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Daily Briefing: War in UkraineRussia Says It Is Willing to Extend Grain Deal With Ukraine
Follow live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war.
GENEVA — The United Nations continued on Tuesday to try to broker a deal that would allow Ukraine to keep exporting its grain past Russian naval vessels blockading the Black Sea, after Moscow said it would extend the agreement only for 60 days, rather than the 120 sought by Kyiv.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative has been a rare example of cooperation between the warring countries, allowing Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest exporters of grain and other food crops, to revive shipments that stalled when Russia launched its full-scale invasion a year ago. When the deal was first signed last July, the United Nations said it would help to alleviate hunger faced by millions of people.
Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said on Twitter on Monday that Russia’s stance would contradict the initial agreement, which said that any extension to the deal would last a minimum of 120 days.
The agreement, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, was renewed for 120 days in November, with an agreement reached three days before its previous expiration date. It is set to expire again on Saturday.
Talks about a further extension began in Geneva on Monday, and further talks were taking place on Tuesday. Russian officials had indicated that they were not satisfied because Moscow has faced difficulties in exporting its own agricultural products.
Sergei Vershinin, a deputy foreign minister, said in a statement after talks with U.N. officials, which he described as “comprehensive and frank,” that Moscow’s stance “will be determined upon the tangible progress on normalization of our agricultural exports, not in words, but in deeds. Russia “does not object to” an extension of the deal, “but only for 60 days,” Mr. Vershinin said.
The United Nations said that it had taken note of Russia’s 60-day proposal but was committed to preserving “the integrity” of the original 120-day deal. Consultations continue “with all parties, at various levels,” Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N.’s aid coordination agency, told reporters in Geneva.
The U.N. has reported that the agreement has allowed more than 23 million tons of grain to reach world markets. The deal helped to stabilize — and then lower — global food prices that had soared after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The agreement also provided for unobstructed exports of agricultural products and fertilizers to world markets, a critical step toward preventing a calamitous decline in global food production at a time when climate disasters are aggravating shortages that are causing millions of people to live in acute hunger.
The grain deal was also critical for Ukraine, given the importance of its agricultural exports to its economy and the fact that overland alternatives for grain exports had proved unsatisfactory.
“Last year, the heroic efforts of our farmers and all workers in the agricultural sector made it possible to preserve Ukrainian agricultural production and Ukraine’s global role as a guarantor of food security,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an overnight speech.
Mr. Vershinin, airing the Kremlin’s complaints, said that while Ukraine’s food exports were running smoothly, Western sanctions had compromised Russian agricultural exports. The exemptions to those sanctions announced by the United States, Britain and the European Union, he said, were “essentially inactive.”
Russia has pushed for months to resume exporting ammonia through a pipeline across Ukraine, to the Black Sea port of Odessa. But Kyiv, in exchange for its consent to that proposal, has countered with a prisoner-of-war swap.
In the meantime, despite Western sanctions exemptions for their agricultural goods, Russian companies said they have run into problems of over-compliance by Western banks, insurance providers and shipping companies that have continued to refuse to work with them.
Russian forces have stepped up their shelling of Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, as Moscow attempts to mount a broader offensive against a heavily defended front line in the Donbas region.
While the battle for the city of Bakhmut has become the main focus of Russian attempts to secure territory in the region, Avdiivka is one of several areas where Moscow is intensifying its attacks along the 160-mile, crescent-shaped front line in the east, Ukrainian officials say.
For weeks, Russia has thrown tens of thousands of soldiers into battles up and down eastern Ukraine in an attempt to drive the Ukrainians out of well-fortified positions. The deadliest fighting has been in and around Bakhmut, where both sides are trying to degrade the other in a monthslong battle of attrition, but the Ukrainian military’s General Staff is routinely reporting more than 100 attempts by Russian forces to break through their defensive lines each day.
Eastern Ukraine
RUSSIA
30 MILES
Kupiansk
UKRAINE
LUHANSK
Lyman
Bakhmut
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Many of the individual battles relate as much to key roads and supply lines as to control over now devastated towns and villages. The length of the battle for Avdiivka illustrates how difficult it has been for Russian forces to take further ground in the east, where both armies have established significant defenses and Ukraine has reinforced its positions.
Russian troops fired two shells at an abandoned school in the town on Monday, killing a local woman, according to a post by Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s president’s office, on the social messaging app Telegram. He posted two photographs of a three-story building that had been reduced to rubble. Russian forces also fired three other artillery rounds at the town, according to the head of the regional Ukrainian military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, writing on Telegram.
There was no independent confirmation of the reports. The town had a population of 31,000 before the war, but almost all its inhabitants have fled. Mr. Kyrylenko said that Russia also shelled nearby communities.
Mr. Kyrylenko said Russia’s attacks included the use of cluster munitions, which rights groups say can disproportionately harm civilians. His account could not be independently confirmed.
The Ukrainian General Staff said in a daily report that its forces had repelled attacks in the town itself as well as in at least five nearby settlements. The attacks form a pattern of destruction, according to other officials.
Russia “has been massively hitting the villages near and on the way to the town over the past week,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka’s military administration, said on Ukrainian television over the weekend.
“These villages are being erased,” Mr. Barabash said. He said Russian forces appeared to be “trying to cut off Avdiivka, disrupt the logistics, the delivery of personnel and ammunition,” probably in the belief that the town housed “a lot of personnel, our guys.” He added that Russian fighters had targeted a road that runs from a big industrial plant into the town.
Videos and photographs from Avdiivka posted on social media in recent weeks showed a town devastated by shelling, even by the standards of other hard-hit places in a region where fighting has raged since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago. In one, a fire burned in a deserted industrial building, a large crater stood in a street full of debris and dozens of houses and many apartment blocks had windows blown out. Even trees appeared blackened. The material had not been confirmed independently.
Pro-Russian separatists occupied Avdiivka for a few months in 2014, when Moscow illegally annexed Crimea and set up breakaway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk, the two provinces that make up Donbas. Ukrainian forces drove the separatists out of Avdiivka in July of that year.
Over the weekend, The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, reported a Russian claim that Moscow’s forces had taken Sjeverne and Kamianka, settlements east and west of Avdiivka. The Ukrainian military denied the claims, and there was no independent confirmation.
The State of the War
- On the Front Lines: From Kupiansk to Bakhmut, Russian forces are attacking along a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine in an intensifying struggle for tactical advantage before possible spring offensives.
- Plotting a Political Advance: Recent statements by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, suggest he wants to move past his standing as a military leader and play a larger role in Russian society.
- War Crime Cases: The International Criminal Court intends to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The cases accuse Russia of abducting Ukrainian children and of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure.
- Ukrainian Refugees in the U.S.: The Biden administration said that thousands of Ukrainians who fled to the United States in the first months of the war would be eligible to extend their stay.
The authoritarian leader of Belarus, a staunch Kremlin ally, welcomed an “upgrade” in relations with Iran during a state visit to Tehran on Monday, Belarusian state media reported, as both countries grapple with Western sanctions and greater scrutiny tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus has emulated Russia’s moves to strengthen ties with countries such as Iran and China, as the United States and European allies enforce sanctions over his support for Moscow’s invasion. His trip to Tehran came as U.S. officials warned about deepening military cooperation between Russia and Iran, an important source of drones and other weapons for Moscow in the yearlong war.
Officials across the Western alliance have said that they are convinced that Iran, Russia and Belarus, all isolated by American-led sanctions, are building a new alliance of convenience.
But Iran’s warm welcome of Mr. Lukashenko on Monday also likely aims to publicly demonstrate that, despite monthslong internal turmoil and opposition — and Western efforts to isolate it — Iran still can court engagement.
Mr. Lukashenko, who met with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing this month, arrived in Iran on Sunday night. After a welcome ceremony featuring national anthems and an honor guard, Mr. Lukashenko and President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran sat down on Monday for talks at the presidential palace. In remarks carried by state media, both men brushed off the isolation measures imposed by the West.
“The Iranian president and I agree that sanctions are a time of opportunities,” Mr. Lukashenko said, praising Iran’s ability to “resist external pressure,” according to the Belarusian state news agency Belta. Mr. Raisi echoed that message and said Tehran was “ready to share its experiences” in countering the penalties’ impact, Iran’s state-run IRNA reported.
Mr. Lukashenko said he gave Mr. Raisi “a lot of credit” for improving bilateral relations over the past two years, noting that his own focus on Iran had at one point “somewhat weakened.”
“I often think about this and assume that we were meant to live through this period, a period of a less intense relationship,” Mr. Lukashenko said, according to Belta. “Yet, during this period, we realized how much we needed each other, how closely we should cooperate.”
Mr. Lukashenko emphasized that point in an afternoon meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying that “the current difficult international situation has shown us who our true and fake friends are.”
“We are determined to have special cooperation with our real partners,” Mr. Lukashenko added, according to IRNA
Ayatollah Khamenei also suggested that taking on sanctions should be an area of cooperation between Iran and Belarus.
“The countries that have been sanctioned by the United States must cooperate with each other and form a joint assembly to destroy the weapon of sanctions,” he said during the meeting, IRNA reported. “We believe that such a thing is achievable.”
Belta reported on Monday that Mr. Lukashenko and Mr. Raisi had signed a “comprehensive road map for all-around cooperation between Belarus and Iran” but did not provide further details. Trade between Iran and Belarus has been growing. It tripled to $100 million in 2022 from $33 million in 2021, according to Belta, but the figures represent a small fraction of Belarus’s trade with other countries with which it enjoys less friendly relations, such as neighboring Poland.
Mr. Lukashenko has been almost wholly reliant on Russia since the Kremlin helped him crush street protests in August 2020 after he claimed an improbable landslide victory in an election whose outcome was widely contested. He depends on subsidized Russian oil and gas, preferential access to the Russian market and Russian security assistance to maintain his 28-year rule.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said on Monday that thousands of Ukrainians who fled to the United States in the first months after Russia invaded their country would be eligible to extend their stay, as the war in Ukraine continues into a second year.
About 25,000 Ukrainians and their family members who came into the country through Mexico at a U.S. port of entry between Feb. 24 and April 25 last year were allowed to stay for a year. The Department of Homeland Security said it would consider one-year extensions for that group.
LONDON — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain described China on Monday as an “epoch-defining challenge” to the international order, as his government published an updated security review that toughened its stance toward Beijing while underscoring the threats posed by Russia and Iran.
The document was ordered last year to revise policy in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, something that was not foreseen by the previous version, which had relatively little to say on European security challenges.
“From Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine to China’s growing economic coercion, the world is becoming more dangerous,” Mr. Sunak’s office wrote on Twitter. “The UK is responding.”
The updated review described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as one of Moscow’s “assaults on European security,” and said that “the threat from Iran has increased,” as demonstrated by its advancing nuclear program, the country’s destabilizing behavior and threats against individuals in Britain who oppose the government in Tehran.
“As threats and volatility increase, we recognize the growing importance of deterrence and defense to keep the British people safe and our alliances strong,” Mr. Sunak wrote in the foreword to the updated review.
Two developments of “particular concern,” he wrote, were China’s deepening partnership with Russia and Russia’s growing cooperation with Iran following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Sunak pledged an additional 5 billion pounds, roughly $6.1 billion, in spending on defense over the next two years. He also repeated a promise to increase resources for the military to the equivalent of 2.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, but without giving a precise time frame for doing so.
The updated review failed to satisfy some hard liners within Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party, including a former leader, Iain Duncan Smith, who questioned whether the new policy defined the government in Beijing as a threat.
There was also criticism from some lawmakers campaigning for greater military spending. Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the House of Commons Defense Committee, appealed for a rapid push to spend 2.5 percent of G.D.P. on defense.
“We are sliding toward a new Cold War,” Mr. Ellwood said in Parliament, “threats are increasing, yet here we are, staying on a peacetime budget.”
THE BATTLE: Ukraine regained control over Kupiansk, which lies about 50 miles from the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine, in the fall, along with a string of other towns and villages across the Kharkiv region. Russia deployed three major divisions to the area and ramped up its attacks in early February, according to Ukrainian officials, but has failed to break through the Ukrainian defensive lines.
WHAT’S CHANGED: While Russia has largely failed to advance, it has stepped up shelling of civilian targets in the area, prompting a Ukrainian official to state over the weekend that Kupiansk was experiencing the “hottest” fighting in the region. The Ukrainian authorities have ordered a mandatory evacuation of all civilians from Kupiansk. On Monday, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration said that shelling continued in Kupiansk and other border districts, but that no civilians had been killed.
President Emmanuel Macron of France met on Monday in Paris with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary — a dinner between one of the most vocal supporters of the European Union and one of its strongest detractors. Both leaders are also at odds over support for Ukraine.
The French presidency said after the dinner that it was “an opportunity to reaffirm the need for unity among European countries in their support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, particularly through the strict application of sanctions against Russia.”
“Navalny,” a film that followed the imprisoned Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny as he investigated his own near-fatal poisoning in 2020, won the Oscar for best documentary feature on Sunday, with Mr. Navalny’s wife and daughter appearing onstage to deliver a message of defiance.
Accepting the award, the Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher spoke out against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and said he was there “because Aleksei Navalny right now is languishing in a gulag six and a half hours outside of Moscow, and I want to remind the world that he is there.”
He then handed the microphone to Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya.
“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth,” she said. “My husband is in prison just for defending democracy.”
Ms. Navalnaya continued, directly addressing Mr. Navalny: “I am dreaming of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.”
The focus on Mr. Navalny came during Hollywood’s most high-profile annual event, with last year’s telecast attracting 15.4 million viewers. The other family member to appear at the awards ceremony, Mr. Navalny’s 21-year-old daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, told the Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in February that she saw the documentary as a “‘get out of death’ card,” in that international attention to his plight would reduce the risk of him being killed in prison.
The documentary, which was an NYT Critic’s Pick, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2022. That February, Mr. Putin began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In March, a Russian court sentenced Mr. Navalny to nine years in a high-security prison on charges of embezzling donations from supporters; he had already been in prison on separate charges of violating the terms of his parole from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Europe’s top human rights court ruled that his numerous arrests between 2012 and 2014 were politically motivated.
Both sentences were internationally seen as efforts to keep the opposition leader and one of Mr. Putin’s most prominent critics, one who had been seen as an international symbol of resistance to Mr. Putin, behind bars.
Mr. Navalny said in November that he had been transferred permanently to solitary confinement, limiting his interaction with the outside world.
In the film “Navalny,” the dissident extracted a recorded confession from a man he had suspected was involved in the August 2020 poisoning. White House officials said American intelligence agencies concluded that Russian security police agents poisoned Mr. Navalny. There is substantial evidence that the Kremlin was responsible for the attack.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said Monday that awarding the Oscar to “Navalny” showed “an element of politicization,” according to Russia’s state news agency, Tass. Mr. Peskov said he had not seen the film.
The International Criminal Court intends to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will seek arrest warrants for several people, according to current and former officials with knowledge of the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The cases represent the first international charges to be brought forward since the start of the conflict and come after months of work by special investigation teams. They allege that Russia abducted Ukrainian children and teenagers and sent them to Russian re-education camps, and that the Kremlin deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure.
The chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, must first present his charges to a panel of pretrial judges who will decide whether the legal standards have been met for issuing arrest warrants, or whether investigators need more evidence.
The Kremlin has denied accusations of war crimes, but international and Ukrainian investigators have gathered powerful evidence of an array of atrocities since the invasion’s early days.
Some outside diplomats and experts said it was possible that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could be charged, as the court does not recognize immunity for a head of state in cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
Still, the likelihood of a trial remains slim, experts say, as the court cannot hear cases in absentia and Russia is unlikely to surrender its own officials.
THE BATTLE: A Ukrainian counteroffensive in the fall forced Russian troops to retreat from the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman and take up new positions about 15 miles away. While Russian forces have launched assaults in the direction of Lyman for weeks, they have failed to make significant progress.
WHAT’S CHANGED: Russia stepped up its assaults in the area in early February but after more than a month, it has made little in the way of territorial gains while absorbing heavy casualties. Still, in recent days, Ukrainian officials have reported heavy Russian shelling along the roughly 50-mile stretch from Lyman north to the town of Kupiansk. “For several weeks in a row, this area has been the leader in terms of artillery” and shelling from multiple-launch rocket systems, Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern command, said over the weekend.
WHY IT MATTERS: Lyman is about 30 miles northwest of Bakhmut and is a critical railway juncture, serving as an important supply hub on the western edge of the Ukrainian region known as Donbas. Recapturing it is key for Moscow’s objective of gaining full control of Donbas, although military analysts say that Russian forces’ failure to advance there underscores the challenges they face in achieving that goal.
Eastern Ukraine
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Kupiansk
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MOSCOW — He cuts the figure of a typical leather-wearing pop star heartthrob. He has a fan base of young and middle-aged women who bring him flowers and stuffed animals when he performs. But Yaroslav Y. Dronov, better known by his stage name, Shaman, is also beloved by an exclusive and powerful Russian fan base: the Kremlin.
The young singer’s star has been rising as the war in Ukraine continues into a second year and Mr. Dronov aligns his music with Moscow’s party line. When Vladimir V. Putin staged a patriotic rally last month coinciding with the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Mr. Dronov performed “Vstanem,” or “Let’s Rise,” a ballad of gratitude to veterans, just before the Russian president came onstage.
Two separate incidents of exploding mines left five injured and one dead in the southern Kherson region, officials said, offering chilling examples of the widespread danger posed by explosives littered across the country.
Four bomb disposal experts and a civilian were injured during a defusing operation in the village of Posad-Pokrovske, a statement from the Kherson military administration said on Monday. The victims were hospitalized.
Separately, another resident of the Kherson region was killed by an anti-tank mine, which exploded in a field as he was driving his car, the statement said.
Although Russian troops who once occupied the region were largely pushed out last fall, they left a colossal array of explosives behind, some abandoned and others rigged as traps. The HALO Trust, a global mine-clearing organization, estimates that mines and explosives may have contaminated a territory the size of Britain.
President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the danger posed by unexploded mines in his nightly address on Monday. He said that his office is exploring how demining operations can be sped up across the country.
“As of now, more than 170,000 square kilometers of our territory remain dangerous because of enemy mines and unexploded ordnance,” he said. “A significant part of this territory is the land of our farmers, the land that has been cultivated.”
Mines and cluster bombs often hide in fields, where they can be camouflaged easily. The region’s farmers, especially, risk death or dismemberment by the weapons scattered on their land. Many wonder how long it will take — or whether or not it will be possible — to remove them all.
“Pollution of the fields and land mine contamination are too huge,” Denys Marchuk, the deputy chair of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council, said in a news conference on Monday.
Mr. Marchuk estimated that 5 million hectares of land in Ukraine are “contaminated with mines,” which is particularly concerning ahead of the spring planting season. He added that the planting season in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions will be on hold while the focus remains on mine clearance.
Michael Schwirtz and Stanislav Kozliuk contributed reporting.
A Year of War in Ukraine
The Future of Ukraine: The European Union and NATO have promised a path to membership for the country. But real partnership will hold risks and benefits.
Weaponization of Adoptions: Since the invasion began, Moscow has transferred thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be adopted. Here is why.
Western Companies: Hundreds of Western businesses are still in Russia. Some say Moscow has tied their hands, while others have chosen to stay put.
Defying Isolation: After the invasion of Ukraine, the West tried to cut Russia off from the rest of the world. Here is why it didn’t work.
A Wartime Partnership: The alliance between President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has become critical to the world order.
Zelensky’s Rise: The Ukrainian president, once brushed off as a political lightweight, has become a household name, representing his country’s tenacity.
Reshaping Russia: President Vladimir V. Putin has suffered setback after setback in Ukraine. But at home, the war has let him craft the country he craves.
Ukrainians’ Texts: The messages that Ukrainians wrote to loved ones as Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, are a snapshot of a turning point in modern history.
How We Verify Our Reporting
Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts.
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