Russia-Ukraine WarPutin Orders Brief Unilateral Cease-Fire; Ukraine Calls It ‘Hypocrisy’

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Putin orders a brief, unilateral cease-fire for his forces in Ukraine.

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called for a cease-fire in Ukraine to celebrate Orthodox Christian Christmas. A senior Ukrainian official dismissed the move as “hypocrisy.”Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday ordered his military to implement a 36-hour cease-fire along the front line in Ukraine for Orthodox Christmas, and urged the government in Kyiv to do the same, the Kremlin said.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, responded with derision in his nightly address, casting shade on Mr. Putin’s motives. He said Russia wanted “to use Christmas as a cover” to stop Ukrainian advances, regroup and bring more troops up to the front. He gave no indication that Ukraine would abide by a cease-fire, though he did not explicitly rule it out.

The Kremlin said that Mr. Putin had set the cease-fire, which would be the broadest of its kind since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, to last from midday on Friday until midnight on Saturday. The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed it had received the order.

Russia celebrates Orthodox holidays based on the Julian calendar, as do some Ukrainians, which is different from the Gregorian calendar used by majority-Catholic and Protestant nations.

“Given that a large number of citizens practicing Orthodoxy resides in the areas of hostilities, we call on the Ukrainian side to announce a cease-fire and give them an opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve and the day of Christ’s birth,” the Kremlin statement said.

Analysts said Mr. Putin’s order appeared to be a public relations move that he can exploit regardless of Ukraine’s response. If Kyiv agrees to a cease-fire, it would give the Russia’s battered military an opportunity to regroup. If Ukraine ignores the cease-fire, Russia can claim it has the higher moral ground and further vilify Ukraine to the Russian public.

Ukrainian officials immediately cast doubt on the sincerity of Mr. Putin’s announcement, pointing out Russia had bombarded civilians on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. “Their current ‘unilateral cease-fire’ cannot and should not be taken seriously,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said in a Twitter post.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior presidential adviser, wrote on Twitter that Moscow’s troops “must leave the occupied territories — only then will it have a ‘temporary truce,’” adding, “Keep hypocrisy to yourself.” In a separate statement, he called the cease-fire order a “propaganda gesture” and a “banal trick.”

“There is not the slightest desire to end the war,” he said.

Some Ukrainians, especially in the western part of the country, observe Christmas on Dec. 25, and on Christmas Eve Russian shelling killed at least 10 people in the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson.

In Washington, President Biden said it appeared to him that Mr. Putin was “trying to find some oxygen” with the cease-fire announcement. “I found it interesting, he was ready to bomb hospitals and nurseries and churches on the 25th and New Year’s,” Mr. Biden said.

Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, called Mr. Putin’s cease-fire announcement “cynical,” coming after Russian attacks on civilian targets. He warned that Russia might use a pause in fighting “to rest, to refit, to regroup and ultimately to re-attack.”

“We have little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” he told reporters at a daily briefing. “I think we know better than to take anything we see or hear from Russia at face value.”

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, said a temporary truce for the Orthodox holiday was welcome would not replace a “just peace in line with the U.N. charter and international law.”

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said a cease-fire do little to help Ukrainians living in fear under Russian occupation. “If Putin wanted peace, he would take his soldiers home and the war would be over,” she wrote on Twitter. “But evidently he wants to continue the war after a short break.”

Mr. Putin’s announcement came just hours after the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill I called for a cease-fire to allow Orthodox Christians on the front line to attend services.

It also followed Mr. Putin’s conversation with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has positioned himself as a mediator in the conflict and on Thursday called for a cease-fire.

Megan Specia and Anushka Patil contributed reporting.

Analysts and Ukrainian officials see Putin’s cease-fire order as a public relations ploy.

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Ukrainian soldiers near the front lines in Kreminna, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

The Russian president’s decision to order his troops to implement a brief cease-fire over an Orthodox Christian holiday was less likely an act of generosity than it is strategic public relations move that he will seek to exploit domestically and on the battlefield, Ukrainian officials and independent analysts said.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s national security council, wrote on Twitter that the cease-fire amounted to “lies and hypocrisy” from “a flock of little Kremlin devils,” underscoring the hostility in Kyiv toward a cease-fire President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia billed as enabling the celebration of Orthodox Christmas.

A senior Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, in a statement describing Mr. Putin’s order as a “banal trick” and “an exclusively propaganda gesture.” He added: “There is not the slightest desire to end the war.”

Mr. Putin’s order puts Ukraine in a difficult position. If Kyiv refuses to honor the cease-fire, analysts said, Russia will likely try to claim higher moral ground on the international stage. If Kyiv does halt its attacks, it would give the battered Russian military time to regroup.

The Kremlin “needs a break to partially restore its military power,” Pavel Luzhin, a Russian military analyst, said in an interview.

Mr. Luzhin said that Mr. Putin probably expects that Kyiv will not honor the cease-fire and has aimed the proposal at least partly to his domestic audience. A broken truce could be used to further vilify Ukrainians.

“The Kremlin is going to demonstrate to Russians, who are mostly tired from the war, why the Russian leadership needs to continue fighting,” Mr. Luzhin said.

Mr. Putin also may be trying to avoid another military disaster during a day of festivities in Russia, one Russian political analyst, Tatiana Stanovaya, said. Earlier this week, a Ukrainian rocket strike killed at least 89 Russian servicemen housed at a vocational school in the Donbas, in one of Russia’s worst military catastrophes of the war.

Ms. Stanovaya said the proposal also showed Mr. Putin’s desire to improve his international image.

“The Christmas cease-fire is quite in line with Putin’s logic, in which Russia is acting on the bright side of history and is fighting for justice, in its definition, of course,” she wrote on Telegram.

Anushka Patil contributed reporting and Ian Carlino contributed translation.

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The U.S. and Germany pledge to send Ukraine armored vehicles and another Patriot system.

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A Marder infantry fighting vehicle, belonging to the German Army, in Lithuania in October.Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The United States and Germany say they will each send armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine and join together to supply Kyiv with a second Patriot missile battery.

The announcement, in a joint statement on Thursday after a phone call between President Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, is the first to pledge Western-made infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine.

Sending more capable armored vehicles and a second Patriot missile battery, following the one that President Biden pledged to send last month, is a significant escalation of military support for Ukraine.

A day earlier, France had said that it would send its AMX-10 RC armored reconnaissance vehicles to Ukraine.

Kyiv has long sought more capable armored vehicles from the West, including those that the United States and Germany say they will now provide: the American Bradley Fighting Vehicle and a German infantry fighting vehicle called the Marder.

Those vehicles are a concession of sorts to Kyiv. Instead of sending what the U.S. military calls “main battle tanks,” such as the M1 Abrams, which carries a small crew and a 120-millimeter gun designed to destroy other tanks, Washington said that it would send the M2 Bradley instead, which the military describes as an “infantry fighting vehicle.”

The Bradley’s mission is to carry troops into battle and to support them with a smaller, though still powerful, 25-millimeter gun that can fire explosive rounds. The pledge is for 50 of the vehicles, according to an official briefed on the aid.

“It’s not a tank, but it’s a tank killer,” Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a briefing to reporters on Thursday afternoon. “A Bradley is an armored vehicle that has a firepower capability that can deliver troops into combat.”

Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly I. Antonov, said that Mr. Biden’s announcement showed that Washington “has no desire” for a political settlement in Ukraine. It was “a confirmation that our interlocutors in the United States have not even tried to listen to our numerous calls to take into account possible consequences of such a dangerous course by Washington,” the Russian news agency Tass reported.

The Pentagon said that the provision of the Bradley vehicles and of another Patriot air defense missile system had become more feasible because the war had dragged on, providing time to train Ukrainian forces to use them.

“Things like the Bradley, things like the Patriot, which are complex systems, are going to require a training and an operations tail,” General Ryder said.

Though Germany is not sending its Leopard 2 battle tank, the decision to provide the Marder infantry fighting vehicle is still a shift for Berlin, which resisted months of calls to send tanks or fighting vehicles.

Germany has already provided Ukraine with armored personnel carriers and its mobile antiaircraft gun, the Gepard, as well as the IRIS-T air defense missile system.

Germany’s support for Ukraine has additional significance as a yardstick for measuring the Scholz government’s willingness to take a leading role in stewarding Europe through one of the biggest security crises the continent has faced since World War II.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote a statement in German on Twitter thanking the chancellor for the aid, especially the second Patriot system.

“Together with the previously delivered IRIS-T system and the Gepard tanks, Germany has made an important contribution to intercepting all Russian missiles,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

What is the Bradley Fighting Vehicle?

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American soldiers driving a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in northeastern Syria in 2021.Credit...Baderkhan Ahmad/Associated Press

The White House announced on Thursday that the Pentagon would be providing Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Kyiv, which offer Ukrainian soldiers greater protection and firepower than any of the trucks or armored personnel carriers the West has sent to date.

Although President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has long asked for U.S.-made tanks, the White House has resisted sending them, citing the amount of time required to train soldiers to employ them in combat and also to maintain and repair them.

Here’s a closer look at the Bradley, which offers a middle ground between the capabilities of a main battle tank, such as the M1 Abrams that Kyiv has asked for, and that of vehicles like the Vietnam War-era M113 armored personnel carriers that the Pentagon has already provided to Ukraine.

It’s not a tank.

The Bradley falls somewhere between a traditional tank and an armored personnel carrier, but it’s not a main battle tank.

A battle tank’s primary mission is to destroy other tanks. The standard U.S. tank is the M1 Abrams, which generally weighs about 70 tons and carries a 120-millimeter gun that can fire a variety of anti-armor rounds.

The Abrams rides on treads and can reach speeds of about 42 miles per hour on flat surfaces and 30 when off-road. Notably, in a departure from previous generations of U.S. tanks, the Abrams is powered by a gas-turbine engine, similar to those used by jet aircraft. Taking care of those engines, and keeping them supplied with enough fuel, is a difficult task on the battlefield.

By comparison, vehicles with diesel motors, like the Bradley, are much easier to maintain and keep in action.

What does the Bradley have?

The Bradley has a 25-millimeter gun mounted on a rotating turret atop the vehicle’s hull, so it is often mistaken for a tank. (Bradleys were substituted for the tanks Donald J. Trump requested as president for a July 4 celebration in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 2019.)

A 7.62-millimeter machine gun is usually mounted on the turret as well, along with launchers for the BGM-71 TOW missile. The United States has already supplied Ukraine with 1,500 TOW anti-tank missiles, announcing the transfer as part of a $775 million aid package on Aug. 19.

Like the Abrams, the Bradley rides on treads instead of wheels, which allows traversals through rough terrain impassable for trucks. And the hulls on both vehicles are wrapped in sophisticated armor blocks meant to offer a degree of protection from direct strikes from enemy gunfire and missiles.

According to an Army history of the vehicle, the Bradley was designed to keep up with M1 Abrams tanks, allowing commanders to move troops alongside tanks for mutual support.

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Bradley Fighting Vehicles at a U.S. military base in northeastern Syria in 2019. The Bradley has a door-and-ramp assembly that opens to the rear so that infantry soldiers can quickly enter and exit.Credit...Darko Bandic/Associated Press

And while both vehicles are operated by small crews — four soldiers for the Abrams and three for the Bradley — the Bradley has a combination door and ramp assembly that opens to the rear so that infantry soldiers can quickly enter and exit.

The Bradley can carry about half as many troops as a traditional armored personnel carrier — such as the M113 vehicles that the Pentagon has already sent to Ukraine — but has much better armor protection and carries far more firepower.

Does Ukraine already have anything like them?

Not exactly. The Ukrainian Army had a number of Soviet-era tanks as well as armored personnel carriers before Russia invaded, and some of the personnel carriers are armed with machine guns. Many have been destroyed as the war has ground on.

The Bradley offers a much greater level of protection for the troops inside, and its 25-millimeter gun and TOW missiles will offer those troops a greater degree of fire support, while giving battlefield commanders the ability to form small teams of Bradleys to take out Russian tanks and other vehicles.

Are there different types of Bradleys?

Yes. The U.S. Army has built two different versions. One, called the M2, is built to carry a squad of perhaps a half-dozen soldiers into combat. The other, called the M3, is designed for scout units to carry out reconnaissance missions and can carry two additional soldiers.

Which version is the U.S. giving to Kyiv?

We don’t know yet.

How long has the Bradley been around?

The Bradley was a creation of the Cold War, built to carry U.S. troops into battle with Russians. According to Army documents, it was introduced in 1981.

Bradleys were used in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and throughout the post-9/11 wars as well.

Its lengthy development — which took more than 15 years — was mocked in a 1998 HBO movie, “The Pentagon Wars.”

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Ukraine recorded its largest annual fall in G.D.P. in over 30 years, a top minister says.

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Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in November. The drop in gross domestic product was the biggest since the country declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Ukraine recorded the largest annual fall in its gross domestic product in more than 30 years, the country’s economy minister said on Thursday, a precipitous decline caused by Russia’s invasion.

The minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, who is also first deputy prime minister of Ukraine, said preliminary data showed that the country’s G.D.P. fell by 30.4 percent in 2022, the largest decline since Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Even so, the drop was slightly lower than the direst forecasts, and Ms. Svyrydenko said in a statement that the “indomitable spirit” of the Ukrainian people, along with financial support from international donors, had allowed Kyiv to “maintain the economic front and continue our movement toward victory.”

The human toll of the war has been severe. More than 100,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, while Ukraine has probably suffered a similar number of military casualties, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, said in November. General Milley said that Russia’s invasion had also killed about 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and displaced 15 million to 30 million residents.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had both estimated that Ukraine’s economy would shrink 35 percent in 2022. The expectations for this year predict modest economic growth but that is subject to huge uncertainty about the course of the war: The I.M.F. set the range of outcomes at a potential decline of more than 10 percent, in the pessimistic scenario, through to growth of 10 percent in the more optimistic case.

Inflation in Ukraine, which is running near 30 percent, is expected to moderate somewhat but to remain above 20 percent, according to economists. Ukraine’s central bank has sharply devalued the country’s currency and more than doubled its key interest rate to address the destabilizing economic effects of the war.

Countries and institutions in the European Union have committed nearly 52 billion euros, about $55 billion, in military, financial, and humanitarian aid, while the United States has pledged some $51 billion, according to data compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organization.

The Kyiv School of Economics estimated that the direct costs of war-related damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure were $127 billion as of September. Rebuilding the country will run to some $750 billion, Ukrainian officials have said. Ukraine is expected to amass big debts and will need to revive its economy when the fighting ends if it is to ensure a sustained recovery.

The kind of armored vehicle France is sending isn’t a game changer, analysts say.

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A French AMX-10 RC armored reconnaissance vehicle, the kind France plans to send to Ukraine, seen during a training exercise in 2012.Credit...Francois Nascimbeni/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Armored reconnaissance and fighting vehicles that France promised this week to send to Ukraine will not alone change the tide in the war, experts said on Thursday, nor do they risk crossing a Russian red line to incite President Vladimir V. Putin.

After President Emmanuel Macron of France pledged to deliver what his office termed in a statement as light combat tanks, officials later confirmed that Mr. Macron was referring to AMX-10 RC reconnaissance vehicles, which France is phasing out from its military.

Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at the Wilson Center in Washington and the Royal United Services Institute in London, said that while any mobile firepower that allies can give to Ukraine would be helpful, the French vehicles would not by themselves make a huge difference in the war.

“It isn’t a game changer,” Mr. Watling said. However, he said, it could encourage “other NATO members to transfer more armored vehicles — which will be very useful for offensive operations later this year.”

And Édouard Jolly, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Ecole Militaire in Paris, said that the AMX-10 RC was “useful on the battlefield, without being a decisive weapon.”

France’s pledge was more significant, he said in an interview on Thursday, as a signal of its renewed support for Ukraine, which could push other countries to send their own. Indeed, shortly after the interview, Germany and the United States announced that they were also sending armored vehicles, as well as another Patriot missile system.

Other NATO states already have sent armored vehicles to Ukraine, including Soviet- or Russian-made tanks from countries in Eastern Europe, and personnel carriers and support trucks from allies farther West.

And despite Mr. Macron’s statement, some experts cautioned against describing the French vehicles as tanks, noting that their light armor renders them unable to withstand anything heavier than small-arms fire. They have large guns like those on tanks, but run on tires rather than tank treads.

“If the Ukrainians were to use it in the same way they would use a tank, it would be quite vulnerable, and they would probably suffer quite heavy losses,” said Sonny Butterworth, a tank expert and senior analyst at Janes, a defense intelligence firm.

The French reconnaissance vehicles appear to be the first Western-made armored vehicles equipped with large-caliber guns that have been sent to Ukraine, Mr. Butterworth said. That may represent only a narrow expansion of Ukraine’s capabilities, but it could also signal what will be needed as the war grinds on.

In the coming year, “Ukraine is going to have to try to retake back more of its territory from Russia,” he said. “And tanks and armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles are considered vital components in this kind of modern war, especially against Russia.”

Nikolai Sokov, an expert at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation and a former Russian diplomat, said that Moscow was more likely to react harshly to Western deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine, like the Patriot advanced ground-based air defense system that the Biden administration committed last month. On Thursday, the United States and Germany announced they would send a second Patriot system.

Heavy tanks, like the American-made M1 Abrams and the German Leopard 2, also “could give the Ukrainians a qualitative edge” and incur a violent response from Russia, Mr. Sokov said.

“I do not see any specific type of new risk associated with the French deliveries,” Mr. Sokov said.

However, he said, it was nearly impossible to know what the tipping point would be, “in the absence of very definitively drawn red lines.”

“The trouble is that when you advance in these small kinds of steps, most likely you will not know that you have crossed the red line,” he said. “So that’s the danger — it’s a very highly uncertain situation.”

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.

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Citing a security stalemate, the U.N. disbands a fact-finding mission into a prison explosion in the east.

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Relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war who were being held at the Olenivka camp gathered for a protest in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Christmas Eve.Credit...Laura Boushnak for The New York Times

A fact-finding mission to a notorious Russian prison camp in eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in an explosion in July, is being disbanded, a United Nations spokesman said on Thursday, citing a lack of necessary security guarantees.

The spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, declined to say whether Russia or Ukraine had refused to give the security assurances, but said the mission would be reconstituted if the security guarantees were given.

In the aftermath of the July 29 explosion, near the town of Olenivka in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, there was little verifiable information about exactly what happened and who was responsible.

The explosion enraged and devastated Ukraine, because most of those killed were considered national heroes. They were soldiers in the Azov Regiment who had endured a protracted Russian siege to defend the strategically significant port city of Mariupol, which finally fell in mid-May. Prisoners released from the camp reported that some of those held were tortured.

Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of causing the explosion to execute the soldiers, calling it a war crime, The New York Times reported in August. Russian officials claimed Ukraine had attacked the prison.

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said days after the attack that he would launch a fact-finding mission into the episode at the request of both Russia and Ukraine.

But on Thursday, Mr. Dujarric said that for a mission to take place in an active war zone, “we require clear safety and access guarantees from both sides and we didn’t feel we had received them.”

Asked what this implied for the families of the Ukrainian soldiers killed in the attack, who were anguished by the lack of independent information about what happened to their loved ones, Mr. Dujarric answered, “The implications are clear — there will not be a fact-finding mission from the U.N. to establish the facts.”

Human rights monitors, including those from the U.N., have repeatedly said that Russia was denying them access to detention sites where Ukrainian prisoners of war were held.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which also requested to visit the Olenivka prison camp after learning of the explosion, confirmed through a spokesman on Wednesday that the organization had not been able to gain access to the camp since May.

The I.C.R.C. released a statement in October, after being criticized by frustrated Ukrainian officials, explaining that its team remained ready to go but had repeatedly been denied access.

In early December, the organization said it had been able to visit some prisoners of war held by both Ukraine and Russia, calling it an “important step forward” but noting that all prisoners of war were entitled to I.C.R.C. visits under the Geneva Conventions.

A correction was made on 
Jan. 6, 2023

An earlier version of this article, relying on information from the International Committee of the Red Cross, referred incorrectly to the organization’s ability to gain access to a prison camp. It has been unable to gain access since May; it is not the case that it has never had access.

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Russia issues the first pardons to prisoners who fought in Ukraine, state media reports.

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A pro-military poster near the Wagner Group’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, Russia, in November.Credit...Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The head of Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group said that a first group of prisoners whom it recruited to fight in Ukraine have completed their service and been pardoned, state media reported on Thursday. Human rights groups said the move highlights the Kremlin’s extralegal use of prisoners to replenish its decimated military.

The Russian state news agency RIA published a video showing Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, the country’s largest mercenary company, congratulating about two dozen men for completing their military contracts. In another segment of the video, Mr. Prigozhin refers to a group as convicts who had earned their freedom after military service.

“You have finished your contract with dignity,” Mr. Prigozhin is shown telling the first group of men. To another group, he says: “Don’t drink too much, don’t take drugs, don’t rape women.”

“We will come back to finish what we started,” one of the men responds, in apparent reference to Ukraine.

In another video from the same scene that was posted on social media, Mr. Prigozhin said that all pardoned men will receive medals and amnesty papers in “two, three days.”

Russia Behind Bars, the country’s main prisoner rights organization, said that it was unclear what legal mechanism was used to free the men, adding to what they say is a long list of legal violations in Mr. Prigozhin’s drive to recruit prisoners to fight alongside Moscow’s forces in Ukraine.

Under the Russian Constitution, only the president can pardon a prisoner. The Kremlin did not publish any pardon decrees this week, and its press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Prigozhin’s claim.

If the pardons are real, the human rights lawyer Dmitri Zakhvatov wrote on the messaging app Telegram, “it fully demonstrates Russian Federation’s officials attitude to justice and state.”

Mr. Prigozhin, who once served a prison sentence for robbery, has masterminded the effort to recruit prisoners for President Vladimir V. Putin’s faltering war in Ukraine. He has often traveled by helicopter to Russia’s remote penal colonies to give rousing speeches to inmates, according to videos posted on social media and accounts from prison rights activists.

In exchange for military service, he has promised inmates high salaries, financial bonuses, death and incapacity payouts and, perhaps most importantly for some, freedom after six months of service.

RIA’s video was published about six months after the first reports of Wagner’s prisoner recruitment drive. Russia Behind Bars said that it was aware of at least one prisoner who returned home this week after serving in Ukraine.

The reports of pardons come as Wagner struggles to recruit new inmates amid growing reports of high mortality rates for frontline Russian soldiers and of inconsistent payments by the company, according to Wagner deserters and human rights activists.

Since June, Wagner has signed up at least 35,000 prisoners for service, according to Russia Behind Bars. The organization’s estimate, which represents nearly 10 percent of Russia’s prewar male prison population, is based on reports from sources in Russian penal colonies and could not be independently verified.

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More than 60 percent of Bakhmut has been destroyed, a Ukrainian official says.

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Walking past a destroyed building in Bakhmut last month.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

The prolonged and bloody battle for Bakhmut has destroyed more than half of the city in eastern Ukraine, a local official said on Thursday.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Ukrainian military administration for the Donetsk region, which includes Bakhmut, said that Ukrainian troops are holding off Russian forces but that the defense of the city has come at a cost amid “constant shelling.”

“The city itself suffers from this,” Mr. Kyrylenko said on Ukrainian television. “It is destroyed by more than 60 percent.” Two people were killed there by Russian artillery fire the previous day, he added. The claims could not be independently verified.

Russia has continued to press an offensive aimed at capturing Bakhmut, after suffering a string of setbacks elsewhere in Ukraine in recent months. The city remains one of the Russian military’s main targets, Ukraine’s deputy minister of defense, Hanna Malyar, said on Thursday.

As the battle for Bakhmut has turned into one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war, and losses for both sides have mounted, Ukraine’s defense of the ravaged city has taken on a symbolism that outstrips its military significance, with “Hold Bakhmut” emerging as a rallying cry for the nation.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who made a daring visit to the city in December, again expressed gratitude in his overnight address for the troops defending it, calling them “warriors.”

Amid the relentless sounds of outgoing and incoming fire, at least 90 percent of the city’s prewar population of 73,000 people have fled.

Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions the Kremlin illegally annexed in September even as its troops were losing ground there. Since then, combat in the region has become a bloody slog, as Ukrainian forces look for places to press their advantage, while Russians build trenches and fortifications along the front lines and try to capture Bakhmut.

The Russian force fighting in Donetsk is partly made up of fighters from the Wagner Group, a private military contracting company, and includes convicts who have been promised pardons in exchange for fighting for Moscow in Ukraine. Trench warfare has swayed back and forth over outlying districts of Bakhmut and nearby villages, with advances and retreats on both sides often measured in the hundreds of yards.

Ukraine moves toward charging 2 Russian commanders accused of ordering strikes that killed civilians.

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A hotel damaged during a Russian strike in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, last month. Ukraine is seeking accountability for Russian attacks on civilian sites. Credit...Laura Boushnak for The New York Times

Ukraine’s security service is seeking to prosecute two high-ranking Russian military officials for ordering strikes on civilian targets, a new escalation in Kyiv’s intense effort to hold Russian military officials and political leaders to account for war crimes.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly cast civilian deaths from bombardments as war crimes while reports of casualties continue to rise, even far behind the front lines. President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top aides have consistently described Russia as a “terrorist state” and have portrayed the thousands of civilian deaths during the 10-month war as evidence of genocide.

Moscow has just as repeatedly denied that its armed forces are purposely targeting civilians.

Experts on international law say there is a high burden of proof for war crimes, especially in establishing who ordered an action that led to a specific atrocity. Modern warfare is full of examples of civilians being harmed, and military leaders have rarely been charged in connection with those acts.

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An injured woman waiting to be taken to a hospital in Kherson last month. Proving who ordered attacks that harmed civilians is difficult.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
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An ice rink where humanitarian aid was stored was hit in an overnight missile strike in Druzhkivka this week.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

On Tuesday, the Security Service of Ukraine announced that the government had served “suspicion notices” — the first step toward formal charges and prosecution — on Col. Gen. Sergei Kobylash and Adm. Igor V. Osipov, accusing them of being responsible for killing civilians with missile strikes.

General Kobylash is the commander of long-range aviation in Russia’s Aerospace Forces. Ukraine accuses him of ordering “massive missile attacks on residential buildings, hospitals and critical infrastructure” across Ukraine.

Admiral Osipov is the former commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. A Ukrainian investigation found that he “ordered systematic missile strikes” from ships in the Black Sea into densely populated areas in Ukraine for several months, according to a statement from the security service. They are the first Russian military leaders to be singled out by Ukrainian authorities specifically for their roles in shelling civilian centers, the statement said.

Both men “have been notified” that they will be charged under Ukrainian law with “planning, preparation, unleashing and conducting of an aggressive war” and “encroachment on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability” and a pretrial investigation is underway, the security statement said. If found guilty, they could be sentenced to life in prison, terms they would only serve if Ukraine had them in physical custody.

United Nations human rights officials have documented that about 7,000 civilians have been killed during the war, and another 11,000 have been wounded, although they caution the true number is likely much higher.

Most civilian casualties were caused by “explosive weapons with wide area effects” including rockets and shelling from heavy artillery, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights said in a statement.

Ukrainian officials have pushed to create an international tribunal to prosecute top Russian officials for war crimes committed during the war, expressing frustration with the current international justice system. Last week, Ukraine proposed a “peace” summit by the end of February but said Russia could participate only if it first faced a war-crimes tribunal.

In November, the European Union’s top official proposed the creation of a U.N.-backed court to investigate and prosecute possible Russian crimes in the war in Ukraine, although it would need to overcome significant procedural hurdles to become reality.

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The invasion of Ukraine has contributed to the ascent of India, a giant that defies easy alignment.

India, which will soon overtake China as the world's most populous country, has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty.

NEW DELHI — Since the war in Ukraine began on Feb. 24., India has rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and dismissed the perceived hypocrisy of the West. Far from apologetic, its tone has been unabashed and its self-interest broadly naked.

“I would still like to see a more rules-based world,” S. Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, said. “But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on what are very deep interests, at that stage I’m afraid it’s important to contest that and, if necessary, to call it out.”

In other words, with its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, India has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty. That need is nonnegotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, even some extra for export. For Mr. Jaishankar, time is up on the mind-set that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s,” as he put it in June.

The Ukraine war, which has provoked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, has caused a different anger elsewhere, one focused on a skewed and outdated global distribution of power. As Western sanctions against Russia have driven up energy, food and fertilizer costs, causing acute economic difficulties in poorer countries, resentment of the United States and Europe has stirred in Asia and Africa.

Grinding trench warfare on European soil seems the distant affair of others. Its economic cost feels immediate and palpable.

“Since February, Europe has imported six times the fossil fuel energy from Russia that India has done,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “So if a $60,000-per-capita society feels it needs to look after itself, and I accept that as legitimate, they should not expect a $2,000-per-capita society to take a hit.”

Here comes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, pursuing its own interests with a new assertiveness, throwing off any sense of inferiority and rejecting unalloyed alignment with the West. But which India will strut the 21st-century global stage, and how will its influence be felt?

‘Fear still remains’: Ukraine finds sexual crimes where Russian troops ruled.

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Olha, a 26-year-old Ukrainian, faced sexual violence by Russian soldiers when she was detained in Kherson.

KHERSON, Ukraine — On her eighth or ninth day in Russian detention, Olha, a 26-year-old Ukrainian, was tied to a table, naked to the waist. For 15 minutes, her interrogator leveled obscenities at her, then threw a jacket over her and let seven other men into the room.

“It was to frighten,” she remembered. “I did not know what would come next.”

Olha said that over 14 days in detention this fall she was threatened with rape and was punched and kicked in the head and chest, breaking a rib. Russians put clamps on her legs, arms and earlobes to send an electric current through her body, she said, and doused her in water to worsen the shocks.

Sitting in Olha’s cramped kitchen weeks later in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, Anna Sosonska, an investigator with the prosecutor general’s office, listened to her recount the ordeal, which added to what Ukraine says is an accumulation of evidence that Russian forces had used sexual crimes as a weapon of war in the places they once ruled.

“We are finding this problem of sexual violence in every place that Russia occupied,” said Ms. Sosonska, 33. “Every place: Kyiv region, Chernihiv region, Kharkiv region, Donetsk region and also here in Kherson region.”

After months of bureaucratic and political delays, Ukrainian officials are gathering pace in documenting sexual crimes, which are prevalent and devastating in times of war but often remain hidden under layers of shame, stigma and fear.

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A woman in a village in the Kherson region explaining last month to Anna Sosonska, an investigator with the prosecutor general’s office, left, how her brother was beaten by Russian troops.
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The playground at a shelter in the Kyiv region. Humanitarian organizations and women’s shelters have started to realize that the scale of sexual violence in the war is immense, as is the need to help victims.

“We found all types of cases of war crimes: rape, forced nudity, sexual torture” inflicted on men, women and children, Ms. Sosonska said. A pattern to the crimes is emerging, she added. “Now we see there is a line of war crimes in the Russian Army and among Russian commanders.”

Russian officials have repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses, despite widespread evidence and accounts collected by Ukrainian and international investigators.

After investigating some areas Russia retreated from, an independent international commission reported to the United Nations in October that “an array of war crimes committed in Ukraine” included cases of sexual violence against women and girls.

Iryna Didenko, who leads the prosecutor’s department investigating such crimes, has already opened 154 cases of conflict-related sexual violence. The real number, she said, is “much, much more.”

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