when they have more supplies of Western weapons and ammunition. Fighting has been reported in recent days as close as 10 miles from the city of Kherson, the first and only regional capital to fall to Russian soldiers.
As Ukrainian counterattacks have picked up, the Russian forces in the south have had to devote more attention to fortifying defensive positions.
General Oleksiy Gromov, a senior Ukrainian military official, said that Russian forces are dismantling concrete irrigation structures around the Kherson region and using the slabs to conceal heavy artillery from Ukrainian strikes.
“Much attention is paid to masking positions,” he said.
As Ukrainian soldiers in the south wait for Western weapons to arrive, the military is trying to use its limited supply of long-range Soviet missiles to hit targets deep in Russian-controlled areas. This week, the military said, it used a Soviet-era ballistic missile to hit a target deep behind enemy lines in the city of Nova Kakhovka on the Dnipro River. “Five armored vehicles, two ammo depots, and a fuel depot were hit,” the Ukrainian military southern command said in a statement.
The strike on the Russian tugboat, which is named the “Vasily Bekh” and can carry a load of some 1,605 tons, was recorded by a Turkish-made Bayraktar drone, according to video released by the Ukrainian military. The timing of the strike and the type of missile used to sink the ship could not immediately be determined.
Ukrainian officials have said they will only release limited information about the situation in the south to preserve operational security.
The Ukrainian military high command said on Friday that Ukrainian attacks in the past 24 hours have resulted in “significant losses in manpower” for the Russians.
The Russians have maintained a naval blockade in the Black Sea, though their ships are largely operating further from Ukrainian shores as Western anti-ship missile systems arrive in Ukraine.
“The enemy continues to keep in combat readiness 20 cruise missile carriers and three large landing craft,” the Ukrainian southern command said on Friday.
Russian forces also continued to launch long-range strikes on Ukrainian military and civilian targets. Four residential apartment blocks were damaged in a Russian missile strike on Friday morning in Mykolaiv, the southern port city where Ukrainian forces stopped a Russian advance toward Odesa earlier in the war. It is now firmly under Ukrainian control but remains a constant target for Russian forces.
Vitalii Kim, the head of the Mykolaiv regional military administration, said two people were killed and 20 were wounded, including a child.
— Marc Santora
Egypt, America’s Middle Eastern ally, maintains warm relations with Putin.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum being held in Russia on Friday will feature a speech from a surprising world leader: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, a longtime U.S. ally that has for decades been the second-largest recipient of American aid in the world.
Egypt has been an important partner in the Middle East for the United States since 1979, when it broke with its Arab neighbors to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Successive U.S. administrations have seen Egypt, with its strategic location on Israel’s borders and its control of the Suez Canal, as key to maintaining stability and combating terrorism in the region.
The U.S. government has given Egypt billions of dollars in aid, rarely wavering until this year, when the Biden administration withheld $130 million over concerns about the Sisi regime’s human rights record.
But Egypt was friendly with Russia long before its relations with the U.S. warmed, and still maintains significant ties: Russia supplied nearly 30 percent of Egypt’s tourists and much of its imported wheat before the war, and Russia is building a $26 billion nuclear power plant in Egypt. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. el-Sisi has tried to balance both relationships, refusing to condemn Russia’s actions as strongly as the U.S. has asked.
Though Egypt voted in March for a United Nations resolution against the invasion under American pressure, it has also hedged its rhetoric about the war. Mr. el-Sisi called Mr. Putin to reaffirm Egypt’s commitment to cooperation soon after the U.N. vote, and Egypt has said for months that it would attend the St. Petersburg forum.
In a speech this week, Mr. el-Sisi referred to the invasion as the “Russia-Ukraine crisis,” pointedly refraining from singling Russia out, and said that Egypt prioritized “the language of dialogue and peaceful solutions.”
Egyptian public opinion also skews toward Russia. Many Egyptians are happy to see Russia challenging the United States and its allies, drawing on deep lingering resentment over the American invasion of Iraq and the West’s support of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
The Egyptian fence-straddling has not gone unnoticed by the U.S., which has in the past signaled displeasure about Egypt’s closeness to Russia, and once threatened to impose sanctions over Egyptian deals to buy Russian aircraft. But it was unclear on Friday whether the U.S. had exerted pressure on Mr. el-Sisi not to speak at the St. Petersburg forum.
From Egypt’s perspective, it cannot afford to alienate either country, especially at a time when Egypt’s economy has been buckling under the stress of inflation, foreign investment pulling out and wheat supplies drying up.
The U.S. and its allies have argued that it is Russia’s invasion that has damaged the Egyptian economy.
“Regardless as to what Russian officials might say regarding cooperation with Egypt, they cannot explain away the hardships this war of aggression is causing in Egypt,” the Group of 7 ambassadors to Egypt said in a joint opinion essay this week. “Nor can Russia distract from the financial consequences of Putin’s war of aggression which threatens the prosperity and livelihoods of Egyptians.”
— Vivian Yee
Ukraine’s path to the E.U. will be long and arduous.
It was an impassioned plea: As war raged in his country, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine asked in early March that his country be allowed to join the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc, which had helped preserve peace in Europe for decades.
“We have proven that at a minimum we are exactly the same as you,” he told the European Parliament. “So do prove that you are with us, do prove that you will not let us go, do prove that you indeed are Europeans.”
On Friday, his plea received a positive endorsement when the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, recommended that Ukraine be granted candidate status in the country’s bid to become a member of the bloc.
However, Mr. Zelensky’s E.U. aspirations aren’t likely to be satisfied anytime soon: Joining the bloc is a painstaking and arduous process that can take as long as a decade. Poland, for example, made a formal request to join the bloc in 1994 and was not admitted until 2004.
For a country to join, its candidacy must be approved by all E.U. member states, which now number 27. It must also make its political system, judiciary and economy compatible with the bloc by adopting the E.U. system of common law, as well as more than 80,000 pages of rules and regulations on things like environmental standards and food hygiene rules.
And while there are precedents for fast-tracking bids — Sweden and Finland managed to join the Union in a few years after applying — a speedy approach is rare. Moreover, other countries have been waiting for years to join, including Albania, Bosnia and Serbia, making it difficult for the European Union to move faster on Ukraine.
Beyond that, the bloc also has a measure of expansion fatigue after being shaken by economic crises, Brexit and the pandemic, as well as the actions of rule-breaking member countries like Hungary.
Ukraine has already been on a path to mooring itself closer to Europe and has had an association agreement with the European Union, signed in 2014 and concluded in 2017, in which it agreed to intensify economic and political ties with the bloc.
Ukrainians have been ardent in wanting to forge closer links with Europe, and in 2013 hundreds of thousands of them took to the streets to protest when the president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, who leaned toward Russia, backtracked on signing an association agreement with the union.
Whatever the challenges for Ukraine’s E.U. hopes, Russia’s war has engendered an outpouring of solidarity in the bloc, drawing some of the toughest sanctions in its history. Eastern and Central European countries like Poland and the Baltic nations, which lived for decades behind the Iron Curtain and where memories of Russian subjugation run deep, have been among the most enthusiastic in backing Ukraine’s membership.
Most Europeans welcomed the union’s eastward expansion in May 2004, when it admitted 10 mostly former Communist countries — including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland — because, among other things, it cemented the demise of the Soviet bloc and helped spread economic and political liberalism across the continent.
The European Union’s ability to offer membership to countries has been one of its greatest foreign policy tools in the post-Cold War world. The prospect of joining forced Bulgaria and Romania to try to tackle corruption and accelerated the arrest of war criminals in Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.
Even though Ukraine’s E.U. membership process is likely to be gradual and face significant challenges, the country’s attempt to forge closer ties with NATO and the European Union underlines how President Vladimir V. Putin’s attempt to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit by force appears to be having the opposite effect.
— Dan Bilefsky
Eurovision rules out Ukraine as host of next year’s song contest.
Kalush Orchestra, a Ukrainian rap act, gave a huge morale boost last month to its war-torn country by cruising to victory at the Eurovision Song Contest — the world’s most watched and glitziest song contest.
That win, with the song “Stefania,” meant that Ukraine also won the right to stage the next contest, scheduled for May 2023. But Eurovision’s organizers announced on Friday that would not be possible.
The organizers, the European Broadcasting Union, said in a news release that it had concluded “with deep regret” that Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine meant that Ukraine could not provide “the security and operational guarantees” needed to host the event, which sees musicians representing countries from across Europe compete against each other for points.
The European Broadcasting Union said it would instead start discussions with the BBC about hosting the event in Britain because Britain’s Sam Ryder came second in last month’s contest.
The BBC confirmed in an emailed statement that it would enter those discussions. “Clearly,” it said, “these aren’t a set of circumstances that anyone would want.”
The decision has not gone down well in Ukraine. Oleh Psiuk, Kalush Orchestra’s frontman, said he would “demand” the decision be changed, in a letter posted to Facebook. The letter was also signed by Ukraine’s culture minister and the country’s two other Eurovision winners: Jamala, who won in 2016 with “1944,” a song that was widely interpreted at the time as a comment on Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea; and Ruslana, who won in 2004 with “Wild Dances.”
Ukraine’s public broadcaster, UA: PBC, said in a news release that it was “disappointed” with the decision. Mykola Chernotytskyi, head of its managing board, said, “a large number of people in Ukraine have thrown all their efforts to fulfill the conditions for holding Eurovision in our country.”
That included offering three potential locations for the event some far from current fighting: Lviv, in western Ukraine; the Zakarpattia region which borders Hungary and Slovakia; and the capital, Kyiv. “We ask our partners to hold further negotiations,” Chernotytskyi said.
In its news release, the European Broadcasting Union insisted Kalush Orchestra would feature in the contest wherever it was staged. “It is our full intention that Ukraine’s win will be reflected in next year’s shows,” it said, adding, “This will be a priority for us in our discussions with the eventual hosts.”
Ukraine has held the twice event before, most recently in 2017.
— Alex Marshall
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