Putin Frames Illegal Annexation as Part of Existential Battle With West (original) (raw)
Putin’s speech on annexation paints a stark picture of a face-off with the West.
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President Vladimir V. Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow on Friday.Credit...Pool photo by Dmitry Astakhov
President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday asserted that Russia would take control of four Ukrainian regions and decried the United States for “Satanism” in a speech that marked an escalation in Moscow’s war against Ukraine and positioned Russia, in starkly confrontational terms, as fighting an existential battle with Western elites he deemed “the enemy.”
Speaking to hundreds of Russian lawmakers and governors in a grand Kremlin hall, Mr. Putin said that the residents of the four regions — which are still partially controlled by Ukrainian forces — would become Russia’s citizens “forever.” He then held a signing ceremony with the Russian-installed heads of those regions to start the official annexation process, before clasping hands with them and chanting “Russia! Russia!”
Mr. Putin’s address came against a backdrop of Russian embarrassments on the battlefield, where Ukraine’s forces have scored stunning victories in recent weeks in the east. Even as the Russian leader spoke, officials said the Ukrainian army had moved closer to encircling the Russian-occupied town of Lyman, a strategically important hub in the Donetsk region that lies inside the territory Mr. Putin is claiming.
Even by Mr. Putin’s increasingly antagonistic standards, the speech was extraordinary, a combination of bluster and menace that mixed conspiratorial riffs against the American-led “neocolonial system” with an appeal to the world to see Russia as the leader of an uprising against American power.
He referred to “the ruling circles of the so-called West” as “the enemy,” a word he rarely uses in reference to the West — and struck a tone of spiteful anger and defiance.
“Not only do Western elites deny national sovereignty and international law,” he said in the 37-minute address. “Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid.”
Western leaders have condemned Russia’s annexations as illegal, and the “referendums’’ that preceded them — purporting to show local support for joining Russia — as fraudulent. The Biden administration announced new sanctions in response to the Kremlin’s move.
President Biden was quick to denounce Mr. Putin’s actions to annex the four territories, saying they “have no legitimacy’’ and adding that “the United States will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.’’
Ukraine’s government has rebuffed Mr. Putin’s claims and vowed to retake territory captured by Russia in the east and south. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to Mr. Putin’s speech on Friday by announcing that he was fast-tracking his country’s application to the NATO alliance. In a video, he accused the Kremlin of trying to “steal something that does not belong to it.” “Ukraine will not allow that,” he said.
Mr. Putin insisted that Russia’s position on annexing the four territories was nonnegotiable, adding that the country would defend them “with all the forces and means at our disposal.”
“I call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire and all military action,” he said, and for the Ukrainian government “to return to the negotiating table.”
“But we will not discuss the decision of the people of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson,” he went on, referring to the four Ukrainian regions being annexed. “It has been made. Russia will not betray it.”
Mr. Putin cast the conflict with the West in even more severe terms than in previous speeches, reeling off centuries of Western military actions to denounce the American-led world order as fundamentally evil, corrupt and set on Russia’s destruction.
“The repression of freedom is taking on the outlines of a ‘reverse religion,’ of real Satanism,” Mr. Putin said, asserting that liberal Western values on matters like gender identity amounted to a “denial of man.”
But Mr. Putin offered few new details on the matter that is now perhaps of greatest concern in Western capitals — whether, and at what point, he may be prepared to use weapons of mass destruction to force Ukraine to capitulate. His spokesman said earlier in the day that after the annexation of the four regions — a move that virtually no other country is expected to recognize — an attack on those regions would be treated as an attack on Russia.
Without saying so directly, Mr. Putin hinted that the role of nuclear weapons in war is on his mind. Describing the West as “deceitful and hypocritical through and through,” Mr. Putin noted that the United States was the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war. He then added: “By the way, they created a precedent.”
Valerie Hopkins and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.
Biden declares the West will not be intimidated by Putin’s actions.
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President Biden said during a news conference at the White House on Friday that the world would not recognize Russia’s annexation efforts.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Biden warned Russia on Friday that the United States and its allies would not be intimidated by its latest actions in Ukraine and said that the world would not recognize the sham referendum that President Vladimir V. Putin staged to justify seizing Ukrainian land.
Speaking at a news conference at the White House, Mr. Biden said the United States and its allies would continue to support Ukraine with military equipment and aid. He warned that anyone who supported Russia’s fraudulent claims to Ukrainian territory would also be subject to economic sanctions.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Putin announced in a bellicose speech that Russia would annex four Ukrainian provinces it had invaded. The Russian leader cast the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against the United States and its allies. He accused America of “Satanism” and of trying to impose its culture on the rest of the world.
“He’s not going to scare us or intimidate us,” Mr. Biden said. “He can’t seize his neighbor’s land and get away with it.”
The president also said that Mr. Putin should not dare to take his fight into NATO territory, underscoring the unity among the alliance.
“America’s fully prepared with our NATO allies to defend every single inch of NATO territory, every single inch,” Mr. Biden said, adding: “Mr. Putin, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying.”
The United States has been investigating leaks that emerged in the Nord Stream gas pipeline and while Mr. Biden said it is not clear exactly what had happened, he believed the damage was the result of Russia’s actions. The United States, he said, is now helping European countries to protect their critical infrastructure.
“It was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies,” Mr. Biden said.
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New U.S. sanctions on Russia hit top officials and the defense and technology sectors.
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The Russian Central Bank headquarters in Moscow. Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is enacting a round of new sanctions aimed at further crippling Russia’s defense and technology sectors and other industries, as well as cutting off more top officials and their families from global commerce, to punish Moscow for its efforts to annex parts of eastern Ukraine.
The Treasury and Commerce Departments will impose sanctions and export controls on any companies, institutions or people who “provide political or economic support to Russia for its purported annexation,” White House officials said on Friday.
“Make no mistake: these actions have no legitimacy,” President Biden said in a statement. “I urge all members of the international community to reject Russia’s illegal attempts at annexation and to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said in a separate statement that “the United States unequivocally rejects Russia’s fraudulent attempt to change Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders”
“This is a clear violation of international law and the United Nations Charter,” he added. “In response, the United States and our allies and partners are imposing swift and severe costs.”
The moves fulfill longtime vows by the Biden administration to punish any move by Russia to annex captured Ukrainian territory. But just as those threats failed to deter President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, it is unclear whether the new penalties — which compound a slew of crushing sanctions imposed in recent months — will blunt his determination.
The Treasury Department said as part of the broad announcement that it is enacting sanctions against 14 international companies for supporting supply chains of the Russian military.
The Treasury Department is putting nearly 300 members of the Parliament on a sanctions list, along with Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina, the governor of the Central Bank of Russia; Olga Nikolaevna Skorobogatova, the first deputy governor of the bank; Aleksandr Valentinovich Nova, a deputy prime minister; and relatives of members of the National Security Council. U.S. agencies had already put Russian security council members on lists.
The State Department also is imposing visa restrictions on more than 900 Russian officials.
The Commerce Department is adding 57 entities from Russia and the Crimea region of Ukraine, which the Russian military forcibly occupied in 2014, to what it calls the entity list, which limits commercial transactions. Officials also plan to try to ensure that companies outside the United States are restricted in the business they can do with those on the list. The Commerce Department now has 392 entities linked to Russia on the list.
The Biden administration was not alone in announcing punitive measures in response to Russia’s illegal annexation.
Britain’s Foreign Office on Friday announced a series of sweeping new sanctions on key services and placed a ban on 700 goods “that are crucial to Russia’s industrial and technological capabilities.” It also put in place an asset freeze and travel ban for Ms. Nabiullina.
Mr. Biden said the United States would “continue to support Ukraine’s efforts to regain control of its territory by strengthening its hand militarily and diplomatically,” citing 1.1billioninnewsecurityaidhisadministrationannouncedforUkrainethisweek.HeaddedthatheanticipatedsigninglegislationfromCongress,inresponsetoaWhiteHouserequest,thatwillprovideanadditional1.1 billion in new security aid his administration announced for Ukraine this week. He added that he anticipated signing legislation from Congress, in response to a White House request, that will provide an additional 1.1billioninnewsecurityaidhisadministrationannouncedforUkrainethisweek.HeaddedthatheanticipatedsigninglegislationfromCongress,inresponsetoaWhiteHouserequest,thatwillprovideanadditional12 billion in U.S. aid for Ukraine.
Despite the latest announcement of sanctions, the Biden administration is still refraining from imposing new penalties on purchases by international companies of Russian oil and gas, the biggest source of revenue for the Kremlin. Russia has been making more money from energy sales than it did before Mr. Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, despite boycotts of purchases by the United States and major European nations. China, India and Turkey have negotiated discounted prices on Russian oil and increased their purchases.
U.S. officials have been discussing a price cap on Russian oil with foreign counterparts, and finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations recently voiced approval for such a move, but governments have yet to decide on final mechanisms or a price.
Megan Specia contributed reporting.
Europe and allies condemn Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory.
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Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, condemned Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s occupied territories on Friday and vowed to continue helping Ukraine until it defeats the aggressor.Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters
As President Vladimir V. Putin moved on Friday to take control of four Ukrainian regions, the European Union and NATO denounced Russia, saying they would never accept the illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory.
President Emmanuel Macron of France condemned Russia’s illegal annexation on Friday, calling it a “serious violation of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty.” Mr. Macron said on Twitter that France would “continue to stand by Ukraine to confront Russian aggression and allow Ukraine to recover its full sovereignty over its entire territory.”
The Kremlin’s effort to subsume Ukrainian territory has amplified the stakes for the West, as Mr. Putin again disregards the international order that has governed Europe for decades. Moscow’s gambit also appeared to have immediate consequences for the security calculus on the continent, with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announcing on Friday that his country was seeking fast-track membership of NATO. In a video, he accused the Kremlin of trying to “steal something that does not belong to it,” saying, “Ukraine will not allow that.”
Mr. Zelensky also signaled that negotiations with Mr. Putin had become untenable.
“It was our state that always offered Russia to reach an agreement on coexistence on equal, honest, decent and fair terms,” he said. “It is obvious that this is impossible with this Russian president. He does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but already with another president of Russia.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday evening, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, called Moscow’s action “an illegal and illegitimate land grab,” and vowed to continue helping Ukraine until it defeats Russia.
“If we let Putin win in Ukraine, it will be catastrophic for Ukraine,” he said. “Ukraine will cease to exist as an independent nation. But it will also be dangerous for us.”
Even among Russia’s traditional allies, no country has come forward to recognize the annexation. Uzbekistan — one of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia — issued a statement before Mr. Putin’s speech, saying it was committed to “respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the noninterference in the internal affairs of other states.”
President Maia Sandu of Moldova — another post-Soviet country that Moscow has tried to court — said she condemned and rejected “Russia’s attempt to illegally annex occupied regions” of Ukraine.
The European Union echoed Mr. Biden’s denunciation of Russia, saying that the bloc would never accept the annexation. The European Council, which is made up of the union’s government ministers, said in a statement that “the nuclear threats made by the Kremlin, the military mobilization and the strategy of seeking to falsely present Ukraine’s territory as Russia’s” would “not shake our resolve.”
The Council of Europe, the continent’s main institution governing human rights, also castigated Russia, saying that the annexation constituted a reckless breach of international law.
“The forcible change of international borders at the expense of another sovereign state, and the so-called ‘referenda’ that preceded it, constitute a grave breach of international law and cannot be recognized,” the organization said in a statement.
In March it suspended Russia from participating, saying that its invasion of Ukraine went against everything the Council stood for.
In Washington, President Biden said Mr. Putin’s actions “have no legitimacy,’’ condemning Russia’s “fraudulent attempt” to gobble sovereign land and stressing that the United States “will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”
In a statement, he added that Russia was “violating international law, trampling on the United Nations Charter, and showing its contempt for peaceful nations everywhere. ”
Monika Pronczuk and Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.
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Ukraine submits application to join NATO, with big hurdles ahead.
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A photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office of President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, leading a meeting on national security on Friday.Credit...Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, via Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine responded to Russia’s claims to have annexed four Ukrainian provinces by announcing that Ukraine is applying for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“We are taking our decisive step by signing Ukraine’s application for accelerated accession to NATO,” Mr. Zelensky said in a statement posted on the presidential website. He said Ukraine was cooperating closely with NATO and argued that Ukraine’s army has already helped secure alliance members in Europe against Russian aggression by inflicting battlefield defeats on the Russian army in Ukraine.
“It is in Ukraine that the fate of democracy in the confrontation with tyranny is being decided,” he said.
Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine’s application could be fast-tracked similarly to the applications of Sweden and Finland.
In Brussels, the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said that Ukraine, like every democracy in Europe, has the right to apply for membership in the alliance, but he cautioned that a decision about accepting a new member is taken by all 30 allied countries by consensus.
NATO’s immediate focus is to continue providing support to Ukraine, so it can “defend itself against the Russian brutal invasion,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.
Ukraine’s desire to join the alliance has long been a source of conflict with Russia, which sees the eastward expansion of NATO as a existential threat. President Vladimir V. Putin has said the expansion of NATO would leave Russia hemmed in with Western missiles on its doorstep, and it appeared to be one of the pretexts for his invasion.
In February, Mr. Zelensky stressed his country’s ambition to be admitted into NATO, an aspiration fixed in Ukraine’s Constitution since 2019. But by March, as war with Russia raged, Mr. Zelensky had backed down, signaling that his country needed to accept that it might never join.
Ukraine’s application to join NATO likely faces big hurdles — which the Ukrainian president appeared to acknowledge, noting that he was aware that admitting a country requires unanimous consent from all of NATO’s 30 members.
“We know it’s possible,” Mr. Zelensky said in his statement, pointing to the recent examples of Finland and Sweden undertaking the accession process. “This is fair,” he added. “This is also fair for Ukraine.”
There is no question that Ukraine would benefit from NATO’s defining credo, which says that “an armed attack” against any member is considered an attack against them all. But, as an alliance predicated on the doctrine of mutual defense, it would be highly unlikely to admit a country ensnared in war.
U.S. officials have said that they will not appease Mr. Putin by quashing Kyiv’s ambition to join the alliance. But Washington and its European allies have also been wary of further antagonizing Russia and risking a wider war, and it remains to be seen how Mr. Putin’s annexation of parts of Ukrainian territory may alter the alliance’s calculus.
France and Germany, among others, have in the past opposed or been skeptical of Ukraine’s inclusion. And analysts say that President Biden, wary of further U.S. military commitments, has also been reluctant to support Ukraine’s membership in the past.
Even if Ukraine could overcome those hurdles, it could face other challenges.
NATO observes an “open-door policy” that says that any European nation that wants to join can do so, if it meets certain requirements. Among them is demonstrating a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law. While Ukrainian leaders say their country meets that threshold, some American and European officials have argued otherwise.
Experts warned that Ukraine’s NATO membership at the moment seems elusive at best. The process could take at least several months, and even years.
“It will take time,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary general. “Until it happens, Ukraine needs cast-iron security guarantees from its allies.”
Monika Pronczuk in Brussels contributed reporting.
Ukraine says 30 people are dead in an attack on a civilian convoy in Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian soldiers at the scene of a Russian missile strike at the edge of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Friday.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched a flurry of rocket, drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian towns and cities overnight Thursday to Friday, creating scenes of destruction inside Ukraine as the Kremlin planned an elaborate, and widely rejected, annexation ceremony in Moscow.
The most lethal strike hit in Zaporizhzhia, one of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow plans to declare part of Russia on Friday as part of an annexation process that has been condemned by the West as a sham and came after a humiliating battlefield defeat. The attack killed at least 30 civilians who were waiting at a checkpoint and bus stop, and injured about 88, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. That would make it one of the deadliest single attacks against civilians in recent weeks.
Mr. Zelensky, in his nightly address, called the attack “deliberate and premeditated murder of Ukrainians,” adding that, “the Russian military knew where their missiles would hit.”
The wave of overnight strikes came as President Vladimir V. Putin declared regions where battles are raging — in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk — to be Russian territory. Moscow says it would then be defending rather than attacking the territory, its stated justification to use any means necessary, in a thinly veiled nuclear threat.
Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, called the missile strike in Zaporizhzhia “horrific news.”
“Amid its losses on the battlefield, Russia continues strikes on Ukrainian civilians, a further demonstration that Ukraine’s fight is not only a fight for freedom and sovereignty, but for survival,” she wrote on Twitter.
A strike also hit residential neighborhoods in Mykolaiv, killing at least three and wounding 19, the regional governor said. Russian strikes hit a bus depot in the city of Dnipro, and Ukraine’s military said that at least half a dozen Iranian-made kamikaze drones had been fired at targets in southern Ukraine.
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The strike killed at least 25 civilians at a checkpoint and bus stop, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, making it one of the deadliest attacks against Ukrainian civilians in recent weeks.CreditCredit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
The governor of Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Starukh, said a rocket had hit a convoy of cars lined up at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city. People in the convoy were waiting to be allowed into Russian-occupied territory to pick up relatives and deliver humanitarian aid, he said.
“All were civilians, our compatriots,” Mr. Starukh said in a message on the Telegram social media app. He declared Saturday a day of mourning.
Zaporizhzhia, a large regional center on the Dnipro River, is often the first port of call for civilians fleeing Russian-controlled territory further south, a place where they can find food and shelter before moving to other parts of the country, usually farther west away from the fighting.
But every day there are also long convoys of vehicles headed the other direction, into Russian-controlled territory. Those are typically people going to check on older relatives, and volunteers in trucks carrying humanitarian aid, particularly medicines, which are largely unavailable in occupied territories or can be purchased only at exorbitant prices.
Because the checkpoint at a highway crossing on the outskirts of town does not operate on a schedule, people line up early in the morning and sometimes wait all day for a chance to pass through, leading to long lines of vehicles.
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Putin’s bellicose speech had messages for myriad audiences.
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Crowds in Crimea watch Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s speech on Friday.Credit...Associated Press
The speech that Vladimir V. Putin gave to Russian lawmakers and governors on Friday asserting that Russia would take control of four Ukrainian regions reverberated far beyond the Kremlin’s walls. It was a display of belligerent defiance intended, it seemed, to appeal to three primary audiences.
To Russians, he sought to justify the expanding hardship his war has caused by insisting they were fighting for their survival. To the West, he telegraphed his determination that he was unbowed by sanctions or arms deliveries to Ukraine — and that Russia would keep fighting. Implicit in his message was a veiled but menacing threat that Moscow still has an enormous nuclear arsenal.
And to the rest of the world, Mr. Putin tried to cast himself as the leader of a global movement against “Western racists” that he claimed were imposing American hegemony upon the world. The West, he asserted, had not changed from centuries past, in which European powers brutally colonized impoverished countries and fought wars to gain economic advantage.
Western countries, he insisted, had “no moral right” to condemn the annexation of parts of Ukraine.
“The Western elites remain colonizers as they always were,” Mr. Putin said. “They have divided the world into their vassals — the so-called ‘civilized countries’ — and everyone else.”
Several hours after his speech, Mr. Putin appeared onstage at a concert and rally celebrating the annexation on Red Square outside the Kremlin. Russian news media reported that Moscow universities had directed students to attend.
Standing before St. Basil’s Cathedral below a banner that said “Russia!” and that was flanked with others reading “Choice of the people!” and “Together forever!,” Mr. Putin reprised his false historical narrative about Ukraine having been “created” by the Soviet Union and led the crowd in chanting “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”
Russian forces are partly encircled in the town of Lyman, a pro-Kremlin proxy leader says.
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Ukrainian military near the city of Lyman in east Ukraine, last week, as Ukrainian forces were trying to recapture the area.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Ukrainian forces appeared to have made progress toward recapturing Lyman, a rail hub in the country’s east, with the head of Russia’s proxy administration in the province saying on Friday that the town was “half encircled.”
“This is very unpleasant news, but we must look soberly at the situation and draw conclusions from our mistakes,” said Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
In another sign of Ukraine’s progress in the strategic town, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Telegram that Russian forces “will have to ask for an exit” from Lyman.
Control of the town is seen as a test of whether Ukraine can build on military gains made earlier in the month, but the exact status of the battle was not immediately clear.
Donetsk Province, where Russia holds significant territory, is one of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia is illegally annexing after staged referendums in recent days that Ukraine and Western governments have denounced as fraudulent. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday signed decrees to declare the four regions part of Russia.
Fighting for Lyman, which is in the northern part of Donetsk Province, has intensified over the last few weeks after Ukraine made a series of gains during a rapid counteroffensive in Kharkiv Province in the country’s northeast.
When Lyman fell to Russian forces in May, it presaged the capture weeks later of twin cities to the east of town. Those cities, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, succumbed to Russian forces who had maximized their superior firepower in helping Moscow to seize control of Luhansk Province, which together with neighboring Donetsk forms the Donbas.
If Ukraine were to recapture Lyman, it would not only increase the likelihood of regaining additional land in Luhansk and Donetsk but put additional pressure on the Kremlin.
Mr. Pushilin said on Telegram that Russia had also lost control of Yampil and Dobryshev, villages north and east of Lyman.
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Scientists are tracking the path of the plume of methane gas from the Nord Stream pipeline leaks.
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CreditCredit...By Integrated Carbon Observation System
The leaks from the Nord Stream undersea pipelines, hit by explosions in recent days, could be among the largest-ever human-caused releases of planet-warming methane gas into the atmosphere, scientists say — equal to the size of a whole year’s emissions from a city the size of Paris, or a country like Denmark.
Now, researchers at the Integrated Carbon Observation System, a Europe-wide research network that runs air monitoring stations across the continent have taken readings of methane gas from the leaks and combined them with weather and other atmospheric patterns to model the path of the plume. The gas curled its way north over the Baltic Sea to the Finnish archipelago before swinging west toward Sweden and Norway and reaching the British Isles.
The researchers say that the modeling is preliminary; it shows the emissions ending, for example, though methane continues to surge from the damaged pipelines, causing a mass of bubbles on the water’s surface. And estimating an exact reading of the amount of methane released is still tricky, said Alex Vermeulen, an atmospheric scientist who heads the European network’s carbon monitoring effort.
There was no direct safety or health risk to regions directly below the methane plume, Dr. Vermeulen said. Concentrations of methane at that point in time after the explosions would be far below levels where the gas would be explosive, or pose direct health hazards.
Still, the ground-based observations from measuring stations in Scandinavia and in the United Kingdom were proving valuable in tracking the release, especially because satellites, blocked by cloudy weather in the region, have struggled to get a clear picture of the leaks. GHGSat, a company that uses satellites to measure greenhouse gas emissions from space, said Friday that one of the leaks was releasing 23 tons of methane an hour — the equivalent of burning 630,000 tons of coal every hour.
Even a leak of this magnitude is just a fraction of overall global emissions. But methane is a particularly potent if short-lived greenhouse gas, warming the atmosphere about 30 times more than carbon dioxide over a period of 100 years, helping to worsen climate change. Just Thursday, scientists said that the oil and gas industry was likely releasing more methane into the atmosphere than previously estimated.
“All these leaks together, we have gas going into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate,” Dr. Vermeulen said. “That’s a big concern.”
In New York, the Russian consulate is vandalized with red paint hours before Putin’s speech.
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The Russian consulate in Manhattan was vandalized on Friday, according to the police.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
The Russian Consulate in New York was vandalized with spray paint early Friday morning, according to the police.
Officers responded to a 911 call about vandalism on the facade of the building, located on East 91st Street, just off Fifth Avenue, at about 1:30 a.m. on Friday, the police said.
No words were visible, just wide streaks of red paint sprawled across the ground floor facade of the building, covering windows and a set of double doors. But some on social media and a few people passing by interpreted the vandalism to be a protest of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
The vandalism appeared just hours before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia gave a belligerent speech in Moscow about the annexation of four regions in Ukraine.
Some of the people who stopped in front of the consulate on Friday morning expressed their support for Ukraine.
Maria Phillips, 39, who was born in what was then the Soviet Union and now lives is London, took photos of the scene.
“I feel moved by it,” she said. “It obviously stands for blood, which Russia is responsible for, killing Ukrainian people and sending people to die in the war, which is pointless and cruel and stupid.”
Marina Kovalenko, 57, a personal trainer who lives nearby, saw photos of the paint on social media and hurried over to catch a glimpse. To her, it was a work of art, and she commended the vandals and offered to bail them out if they were caught.
There have been no arrests, and the episode was deemed a possible bias incident, the police said.
“I always was thinking to spray the flag, but I’m short,” Ms. Kovalenko joked. “And I know it’s criminal.”
She said she moved to the United States from Russia 11 years ago, but her family remained there. She added that she thought the paint should remain until Russia’s government changed course.
“I wish I was brave enough to do it myself,” she said.
Julia Krushelnycky, a Ukrainian American senior at the Spence School across the street from the consulate, teared up as she surveyed the scene. She said it had been very difficult for her to attend school daily as the war grinds on.
“It’s very emotional to have this very visual representation of the Russian consulate every day, something a little bit tough for me,” she said.
The Russian consulate referred questions about the incident to the U.S. State Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A sign on the consulate’s door said all appointments were canceled for the day.
A correction was made on
Oct. 3, 2022
:
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Ukrainian American senior at Spence School. Her name is Julia Krushelnycky, not Julia Krushelnysky.
— Karen Zraick and Mable Chan
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What to know about Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian provinces.
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A local resident rides past an abandoned Russian tank in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit...Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
President Vladimir V. Putin declared on Friday that some 40,000 square miles of eastern and southern Ukraine would become part of Russia — an annexation broadly denounced by the West, but a signal that the Russian leader is raising the stakes in the seven-month-old war.
The Russian leader spoke in the chandeliered St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace — the same place where he declared in March 2014 that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was part of Russia.
“This is the will of millions of people,” he said before signing decrees to declare four Ukrainian regions part of Russia. “This is their right, their inalienable right.”
Here is what we know:
What is Russia proposing?
Russia says it is annexing four provinces — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — in the south and the east of Ukraine where intense fighting continues. Moscow hastily put the plan in motion after a humiliating battlefield defeat drove the Russian Army out of another province, Kharkiv, in early September and the Ukrainian advance appeared to be gathering force.
The move sets the stage for the Kremlin to assert that it is defending, not attacking, in the war in Ukraine — and so it is justified to use any military means necessary, a thinly veiled nuclear threat. Annexing the provinces could be used as a rationale for drafting Ukrainian men living there to fight other Ukrainians in the war, helping to solve a shortage of troops in the Russian Army.
Why does the international community oppose it?
The United States, its European allies and many other countries oppose Russia’s nuclear saber rattling and say that allowing a country to capture new territory militarily sets a destabilizing precedent. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, an article published by the Council on Foreign Relations observed that Russia, a member of the United Nations, was violating the United Nations Charter, which requires that U.N. member states refrain from the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Western allies of Ukraine say the supposed referendums showing support for uniting with Russia were a sham, as some residents of occupied areas were forced to vote at gunpoint, and a large portion of the population had fled as internally displaced people or refugees. The final tallies could also have easily been falsified.
How much land in the regions do the Russians control?
Much of the territory Russia is is claiming as its territory is occupied by the Russian army already. Russia captured and set up client states controlling about a third of two provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, in a war that began in 2014. Its military advanced into the other two provinces, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, in the invasion that began in February.
The front lines have shifted in fierce, seesaw fighting over the seven months of the war, with Russia mostly losing ground. The Russian army now controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions and about half of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. Thousands of square miles of territory and hundreds of cities, towns and villages are now under firm Ukrainian control in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, including the capital of one province, the city of Zaporizhzhia.
How is Ukraine responding?
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his ministers and commanders say they will continue their fight to expel the Russian Army from Ukraine, regardless of whether Moscow calls parts of their country Russia.
What is the process, and what comes next?
The Kremlin is using pageantry and a show of adhering to Russian legal formalities to give the annexation a veneer of legitimacy. A rally was planned on Red Square on Friday to celebrate. The proxy leaders of the four provinces traveled to Moscow and appealed to Mr. Putin to accept their regions as part of Russia.
If the process follows the template laid down in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, Mr. Putin will submit a draft law to Russia’s Parliament proposing to expand the country’s borders.
The constitutional court will then review the proposal and both chambers vote on it. There should be no surprises: All members of Parliament are loyal to Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin would then sign the law on accession and claim the new territory.
For a deaf family in Ukraine, the bombs came without warning.
SALTIVKA, Ukraine — In her rundown apartment building on the edge of Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine, Antonina Andriyenko felt the vibrations but couldn’t hear the explosions when Russia invaded in late February. She knew something was happening only when her panicked neighbors rushed to leave.
“At first I thought it was an earthquake,” said Ms. Andriyenko, 74, who is deaf and lives with her 48-year-old daughter, Tanya, who is deaf and autistic. In an interview through a sign language interpreter, Ms. Andriyenko described the fear and confusion as the Russian forces pounded the city.
“We were afraid to sleep. We stayed in a corner hiding,” she said. “The windows were breaking.”
Like others with disabilities, for the estimated 40,000 deaf and hearing-impaired Ukrainians, the war is particularly dangerous and difficult to navigate. While several thousand deaf Ukrainians have been evacuated to safer areas or neighboring countries, Ms. Andriyenko was among the many more who remained.
She and her daughter were among only a handful of residents left in her 72-unit building in a heavily damaged apartment complex in Saltivka, a suburb on the northern edge of Kharkiv. She said that the remaining neighbors watched out for them.
Saltivka, with its sprawling Soviet-era apartment blocks, is just 20 miles from the border with Russia and took the brunt of the initial assault. Attacks and counterattacks continued for months.
Kharkiv is calmer now, but anxiety has not completely disappeared. Russia is still sending occasional rockets into the area amid reports that it is also massing troops along the border.
One day in July, Ms. Andriyenko, an outgoing woman who gestures animatedly and communicates by writing simple notes in Russian, was standing outside her apartment. Not far away, the sound of shells could be felt as well as heard. Muffled shrieks came from inside.
“Sometimes she screams, and I don’t know why,” Ms. Andriyenko said, referring to her daughter.
After the invasion, Ms. Andriyenko said, neighbors wrote her a note telling her that she and her daughter should leave.
“We stayed because we didn’t know where to go,” Ms. Andriyenko said. “We didn’t have any information.”
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E.U. ministers approve taxes on energy profits to support struggling households.
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Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for energy, and Deputy Prime Minister Jozef Sikela of the Czech Republic at a news conference after a European Union Energy Ministers meeting on high energy prices, in Brussels, on Friday.Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters
BRUSSELS — Energy ministers in the European Union agreed on Friday to tax the profits of energy companies as part of a set of emergency measures aimed at softening the impact of soaring energy prices on businesses and consumers.
Europe’s energy crisis, aggravated by Russia’s periodically cutting off parts of the bloc’s energy supply to punish it for supporting Ukraine, has led to historically high heating and electricity bills in the 27-member bloc.
Last month, tens of thousands of Europeans took to the streets in at least four countries — the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Belgium — to protest against spiraling energy prices and record inflation. With winter approaching, governments have been under mounting pressure to shield Europeans from blackouts and bankruptcy, while at the same time ensuring a continued energy flow from alternative suppliers.
The measures approved by the bloc’s energy ministers focused on taxing energy-company profits — the proceeds of which would be used to fund subsidies for struggling businesses and households — and a mandatory reduction in electricity consumption. But the ministers stopped short of introducing a cap on the price of gas — a more radical measure sought by several members of the bloc that proponents say would not just help consumers foot their energy bills, but would also bring those bills down.
“Today we have completed yet another part of the puzzle, but definitely not the last one,” Jozef Sikela, the energy minister from the Czech Republic who led the negotiations on the legislation, told reporters on Friday. “We are in an energy war with Russia, which also strongly affects our industry. Further and coordinated E.U. action is needed.”
The energy ministers gathered in Brussels on Friday agreed to a cap on revenues of nuclear and renewable energy suppliers at 180permegawatt−hour,aswellasa“solidarity”taxonfossilfuelcompanies.Together,theleviedtaxesareexpectedtobringaround180 per megawatt-hour, as well as a “solidarity” tax on fossil fuel companies. Together, the levied taxes are expected to bring around 180permegawatt−hour,aswellasa“solidarity”taxonfossilfuelcompanies.Together,theleviedtaxesareexpectedtobringaround140 billion, which would be channeled into subsidies. And for the first time in its history, the bloc mandated a politically sensitive reduction in energy consumption.
Those steps would have been inconceivable mere months ago, but winter is fast approaching. The urgency of the crisis was underscored this week when leaks were discovered in gas pipelines connecting Russia with Germany that European officials blamed on sabotage, highlighting the fragility of its infrastructure.
The measures approved on Friday do not go far enough for some E.U. nations. In a letter to the bloc’s executive arm earlier this week, energy ministers from 15 out of 27 member nations called for a general cap on the price of gas — which wealthier states such as Germany and the Netherlands oppose.
The cap on gas prices, they said in the letter to the commission, is “the one measure” to “mitigate the inflationary pressure, manage expectations and provide a framework in case of potential supply disruptions, and limit the extra profits in the sector.”
Some experts, however, have warned such a measure could backfire.
“Any intervention aimed at capping energy prices entails the risk of removing a key incentive — high prices — to reduce demand, making Europe worse off,” said Simone Tagliapietra of Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic research institution. “Europe needs to prepare for a new normal without Russian gas. Next spring, to get the 150 billion cubic meters of gas we need, we have to maximize imports from alternative supplies and keep demand lower.”
He added: “Any measure we adopt today should not compromise our ability to do that.”
The Pentagon plans to set up a new command to arm Ukraine, officials say.
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Ukrainian soldiers heading toward the front line near Kramatorsk, in the country’s east, in May. The Pentagon has committed more than $16 billion in military aid to Ukraine.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is preparing to overhaul how the United States and its allies train and equip the Ukrainian military, reflecting what officials say is the Biden administration’s long-term commitment to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The proposal would streamline a training and assistance system that was created on the fly after the Russian invasion in February. The system would be placed under a single new command based in Germany that would be led by a high-ranking U.S. general, according to several military and administration officials.
Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the top American officer in Europe, recently presented a proposal outlining the changes to Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, the officials said. Mr. Austin and his top aides are reviewing the plan and are likely to make a final decision in the coming weeks, senior U.S. officials said, adding that the White House and the Pentagon favored the approach. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential discussions.
Just as the Pentagon has committed more than $16 billion in military aid to Ukraine — a combination of immediate shipments from stockpiles as well as contracts for weapons to be delivered over the next three years — the new command signals that the United States expects the threat from Russia to Ukraine and its neighbors to persist for many years, current and former senior U.S. officials said.
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Intercepted calls reveal the Russian army in disarray.
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The New York Times exclusively obtained recordings of thousands of calls that were intercepted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.Credit...The New York Times
KYIV — The Ukrainian capital was supposed to fall in a matter of days. But plagued by tactical errors and fierce Ukrainian resistance, President Vladimir V. Putin’s destructive advance quickly stalled, and his forces became bogged down for most of March on the city’s outskirts.
From trenches, dugouts and in occupied homes in the area around Bucha, a western suburb of Kyiv, Russian soldiers disobeyed orders by making unauthorized calls from their cellphones to their wives, girlfriends, friends and parents hundreds of miles from the front line.
Someone else was listening in: the Ukrainian government.
The New York Times has exclusively obtained recordings of thousands of calls that were made throughout March and intercepted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies from this pivotal location.
The calls, made by dozens of fighters from airborne units and Russia’s National Guard, have not previously been made public and give an inside view of a military in disarray just weeks into the campaign. The soldiers describe a crisis in morale and a lack of equipment, and say they were lied to about the mission they were on — all conditions that have contributed to the recent setbacks for Russia’s campaign in the east of Ukraine.
The conversations range from the mundane to the brutal, and include blunt criticisms of Mr. Putin and military commanders, remarks that may be punishable under Russian law if they were publicly expressed at home. The Times is using only the first names of the soldiers, and is withholding the names of family members in order to protect their identities.
Produced by Rumsey Taylor and Matt Ruby. Translations by Aleksandra Koroleva and Oksana Nesterenko.
Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman comes a day after Putin said he was annexing the region.
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Ukrainian soldiers near the city of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region last week.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
RIVNE, Ukraine — Russian forces withdrew from the strategic eastern city of Lyman on Saturday, a significant setback for Moscow just a day after President Vladimir V. Putin declared that the region where it lies was now part of Russia.
The battle for Lyman, a city in Donetsk Province with a prewar population of 20,000, is particularly poorly timed for the Kremlin, coming shortly after Mr. Putin illegally declared the annexation of four regions in Ukraine where battles are still raging and a month after Kyiv’s victories in the country’s northeast.
The loss of the rail hub puts additional pressure on the Kremlin, which has been facing blowback at home over its losses on the battlefield and over the conscription of hundreds of thousands of men to fight in Ukraine.
Hours after Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said its forces were entering the city, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it had made the decision to pull out of Lyman. The withdrawal staved off a potential worst-case scenario for the Kremlin in which Russian troops were trapped.
“Due to the risk to be encircled, the allied forces were withdrawn” from the city to “more advantageous” locations, the ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Earlier, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry had posted a video on Twitter showing two soldiers unfurling the country’s yellow-and-blue flag at a sign marking the city limits. The army “will always have the decisive vote in today’s and any future ‘referendums,’” it added in a pointed reference to the discredited votes taken to justify the annexation.
A senior Ukrainian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Lyman was “already liberated.”
“A mop-up is ongoing,” the official said. “The Russians have nowhere to run.”
Last month’s sweeping and successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s northeast sent Russian soldiers in full retreat, leaving Moscow’s troops in Lyman isolated and severed from their supply lines.
But that Ukrainian victory came at a cost: Russian forces managed to rush troops to Lyman, fighting viciously for the city amid Mr. Putin’s new territorial claims in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Lyman, which fell to the Russians in May, serves as a rail hub that flows into Donbas, the mineral rich region in the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk provinces that has long been the focus of Mr. Putin’s war aims.
Ukraine’s ability to recapture Lyman is the most significant proof yet that Russia’s ability to control the Donbas is anything but certain.
With Lyman under Ukrainian control, the battle for the Donbas enters a new phase. The city’s recapture means that Ukraine’s troops have gained a new foothold in the region and are positioned to claw back territory before winter sets in.
The next target, if the Ukrainian military continues its advance, would likely be Svatove, a city northeast of Lyman where Russians have retrenched, according to analysts.
Russia’s military, depleted and losing ground, is likely to be faced with a decision that involves shuttling resources from other parts of the front to slow Ukraine’s advance or continuing to lose chunks of the Donbas.
Some of the nearest Russian reinforcements are roughly 25 miles to the southeast, around the city of Bakhmut. Wagner Group, an infamous paramilitary unit that reports directly to the Kremlin, has battered the Ukrainian defenders there but has failed to seize significant parts of the city.
Ukraine’s slow-moving offensive in the south toward the port city of Kherson has largely been overshadowed by events in the east. But fighting there remains fierce as better-trained Russian forces have put up staunch resistance against advancing Ukrainian troops.
Michael Schwirtz, Anton Troianovski and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.