Russia-Ukraine WarRussian Attacks Intensify in East, Ukraine Says

Follow live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Ukrainian military reports attacks at dozens of points across the eastern front.

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Ukrainian soldiers walking past a crater in front of a high-rise building on Sunday, a day after a missile attack in Druzhkivka, in eastern Ukraine.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces attacked dozens of Ukrainian positions across the eastern front, the Ukrainian military said on Monday, as Moscow’s assaults widen and intensify ahead of what Kyiv has warned could be the Kremlin’s largest offensive since the first weeks of the war.

The Ukrainian General Staff, which is responsible for military strategy, said in its daily battlefield update that the Russians fired on some two dozen towns and villages around Bakhmut, the ruined city that has become the focal point of Moscow’s campaign to seize all of the eastern area known as Donbas.

But the general staff said that the chaotic nature of the Russian effort — including waves of inexperienced recruits and former convicts belonging to the Wagner paramilitary group — was limiting its effectiveness.

“There was a complete lack of coordination and interaction among the servicemen of Russian occupation troops and the so-called Wagner Group’s mercenaries,” it said.

Just as Russia used its overwhelming advantage in artillery early in the war to grind out gains in eastern Ukraine, it is now deploying hundreds of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers, in small groups, to probe for vulnerabilities in Ukrainian defensive lines. That has forced Ukraine to stretch its forces to meet the threat.

But while the fighting has been brutal — with hundreds of soldiers being killed or wounded daily on both sides, according to U.S. and European estimates — neither side has achieved any significant territorial gains in months. The eastern front has remained largely the same, running along a 140-mile stretch of territory that forms the shape of a jagged crescent moon.

It remains unclear where and when Moscow will mount a large-scale offensive, but Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said on Sunday that tens of thousands of newly mobilized soldiers have been dispatched to northeastern and southeastern part of occupied Ukraine. He said that Moscow is determined to break through Ukrainian defensive lines before the anniversary of its invasion, on Feb. 24.

At the northern edge of the crescent is the Russian-held city of Kreminna, where heavy battles are playing out in surrounding forests. Kreminna is where the Ukrainian counteroffensive in September stalled after driving the Russians from the northeastern Kharkiv region, and it is now one of the areas where Ukrainian officials have said Moscow is massing troops for a renewed assault.

At the center of the crescent is Bakhmut, the site of one of the war’s most prolonged and bloody battles, where Russia has made slow progress in its monthslong attempt to encircle the city. Lieutenant Roman Konon, who is fighting in the city with the “Freedom” battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, said Russia continued to attack with “an unprecedented force.”

“First, the infantry units of the occupiers go on reconnaissance by combat, then a massive barrage of artillery begins and the infantry assault is repeated again,” he said in a video message played on Ukrainian national television.

Despite Russian forces’ “minor successes in advancing,” he said, Ukrainian forces still controlled a highway that allows supplies to get into the city.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with his military leadership on Monday to get updated on the current situation on the front lines. “Special attention was paid to the positions of the defense forces in the Bakhmut direction and their provision with necessary munitions,” his office said in a statement.

At the southern edge of the crescent, near the town of Vulhedar, Ukraine says Russian attacks have been repulsed. But Ukrainian officials warned that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been deployed to the region and could be gathering for a more coordinated assault.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday night that Russian forces were determined to avenge their setbacks in the first year of the war, and that the “fierce battles” raging on the front will likely grow in intensity.

“We have no alternative but to defend ourselves and win,” he said.

A possible shake-up looms in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.

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Ukrainian soldiers on their way to the front line in eastern Ukraine in January.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

As Ukrainian forces battle to hold off an intensifying Russian assault in the east, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov could soon be reassigned, which would make him the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to change jobs since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Davyd Arakhamia, the leader of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, said on Sunday that Mr. Reznikov would be transferred to the leadership of another ministry. But the timing of such a move, or even whether it would take place, remained unclear. On Monday, Mr. Arakhamia said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app, that “changes in the field of defense will not take place this week.”

Mr. Reznikov, a lawyer who has led the defense ministry since shortly before Russia’s invasion in February last year, said in a television interview late Sunday that he was surprised to learn that he might be transferred, and that he would refuse the new position because he did not have the expertise. Earlier on Sunday, he had told a news conference that only Mr. Zelensky could remove him from his post.

“No official remains in office forever. No one,” Mr. Reznikov said, adding: “I will do what the head of state suggests to me.”

Mr. Zelensky has not commented on the matter.

The fate of Mr. Reznikov has been the subject of increasing speculation amid a growing scandal involving accusations of financial impropriety in the defense ministry. Mr. Reznikov has not been directly implicated in any wrongdoing, and Mr. Arakhamia did not link the move to concerns about the corruption scandal, saying only that “time and circumstances call for strengthening and regrouping.”

Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet has remained remarkably intact throughout the nearly yearlong war. Last month, his minister of internal affairs, Denys Monastyrsky, was killed in a helicopter crash near Kyiv, the cause of which remains under investigation. Days later, amid growing scrutiny of potential financial impropriety among government officials, a top official in Mr. Zelensky’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, resigned after drawing criticism for his use of an S.U.V. donated by General Motors for humanitarian missions.

Mr. Reznikov has been a public face of Ukraine’s war effort, shuttling to foreign capitals to persuade allied defense officials to send more weapons. Rumors that he might lose his job started swirling in late January as Mr. Zelensky hinted at personnel changes in his government.

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Leopard training, a Russian diesel ban and the battle for Bakhmut: What to watch for this week.

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After shelling in Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, on Friday.Credit...Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Here are some of the developments to watch this week in the war in Ukraine:

Tank Training: Ukrainian soldiers on Monday will begin training outside the country on German-made Leopard 2 tanks, dozens of which were pledged by Western allies last month.

Ahead of a new anticipated Russian offensive, Western allies of the government in Kyiv are rushing battle tanks, armored vehicles and other advanced weapons to help Ukraine. Although many are not expected to arrive for months, officials are trying to condense training on the German-made tanks to a few weeks.

The United States last week announced a new $2.2 billion aid package for Ukraine that, for the first time, includes funding for a rocket-boosted weapon with a range of up to 93 miles. Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, emphasized on Sunday that his government has promised that any weapons it receives from allies would not be used to strike targets within Russia’s internationally recognized borders.

E.U. Embargo: Two months after banning most crude oil from Russia, the European Union on Sunday expanded the embargo to Russian supplies of diesel and gasoline, the lifeblood of transportation.

The escalation is aimed at further throttling Russia’s energy business, cutting it off from its most important export market. Sales of petroleum products are crucial for financing the country’s budget and, ultimately, its war in Ukraine.

Battle for Bakhmut: The founder of the Wagner private military company, whose forces have helped lead Russia’s fight for Bakhmut, said on Sunday that Ukrainian troops were “fighting to the last” in the key eastern city, denying reports on social media that Kyiv’s forces were withdrawing.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine are not retreating anywhere,” the founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said in a statement posted by one of his companies on Telegram. He said Ukrainian troops were defending “every street, every house, every stairwell,” he said, as they waged an increasingly desperate effort to deny Moscow its first significant battlefield success in months.

While Mr. Zelensky has vowed that “no one will give away Bakhmut,” some Ukrainian soldiers deployed there are increasingly pessimistic about the city’s fate. They are killing Russians, one soldier recently told The New York Times, but not fast enough.

Nuclear Security: The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog will meet with Russian officials in Moscow this week to discuss security at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, the Russian news agency Tass reported.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has spent months attempting to broker a deal to create a demilitarized security zone around the facility, which has been hit by frequent shelling. He met last month with Mr. Zelensky, but a Kremlin spokesman said on Monday that Mr. Grossi would not meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week.

Last week, Mr. Grossi said that progress on the talks was “too slow and more determined efforts are required from all sides.”

Russia’s foreign minister heads to Mali, his third trip to Africa in recent months.

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Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, meeting with South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, in Pretoria last month. Mr. Lavrov will visit Mali on Monday, in his third visit to Africa in about six months.Credit...Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, was scheduled to arrive in Mali late on Monday, making his third trip to Africa in about six months as Russia seeks to extend its influence and maintain support among non-Western countries for its invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Lavrov’s two-day visit to the West African nation is aimed at strengthening defense and security ties, the Malian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Russia has already supplied Mali with military aircraft including helicopters, as well as hundreds of military advisers and operatives, many of whom Western officials say belong to the Wagner mercenary group.

Before traveling to Mali, Mr. Lavrov visited Iraq on Sunday. He is scheduled to travel next to Mauritania and Sudan, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

Russia, Africa’s largest arms dealer, has longstanding ties to nations on the continent, many of which have supported President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The relationship with Mali is just one of several military alliances that the Kremlin has strengthened in recent years, a mutually beneficial strategy that has made Russia a favored security partner for many African nations.

Last month, Mr. Lavrov visited South Africa, days after the government there announced that it would hold joint military exercises with Russia and China in February.

Russia provided about 45 percent of major arms to Africa between 2012 and 2021, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In recent years, a growing number of countries have established contracts with Russian mercenary groups, including Wagner, whose fighters are active in the war in Ukraine. In most African countries where they have deployed, Wagner operatives have been accused of widespread abuses, including killings of civilians, sexual violence and torture.

In Mali, United Nations experts have said that Wagner mercenaries may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity along with the country’s military. On Sunday, Mali’s government said it was expelling the head of the human rights division of the U.N. peacekeeping operation stationed in the country.

Since a 2020 military coup in Mali, the junta in Bamako has drawn closer to Russia. At the same time, its relationship has soured with France, its former colonial ruler, which ended a nine-year military operation in Mali last year as anti-French sentiment rose. The military junta in neighboring Burkina Faso also has vowed to strengthen ties with Russia, while ordering France to pull out troops stationed in the country.

For the Malian authorities, the visit also offers a show of foreign support amid tensions with Western nations, and some West African neighbors, over the coup and its use of mercenaries.

“The presence of the Russian foreign minister is an opportunity for the Malian authorities who need a powerful ally on the global stage,” the daily Le Pays newspaper wrote on its front page.

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What weapons is Ukraine getting, and will they arrive in time?

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American M1A1 Abrams tanks during NATO exercises in Latvia.Credit...Ints Kalnins/Reuters

The latest American weapons package for Ukraine, unveiled on Friday, includes the longest range weapons yet to push back Russian troops and strike logistical targets well behind enemy lines. But they come with a hitch: They will be deployed on the battlefield too late to be used against a broad assault by Moscow that seemingly has begun to unfurl in eastern Ukraine.

That is also the case with most of the Western tanks, fighting vehicles and air-defense missiles that have been promised after months of pleas by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

Most of the sophisticated weapons will also require rigorous training for Ukrainian troops, who have never used them, a process that usually takes months and sometimes as long as a year.

And some of the arms — like the rocket-propelled guided bombs that the United States is now offering in the $2.17 billion package — have to be retrofitted from existing stocks or even built from scratch.

Already, Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold territory against Russia’s latest offensive, and Moscow is believed to be mobilizing at least 200,000 additional soldiers and possibly more.

“It is a race for time now,” said Heinrich Brauss, a former NATO assistant secretary general for defense policy and force planning.

Millions of Ukrainians will face mental health challenges because of the war, the W.H.O. country head says.

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Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Public health authorities in Ukraine are warning of the long-term psychological impact of the war, saying that nearly a quarter of the country’s population could suffer mental health problems.

An estimated 10 million people will likely develop some form of mental health condition as a result of the war, said Dr. Jarno Habicht, head of the World Health Organization’s office in Ukraine. He added that the number — which is based on W.H.O. estimates that analyzed the effect that other conflicts had on mental health — will probably increase.

“Because this war and crisis is different than many others we have seen, my assumption is that net number could grow as the time goes on,” Dr. Habicht said during an interview in Kyiv last month. He added that stress-induced disorders including anxiety, along with depression, were among the main concerns.

He emphasized that addressing mental health will be essential to ensuring long-term development and social cohesion in Ukraine as the conflict continues.

“We need to be ready to support those more than 10 million people,” he said, adding that services must be available not only in Ukraine but also in neighboring European countries hosting Ukrainians who have fled the war. “Some of them have come back, but some of them are still away finding a place to raise their children, to be in a safe place, to have electricity.”

There have been some strides toward addressing the mental health needs, Dr. Habicht said, including through an initiative spearheaded by Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, that aims to make high-quality, affordable mental-health services available to people across Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, the W.H.O. and more than a dozen other partners have begun a program to train primary care physicians on how to treat patients with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal behavior, and substance abuse. Hundreds of physicians have gone through the program, which will also be offered online to help expand its reach.

The key to addressing mental health concerns in Ukraine, Dr. Habicht said, “is not waiting until the war is over.”

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Russia’s soaring death toll offers a grim insight into its tactics.

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Ukrainian medical evacuation team members await calls for wounded soldiers in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which has been the scene of heavy fighting.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials.

While the officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, they say the slaughter from fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and the town of Soledar has ballooned what was already a heavy toll.

With Moscow desperate for a major battlefield victory and viewing Bakhmut as the key to seizing the entire eastern Donbas area, the Russian military has sent poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, has been hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.

Russia analysts say that the loss of life is unlikely to be a deterrent to Mr. Putin’s war aims. He has no political opposition at home and has framed the war as the kind of struggle the country faced in World War II, when more than 8 million Soviet troops died. U.S. officials have said that they believe that Mr. Putin can sustain hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine, although higher numbers could cut into his political support.

Ukraine’s casualty figures are also difficult to ascertain, given Kyiv’s reluctance to disclose its own wartime losses. But in Bakhmut, hundreds of Ukrainian troops have been wounded and killed daily at times as well, officials said. Better trained infantry formations are kept in reserve to safeguard them, while lesser prepared troops, such as those in the territorial defense units, are kept on the front line and bear the brunt of shelling.

The last public Biden administration estimate of casualties came last November, when Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more than 100,000 troops on each side had been killed and wounded since the war began. At the time, officials said privately that the numbers were closer to 120,000.

Here is a look at how ammunition gets from U.S. factories to Ukrainian battlefields.

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At factories in northeastern Pennsylvania and rural Iowa, artillery ammunition are made to be sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.

Every day for months, Ukrainian soldiers have fired thousands of American-made artillery shells at Russian troops, and all of that ammunition begins its journey to the battlefield at factories in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest of those plants, in Scranton, first began making steel shells in the early 1950s for the Korean War.

The empty shells are sent to rural Iowa, where they are filled with molten explosives and packaged for delivery.

Here is a look at the process of making them.

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Two men set out from Russia, hoping a boat could carry them to U.S. soil. It did not go as planned.

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Maksim, left, and Sergei fled Russia, opposing their country’s war with Ukraine and its effort to enlist more men to fight.Credit...Grant Hindsley for The New York Times

A series of knocks rattled his apartment door one day last fall, and Maksim peered through the peephole to see two soldiers in uniform. They were military enlistment officers, he knew, expanding the vast conscription effort for the war in Ukraine to Russia’s remote Far East.

The 44-year-old fisherman kept in motionless silence until the officers moved along. Knowing they would be back, Maksim went that night to the home of a friend, Sergei, who had received an unwelcome visit of his own. Together, they pored over maps at Sergei’s kitchen table, trying to find a way to flee the country and a war where thousands of young Russian men were dying. Sergei then offered a plan that, at first, seemed unfathomable.

“I propose that we travel by sea,” Sergei said.

The idea was the start of a daring and daunting journey in which the two men set off in a small fishing boat with a 60-horsepower motor to travel hundreds of miles over several days — past Russian border guards and through the treacherous Bering Sea — to win asylum on U.S. shores. It was a desperate quest for freedom, and one that did not go according to plan.

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Another subtle dance for weapons is underway, this time for U.S. fighter jets.

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Ukraine has asked for dozens of F-16s, which were developed in the 1970s by General Dynamics and the U.S. Air Force.Credit...Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

WASHINGTON — For Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies, the playbook has now become standardized.

First, Kyiv asks for an advanced weapons system. The Biden administration says no, and quietly suggests that Ukraine could get the same type of weapon from its European neighbors, in half the time.

But NATO countries in Europe, still smarting from President Donald J. Trump’s oft-spoken wish to break up the alliance, refuse to commit to sending anything to Ukraine that would provoke Russia unless the United States is right in there with them. So, after months of hemming and hawing, the Biden administration says yes, and the gates to more weapons open.

So it was with air defense systems, when President Biden decided in late December to send a Patriot battery to Ukraine, and Germany and the Netherlands then announced that they too would send Patriot launchers and missiles. So it was with armored fighting vehicles, with France and Germany opening up their larders once the Biden administration signaled in January that it would send Bradleys. So it was with tanks, with Germany agreeing to send Leopard 2 tanks once the Biden administration agreed to send the American M1A2 Abrams.

Now it is the fighter jets, the latest item on the Ukrainian acquisition wish list. Kyiv has asked for dozens of F-16s, the single-engine fighter jet developed in the 1970s by General Dynamics and the U.S. Air Force. Almost 50 years later, American Air Force pilots are still flying the F-16, as are pilots in a host of U.S. partner nations.

Ukraine wants them, both to provide air support for troops as they seek to reclaim cities and towns in the east and the south where Russian troops have dug in, and to protect their cities and towns from Moscow’s attack planes.

Following the usual script, the Biden administration is saying no — but officials hasten to say, privately, that no is probably temporary.

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How an American military training group imploded in Ukraine.

Laura Boushnak, Brendan Hoffman and Jim Huylebroek for the New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — Andrew Milburn, a former American Marine colonel and leader of the Mozart Group, stood in a chilly meeting room on the second floor of an apartment building in Kyiv about to deliver some bad news. In front of him sat half a dozen men who had traveled to Ukraine on their own dime to work for him.

“Guys, I’m gutted,” he said. “The Mozart Group is dead.”

The men stared back at him with blank faces.

One asked as he walked toward the door, “What should I do with my helmet?”

The Mozart Group, one of the most prominent, private American military organizations in Ukraine, has collapsed under a cloud of accusations ranging from financial improprieties to alcohol-addled misjudgments. Its struggles provide a revealing window into the world of foreign volunteer groups that have flocked to Ukraine with noble intentions only to be tripped up by the stresses of managing a complicated enterprise in a war zone.

“I’ve seen this happen many times,” said one of Mozart’s veteran trainers, who, like many others, spoke only anonymously out of concerns that the Russians might target him. “You got to run these groups like a business. We didn’t do that.”

Hundreds if not thousands of foreign veterans and volunteers have passed through Ukraine. Many of them, like Mr. Milburn and his group, are hard-living men who have spent their adult lives steeped in violence, solo fliers trying to work together in a very dangerous environment without a lot of structure or rules.

The Mozart Group thrived at first, training Ukrainian troops, rescuing civilians from the front lines and raising more than a million dollars in donations to finance it all. But then the money began to run out.

After months struggling to hold itself together, Mozart was plagued by defections, infighting, a break-in at its office headquarters and a lawsuit filed by the company’s chief financial officer, Andrew Bain, seeking the ouster of Mr. Milburn.

The lawsuit, filed in Wyoming, where Mozart is registered as a limited liability company, is a litany of petty and serious allegations, accusing Mr. Milburn among other things of making derogatory comments onabout Ukraine’s leadership while “significantly intoxicated,” letting his dog urinate in a borrowed apartment and “diverting company funds” and other financial malfeasance.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I’m flawed,” said Mr. Milburn, who acknowledged in an interview that he had been drinking when he made the comments on Ukraine. “We all are.” But he denied the more serious allegations about financial improprieties, calling them “utterly ridiculous.”

Fears that Russian could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine have diminished, but could re-emerge.

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Tensions over Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s nuclear threats have abated, but could return.Credit...Mikhael Klimentyev/Sputnik

WASHINGTON — Last fall, tensions in Washington reached a crescendo as Moscow made persistent nuclear threats and U.S. intelligence reported discussions among Russian military leaders about the use of such weapons.

Concerns remain over Russia using a nuclear weapon, but the tensions have since abated. Several factors explain why, officials said: A more stable battlefield, China’s warnings against the use of nuclear weapons, improved communications between Moscow and Washington and an increased role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Ukraine have contributed to a measure of stability.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a senior U.S. official said recently, may well have come to the conclusion that the threats, which he once saw as leverage, were backfiring.

The possibility of nuclear escalation continues to influence American decisions over what advanced weaponry to give Ukraine. But nearly a year into the war there, American policymakers and intelligence analysts have more confidence that they understand at least some of Mr. Putin’s red lines — and what kinds of support for Ukraine will prompt statements of condemnation versus what might risk something more dangerous.

Inside the Biden administration, officials caution that Russia’s threats over nuclear escalation are not over, and that the next time the Kremlin wants to remind the West about the power of its arsenal, it could potentially move a nuclear weapon that it knows can be observed by the United States. The U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations.

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‘They come here to forget’: At ski resorts, Ukrainians find relief, if not an escape, from the war.

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On the slopes of the Dragobrat ski resort in January in Ukraine.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

POLYANYTSYA, Ukraine — Children in puffy snowsuits waited patiently to board the ski lift, clutching their poles. Some families rode to the top just to breathe in the crisp mountain air and walk between the tall pines that framed the valley below.

Ski instructors in red onesies guided students down bunny slopes coated with snow churned out by machines, as the real stuff has been in short supply throughout Europe this winter. Teenagers let out delighted yelps as they slipped on the ice of a nearby skating rink.

It was almost easy to forget that this idyllic scene — at the Bukovel ski resort in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine — was unfolding in a country at war, with pitched fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces playing out on front lines a few hundred miles away.

Some of the Ukrainians on the crowded slopes were trying to escape the stresses of life under siege. Some were simply trying to find a place to work with somewhat reliable electricity.

“It’s a way to get normal life back,” almost an act of defiance, said Yana Chernetska, 30, who came to the mountain from Odesa for a few days with her 4-year-old daughter and her husband. “No missiles should stifle a normal childhood for my child.”

But for others, the battlefield was never far from their minds.

Zelensky may attend the E.U. summit this week in Brussels.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a meeting with European Union leaders in Kyiv on Friday.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

BRUSSELS — President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine could visit Brussels on Thursday to meet with European Union leaders arriving in the Belgian capital for a long-planned summit.

As part of such a visit, Mr. Zelensky would likely address the European Parliament on Thursday, according to an email from the parliament’s secretary general to European lawmakers that was reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Zelensky’s possible presence, which hinges on security arrangements, was reported earlier by The Financial Times.

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council of member nation leaders, invited Mr. Zelensky to participate in person at “a future summit.” The invitation was announced in a Twitter post from a spokesman for Mr. Michel, who did not specify any details of the invitation or its timing.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on a state news broadcast on Monday night that his department was working on a number of possible visits by Mr. Zelensky, “but when and where they will take place, you will find out from the president himself and from his office,” according to the Ukrinform news agency.

A visit this week, if it happens, would be the Ukrainian leader’s second known trip outside his country since Russia invaded nearly a year ago. In December, Mr. Zelensky visited Washington to meet with President Biden and deliver an emotional plea to Congress.

Last month, Ukraine received more heavy military aid from the United States, as well as the promise of Abrams tanks.

Mr. Zelensky’s mission to Brussels would be a little different. As he did during a visit by top E.U. brass to Kyiv last week, Mr. Zelensky would most likely be trying to shore up political support as the E.U. deals with the economic fallout of the war and the cost of hosting more than four million Ukrainian refugees.

European nations have largely closed ranks behind Ukraine, in some cases at great cost to their economies, including by severing their energy links to Russia. They have also dealt with the fallout of ratcheting up the economic costs of the war for the Kremlin through sanctions — while Mr. Zelensky has been pushing for more, and better enforced, economic penalties for Moscow.

Ukraine was granted E.U. candidate status in June, but the recent visit by European leaders to Kyiv underscored that it is unlikely to be admitted to the club soon. Mr. Zelensky’s request for an expedited process has also fallen flat.

Still, Mr. Zelensky needs E.U. funding to keep his embattled country running and avoid a default on its debts. And his country will need enormous sums of funding to ultimately rebuild.

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Outnumbered and worn out, Ukrainians in the east brace for a Russian assault.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

NEVSKE, Ukraine — In a tiny village in eastern Ukraine at the epicenter of the next phase of the war, Lyudmila Degtyaryova measures the Russian advance by listening to the boom of incoming artillery shells.

There are more and more of them now. And they are coming more frequently, as Russian troops grind their way forward.

“You should see the fireworks here,” said Ms. Degtyaryova, 61, as the sounds of artillery howled all around. “It is like New Year’s.”

Russia’s military is preparing to launch a new offensive that could soon swallow Ms. Degtyaryova’s village of Nevske, and perhaps much more in the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas. But already the impact of Russia’s stepped-up assault is being felt in the towns and villages along the hundreds of miles of undulating eastern front.

Exhausted Ukrainian troops complain they are already outnumbered and outgunned, even before Russia has committed the bulk of its roughly 200,000 newly mobilized soldiers. And doctors at hospitals speak of mounting losses as they struggle to care for fighters with gruesome injuries.

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