Kyiv April 23, 7:00 p.m.
Moscow April 23, 7:00 p.m.
Washington April 23, 12:00 p.m.
Even as heavy artillery, …
Kyiv April 23,7:00 p.m. Moscow April 23,7:00 p.m. Washington April 23, 12:00 p.m. Even as heavy artillery, drones, tanks and ammunition pour in, the Ukrainians say Russian forces are probing for weak spots along a 300-mile eastern front. So far, military analysts say, Russia has not made any significant territorial gains since it announced its renewed offensive in the region. Marc Santora After months of begging and shaming allies around the world to provide his nation with heavy weapons, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an overnight address Saturday that his pleas were finally being answered and his country was increasingly better able to defend itself. “We will be able to show the occupiers that the day when they will be forced to leave Ukraine is approaching,” he said. That vow of confidence came hours before Russian missiles struck residential and military buildings in the Black Sea port of Odesa, in an another sign Moscow still threatens more than the eastern Donbas region, its stated territorial objective. At least six people were killed, according to local officials, who said the death toll was expected to rise. It was the first time that a missile has struck Odesa since early April and came a day after a Russian general said that Moscow was intent on controlling all of southern Ukraine. While Russia has failed to make any significant territorial gains in the east, the Ukrainian defense intelligence agency warned that Russian forces are trying to identify the Ukrainian military’s most vulnerable points in order to launch a large-scale offensive. The Russians continued to pound military and civilian targets along the 300-mile long front line even as the Ukrainian military claimed to have repulsed multiple Russian thrusts and staged counterattacks to reclaim Russian-occupied communities. In places that have been liberated, Ukrainians working with international investigators are continuing to document violence against civilians. Ukraine’s prosecutor general is examining more than 8,000 reported cases of atrocities around Ukraine, including summary executions, sexual violence and the forced deportation of children to Russia. At the same time, Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia is trying to cover up atrocities in Mariupol, where its forces now control most of the city and hundreds of civilians, including children, are struggling to survive in the bunkers of a blockaded steel plant. In other major developments: Mr. Zelensky warned that Russian aggression would not stop at his country’s borders. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine was intended only as a beginning, then they want to capture other countries,” he said in his overnight address. Western allies were speeding up efforts to deliver heavy arms to Ukraine. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said on Friday that his country was considering sending tanks to Poland so that Warsaw could then send its own tanks to Ukraine. Canada announced that it had sent heavy artillery, including M777 howitzers and additional anti-armor ammunition, to Ukraine in conjunction with the United States. Russian authorities opened a criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian pro-democracy activist and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, for spreading “false information” about the war in Ukraine, his lawyer said on Friday. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called for his release. António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, will meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday in Ukraine, two days after meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, to try to negotiate a peace deal. Hackers claimed to have broken into dozens of Russian institutions over the past two months, including the Kremlin’s internet censor and one of its primary intelligence services, leaking emails and internal documents to the public. Michael Schwirtz At least six people were killed when two cruise missiles struck a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said. Given the extent of the damage, officials said the number of victims was certain to climb. “There will be more,” Sergei Nazarov, an aide to Odesa’s mayor, said in a text message. He said the missiles struck a residential neighborhood in the Tairove district in the far west of the city. Photographs and video from the scene, including those posted to the city government’s Telegram channel, appeared to show extensive damage to a large housing complex, which was partially obscured by plumes of thick, black smoke. “All of this is while peaceful Odesa was preparing for Easter Sunday,” the mayor of Odesa, Gennady Trukhanov, said in a statement posted to the city’s Telegram channel. Orthodox Christians, who make up the majority in Ukraine, celebrate Easter this Sunday, and some in the Ukrainian military had expected, or hoped, that there might be some letup in the shelling. At least 18 were wounded in the strike, according to Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential administration. He said a three-month-old baby was among the dead. The missile attack on Odesa comes a day after a Russian general outlined what appeared to be a broad new set of military objectives, including the seizure of all Ukrainian lands along the Black Sea, including Odesa. While taking Odesa had appeared to be a major goal of the Russian military at the outset of the war, efforts by Russian forces to march westward along the coastline have been hindered by fierce Ukrainian resistance and logistical issues. The sinking this month of the Moskva, a warship in Russia’s Black Sea fleet, seemed to put an end to speculation that Moscow could mount an amphibious assault on the city. In the past, Russian forces have launched rocket attacks against Odessa and the surrounding region by both air and sea, but those strikes have largely been aimed at military targets and strategic infrastructure. Until Saturday, Odesa had been largely spared the high-casualty attacks on civilians suffered by other Ukrainian cities. Saturday’s attack was carried out by a Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, according to a statement by Ukraine’s southern air defense forces. It said the bomber fired six cruise missiles, two of which were taken out by Ukraine’s missile defense system. “Unfortunately two missiles hit military targets and two hit residential homes,” the statement said, adding that Ukrainian forces also destroyed two Russian drones that were being used to help target the missiles. It was not immediately clear what military targets had been hit. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, described the missile strikes as a terrorist attack. “The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odesa is terror,” Mr. Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “We need a wall between civilization and barbarians striking peaceful cities with missiles.” Marc Santora At least two people were killed when Russian missiles struck residential and military buildings in Odesa, local officials said, and an aide to the president said the toll was at least five dead and 18 wounded. It was the first missile strike on the city since early April, and the assault came one day after a Russian general said that Moscow was intent on controlling all of southern Ukraine. Marc Santora The Ukrainian military claimed on Saturday that it destroyed a Russian command post in the southern region of Kherson, which has been largely under Russian control since the early days of the war. The intelligence agency of the Ukrainian defense ministry said in a statement that the Russian command center was located near a location of active clashes between the two forces and two high-ranking Russian officers were present at the time of the strike. The claim could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Russia’s military, which rarely acknowledges battlefield setbacks. In a separate statement, Oleksiy Arestovych, a former Ukrainian military intelligence officer who is now an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office, said that about 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center at the time of the attack. “Their fate is unknown, but I think it must be miserable,” he said in an interview with a well-known Russian human rights activist. The Ukrainian military claimed later that two Russian generals were killed and another critically injured and had to be evacuated. While fighting is raging in eastern Ukraine, Russia has been seeking to solidify its control in the south. The Black Sea port city of Kherson was the first major urban center to fall to Russian forces after their invasion. Situated just north of the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Kherson has been critical in Moscow’s broader effort to control territory in the south. It is a vital link in Russia’s logistical chain stretching to Crimea, allowing for the movement of heavy artillery and equipment into southern Ukraine by rail. In the first weeks of the war, Russia used Kherson as a springboard in its push toward Odesa. That offensive that was ultimately halted by stiff Ukrainian resistance in the city of Mykolaiv. After stopping the Russian advance, the Ukrainians staged several counterattacks and have reclaimed some villages in the region. But Russia has been fortifying its positions. President Voldymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other officials in his government have claimed that Russia is preparing to conduct a “referendum” to create a “Kherson People’s Republic.” Moscow used a similar tactic with a disputed referendum in Crimea, which it invaded in 2015 and subsequently annexed. “I want to say straight away: any ‘Kherson People’s Republics’ are not going to fly,” Mr. Zelensky said earlier this week. Marc Santora A missile strike has hit the southern city of Odesa and damaged infrastructure, the City Council said in a post on Telegram. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that “terror” was the “only aim” of a strike on Odesa. “We need a wall between civilization and barbarians striking peaceful cities with missiles,” he said on Twitter. Marc Santora After Russia rejected Ukrainian calls for a pause in fighting for the Orthodox Christian Easter period, Ukraine’s military said that curfews would remain in place for traditional vigils held the night before the holy day on Sunday. “We must understand that the gathering of civilians at a predetermined time of all-night service can be a target for missiles, aircraft and artillery,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said in a statement issued Saturday morning. Earlier in the week, Metropolitan Epifaniy, the head of Ukraine’s Orthodox church, asked clergy to forgo night Easter services in areas of the country affected by fighting, fearing Russian bombardments. “It is hard to believe this will really happen, because the enemy is trying to completely destroy us,” he said in a televised speech. Both Ukrainians and Russians are predominantly Orthodox Christians. But long-simmering tensions between church leaders deepened in recent years. In 2019, the church in Ukraine, which had been subordinate to Moscow since 1686, was granted its independence. The war is now dividing the Orthodox faithful around the world. The Orthodox Easter service starts late on Saturday and goes into Sunday morning, when a traditional feast begins. Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter a week later than most other churches. “Already, many religious communities, with the blessing of their leaders, have decided to postpone Easter services,” the military said in its statement. “We urge priests and the faithful to follow such decisions and choose an alternative time of night for liturgies.” Marc Santora Bolstered by a growing arsenal of heavy weapons supplied by Western allies, Ukraine’s military has launched counteroffensives across their country’s northeast and claimed to have driven Russian forces out of several towns and villages. The Ukrainian military intelligence agency, however, warned on Saturday that Russia was completing efforts to regroup in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region and was probing Ukrainian defenses for weak points before launching a major offensive. It also said that some of the elite Russian fighters who had been engaged in the battle for the southern city of Mariupol are now being dispatched to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Russian forces control a swath of territory in eastern Ukraine in the shape of a crescent moon — with Izium in the Kharkiv province to the north, the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk to the east, and large parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions to the south. Russian forces are looking to advance from multiple directions, encircling tens of thousands of entrenched Ukrainian forces. Russia has so far failed to make any major territorial gains in eastern Ukraine since Moscow announced the start of its renewed offensive this past week, including in the last 24 hours, according to an assessment from Britain’s military’s intelligence agency. Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that it had taken back settlements around the cities of Kharkiv and Izium, while repelling Russian thrusts in Donetsk. Russian forces have also been unable to establish dominance in the air or on the sea, according to the British military intelligence agency’s assessment released on Saturday. While Russia has claimed victory in the besieged city of Mariupol — a port key to its goal of securing a land corridor between eastern Ukraine and the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula — a band of Ukrainian fighters remain blockaded inside a sprawling steel factory. The British intelligence agency said that “heavy fighting continues to take place, frustrating Russian attempts to capture the city, thus further slowing their desired progress in the Donbas.” The Donbas is the industrial territory that stretches across the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, bordering Russia. Since 2014, Russian proxies have controlled about a third of the territory, which is now serving as a springboard for part of the wider Russian offensive in the region. Most of the fighting over the past week has been for control of towns and villages directly on the front line — many of which were already devastated by weeks of war. Many of the five million people who have fled Ukraine over the past two months have come from urban centers in eastern Ukraine. Russia continued to pound civilian targets, Ukrainian officials said. Local leaders said several civilians were killed in overnight shelling in the Donetsk region. Moscow has shifted its focus to the Donbas after a failed attempt to seize Kyiv, the capital, in the north, where its military was beset by problems of logistics, tactics and morale. Those issues are likely to persist in the battle for Donbas, independent analysts say. Russia has suffered heavy losses in first two months of the war and military analysts have questioned if they have taken the time to properly regroup. The British intelligence agency said that any shift in Russian tactics would take time. “Therefore, in the interim there is likely to be a continued reliance on bombardment as a means of trying to suppress Ukrainian opposition to Russian forces,” according to the assessment. “As a result, it is likely that Russian forces will continue to be frustrated by an inability to overcome Ukrainian defenses quickly.” Ukrainian forces are also far better armed now than at the start of the war, with increasingly powerful weapons pouring into the country. The United States recently approved an additional $800 million assistance package and other nations — from regional neighbors like Slovakia, Poland and the Baltics to Canada — have started delivering heavier and longer-range weapons. They include tanks, howitzers, anti-aircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armed drones, armored trucks and personnel carriers. “I am grateful to all our partners who finally heard us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday. “We know for sure that with these weapons we will be able to save the lives of thousands of people.” Here’s how Russia wants to seize eastern Ukraine, its main objective in the war. Victoria Kim When a Russian commander said this week that gaining full control of southern Ukraine was one of the Kremlin’s military goals, he noted that doing so would give Russia “yet another point of access” to a little-known and internationally unrecognized breakaway republic known as Transnistria. The 250-mile sliver of land that largely runs along the eastern bank of the Dniester River is controlled by Moscow-backed separatists who broke away from Moldova, Ukraine’s neighbor to the southwest, in 1992. Here is a closer look at the enclave. The self-declared republic known as Transnistria, which formally calls itself the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, is the strip bordered mostly by the Dniester River on the west and Ukraine on the east.
