News

May 20, 2023

Russia

Follow live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war. The newly announced U.S. shipment of weaponry includes armored vehicles that can clear minefields ahead of major ground movements. Russia said it

Follow live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war.

The newly announced U.S. shipment of weaponry includes armored vehicles that can clear minefields ahead of major ground movements. Russia said it foiled Ukraine’s attempts this week to strike Crimea.

The Pentagon’s latest package includes up to $775 million of weapons and supplies from its stockpile.

Russia replaces the commander of its damaged Black Sea Fleet.

Russia’s Gazprom announces another halt to Germany’s gas flow.

A Ukrainian official says forces will continue to strike in Crimea.

Ukraine warns Russia is preparing to sever the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from its power grid.

A heavyweight rematch is a chance for a surprise champion to get the world to focus on Ukraine.

Putin offers his first public remarks on the nuclear complex since the most recent tensions began.

WASHINGTON — The United States is sending a new influx of arms and equipment that Ukraine will need for its counteroffensive against Russian troops in the country’s south, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The Defense Department will also continue to send a steady stream of rockets for the HIMARS launchers that have been credited with destroying Russian command posts and ammunition depots, and other artillery designed to disrupt supply lines.

Taken together, the new shipment of up to $775 million of weapons and supplies from the Pentagon’s stockpiles illustrates an emerging dual strategy: fueling Ukraine’s immediate artillery fight, while also helping to build up an arsenal to support a counterattack near Kherson, in the country’s south, that has yet to fully materialize.

The latest shipment includes 40 armored vehicles equipped with giant rollers to clear minefields ahead of any Ukraine ground operation, as well as 50 armored troop-carrying Humvees, 1,500 TOW guided missiles and 1,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles.

“The mine-clearing is a really good example of how the Ukrainians will need this sort of capability to be able to push their forces forward and retake territory,” a senior Defense Department official told reporters on a conference call on Friday.

The Pentagon is also sending more high-speed anti-radiation missiles, or HARMs — air-to-ground weapons designed to seek and destroy Russian air defense radar. Military technicians have figured out how to integrate the American missile on Ukraine’s Soviet-designed MiG fighter jets to help defeat one of the biggest threats to the Ukrainian air force.

The package also includes the HIMARS rockets, 16 105-millimeter howitzers and 36,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as 15 ScanEagle drones to help spot Russian targets and relay location information to the gunners.

For now, the United States has limited to 16 the number of HIMARS launchers sent to Ukraine, fearing that providing more would lead to burning through the Pentagon’s stockpile of satellite-guided rockets and eventually endanger U.S. combat readiness.

Pentagon officials have emphasized in recent days that its resupply of ammunition for various artillery systems has now reached a regular, sustainable level that Ukrainian commanders can count on as they plan operations.

The shipment, the Biden administration’s 19th overall to Ukraine, comes as fighting in Kherson, in the south, and the Donbas region, in the east, has largely ground to a standstill. A Russian offensive to seize Donetsk Province, part of the Donbas, has stalled — partly, American officials said, because Moscow rushed several thousand troops to the south to counter the anticipated Ukrainian offensive there and partly because of the effects of the HIMARS strikes.

“Right now, I would say that you are seeing a complete and total lack of progress by the Russians on the battlefield,” the senior Pentagon official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. “You’re seeing this hollowing out of the Russian forces in Ukraine.”

But when pressed by reporters, the official said that the Ukrainians lacked sufficient troops and combat power to drive the Russians from their defensive positions.

“We haven’t seen a significant retake of territory, but we do see a significant weakening of Russian positions in a variety of locations,” the official said.

The official repeatedly declined to comment on a series of attacks and other explosions in Crimea over the past two weeks. Ukrainian officials privately attribute the attacks to an elite Ukrainian special forces unit operating behind enemy lines with the help of local partisan fighters. The strikes have shocked Russian commanders in Crimea, who thought their forces and weapons depots were out of reach of Ukrainian attacks, officials said.

John Ismay contributed reporting.

— Eric Schmitt

Russia has replaced the commander of its Black Sea Fleet, the country’s state news agency reported on Friday, following a series of setbacks that include a recent powerful strike on one of its Crimean bases and the losses of its flagship vessel in April and control of a tiny island in June that served an outsize role in Russia’s naval operations.

The shake-up suggested the gravity of the setbacks to the Black Sea Fleet’s operations. While there have been unconfirmed reports of similar major changes in the leadership of other forces, they have not been made public by the Russian government.

In a report by the state news agency, Tass, on Friday, the new commander, Vice Admiral Viktor N. Sokolov, was quoted as saying that he had been appointed by the country’s defense minister last week.

The comment came as he spoke to junior officers in Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest port city and the base for the fleet since Russia illegally seized the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

“The Black Sea Fleet is participating in the special military operation, and is successfully completing all the tasks set for it,” Admiral Sokolov, 60, told the officers, according to Tass, using the Kremlin’s terminology for the conflict.

Admiral Sokolov, who served previously as the leader of the St. Petersburg-based Kuznetsov Naval Academy, Russia’s top officer training school, added that the fleet expected to receive 12 new vessels this year, along with aviation and land-based vehicles.

He replaces Vice Admiral Igor V. Osipov, who had commanded the fleet since 2019. In May, Britain’s defense intelligence agency reported that Admiral Osipov had likely been suspended following the sinking of the fleet’s flagship, the cruiser Moskva. Asked about the report at the time, a senior Pentagon official went further, saying the commander had been dismissed.

Pro-Kremlin military analysts have cited the Black Sea Fleet as the weakest link in Russia’s military effort. Since the start of the war in February, it has suffered repeated and embarrassing setbacks. Ukraine said it used Neptune missiles to sink the Moskva in April, a strike Russia has never acknowledged. It was the biggest warship lost in combat in decades.

The Black Sea Fleet is integral to the Russian war effort and has been crucial in Moscow’s efforts to exert control along Ukraine’s coastline, devastating Ukraine’s economy. The fleet has also launched sea-based long-distance missiles to strike targets deep inside Ukraine.

“Most of Russia’s naval victories have been achieved here by the Black Sea Fleet,” Admiral Sokolov told the officers, according to a video report of the event by the local television network.

The change in leadership came as Ukraine has increasingly used sabotage and sophisticated longer-range weapons to strike Russian-held territory. But Russia has shown a robust ability to absorb losses, and retains superior military might.

And it remains unclear exactly what toll the fleet sustained in the attack on its Saki air base in Crimea earlier this month, which Ukraine suggested had been carried out by special operatives and local partisans. Satellite images analyzed by The New York Times showed at least eight destroyed jets.

In a briefing for reporters on Friday, a Western official said that the attack had “put more than half of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet naval aviation combat jets out of use.” He added that “the Russian system is busy seeking to allocate blame for the debacle.”

But U.S. officials disputed the idea that such a proportion of the fleet’s aviation assets had been disabled. Recent Ukrainian attacks in Crimea have been significant, they said, and the explosions and damage Ukraine has caused have been real, including the loss of some fighter jets. However, they cautioned that the damage was not decisive, and the recent attacks alone were not enough to cause a shift in the war.

In June, Russian troops withdrew from tiny Snake Island in the Black Sea after repeated assaults by Ukrainian forces, limiting its control over Ukraine’s shipping lanes.

— Dan Bilefsky, Ivan Nechepurenko, Steven Erlanger and Julian E. Barnes

BERLIN — Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, says it will temporarily shut down its gas pipeline to Germany at the end of the month for repairs, a move likely to trigger more uncertainty in Europe as countries struggle to compensate for cuts in Russian fossil fuels.

Gazprom says it will close the taps of the Nord Stream pipeline from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2 to replace a turbine with the help of its manufacturer, Siemens. Gazprom and the German government have already been trading blame for slowed flows of gas through the pipeline. Gazprom has said Western sanctions have slowed repairs, reducing gas flows by up to 60 percent. Berlin has accused Gazprom of playing politics on Moscow’s behalf.

“The Russian side’s justification is simply a pretext,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, told reporters in Berlin in June. “It is obviously the strategy to unsettle and drive up prices.”

Europe has been working to wean itself off Russian gas, oil and coal as part of its sanctions on Moscow in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine. Many European states are bracing for potential energy shortages this winter, but perhaps none are as vulnerable as Germany, Europe’s largest economy. More than half of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia before the war in Ukraine.

Germany has been working to find alternative sources of natural gas, and has also made the awkward decision to restart coal plants already shut down as part of its plan to phase out coal by 2030. It now looks likely to extend the life of its contested three nuclear plants as well.

According to Gazprom, gas transports through the underwater pipeline to Germany could be resumed after repairs at a rate of 33 million cubic meters per day — around 20 percent of the actual capacity of the pipeline.

The German government did not immediately comment on the announcement.

— Erika Solomon

KYIV, Ukraine — A series of explosions were reported deep in Russian-held territory overnight into Friday, including in the strategically important Crimean Peninsula, as Ukraine appeared to step up its campaign to try to degrade Moscow’s combat capabilities and the morale of its troops.

A large blast at an ammunition depot was also reported within Russia itself, in the border city of Belgorod, and was strong enough to require the evacuation of two villages.

Russian officials acknowledged that sites had been targeted and said they were investigating the causes. In the two incidents in Crimea, they said they were able to fend off drones with antiaircraft fire. It was not immediately possible to independently confirm their claims.

It remains unclear what the recent flurry of deep strikes and attempted strikes on Russian infrastructure ultimately means for the war’s outcome. Without a concerted Ukrainian ground offensive that takes advantage of the chaos behind the front lines, Russian troops could adapt and mitigate future Ukrainian attacks.

For now, Russian forces are making little progress in their battle for east. They have not captured a major city since the city of Lysychansk fell in early July, though their forces have been battling for frontline villages that have been heavily defended for the last eight years.

The Ukrainians had previously been somewhat circumspect about their involvement in a series of behind-enemy-lines attacks in Crimea, including one assault that the Ukrainians said included the work of partisans and destroyed fighter jets. But on Friday a senior Ukrainian security official said that Kyiv would target sites there as part of a “step-by-step demilitarization of the peninsula with its subsequent de-occupation.”

The official, Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s national security council, said that Crimea was a sovereign territory of Ukraine and that there was an ongoing effort to liberate it. It was the highest-level acknowledgment that strikes in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, were part of a Ukrainian campaign.

While the prospect of driving Russians from Crimea is a distant one, Ukraine is trying to undermine what has been a vital link in the logistical chain of the Russian war machine.

The Crimean Peninsula was a key staging ground for the invasion of Ukraine six months ago and is a vital link in Moscow’s supply chain for troops occupying southern Ukraine. It is also home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and over the past eight years has been increasingly militarized by Moscow.

Mr. Danilov, who did not claim Ukrainian credit for individual strikes, urged people living in Crimea to provide Ukraine’s military with critical information about Russian military equipment placement and troop movements.

The explosions overnight into Friday included blasts at a military airfield outside Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea and home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet; the Russians later said the booms were the sound of successful anti-aircraft fire. Loud bangs were also reported above the Kerch Strait bridge, the only land link connecting Russia to Crimea. Russia said an air-defense system had opened fire at a drone.

Top Ukrainian military commanders have said that their counteroffensive to reclaim lost territory would not look like the Russian offensive, which has relied on heavy artillery fire to tear a path of devastation to grind out slow and bloody gains.

The Ukrainians know the old Soviet playbooks, they say, and are not playing by them.

In practice, the Ukrainian strategy could be seen in the breadth of the targets it targeted overnight and in recent days.

Even before the overnight flurry of activity, the Ukrainian military’s intelligence agency reported that Moscow was moving some of its combat aircraft to the Russian Federation and deep into the Crimean Peninsula. The claims could not be independently confirmed.

— Marc Santora

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company said on Friday that Russia was preparing to disconnect power lines at the mammoth Zaporizhzhia power plant from Ukraine’s grid, a potentially risky and complicated process that could deprive government-controlled territories of power and divert it to Crimea and Russia.

The Russians would have to shut off the reactors at the plant to reroute the electricity. That means that the power to keep cooling systems functioning at the plant would come from diesel generators, raising the risks of an accident at a facility in a war zone where workers are operating under duress.

Ukraine has been warning for some time that Russia might want to take the plant off its grid, and on Friday, the Ukrainian energy company, Energoatom, said that it had evidence that “the Russian military is looking for suppliers of fuel for diesel generators,” in what it said was a clear signal that they may be preparing to cycle the two working reactors down.

Ukrainian claims about Russia’s intentions could not be independently verified, and Moscow had no immediate comment. A top local occupation official, however, said that he was opposed to shutting down the reactor.

“A nuclear power plant shouldn’t be mothballed,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-appointed head of the occupied sectors of the Zaporizka region, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. It was unclear how long a period he was talking about.

Senior Russian officials have said that Russian military control over the plant is the best guarantee for its safety, while accusing Ukraine and its ally, the United States, of creating conditions that could cause another Chernobyl, the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine that the Soviet Union initially tried to hide.

Asked about Ukraine’s claims during a trip to the port city of Odesa, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said that “obviously the electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity,” and that should be respected.

The immediate consequences of a shutdown would be on the Ukrainian power grid, particularly in southern areas, which could potentially lose power. The plant, when fully operational, provides for about 10 percent of Ukraine’s electricity needs, with the ability to power four million homes.

The bigger concern, however, is a potential meltdown if something goes wrong in the efforts to keep power running at the plant with diesel-fueled generators. It is not publicly known how much diesel fuel is at the plant and, with Russian supply lines under constant attack by Ukrainian forces, it is not clear how easily it can be transported to the site.

Carried out properly under long-established protocols, cycling down a nuclear reactor does not carry great risk, according to nuclear experts. But the conditions of the plant, which has been damaged in recent shelling, are far from ideal. And the Ukrainian engineers, who would likely have to carry out the tasks, have been working in difficult conditions.

A power failure during the process of taking the reactor offline could cause a breakdown of the plant’s cooling system. There could be a scenario similar to the one that played out in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, when the loss of coolant resulted in three reactors undergoing some degree of core meltdown, nuclear experts say.

After that disaster, however, Ukraine upgraded the Zaporizhzhia site to enable a shutdown even after the loss of cooling water from outside the containment structures, Dmytro Gortenko, a former plant engineer, said in an interview.

Tensions around the nuclear power plant on the front lines escalated this week as the Russian and Ukrainian militaries traded charges that each was preparing to stage an attack on the plant in coming days, risking a catastrophic release of radiation.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed that the Ukrainian military was preparing a “terrorist attack” on the sprawling Zaporizhzhia complex, prompting the Ukrainian military intelligence agency to respond that the Russian warning was in fact a pretext for Moscow to stage a “provocation” of some kind there on Friday.

Russia has rejected international calls to have its forces pull back from the facility and create a demilitarized zone. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said Friday such a zone would only increase the risks of nuclear disaster, claiming that the presence of its military was “a guarantee that no such scenario will occur.”

— Marc Santora and Neil MacFarquhar

When Oleksandr Usyk upset the incumbent heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in London last September, his win triggered speculation that a rematch could take place in early 2022 in Ukraine, Usyk’s native country.

After the smaller Usyk outboxed the heavily favored Joshua at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the parties targeted Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, for the second fight and mused about a sold-out Olimpiyskiy National Sports Complex.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the prospect of that scene impossible, and it also prompted Usyk, 35, to abandon training for a stint in the Ukrainian army.

The rematch, scheduled for Saturday night, landed at the Jeddah Superdome, a 35,000-seat multipurpose sports arena in Saudi Arabia. And beyond war, the other big factor for the fight’s location is money.

Usyk, who holds titles from three of the four major sanctioning bodies, and Joshua, 32, will evenly split $77 million, the purse put up by Saudi organizers in return for hosting the event.

For Usyk, the bout is another chance to focus the world’s attention on Ukraine as the country’s military resists a Russian invasion that has lasted nearly six months.

“I’ve never seen him more determined now,” said Alexander Krassyuk, the chairman of K2 Promotions, the company that backs Usyk. “Not too many people in the world can deliver this message to millions, to hundreds of millions of people. Usyk is able to do that, and he does it in the sport of boxing.”

Early in the conflict, Usyk joined a defense battalion, and he recently told The Guardian that he had lost 10 pounds during the first month of the war.

— Morgan Campbell

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in his first public remarks about the battles raging in the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, accused the Ukrainian military on Friday of risking a “large-scale catastrophe” by shelling the plant.

The remarks, paraphrased by the Kremlin presidential website, came during a telephone call initiated by President Emmanuel Macron of France. The two presidents agreed to work toward organizing a visit by a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, to the facility, the Kremlin said.

Tensions ratcheted up around the plant over the summer, with both sides accusing each other of risking a nuclear disaster by targeting the facility. Ukraine has described Russia as using the nuclear power plant — the largest in Europe — for blackmail, risking a calamity by stationing troops at the power plant who shell Ukrainian positions across the Dnipro River.

Mr. Putin, echoing the position stated repeatedly by senior Russian officials in recent days, blamed Ukraine for the shelling at the plant, saying it “creates the danger of a large-scale catastrophe that could lead to radiation contamination of vast territories.”

Mr. Putin and Mr. Macron also spoke about the nuclear power plant back in March. At that time, Mr. Putin expressed concern that saboteurs might target the plant. Russian forces have occupied the region around the plant since the early weeks of the war, but Ukraine has been slowly eating away at the territory seized by Russia.

— Neil MacFarquhar

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said during a visit to Odesa, Ukraine, on Friday that the port — where shipments of grain have begun departing under an international deal in recent days — stood as a symbol of what the world can achieve when countries work together for the common good.

But he said that wealthier countries needed to support developing nations by helping them buy the grain.

“A country cannot feed itself if it is starved for resources,” Mr. Guterres told reporters in Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port city.

He visited the city to witness the progress of the fragile agreement brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that freed up grain after it was stuck for months amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia’s monthslong blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports aggravated a global food crisis, helping stoke famine in Africa and contributing to soaring grain prices.

Mr. Guterres urged the private sector to cooperate to get more food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and Russia, warning that “without fertilizer in 2022, there may not be enough food in 2023.” Yet his remarks came in the midst of a conflict that has underscored the limits of his organization’s influence when one of its most powerful members instigates a war.

On Thursday, as he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in Lviv, in western Ukraine, he heralded the effectiveness of the deal, saying it confirmed the United Nations’ vital role as a mediator. But Mr. Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, acknowledged that the unresolved problem that had brought him to Ukraine was the war.

As the head of a global organization whose charter pledges to end “the scourge of war,” he has repeatedly called for a political solution to end the conflict and has offered to mediate, to little avail. From the beginning of Russia’s invasion in late February until April, Mr. Guterres was unable to even get President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on the phone, according to Mr. Guterres’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric.

Some of the most effective efforts to punish Russia have come in the form of tough economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union, but those came outside the Security Council, the structure within the United Nations that has the power to impose sanctions.

While the war has laid bare the limits of the United Nations’ ability to resolve global conflicts, it has also showcased the organization’s vital humanitarian role, providing aid, food and health care to millions of Ukrainian refugees. Mr. Guterres himself served as the U.N. high commissioner for refugees from June 2005 to December 2015, taking up the role of secretary general in 2017.

But Russia holds veto power on the Security Council, robbing it of the ability to pass legally binding resolutions holding Moscow accountable. And Russia has a powerful ally, with its own veto, on the council: China.

Among the council’s most striking recent failures is the yearslong civil war in Syria, in which Russia blocked definitive action. China’s and Russia’s alliances kept the Security Council from moving aggressively to counter atrocities against the Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar. North Korea, which China also protects, has repeatedly ignored U.N. prohibitions against conducting nuclear tests.

Cases where the council was able to act include imposing painful sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. The council also authorized military intervention in support of Libyan rebels in 2011, despite Russia’s reluctance — but the assassination of the Libyan dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reinforced Russian suspicion of the organization.

— Emma Bubola, Dan Bilefsky and Farnaz Fassihi

When explosions rang out over the Kerch Strait bridge overnight into Friday, the social media accounts of people closely tracking the war lit up in a frenzy of activity.

Was the bridge, a vital link connecting Russia to Crimea, under attack?

On Friday, the bridge appeared undamaged. Russian officials said that a drone had triggered air defense systems and that a drone had been shot out of the sky. The Ukrainian government had no official comment.

But the episode focused attention on one of the most closely watched potential targets in Ukraine’s sights as Kyiv steps up a campaign to sow chaos and disrupt Moscow’s ability to sustain its war machine.

As the number of explosions at critical Russian sites in Crimea has mounted in recent days, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said this week that the bridge was a legitimate target.

“This bridge is an illegal object, permission for the construction of which was not given by Ukraine,” he wrote on Twitter. “It harms the peninsula’s ecology and therefore must be dismantled. Not important how — voluntary or not.”

The bridge’s destruction would be one of the most significant blows Ukraine could inflict on Moscow because it would sever the single overland route to bring supplies from Russia to its bases in Crimea.

It would also certainly infuriate the Kremlin. In recent weeks, Moscow has stepped up countermeasures to defend the structure. It has deployed a target ship — replete with an array of radar reflectors — to protect the bridge from attack and has run drills to cover the bridge with a smoke screen.

After video of the explosions above the bridge began spreading on social media, local officials said that the structure’s defensive systems had done their job.

“Preliminary information: The antiaircraft defense systems have worked in Kerch,” Oleg Kryuchkov, a top adviser to the Russian proxy government in Crimea, said in a statement. “There is no danger to the town or the Crimean Bridge.”

His statement could not be independently verified, and it remained unclear what was happening around the bridge.

As well as military value, the structure holds deep symbolic significance for the Kremlin. After illegally annexing Crimea in 2014, Moscow vowed to physically connect the peninsula to Russia.

For a century, talks of building a bridge across the strait — which runs between two mountain ranges, creating a fierce wind tunnel — had failed to result in action. But Mr. Putin put his weight behind the project, despite that and other engineering challenges, which include a seabed covered with some 250 feet of fine silt deposited by the alluvial flow from various rivers.

During World War II, an ice floe that broke free toppled a bridge that had been hastily constructed across the waters.

In 2018, when the new bridge was opened, Mr. Putin personally drove a truck along the 12-mile span. In a speech at the time, he hailed it a “remarkable” achievement that, he said, referring to a major city on the peninsula, “makes Crimea and legendary Sevastopol even stronger, and all of us are even closer to each other.”

But after explosions at the Saki airfield on Crimea this month, the bridge served a different purpose: It was a quick escape route as the war came to the peninsula, with more than 38,000 cars crossing in one day, the most recorded since Mr. Putin declared it open.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to a bridge to Crimea that was toppled during World War II. The bridge was planned by Germany, but it was not a “German military bridge.”

How we handle corrections

— Marc Santora

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, both plan to attend the Group of 20 summit in November, according to Indonesia’s president, setting the stage for the highest-level global diplomatic meeting since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The summit could put the two leaders in the same room with President Biden and U.S. allies, at a time of a changing world order with authoritarian governments increasingly aligned on one end, and democratic nations wary of that rise on the other.

Central to the summit will most likely be discussion of the war in Ukraine, which has brought those allegiances into sharper focus than ever as the United States, Europe and their allies have thrown vast military support behind Ukraine and sought to isolate Russia. China’s own encroachment of Taiwan will also be a major schism. Tensions over the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its territory are at their highest point in decades.

It would be the first face-to-face meeting between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi in the Biden presidency and would happen amid increasing geopolitical tensions and fraying ties between the United States and China.

President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, which is hosting the meeting in Bali, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin had told him of their plans to attend the summit.

Mr. Widodo extended the invitation earlier this year to Mr. Putin and to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. He did so after Mr. Biden said that Russia should be ousted from the G20 as a punishment for waging war on Ukraine.

Neither country has independently announced its leader’s plans to attend in person. The visit would be Mr. Xi’s first foreign visit since the Covid-19 pandemic and the first global summit Mr. Putin has attended since the invasion.

While the United States and Europe have tried to create a united global front to counter Russia’s aggression, China has reaffirmed its ties to Russia. In February, weeks before the invasion, Mr. Xi said he had a friendship with “no limits” with Mr. Putin.

China has declined to provide direct military or economic support to Russia in its invasion, casting itself as a neutral arbiter on the conflict, but in a phone call in June with Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi offered to deepen relations between their nations and to build “closer bilateral strategic cooperation.”

Chinese officials and state news media outlets have stayed away from calling Russia’s attack on Ukraine a “war” or an “invasion.” This week, the Chinese Defense Ministry said that its troops would participate in military exercises in Russia; the countries have held joint drills in the past. The U.S. Commerce Department has accused Chinese companies of supporting Russia’s military in violation of sanctions.

In a call with Mr. Biden in late July, Mr. Xi warned that China would not tolerate “interference by external forces” on Taiwan’s status. This month, China displayed its military might, encircling the island in moves timed around a visit to Taiwan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

— Victoria Kim

Myanmar, facing an economic crisis and widespread fuel shortages since the military seized power in a coup 18 months ago, will begin importing gasoline and diesel fuel from Russia.

Governments including the United States and Europe have imposed sanctions on both countries.

Russia is an ally of Myanmar and a major supplier of weapons to the Southeast Asian nation, even as Moscow wages its own costly war in Ukraine. As a member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia has joined China in blocking any significant action against Myanmar’s generals over the coup and bloody crackdown on civilian protesters.

As part of the response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the United States and Europe imposed economic sanctions and reduced energy purchases. Russia, a major oil producer, has had to search for nations willing to buy its petroleum products.

“We aim to buy high-quality fuel at a cheap price from a country where we can get it quickly,” a spokesman for Myanmar’s junta, Gen. Zaw Min Tun, said this week of the deal to import fuel from Russia.

The coup gave rise to mass protests and, eventually, armed conflict. The pro-democracy People’s Defense Force, local resistance units and ethnic rebel groups are clashing with the military in many parts of the country.

Myanmar was plunged into economic crisis after the coup when opponents staged a national strike. The economy has never recovered. Myanmar’s currency has plummeted and, in recent weeks, fuel prices have soared as shortages have become severe.

Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader and head of the military regime, negotiated the oil deal last month when he traveled to Moscow, General Zaw Min Tun said, and Myanmar would consider joint oil exploration in Myanmar with Russia and China.

“As Russia and Myanmar are sovereign countries, we will not interfere in each other’s internal affairs and will increase economic trade and purchases of defense and military equipment,” he said.

In remarks to officials earlier this week, General Min Aung Hlaing blamed rising fuel prices on the “market manipulation of merchants” and said the country had enough fuel to last only until the end of August, state media reported.

Gasoline and diesel from Russia would begin arriving sometime after August, he said, without specifying when. Myanmar media reported that shipments would begin arriving in September.

Ko Than Win Naing, who delivers food by motorbike in the city of Mandalay, said the price he pays for gas has doubled, but that it is in such short supply that he often can’t find any. Many days he starts searching for gas at 5 a.m. but comes home empty-handed.

He was relieved one recent day to fill his motorbike’s tank after a three-hour wait, only to start worrying again the next day.

“Almost all the gas stations are closed because they have no fuel,” he said. “The fuel price has doubled, but my income has dropped by more than half.”

— Richard C. Paddock

ODESA, Ukraine — The Odesa Fine Arts Museum, a colonnaded early-19th-century palace, stands almost empty. Early in Russia’s war on Ukraine, its staff removed more than 12,000 works for safe keeping. One large portrait remained, depicting Catherine the Great, the Russian empress and founder of Odesa, as a just and victorious goddess.

Seen from below in Dmitry Levitzky’s painting, the empress is a towering figure in a golden gown. The ships behind her symbolize Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Turks in 1792. “She’s textbook Russian imperial propaganda,” said Gera Grudev, a curator. “The painting’s too large to move, and besides, leaving it shows the Russian occupiers we don’t care.”

The decision to let Catherine’s portrait hang in isolation in the first room of the shuttered museum reflects a sly Odesan bravura: an empress left to contemplate how the brutality of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president who likens himself to a latter-day czar, has alienated the largely Russian-speaking population of this Black Sea port, established by her in 1794 as Moscow’s long-coveted conduit from the steppe to the Mediterranean.

Odesa, grain port to the world, city of creative mingling, scarred metropolis steeped in Jewish history, is the big prize in the war and a personal obsession for Mr. Putin. In a speech three days before ordering the Russian invasion, Mr. Putin singled out Odesa with particular venom, making clear his intention to capture “criminals” there and “bring them to justice.”

Mr. Putin believed at the outset of the war that he could decapitate the Ukrainian government and take Kyiv, only to discover that Ukraine was a nation ready to fight for the nationhood he dismissed. As the focus of the fighting shifts to southern Ukraine, Mr. Putin knows that on Odesa’s fate hinges Ukrainian access to the sea and, to some degree, the world’s access to food. Without this city, Ukraine shrivels to a landlocked rump state.

“Odesa is the key, in my view,” said François Delattre, the secretary general of the French Foreign Ministry. “Militarily, it is the highest-value target. If you control it, you control the Black Sea.”

— Roger Cohen and Laetitia Vancon

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to global soul-searching about overreliance on Russian oil and gas, but another major Russian export is also in the spotlight: diamonds.

The country is the world’s largest supplier of small diamonds. For years, engagement rings, earrings and pendants for sale in the United States and beyond have included diamonds mined from deep in the permafrost in Russia’s northeast.

Now, the United States and other countries are taking action that could officially label Russian diamonds as “conflict diamonds,” claiming their sale helps pay for Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine.

“Proceeds from that production are benefiting the same state that is conducting a premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified war,” George Cajati, a State Department official, wrote in a letter in May to the chair of the Kimberley Process, an international organization created by a United Nations resolution to prevent the flow of conflict diamonds.

The European Union, Canada and other nations in the West, as well as Ukraine and several activist organizations, have joined in similar calls for a discussion about the invasion's implications.

Also known as blood diamonds, conflict diamonds are commonly thought of as gems sold to finance war. The Kimberley Process defines them more specifically as “rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments.”

But “rebel movement” does not accurately describe Russia, and officials there object to labeling the diamonds as conflict gems. They chalk up the effort by Western governments to do so as “political demagogy,” according to an emailed statement from the press service of Russia’s Ministry of Finance.

— Dionne Searcey

ALEXANDROUPOLI, Greece — It is an unlikely geopolitical flash-point: a concrete pier in a little coastal city, barely used a few years ago and still occupied only by sea gulls most of the time.

But the sleepy port of Alexandroupoli in northeastern Greece has taken on a central role in increasing the U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe, with the Pentagon transporting enormous arsenals through here in what it describes as the effort to contain Russian aggression. That flow has angered not only Russia but also neighboring Turkey, underlining how war in Ukraine is reshaping Europe’s economic and diplomatic relationships.

Turkey and Greece are both NATO members, but there is longstanding animosity between them, including conflict over Cyprus and territorial disputes in the Mediterranean, and Ankara sees a deeper relationship between Athens and Washington as a potential threat.

The increase in military activity has been welcomed by the government of Greece, most of its Balkan neighbors and local residents, who hope that Americans will stimulate the regional economy and provide security amid rising regional tensions.

Raising the strategic stakes is the impending sale of the Alexandroupoli port. Four groups of companies are competing to buy a controlling stake — two include American firms, backed by Washington, and two have ties to Russia.

U.S. military operations in Greece have expanded greatly since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, and top officials from Moscow and Ankara have called that a national security threat.

— Niki Kitsantonis and Anatoly Kurmanaev

BRUSSELS — A proposal that the European Union ban visas for all Russian tourists because of the Ukraine invasion has set off a debate in the continent’s capitals about morality, legality, collective guilt and the use of power.

Already, some nations, like Estonia, are implementing their own bans, canceling some visas and refusing to allow Russian tourists to enter. Other countries, like Germany, argue a blanket ban will hurt Russians opposed to President Vladimir V. Putin and his war. Still others say the European Union cannot afford to show divisions over the issue and needs to come up with a consensus policy.

Further fueling the debate, the Czech government, which holds the current presidency of the European Union, will raise the proposal with foreign ministers at the end of this month.

Beyond the legal and moral issues raised by the proposed ban, suggested this month by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, lies a more practical question: Would it have the intended effect, as its proponents say, of driving home to the Russian people the costs of the war begun by their autocratic president, Vladimir V. Putin?

Or would it, as critics say, produce the opposite result by antagonizing and alienating Russians, while reinforcing Mr. Putin’s claims that the West is trying to destroy Russia?

Benjamin Tallis, a Berlin-based analyst, argued that bans would not just stop Russians from taking European vacations while their troops kill Ukrainians, but would also provide a chance for Europeans to use their power for moral and strategic ends.

It would tell Russians, “travel to Europe is a privilege, and you value it, and we’re going to take it away,” he said. “Power begets power, and in general the E.U. and some states, especially Germany, are very shy about using the real power they do have.”

— Steven Erlanger and Neil MacFarquhar