Ukraine War Live News: Russia Captures More Ground as It Nears Full Control of Luhansk - The New York Times

Moscow’s advancing forces threaten Lysychansk, the last major urban center in Ukrainian hands in Luhansk province.

Ukrainian forces in the city are digging in and bracing for an expected onslaught.

After Russia breaks through front line, Ukrainian troops in key city brace for an onslaught.

A Ukrainian journalist was executed ‘in cold blood’ by Russian soldiers, Reporters Without Borders says.

Turkey seeks to unlock a Russian blockade that is fueling a global food crisis.

DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — After weeks of artillery barrages, airstrikes and tank battles, Russian forces appear to have broken through a key part of Ukraine’s defensive line in the east, signaling the next step of their campaign to capture the last two major cities in the mineral-rich province of Luhansk.

Russian forces now control most of Sievierodonetsk, save a few pockets of resistance, and Ukrainian forces hold Lysychansk, where the hills bristle with their artillery.

The cities are part of a 30-mile-wide pocket where Ukrainian troops are holding out, gradually squeezed by Russian forces.

Ukrainian troops have dug new trenches on street corners and erected new roadblocks to create chokepoints for the Russian troops that are expected to arrive in the coming days and weeks.

Sergiy’s acknowledgment that a final battle for Lysychansk is near came as regional officials announced on Wednesday that Russian troops had overrun three small towns to the southeast of his city.

“The surprising aspect here is that Ukraine has chosen to reinforce as Russian forces inch closer to the city,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research group in Virginia.

However, Russia may not have the forces to exploit this localized offensive, and will find itself in a grinding fight against yet another set of Ukrainian defensive lines.”.

In the port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian forces held out for weeks in a steel mill complex after the rest of the city had fallen.

Russia’s forces are trying to flank the two cities on the Siversky Donets River from the east and west, Ukrainian military officials said.

In the west, Russian troops have positioned themselves to build pontoon bridges near the town of Siversk, a strategic hub for Ukrainian supply routes into Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk, according to those officials.

“We are being pressed closer to the city,” said Oleksandr Voronenko, a military police officer stationed in Lysychansk.

The battle for the twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk has left both the Russian and Ukrainian armies severely depleted, offering a window into the bloody struggle still to be fought for wider control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

Russian forces are closing in on what would be their first significant territorial gain in weeks in Ukraine, as they advance on the two cities, the last major pieces of Luhansk province not to fall into Russian hands.

The capture of the twin cities would eliminate an advantage the Ukrainians have in being able to use the Siversky Donets River as a natural defensive barrier that Russian forces have suffered heavy losses trying to cross.

Some military analysts have questioned the wisdom of Ukraine investing so much blood and equipment to defend territory with marginal strategic value.

However, much as the 86-day-long fight for Mariupol forced Russia to devote resources to the battle and gave Ukrainian forces in other parts of the country time to mount a defense, the fight in Luhansk has bought them time, allowing for more powerful weapons to flow into the country.

The Ukrainians have sought to take advantage of stretched Russian forces to set the stage for counter offensives around Kherson in the south and Kharkiv in the northeast.

Control over southern Ukraine is central to Moscow’s efforts to strangle Ukraine economically, while holding the Kharkiv area is critical to maintaining supply lines for its forces in the east.

It remains to be seen how the flow of Western weapons to Ukraine might alter the strategic balance, but military analysts and the Ukrainians say they will make any new Russian offensives much more costly, and enable more counter offensives.

The discarded food packaging and plastic cutlery of Russian soldiers discovered nearby in an area that had been occupied by Russian forces.

The men’s bodies were discovered on April 1 in a forest near the village of Moshchun, near Kyiv, which came under heavy bombardment in early March when Russian forces tried to take the Ukrainian capital.

The group said Mr.

But it said photos of his body showed a blue armband similar to those worn by Ukrainian soldiers, a marker it said frontline journalists sometimes wore to identify themselves to the Ukrainian military as “friendlies.”.

Levin may have provided images taken by his drone, including images showing Russian positions, to Ukrainian forces.

Levin was killed by two shots fired by Russian soldiers using small arms.

Reporters Without Borders said it had handed over its evidence to the Ukrainian judicial authorities.

The letter said the United States “has acknowledged that Brittney is essentially a political pawn in classifying her as wrongfully detained.” And while the signatories cited “deep appreciation” for the administration’s efforts to free Ms.

The administration, she said, is “debating whether they should start negotiating,” when it has already been determined that her wife was wrongfully detained.

Administration officials have said Mr.

Since the war began, Russian forces have pummeled Mykolaiv, frustrated by their failure to capture it and advance west toward Odesa.

KYIV, Ukraine — As Ukrainian forces launch a renewed assault on Snake Island in the Black Sea, recent strikes suggest that they are using powerful Western anti-ship weapons in an effort to undermine Russian naval domination.

The Ukrainian military’s southern command said late on Tuesday that it was using “various forces and methods of destruction” to attack Russian infrastructure on Snake Island, a speck of land south of Odesa that is critical to efforts to control the Black Sea.

On Wednesday morning, the military said it had destroyed a Russian air defense system, radar installation and vehicles on the island.

Russia’s defense ministry said it had thwarted the attack, which it said had featured 15 drones and long-range missiles, and was intended to land Ukrainian soldiers on the island.

“The unsuccessful fire attack forced the enemy to abandon the landing to Snake Island,” the Russian military said.

The Russians said that “after being convinced that the attempt to seize the island had failed,” the Ukrainians had used long-range anti-ship missiles and drones to attack Russian gas infrastructure facilities in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.

But Ukrainian officials defended the targeting of Russian offshore drilling infrastructure, saying that Moscow was converting its drilling platforms to military installations by installing high-tech surveillance and communications systems on the rigs.

The current round of fighting around Snake Island appeared to kick off on Friday, when the Ukrainians struck a Russian naval tugboat as it was on a mission to deliver weapons and personnel to the island.

On Tuesday, the British military’s intelligence agency said that Ukraine had “almost certainly” used newly delivered Harpoon missiles in the attack — their first demonstrated use.

Ukrainian coastal defense capabilities have now “largely neutralized” Russia’s ability to project maritime force in the northwestern Black Sea, the British analysis said.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, said that Ukrainian weapons had hit a former natural-gas rig on Monday where Russian forces had placed radio-jamming equipment, blocking Ukraine from getting an accurate picture of the area.

Zagorodnyuk said the strikes might be an indication that important naval weapons Ukraine has been seeking from its Western allies had arrived.

The Russians said that the Ukrainian attack on the drilling rig had resulted in an intensive fire and could lead to “an environmental disaster.”.

The strikes at sea come amid an intensification of bombardment across southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military has reported more than two dozen Russian missile attacks in recent days.

Serhii Bratchuk, the spokesman for the Odesa regional military administration, said a Russian missile barrage on Odesa on Monday had struck targets including a food warehouse and a cemetery.

As both sides duel in the Black Sea, the world is wrestling with a global food crisis caused by a Russian naval blockade that is keeping Ukrainian ships from leaving port with millions of tons of grain.

After a series of attacks in May by Ukrainian forces in and around Snake Island, Russia has reinforced its outpost there with multiple surface-to-air rocket systems, according to satellite imagery and Ukrainian officials.

Bratchuk said the Russians were trying to turn the garrison on the island into “something that could be the analogue of the warship Moskva.” The Ukrainians sank the Moskva, the flagship on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in April.

The men, many soldiers themselves, covered the freshly dug hole with dirt.

Friends said that Metallica music would have been more fitting for his funeral than the military dirges that now play in Lviv’s Lychakiv cemetery daily.

Turkish and Russian military delegations met in Moscow on Tuesday, Turkey’s defense ministry said, part of an ongoing effort by Turkey to help unlock a Russian blockade of Ukrainian grain exports that is spurring a global food crisis and reverberating as far away as Africa.

Cargo ships holding more than 20 million tons of grain are trapped by the blockade in Ukrainian ports, Ukrainian and United Nations officials have said.

Turkey’s defense ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations and Turkey were expected to meet in Turkey in the coming weeks to discuss the blockade.

A Russian government statement said this week’s talks had included “the safe exit of Turkish merchant ships and the export of grain from Ukrainian ports, as well as approaches to ensuring safe navigation in the Black Sea.”.

The crisis has underscored the international effects of a major war in a globalized world, with the blockade spurring a spike in global food prices and buffeting drought-stricken countries in Africa, some facing severe hunger.

The war in Ukraine has also underlined efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to project his country’s power on the global stage by playing both sides in the conflict.

President Biden said last week the United States was working with Europe to build grain storage capacity in Poland.

“There’s been a mad rush to find alternatives” for Ukraine’s grain exports, said Mike Lee, a specialist in Black Sea agricultural projects at Green Square Agro Consulting in Britain.

But Andrée Defois, deputy chief operating officer of Strategie Grain, said the figure could now fall to around 6 percent unless there is “a miracle.”.

The Russian authorities this week threatened Lithuania with retaliation if the Baltic country did not swiftly reverse its ban on the transportation of some goods to Kaliningrad by rail.

Having invaded Ukraine and deployed its troops to its pliant ally Belarus, Russia has suddenly flexed its military muscle near the borders of several NATO countries, including Baltic nations.

Only a thin corridor between Lithuania and Poland, about 60 miles long, separates Russian forces in Belarus from Kaliningrad.