Some of The Latest Events in Ukraine

Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

New York Times

 

 

4 hours ago

Lara Jakes

Reporting from Washington

President Biden praised President Zelensky’s speech to Congress earlier on Wednesday as “convincing and significant.” But he is unlikely to agree to a no-fly zone to be established over Ukraine.

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Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

March 16, 20 

4 hours ago

Anton Troianovski

Reporting from Istanbul

The Russian authorities said they had opened a criminal investigation against a popular lifestyle blogger, Veronika Belotserkovskaya, for antiwar Instagram posts that “discredited the state authorities and the armed forces of the Russian Federation.” It was a sign that the Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition to the war was affecting not only activists and journalists but also extending across society.

March 16, 2022, 12:09 p.m. ET 

4 hours ago

Aurelien Breeden

Reporting from Paris

France said on Wednesday that it wanted to end Russian gas and oil imports by 2027. Jean Castex, the prime minister, announced a series of subsidies, tax breaks and other measures to help companies with heavy energy consumption. Mr. Castex said he hoped the war would end soon, but the government has the duty “to prepare for a long crisis.”

March 16, 20 

4 hours ago

Mauricio Lima

Reporting from Palanca, Moldova

Police officers helped an elderly Ukrainian woman board a minibus after crossing the border into Palanca, a small village in eastern Moldova.

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Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

March 16, 20 

5 hours ago

Anton Troianovski

Reporting from Istanbul

Russia on Wednesday blocked online access to BBC News inside the country — making the broadcaster the most prominent Western media outlet so far to be hit by the Kremlin’s wartime crackdown on media. Russia's Foreign Ministry said the move was “only the beginning of the response to the information war unleashed by the West against Russia.”

March 16, 20 

5 hours ago

Elif Ince

Reporting from Istanbul

At a meeting in Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, thanked Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for his country's “balanced approach” toward the Ukraine conflict — emphasizing that Ankara has not imposed sanctions against Russia. Mr. Cavusoglu in turn thanked Mr. Lavrov for “answering whenever he called or texted.”

March 16, 2 

5 hours ago

Megan Specia and Josh Holder

Russian invasion fails to transform into wide-scale and coordinated military push, military analysts say.

 

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Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers carried a man injured during

 a shelling attack on Hospital Number 3 in Mariupol on Tuesday.Credit...

Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

Russian forces continued their assault on Ukraine on several fronts Wednesday but have failed to make significant territorial gains in recent days, according to monitoring groups — the latest evidence that the invasion has failed to transform into a well-coordinated, wide-scale push against multiple cities simultaneously. 

While Russia has the superior military capability and has been intensifying attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, Moscow has so far been denied the swift victory it anticipated. In the face of tenacious resistance by Ukrainian forces and weighed down by an ill-prepared military, Russia has failed to capture major cities across the country, including Kyiv, the capital. 

The Institute for the Study of War, which has been tracking developments closely, noted in a Tuesday evening assessment that, for nearly two weeks, Russian forces have not been conducting extensive simultaneous attacks that would allow them to seize control of multiple areas at once in Ukraine. And they were unlikely to do so in the next week, it said.

While attacks on the outskirts of Kyiv, particularly in the northwest of the city, continued overnight, Russian forces were unlikely to completely encircle the city or move more troops in to escalate assaults across northeastern Ukraine in the near future, the Institute added.

Nevertheless, in the southeast of the country, Russian forces are steadily advancing in three directions. They are advancing northeast from Kherson, the strategic port city; taking territory in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, two territories largely controlled by Russian-backed separatists; and they have been besieging Mariupol, a city that for weeks has been buffeted by an escalating humanitarian crisis.

According to the Institute’s analysis, the capture of Mariupol will likely be the next “key inflection in the Russian invasion.” Hundreds of people have begun fleeing the city in convoys in recent days as small humanitarian corridors have sporadically opened. 

Located on the Sea of Azov in the country’s southeast, Mariupol is part of a vital stretch of terrain that Russia is trying to capture in an attempt to link Russian-backed separatist enclaves in the southeast with Crimea, the southern peninsula Russia annexed in 2014.

Mariupol, a city of 400,000, has been largely cut off by the Russian siege, without water and electricity. City officials have said that more than 2,400 people have been killed but they believe the toll is likely much higher. 

Russian forces have completely encircled the city, and daily strikes have targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure. Despite strong Ukrainian resistance, analysts say that Russian forces could likely capture the city. 

Russian forces have also made progress toward encircling Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine which hosts Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.