Biden credits CIA for ability to forewarn world about Putin’s Ukraine plans
Blinken at G-20 tells Russia to end Ukraine blockade
U.S. sending Ukraine precision artillery rounds
Putin challenges West to fight Russia on the battlefield: ‘Let them try’
Russia uses at least 18 sites to forcibly transfer civilians, U.S. says
Putin says further sanctions could be ‘catastrophic’ for global energy market
Ukraine grain farmers devastated by Russia’s Black Sea blockade
Germany ratifies NATO bids for Sweden, Finland
The West wants to save Ukraine from defeat. But what about victory?
Russian lawmaker imprisoned for 7 years for opposing war on Ukraine
Moscow’s chief rabbi steps down over war
Siversk could be Russia’s next target, British Defense Ministry says
U.N. warns of ‘looming hunger catastrophe’ if grain blockade continues
Finnish lawmakers tighten security on 830-mile border with Russia
Art of dissent: How Russians protest the war on Ukraine
Biden credits CIA for ability to forewarn world about Putin’s Ukraine plans
Blinken at G-20 tells Russia to end Ukraine blockade
U.S. sending Ukraine precision artillery rounds
Putin challenges West to fight Russia on the battlefield: ‘Let them try’
Russia uses at least 18 sites to forcibly transfer civilians, U.S. says
Putin says further sanctions could be ‘catastrophic’ for global energy market
Ukraine grain farmers devastated by Russia’s Black Sea blockade
Germany ratifies NATO bids for Sweden, Finland
The West wants to save Ukraine from defeat. But what about victory?
Russian lawmaker imprisoned for 7 years for opposing war on Ukraine
Moscow’s chief rabbi steps down over war
Siversk could be Russia’s next target, British Defense Ministry says
U.N. warns of ‘looming hunger catastrophe’ if grain blockade continues
Finnish lawmakers tighten security on 830-mile border with Russia
Art of dissent: How Russians protest the war on Ukraine
At the Group of 20 meeting on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Russia to end its blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, while Russian forces continue to shell the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the region’s governor said Friday.
Hours after the G-20 session, where Russia’s foreign minister accused Western diplomats of “rabid Russophobia,” the Pentagon announced a new shipment of four multiple-launch rocket systems to Ukraine as part of a $400 million package that also included additional ammunition and other supplies.
Russia appears to control all of the Luhansk province, after late last month seizing the city of Severodonetsk, which is facing a “humanitarian disaster,” according to Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai.
Here’s what else to know
Biden visited the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., where he credited its staff for the country’s ability to “forewarn the world” about what Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine.
“You saw the forces that he was amassing, the plans that he was making,” Biden said.
The president met with agency members and its director, William J. Burns, and delivered remarks to mark the celebration of the organization’s 75th anniversary.
CIA officers, Biden said, did not ask for “recognition or personal acclaim, knowing that the quiet bravery of women and men in this agency echoes loudly, all around the world.”
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out Russia for blocking Ukrainian grain exports amid rising global food prices in a contentious closed-door session at a meeting of the top diplomats of the world’s largest economies on Friday.
The Group of 20 meeting hosted by Indonesia on its resort island of Bali is the first time top U.S. and Russian diplomats have been in the same room since the invasion of Ukraine. The deep divisions between East and West — as well as North and South — at the conference hampered discussions on an array of pressing concerns, including rising energy and food costs, climate change, poverty and pandemic responses.
“To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. Its grain is not your grain. Why are you blocking the ports? You should let the grain out,” Blinken said, according to a Western diplomat in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relate events at the session.
Blinken also disparaged Moscow’s contributions to the World Food Program, noting that it has provided only a fifth of 1 percent of the donations to the organization.
Ahead of the clash, Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, implored her fellow diplomats “to end the war sooner than later and settle our differences at the negotiating table, not the battlefield.”
But signs of collaboration were sparse.
The United States will send Ukraine an additional $400 million in military assistance heavily focused on high-precision long-range weapons, the Pentagon said Friday.
The package consists of four high-mobility artillery rocket systems, also known as HIMARS, adding to the eight that Washington already has delivered to Kyiv. It also includes 1,000 rounds of what a senior U.S. defense official called a “new type” of 155 mm ammunition to use in the howitzer cannons that were part of previous transfers. Those rounds — which officials declined to identify by name, citing security concerns — are intended to enhance Ukraine’s ability to target Russian military assets.
The senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, indicated the weapons’ precision should be more efficient than the standard rounds Ukrainian forces currently employ. Officials in Kyiv claim they are going through between 5,000 to 6,000 rounds of standard artillery ammunition per day; the U.S. official said the burn rate of these weapons would be far less.
More than four months into the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged Thursday that the conflict had only just begun. And he challenged Western countries supporting Ukraine to “try” to fight Russia on the battlefield.
In televised remarks to parliamentary leaders, Putin pushed back on the idea that Russia has let the invasion drag on for too long, saying it hadn’t “even really started anything yet.” He said negotiating peace is getting more and more difficult, then focused his ire on Western countries that have imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia while offering support and resources to Ukraine.
“We hear today that they want us to be defeated on the battlefield,” Putin said, according to state media outlet RIA Novosti. “Well, what can I say? Let them try.”
He added, “We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading toward this.”
Putin’s comments come as the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which is now almost completely under Russian control, said Friday that the city of Severodonetsk is facing a “humanitarian disaster.”
Moscow has established at least 18 “filtration” locations on its border with Ukraine to forcibly relocate Ukrainian civilians to Russia or Russian-held territory inside Ukraine, a U.S. official said Thursday.
“The vast majority of forcibly transferred Ukrainian civilians remain trapped in Russia, without the documents, knowledge, or financial resources to escape, while Russian officials pressure them to give up their Ukrainian citizenship and hopes of ever returning home,” said Courtney Austrian, the deputy chief at the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Citing Ukrainian government figures, she said that as many as 1.6 million civilians, including more than a quarter of a million children, have been forced to move to Russia, while people considered loyal to Moscow are moved into the properties of those who fled the violence.
She added that the stories of those who have escaped “paint a horrifying picture of Russia’s filtration operations and its systematic process of forcibly transferring Ukrainian civilians to Russia, often to remote areas of the Far East, from the territories that Russia has seized since February 24.”
In late March, a young Ukrainian woman from the city of Mariupol told The Post of her experience of being transferred to a filtration camp with her family before being sent to Russia.
[Ukrainian refugees in Russia report interrogations, detention and other abuses]
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said further sanctions on Russia would harm the countries imposing them more than Russia, warning of the potential for “catastrophic consequences on the global energy market.”
“Yes, we know that the Europeans are trying to replace Russian energy resources,” Putin said at a televised meeting with senior officials on Friday, according to Reuters. “However, we expect the result of such actions to be an increase in gas prices on the spot market and an increase in the cost of energy resources for end consumers.”
European nations have been moving to supplant Russia-supplied gas with other sources, including liquefied natural gas. However, it has been hard to make up the shortfall, even during the relatively low-demand summer months, while European officials have accused Russia of slowing down deliveries of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Putin added that “sanctions restrictions on Russia cause much more damage to those countries that impose them” and warned that further use of sanctions could lead to “even more severe, without exaggeration, even catastrophic consequences on the global energy market.”
The Russian president said that companies should have been prepared for the latest sanctions from the European Union, including an oil embargo. But while Putin said that the “economic blitzkrieg” against Russia was failing, he also said that the Russian economy had been hurt by the sanctions and that risks remained for individual industries and the labor market.
BASHTANKA, Ukraine — The morning Russian tanks and troops stormed across Ukraine’s borders, Volodymyr Onishchuk’s grain got stuck. He had delivered about $100,000 worth to a storage site at Ukraine’s Black Sea port in Mykolaiv on Feb. 23, but by Feb. 24 — when the ship with his harvest was to set sail — Russian troops were on the ground and warships lingered menacingly off the Ukrainian coast.
On that day, Onishchuk wasn’t overly concerned that he hadn’t been paid yet. Fending off Russia was foremost on his mind. But then one week passed — and then a month and then four months — with Ukraine’s main ports still blockaded by Russia’s fleet. Not only was he missing the money from his last yield but a new crop was nearly ready to send to market, with no way to profitably move it. And future crops were uncertain.
“If we don’t sell this grain now and don’t cover our expenses, tomorrow we simply won’t be able to plant,” he said.
Germany’s parliament voted overwhelmingly Friday in support of Sweden’s and Finland’s bids to join the NATO military alliance.
The bloc’s 30 members signed accession protocols for the two Nordic countries on Tuesday, but the decision needs to be ratified by each state.
Germany becomes the fifth country to do so, after Canada, Estonia, Denmark and Norway gave their approval.
Finland and Sweden have traditionally been nonaligned militarily but voiced their intention to join NATO following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Initial opposition by Turkey was overcome through an agreement in which Sweden and Finland said they would address Ankara’s concerns over what it viewed as their support for Kurdish militant groups.
Last week at the NATO summit in Madrid, President Biden extolled the unity of the moment. Russian President Vladimir Putin “thought he could break the transatlantic alliance,” Biden told reporters, before pointing to how the Russian invasion of Ukraine had only galvanized the West and led to NATO’s imminent expansion with two new Nordic entrants.
“We are going to stick with Ukraine,” he added, “and all of the alliance is going to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes to, in fact, make sure that they are not defeated.”
That was a statement of intent and commitment to the government in Kyiv, one echoed by Biden’s European counterparts. Yet nestled within his remarks was an open question: The United States and its allies may be doing what they can to prevent Ukrainian defeat, but what about facilitating Ukrainian victory?
The Biden administration and its European allies have already poured billions of dollars worth of military aid into Ukraine. They have sourced Soviet-era munitions and equipment best suited for Ukrainian capabilities, flooded the nation with vital tactical arms like antitank Javelin missiles and fast-tracked Ukraine’s military modernization with top-of-the-line artillery and rocket launchers. They have also placed tremendous new pressures on the Russian economy through sanctions.
But some officials in Kyiv and Washington argue it’s far from enough.
RIGA, Latvia — A municipal lawmaker in northeastern Moscow was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison for calling Russia’s attacks on Ukraine a war, a term banned in references to the invasion, and for expressing his opposition to the war during a municipal council meeting in March.
“They took away my spring, they took away my summer, and now they’ve taken away seven more years of my life,” Alexei Gorinov, 60, said after the verdict. He said his only offense was to express his opinion in a meeting of the Krasnoselsky municipal council, according to Russian media present in the court.
He faced the “aggravated” charge that he “used his position” to discredit the military. Under President Vladimir Putin’s sweeping crackdown on dissent, any criticism of the war or the military is a criminal offense.
Gorinov’s case, the first in which a significant prison sentence was imposed for opposing the war, is likely to send the message that no dissent will be tolerated.
Speaking before the verdict in court Friday, Gorinov said the war in Ukraine was “the last most vile and dirty thing.”
“I am convinced of this: War is the fastest means of dehumanization, when the line between good and evil is erased. War is always violence and blood, torn bodies and severed limbs. It is always death. I do not accept it, and I reject it.
“We are promised victory and glory. Why, then, do so many of my fellow citizens feel shame and guilt? Why have so many people left Russia and continue to do so? And why does our country suddenly have so many enemies?
“Could it be that there is something wrong with us? Let’s think about it. At least give us a chance to discuss what is going on. Exchange opinions. After all, it’s our constitutional right,” he told the court.
Russia has charged thousands of people with administrative offenses for antiwar protests or posts on social media, but a smaller number face large fines or long prison terms on criminal charges of spreading disinformation about the military or the war. The maximum penalty is 15 years. Dozens of people are in detention pending trial.
Moscow’s chief rabbi, who left Russia after voicing his opposition to the war in Ukraine, announced late Thursday that he was stepping down from the post.
Pinchas Goldschmidt wrote on Twitter that he had decided to leave the position after almost three decades to avoid endangering the local Jewish community.
“Sad as I am, in the circumstances, it is clearly in the interest of the future of the community that I now leave my post,” he said.
“We did our best to navigate and build the community through the tulmoutous [sic] 1990s and in the increasingly authoritarian Russia under the current president,” Goldschmidt wrote.
“As the terrible war against Ukraine unfolded over the last few months I could not remain silent, viewing so much human suffering, I went to assist the refugees in Eastern Europe and spoke out against the war.
“As time progressed, despite re-electing me to the position of Chief Rabbi last month, it became clear that the Jewish community of Moscow would be endangered by me remaining in my position.”
Last month, Goldschmidt’s daughter-in-law said the rabbi had left Russia after refusing to publicly support the Russian invasion.
Can finally share that my in-laws, Moscow Chief Rabbi @PinchasRabbi & Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, have been put under pressure by authorities to publicly support the 'special operation' in Ukraine — and refused. pic.twitter.com/Gy7zgI3YkJ
Russia’s military looks to be concentrating equipment in the direction of the Ukrainian city of Siversk, about five miles from the front line in the eastern region of Donetsk, according to an intelligence update from the British Defense Ministry on Friday. “There is a realistic possibility that Russia’s immediate tactical objective will be Siversk,” the ministry said.
It also noted that Russian forces appear to be pausing to rest and resupply before undertaking new offensive operations in Donetsk. That assessment aligns with that of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which said Friday that the “operational pause” is setting the stage for a more significant offensive in the coming weeks.
The world could face multiple famines over the next two years if urgent action is not taken to end the blockade in Ukraine, the head of the U.N. World Food Program has warned.
“Ukraine is a critically important breadbasket for the world, exporting tens of millions of tonnes of wheat, maize and barley each year, as well as sunflower seeds used to make vegetable oil,” David Beasely wrote in the foreword of a report published Friday by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “But these commodities have been wiped from food stocks overnight by the blockade of the Odesa-area ports in southern Ukraine.”
Countries around the world rely on grain grown in Ukraine, but the problem of war-restricted exports has been worsened by global shortages and higher prices for fuel and fertilizer, he said.
“Without urgent action, food production and crop yields will be slashed,” Beasely wrote. “This raises the frightening possibility that on top of today’s food-pricing crisis, the world will also face a genuine crisis of food availability over the next 12 to 24 months — and with it, the specter of multiple famines.”
He urged that a political solution be found for the blockade of ports in Ukraine and also called on governments to avoid stockpiling to protect the most vulnerable from starvation.
“As starvation tightens its grip on dozens of nations, we must not allow the war in Ukraine to overwhelm millions of families already trapped in a deadly struggle against hunger,” he said. “They are relying on us for survival, and we must not let them down.”
Finnish lawmakers on Thursday approved legal amendments aimed at tightening border security, primarily along its 830-mile border with Russia, as it continues the process of joining the NATO military alliance — a move that has irked Moscow.
The new law allows authorities to restrict movement at border crossings in exceptional situations, according to the Finnish legislature’s website. The bill, which looks to limit immigration under the influence of a foreign state, was prompted by Helsinki’s concerns that Russia could abruptly allow hundreds of immigrants or asylum seekers to show up at the Finnish border, and disrupt public order or undermine public health.
That happened in the winter of 2015-2016 when Russia let more than 1,700 third-country refugees and asylum seekers flooded the crossing points at Russia’s borders with Finland and Norway.
NATO’s 30 members this week signed formal accession protocols for Finland and neighboring Sweden to join the alliance. The two Nordic countries must now await approval from the legislatures of all NATO members. Lawmakers in Canada, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Albania have so far endorsed their applications, the Associated Press reported.
The latest: Western artillery pieces that have been flowing into Ukraine since spring are starting to make a difference on the battlefield, President Zelensky said Wednesday. The Kremlin’s troops are also closing in on the Donetsk city of Slovyansk.
The fight: A slowly regenerating Russian army is making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine against valiant but underequipped Ukrainian forces. The United States and its allies are racing to deliver the enormous quantities of weaponry the Ukrainians urgently need if they are to hold the Russians at bay.
The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. Russia has used an array of weapons against Ukraine, some of which have drawn the attention and concern of analysts.
Photos: Post photographers have been on the ground from the very beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.
How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.
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