President Biden convened a call with world leaders on Tuesday morning to reassure them about the United States’ ongoing commitment to supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, White House officials said.
Mr. Biden spoke with 11 leaders, including the prime ministers of Canada, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, and the presidents of Poland and Romania. The chancellor of Germany and the foreign minister of France also joined the call, along with the leaders of the European Commission, the European Council and NATO.
The White House did not provide details of the call. But a senior administration official had said on Monday that the president was expected to call his counterparts in the aftermath of congressional passage of a 45-day stopgap spending bill that did not include new funding for Ukraine.
Mr. Biden, his top aides and congressional Democrats and Republicans have said they are confident that further financial commitments would be agreed to in a final spending bill, but the failure to do so when the House and Senate passed the bill over the weekend highlighted the decreasing willingness of some Republicans to fund Kyiv’s war effort.
“There is a bipartisan support for this from the beginning,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday. “It’s going to continue. We have heard from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and that’s what we expect.”
If Congress were to refuse to appropriate more money for Ukraine, it could severely restrict the flow of weapons to the battlefield, which has helped repel Russian forces. Administration officials have said they can continue to send weapons with existing funds, but not for long.
- Election in Slovakia: The victory of Robert Fico, a former prime minister of Slovakia who took a pro-Russian stance, is a further sign of eroding support for Ukraine in the West as the war drags.
- U.S. Aid: Ukraine said it was confident that the United States would continue to support its war against Russia, even after Congress passed a stopgap funding bill that did not include money for Kyiv.
- Severed From the Sea: With Russia trying to maintain military control of the Black Sea, the city of Odesa is disconnected from its waters and its history as a flourishing port city.
- The Scars of Izium: Russian forces left the city in eastern Ukraine a year ago, but the buildings remain in ruins and services are still spotty. Its residents worry that more mayhem may lie ahead.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive has rumbled forward in recent months, it has encountered minefields and forces dug into elaborate trench networks. Kyiv’s forces have also run up against a Russian tactic of ceding ground before striking back.
Reports on Monday illustrated the issue: Russian forces said they had staged an assault on Ukrainian troops on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, while Ukraine’s forces said it had “repelled the attacks.”
Rather than holding a line of trenches at all costs in the face of Ukraine’s assault, security experts say, Russian commanders have employed a longstanding military tactic known as “elastic defense.”
The tactic sees Russian forces pull back to a second line of positions, encouraging Ukrainian troops to advance, then strike back when the opposing forces are vulnerable — either while moving across open ground or as they arrive at recently abandoned Russian positions.
The goal is to prevent Ukrainian troops from actually securing a position and using it as a base for further advances. That’s what Ukraine was able to do with success in the village of Robotyne in the south, their biggest breakthrough in recent weeks.
“The defender gives ground while inflicting as heavy casualties as they can on the attackers with a view to being able to set the attackers up for a decisive counterattack,” said Ben Barry, a senior fellow for land war studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank.
This tactic is just one of several factors that have impeded more rapid progress, according to Ukrainian officials and military experts. They also cite Moscow’s use of dense minefields, networks of trenches and tank barriers, as well as the West’s reluctance to supply advanced fighter jets and longer-range weapons sooner in the war.
Perhaps the most formidable obstacle is Russia’s large stockpiles of artillery, which have been deployed throughout the conflict and not least to repel the counteroffensive that began in June.
Elastic defense is not a new approach, Mr. Barry said. The Soviet Union employed it during its defeat of Germany in 1943 at the Battle of Kursk, one of the biggest on the eastern front during World War II. Russia also appears to have been applying it for some time in Ukraine.
Assessing whether the tactic is being deployed on any given day is difficult without direct access to Russian commanders, experts said. But the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, noted signs of it in recent days around Robotyne, which fell to Ukrainian forces at the end of August.
Some significant field fortifications had changed hands several times, it said in a report this weekend, adding that Russian forces had “been conducting successful limited tactical counterattacks.”
A key factor in the successful implementation of elastic defense is the judicious use of military reserves, who can be thrown into the battle for a counterattack, said Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian commander who is now a senior official at the Razumkov Center, a think tank in the capital, Kyiv.
Moscow appeared to have begun to deploy elite airborne units to its defense in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to Mr. Melnyk, suggesting that its supply of regular reserves could be running thin — a development that Mr. Melnyk said would be “encouraging news” for Ukraine.
Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that if Moscow’s forces begin to retreat more than a few hundred yards at a time, and Ukrainian troops, particularly mechanized units, are able to build up enough momentum to advance in significant numbers, it would be a sign that Russia’s defensive strategy was beginning to falter.
“One of the biggest things that remains in question is whether or not the Ukrainian military will be able to achieve a breakthrough,” he said on the “War on the Rocks” podcast last week. One alternative, he said, is that “what we’re seeing is largely how this offensive was going to unfold from now until, let’s say we get into the winter, or perhaps even through the winter.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTUkraine and Russia have fought intense battles since June, when Kyiv launched a counteroffensive buoyed by billions of dollars in military aid from NATO allies, but relatively little ground has changed hands. Here’s a look at the state of the battlefield.
Zaporizhzhia region
The main thrust of Kyiv’s counteroffensive is taking place in southern Ukraine in the western half of the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine took the village of Robotyne last month after weeks of combat. There have since been reports of other small advances. Ukraine needs to push through miles of territory and minefields before it reaches the fortified city of Tokmak, some 15 miles southwest of Robotyne. After that, Ukraine’s next objective in that part of the front line could be the city of Melitopol, which is around 31 miles from Tokmak.
Donetsk region
In eastern Ukraine, Ukraine’s military said this month it had retaken the tiny villages of Klishchiivka and Andriivka, just south of the Russian-controlled city of Bakhmut. Putting pressure on Russian forces in the city, which fell in May after one of the war’s bloodiest battles, is one apparent goal of the counteroffensive. Some U.S. intelligence and military officials said in August they were perplexed by Kyiv’s focus on Bakhmut, a position rejected by Ukraine.
There has been heavy fighting on other sectors in Donetsk province. Close to the regional capital, Donetsk, Russian forces have conducted ground attacks near Marinka and Adviivka, but have been repelled, according to Ukraine’s military. Moscow has targeted the towns since the first days of its full-scale invasion 19 months ago.
For their part, Ukrainian forces have pushed south since June from a front line close to the town of Velyka Novosilka. In August, they took the village of Urozhaine.
Kharkiv region
In the northeast, Moscow has seized a small amount of territory since the summer in fighting for villages east of the city of Kupiansk, the only sector in which Russia has made a concerted recent effort to advance. Military experts say the attacks are likely partly aimed at forcing Ukraine to divert troops from its main counteroffensive thrust.
Kherson region
Last November, Ukraine retook the southern city of Kherson, forcing Moscow to retreat to the eastern side of the Dnipro River. Since then, Ukraine has launched raids along the eastern bank amid fighting for river islands. Russia has shelled the river’s western bank repeatedly. In June, the destruction of the river’s Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, in an explosion likely caused by Russian forces, caused environmental devastation.
Black Sea and Crimea
The Black Sea has become a main theater of conflict. Ships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet have launched deadly missile strikes across Ukraine, and Kyiv has increasingly been using drones and missiles to try to undercut Moscow’s naval dominance. Since August, Ukraine has damaged a Russian warship in a drone strike and hit Moscow’s naval headquarters in occupied Crimea.
Ukraine has also repeatedly attacked the bridge that joins Russia to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. Russia has targeted Ukraine’s ports on the Danube River and the Black Sea, including Odesa, hampering its ability to ship grain.
The Russian ruble briefly weakened to a symbolically important exchange rate of 100 to the dollar on Tuesday for the first time since mid-August, when worries about wartime shocks to the economy led the central bank to call an emergency meeting at which it sharply raised interest rates to 12 percent.
The dip also came two and a half weeks after the central bank announced that it would raise the benchmark interest rate again, to 13 percent, in response to higher inflation that the bank said was driven by demand outpacing production capabilities. Higher interest rates make it relatively more attractive to hold ruble-denominated assets.
Since mid-August, the ruble has hovered around 95 to 99 rubles to a dollar, significantly weaker since the start of the year, in a sign of the financial volatility unleashed by President Vladimir V. Putin’s war against Ukraine. High military spending, labor shortages and a steadily worsening trade balance have led to concerns about a weakening economy and the sustainability of Moscow’s intense spending on the war.
When it raised rates in September, the central bank blamed the ruble’s decline on various “external restrictions” on trade with Russia that have raised the cost of imports and weakened demand for Russian exports.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, the ruble has experienced a series of ups and downs, weakening to 135 per dollar in March 2022 as the economy suffered from an onslaught of Western sanctions and an exodus of capital and assets. Later in 2022, the ruble recovered, after a spike in oil prices and falling imports.
But it slumped again in August, losing about 25 percent of its value versus the dollar from the beginning of the year. In response, the central bank called an emergency meeting and aggressively raised the benchmark interest rate.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that the ruble’s slip on Tuesday against the dollar was not a reason for worry. “We have to get used to living in the ruble zone and not feel dependent on the dollar,” he said, calling such concerns “rudiments of the past.”
In a meeting to discuss the federal budget last month, Mr. Putin said the country’s “current economic situation is generally stable and balanced” and that he expects gross domestic product to grow by 2.5 to 2.8 percent in 2023, according to news reports. The central bank’s latest prognosis for growth was more conservative, between 1.5 and 2.5 percent for the year.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTRussian attacks have wounded five people and caused damage in parts of Ukraine, the authorities said Tuesday, in yet another daily reminder of the toll on the country after 19 months of war.
Ukraine’s Air Force said air defenses shot down all but one of the 31 drones and a cruise missile that Russia launched overnight into Tuesday, but falling debris from the interceptions can also be dangerous. In the city of Dnipro, a business, a car and a garage caught fire, according to Mykola Lukashuk, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council. He said on the Telegram messaging app that 13 drones had been shot down overnight in the region.
Five people were injured on Monday in separate attacks in the Donetsk region in the east of the country, Ihor Moroz, the acting head of the regional military administration, said in a statement posted on Facebook on Tuesday. Mr. Moroz gave no details of how they were injured, but Russian shelling in the region frequently wounds civilians.
Russian forces also shelled the southern city of Nikopol overnight into Tuesday, damaging two residential buildings. The city, which is on the Dnipro River, has been regularly targeted. One person was injured when another town on the bank of the river, Zmiivka, was also shelled on Tuesday, according to the Kherson regional administration. The Ukrainian claims have not been independently verified.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched the drones from Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014. The peninsula is a hub for the Russian military, which keeps troops, fuel, ammunition and other supplies there to funnel to its forces on the front lines in southern Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said that regaining control of Crimea is fundamental to his objective of restoring sovereignty over the whole country. Ukrainian forces have stepped up their attacks on military targets on the peninsula in recent weeks, in part to hinder Russia’s capacity to resist the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The counteroffensive, which began in the south and east of the country in June, has made limited progress and relatively little ground has changed hands on the front lines this year, despite intense fighting.
Ukraine has also launched its own attacks inside Russia, several of which have hit buildings in Moscow.
The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, said on Tuesday that Russia’s air defenses had shot down a drone overnight in the Trubchevsky district. He said that there were no casualties or damage. The claim had not been independently verified.
An earlier version of this article misstated the title of Mykola Lukashuk. He is the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council, not the head of the regional military administration there. The error was repeated in a picture caption.
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Surrounded by rooms filled with stacks of cluster munitions and half-made thermobaric bombs, a soldier from Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade recently worked on the final part of a deadly supply chain that stretches from China’s factories to a basement five miles from the front lines of the war with Russia.
This is where Ukrainian soldiers turn hobbyist drones into combat weapons. At a cluttered desk, the soldier attached a modified battery to a quadcopter so it could fly farther. Pilots would later zip tie a homemade shell to the bottom and crash the gadgets into Russian trenches and tanks, turning the drones into human-guided missiles.
The aerial vehicles have been so effective at combat that most of the drone rotors and airframes that filled the basement workshop would be gone by the end of the week. Finding new supplies has become a full-time job.
“At night we do bombing missions, and during the day we think about how to get new drones,” said Oles Maliarevych, 44, an officer in the 92nd Mechanized Brigade. “This is a constant quest.”
More than any conflict in human history, the fighting in Ukraine is a war of drones. That means a growing reliance on suppliers of the flying vehicles — specifically, China. While Iran and Turkey produce large, military-grade drones used by Russia and Ukraine, the cheap consumer drones that have become ubiquitous on the front line largely come from China, the world’s biggest maker of those devices.
That has given China a hidden influence in a war that is waged partly with consumer electronics.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe Russian position was marked with the blue flag of Moscow’s elite airborne units but the fabric looked almost translucent through the Ukrainian sniper’s scope.
The flag, atop a Russian-occupied building in southern Ukraine, was just over a mile away. If a Russian soldier appeared, it would take roughly four seconds for the sniper’s large-caliber bullet to reach the man’s chest.
“They move around in the morning and in the evening,” said Bart, the leader of the four-man sniper team.
They had arrived in darkness after navigating pitch-black roads, crammed into a pickup truck with its lights off. With hurried steps on broken glass, they set up their rifles at their position, known as a “hide.”
Bart relaxed, stretching his arms out behind his 20-pound rifle, concealed among the rubble of a half-destroyed building. It was dawn and it was going to be a long day.
If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been defined as a grueling artillery war bolstered by tanks, drones and cruise missiles, then the role of the sniper, unseen and lethal, occupies an often-overlooked part of the battlefield.
Overshadowed by high-tech killing tools and the blunt power of howitzers and mortars, Ukraine’s snipers are part of a more rudimentary force: the infantry. There are comparatively few, but they are no less essential than they were more than a century ago, when a World War I marksman could terrorize a hundred men with a single shot.
But modern technology, especially the proliferation of small drones that serve as lethal observation tools above the front lines, has made sniping from concealed positions far more difficult. That has forced Ukrainian snipers to change tactics or risk a quick death.
A team from The New York Times spent a week embedded with a Ukrainian sniper team in the country’s south. We read reports on snipers’ missions, and interviewed snipers, instructors and trainees across Ukraine to understand this behind-the-scenes war waged by a cadre of well-trained shooters.