Ukraine, Moscow and More...

By Yana Dlugy

I grew up in Moscow, spent childhood summers in Odesa, and have worked as a journalist in both Russia and Ukraine. I reported on the former Soviet Union for Newsweek and later Agence France-Presse from Moscow and headed AFP’s Kyiv bureau. I have also worked as a journalist in the Middle East and Europe. Here’s the latest.

Russia moved to eliminate the age limit of 40 for first-time enrollment in the military — a change that could enlarge the pool of potential recruits.  Witness testimony and videos obtained by The Times show how Russian paratroopers executed at least eight Ukrainian men in Bucha.  The Group of 7 economic powers pledged $20 billion to help support Ukraine’s economy. Follow our live updates.

A natural gas plant in Raikkola, Imatra, Finland.Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Russia’s fallout with Finland

Just days after formally applying to join NATO, Finland said today that Russia would cut off supplies of natural gas to the country.

Russia said that it was suspending gas shipments because Finland had failed to make payments in rubles. But President Vladimir Putin has a history of using Russia’s energy supply as a political weapon.

Finland’s state energy provider, Gasum, called the move “highly regrettable” but anticipated. “We have been carefully preparing for this situation,” it said, adding that it expected normal operations to continue.

Gasum supplies about 60 percent of Finland’s domestic market and gets all of its supplies from Russia. It said that during the next few summer months when demand is lower, it would turn to Estonia for supplies and afterward to other sources.

The gas shut-off, which is expected to happen tomorrow, will come a week after Russia suspended electricity exports to Finland. Putin has warned Finland that its move to join NATO, along with neighboring Sweden, was a “mistake.”

The two countries’ histories have been intertwined for centuries. After more than 600 years as an eastern province of the Kingdom of Sweden, Finland was annexed in 1809 to Russia, which ruled it until the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

The Soviet Union attacked Finland in 1939, expecting to steamroll through its smaller neighbor. But the outgunned and outmanned Finns held off the Red Army for months in what became known as the Winter War, a scenario being echoed today on Ukraine’s battlefields.

Although Finland ceded 11 percent of its territory to the Soviets in an eventual peace deal, the country retained its independence.

After World War II, Finland managed to survive as an independent and unoccupied country in the shadow of the Soviet Union by agreeing to neutrality, in what became known as a policy of Finlandization (another idea that has echoed throughout the Ukraine conflict).

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Heavy fighting continues within earshot of a ring of villages to the east of Kharkiv.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Russian troops dig in

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is springing back to life after Russian forces were pushed back from its immediate outskirts. But the Russians are close enough to remain a threat, my colleagues Carlotta Gall and Finbarr O’Reilly report.

Heavy fighting continues within earshot of a ring of villages to the east that the Russians recently abandoned. In recent days, both armies have traded artillery fire across hills to the north and east of the city. The current Russian positions still allow them to shell Kharkiv.

“We are afraid they will come again,” said Olha, 66, in the village of Vilkhivka, four miles east of Kharkiv’s city line, as the bombardment sounded from across the hills. “God help us that it does not happen.”

Although the Ukrainian forces are confident they will eventually rout the Russians, they also say they are encountering tough resistance from units that have dug in. Some Russian troops north of Kharkiv are entrenched, becoming much harder to drive back.

“There is a whole underground city there,” one officer who gave his code name, Tikhi, said, gesturing farther north. “They have trenches, bunkers, everything is operating underground. We tried one time to take it. It was quite scary.”

The soldiers have been unable to advance for three weeks because they lacked the necessary artillery support against the well-dug-in Russian troops, Tikhi said.

The Russian units being deployed today are better trained and more experienced than the ones who were deployed in February and March, said a businessman who enlisted at the beginning of the war and goes by the code name Odin.

“It is getting much more difficult,” he said.

What else we’re following

In Ukraine

Russian forces have taken full control of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and have captured the commander of the Azov battalion, Russia’s defense ministry said.  Hours earlier, the commander appealed for proper burials for fighters who had died at the plant. Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said his country would fight until it evicts Russian forces from all of its territories, including Crimea, The Wall Street Journal reports.  The foreign minister of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, said NATO had “done nothing” for his country.  Ukraine’s richest man is mulling selling a superyacht being built for him.

In Russia

The frontman of the Russian band DDT was charged after condemning the war at a concert. Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder is stepping down as chairman of Russia’s oil giant Rosneft.

Around the world

The war has remade Washington, from revitalizing NATO to resurfacing anxiety about nuclear war, writes Susan Glasser in The New Yorker.  The U.S. has committed more than $54 billion in aid to Ukraine. Here are four ways to understand spending.

We also recommend

In an interview with The Times, Senator Mitch McConnell talked about why the U.S. should fully support Ukraine. “For a lot of younger people in America, this is the first time they’ve ever seen a clear battle between right and wrong,” he said.  As some Russian officials push for a trial of the Ukrainian fighters who defended Mariupol, Neil MacFarquhar takes a look at the Kremlin tradition of using the courts for political goals.

The New York Times

Thanks for reading.