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Russia Stokes Ukraine Tensions With Evacuations and Missile Tests

Russia Stokes Ukraine Tensions With Evacuations and Missile Tests

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A Ukrainian soldier at a front line position in Krymsk, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday.
Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

MUNICH — As shelling hammered towns in eastern Ukraine on Saturday and civilians boarded buses to evacuate the region, Russia engaged in a dramatic display of military theater, test-firing ballistic and cruise missiles in a reminder to the West that a conflict over Ukraine could quickly escalate.

In eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have asserted, without evidence, that Ukraine was planning a large-scale attack, separatist leaders urged women and children to evacuate and able-bodied men to prepare to fight.

While Western leaders have dismissed the notion that Ukraine would launch an attack while surrounded by Russian forces, the ginned-up panic was a disturbing sign of what the United States has warned could be a pretext for a Russian invasion. President Biden declared Friday that President Vladimir V. Putin had already decided to invade Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, flew to Munich on Saturday to shore up Western support for his threatened nation. Some observers in Washington have expressed concern that his leaving the country at this critical moment could provide an opening for Moscow, which the West believes is intent on toppling Mr. Zelensky’s government.

Mr. Zelensky made an emotional appeal to the West, saying that sanctions against Russia should begin immediately and that there was no point in daily declarations that attacks are imminent, as they are destroying the economy. He added that no deal should be struck with Russia that does not include his nation.

“It’s important for all our partners and friends to not agree about anything behind our back,” he said. “We’re not panicking. We’re very consistent that we are not responding to any provocations.”

Western leaders there displayed a united front and issued repeated calls for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. Vice President Kamala Harris called the crisis “a defining moment” for European security and the defense of democratic values.

Even the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, in a striking comment of some distancing from Russia, said that the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of every country should be safeguarded. “Ukraine is no exception,” he said in a virtual appearance at the Munich conference. But he also urged the United States to stop making “hyperbolic warnings” about Russian intentions.

But Mr. Putin sent his own message, presiding over tests of nuclear-capable missiles.

Tensions between the United States and Russia have not been this high since the Cold War, and Russia’s nuclear drills on Saturday appeared carefully timed to deter the West from direct military involvement in Ukraine. In Munich, Ms. Harris warned that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its allies would target not only financial institutions and technology exports to Russia, but also “those who are complicit and those who aid and direct this unprovoked invasion.”

“Russia continues to claim it is ready for talks, while at the same time it narrows the avenues for diplomacy,” she said. “Their actions simply do not match their words.”

In Ukraine, shelling escalated in the east, where Russian-backed separatists have battled government forces in the last few days.

Artillery fire picked up along the entire length of the frontline, the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior Affairs said on Saturday. The shelling was roughly double the level of the previous two days, the ministry said.

Several intense artillery barrages targeted a pocket of government-controlled territory around the town of Svitlodarsk, a spot that has worried security analysts for weeks for its proximity to dangerous industrial infrastructure, including storage tanks for poisonous gas.

“I have a small baby,” said Nadya Lapygina, a resident of Staryi Aidar, one of several dozen towns hit by artillery and mortar fire on the northern border of the breakaway separatist region of Luhansk. “You have no idea how scary it is to hide him from the shelling.”

There were also alarming signs of what American officials described as possible precursors to a pretext for a Russian invasion. Leaders of Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine issued a call on Saturday for all men in the territory they control to register to fight.

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Credit…Alexandra Beier/Getty Images

MUNICH — In an appeal that was at times bitterly critical of the West, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine urged allies on Saturday to begin sanctioning Russia now rather than wait for an invasion, and he took aim at repeated American declarations that an attack would happen within days.

“What are you waiting for?’’ Mr. Zelensky asked a large audience at the annual meeting of the Munich Security Conference, which he attended despite warnings that his absence from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, could give Russia an opportunity to strike. “We don’t need your sanctions after” the economy collapses and “parts of our country will be occupied.”

By turns grateful for allied unity and frustrated by its apparent ineffectiveness, Mr. Zelensky described Europe’s security architecture as “brittle,” even “obsolete,” as he portrayed the plight of his country since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Mr. Zelensky’s remarks contrasted with Vice President Kamala Harris’s portrayal earlier in the day of a united and vigorous NATO alliance that had shown its resolve at a time when Europe’s security was under “direct threat.”

A key element of the West’s strategy has been to expose Russian plans, and to make public their intelligence estimates about when Russian forces are expected to move across the Ukrainian border. But Mr. Zelensky argued that the daily predictions of an imminent invasion, most recently from President Biden on Friday, were scaring off investors, “crushing” the national currency, and terrorizing his population.

“Just putting ourselves in coffins and waiting for foreign soldiers to come in is not something we are prepared to do,’’ he said. “We cannot say on a daily basis that war will happen tomorrow.’’

Mr. Zelensky carefully navigated around one of the central complaints from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russ: that NATO would not give a “written guarantee” that it would never let Ukraine into the Western alliance. Mr. Zelensky made clear he would not back down on seeking membership, but blamed the West for foot-dragging on Ukraine’s interest in joining.

“We are told the doors are open,” Mr. Zelensky said, referring to NATO. “But so far, the strangers are not allowed. If not all members are willing to see us, or all members do not want to see us there, be honest about it. Open doors are good, but we need open answers.”

Ukraine, he added, does not need “years and years of closed questions” from NATO.

Mr. Zelensky repeatedly said he wanted to meet Mr. Putin, who has been curtly dismissive of that possibility and indeed of the entire Ukrainian government. Mr. Putin has made clear that he views Ukraine as part of Russia, or at least that the two countries form one “historical and spiritual space,” as he put it in a 5,000-word disquisition on “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” published last summer.

Mr. Zelensky sounded bitter as he portrayed the West as having failed to live up to the commitments it made in 1994, when it offered vague security guarantees in return for Ukraine’s decision to give up a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons. The weapons had been left in silos on Ukrainian territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

When Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, he said, the signatories of the 1994 agreement, called the “Budapest Memorandum,” pretended it did not exist. “We have lost parts of our territory which are bigger in territory than Switzerland, Netherlands or Belgium.”

“We will protect our country,” Mr. Zelensky said, “with or without support.”

Appealing for calm, he said he had enjoyed breakfast in Kyiv and intended to be back home in time for dinner.

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Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

AVILO-USPENKA, Russia — Inna Shalpa, a resident of the separatist-held town of Ilovaisk in eastern Ukraine, had no idea where the Russian bus she stepped into with her three children would take her on Saturday. But she was ready to accept the uncertainty, convinced that a wider war at home was imminent.

“We were mostly worried about the children,” Ms. Shalpa, 35, said in the middle of a frantic effort to distribute people among buses parked in front of the first Russian railway station on the other side of the border from Ukraine.

Mr. Shalpa was one of several thousand people who have crossed into Russia after Kremlin-backed leaders of the two separatist republics in Ukraine declared an evacuation of women and children, claiming that the Ukrainian government is about to launch an attack.

Kyiv has denounced the separatist claims as baseless provocation, and many of their moves are seen as a deliberate effort to create panic — potentially as a pretense for Russian military action. But for many residents, the fear of violence is real.

Fighting between the separatists and Ukrainian forces has intensified severely over the past few days, with the heavy use of artillery heard from afar. Some people said they fled because separatist leaders had urged them to.

On Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered the government to pay $130 to every refugee, and the Russian government sent $64 million to regional authorities for the effort. The government of the Russian region of Rostov, which has several crossing points with the separatist areas, has declared a state of emergency.

The Ukrainian government has tried to persuade people that Ukraine is not their enemy. But after eight years of grinding war in Ukraine’s east that has left thousands dead, many people arriving through the Matveev Kurgan border crossing on Saturday were not convinced. Most get their news from Russian state television channels, and years of shelling have taught them to be skeptical of Ukraine’s motives, they said.

Ukrainian soldiers “are standing just six miles away from us and we can hear them very well,” said Lyudmila N. Zueva, 63, referring to sounds of gunfire.

Like many people fleeing, Ms. Zueva, a retired teacher, was traveling to stay with relatives in Russia.

For those like Ms. Shalpa, who couldn’t go stay with relatives and friends, the Russian government has built a tent camp on the border.

Though feelings of animosity toward Ukraine were common among those arriving in Russia on Saturday, some people said they didn’t care who was in charge as long as there was peace.

Yekaterina Novikova was waiting for a commuter train to with her daughter and grandson to go to the Russian city of Taganrog. She had to leave her son and his family and she couldn’t hold back her tears.

“We were thinking that it would be better for us to return to Ukraine,” she said. “Now we don’t care, we just want peace.”

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Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

SEVERODONETSK, Ukraine — Several intense artillery barrages by Russia-backed separatists on Saturday targeted a pocket of Ukrainian government-controlled territory around the town of Svitlodarsk, a spot that has worried security analysts for weeks because of its proximity to industrial infrastructure, including storage tanks for poisonous gas.

The artillery fire picked up along the entire length of the front line, Ukraine’s interior ministry said in a statement in which it reported mortars, artillery shells and rocket-propelled grenades being fired “along the whole line of confrontation.” It was about double the level of the previous two days, the statement said.

The most frequently targeted area from midnight until about 2 p.m. on Saturday was in the vicinity of Svitlodarsk, near a chemical plant in separatist-controlled territory about six miles away. The site has seemed ripe for provocation, Ukrainian military analysts have said.

The sprawling plant is one of Europe’s largest fertilizer factories. A stray shell from returning fire from the Ukrainian Army risks hitting pressurized tanks and more than 12 miles of pipelines holding poisonous ammonia gas. The United States has warned the Russian government could stage an incident with poisonous chemicals to justify intervention.

Residents in the village of Luhansk, near Svitloldarsk, said both sides had been opening fire in recent days.

“When we are very nervous, we will leave,” said Yana Tinyakova, 31. “But we built this house with our hands. We don’t want to leave. This is ours. We have no place to escape to. If even we had a place to go, we don’t want to, because this is our home.”

Earlier Saturday, the Ukrainian military said that one soldier had been killed and another wounded in fighting along the front line in the area near Svitlodarsk.

The area is also seen as a potential flash point for a nearby water and pipe network that crosses the front line and supplies drinking water to several million people on both sides of the conflict, including residents of the city of Donetsk, one of the capitals of the two self-declared separatist states backed by Moscow in eastern Ukraine. A cutoff of that water supply amid fighting in 2014 hastened an outflow of refugees from the city.

On Saturday, Russia’s Interfax news agency, cited Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, as saying that shelling had damaged a pumping station and water pipes. He said the water supply was again at risk.

With each side of the conflict striving to control the narrative as much as any disputed piece of ground, the reported loss of water for residents in the Russian-backed areas came as a setback for Ukraine as it reinforced Russian assertions of dire conditions for civilians.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday ordered ministers in his cabinet and members of Parliament to travel to front-line villages, the head of the Ukrainian security council said.

The move seemed intended to signal to Ukrainians that he was rallying his government to defend the country, while officials could also help draw international attention to civilian suffering in front-line towns.

BARANOVICHI, Belarus — Russian and Belarusian military forces staged a mock battle on Saturday, with warplanes, tanks and rocket launchers pounding a muddy, wind-swept military training ground around 70 miles north of the Ukrainian border.

The two countries displayed their firepower just hours after President Biden said in Washington that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had made a final decision to reject diplomatic overtures and invade Ukraine.

The military maneuvers, planned long in advance, came on the penultimate day of a 10-day joint exercise involving the biggest deployment of Russian troops on the territory of Belarus, a neighbor and close ally, since the end of the Cold War.

NATO officials have warned that the maneuvers could provide cover for an attack on Ukraine. But there was no sign there on Saturday of any preparations for real rather than pretend war, with soldiers milling around as military attachés from Ukraine and several NATO countries, including the United States, Poland and Turkey, watched a deafening barrage of rockets and bombs beat back an attack by mock enemy forces.

The military exercises, known as Allied Resolve 2022, revolve around a fictitious conflict between an aggressive coalition of hostile states serving as a stand-in for NATO, and two made-up nations representing Belarus and the Russian Federation.

Following the Kremlin’s script that Russia is a victim rather than an aggressor, Saturday’s drills southwest of the Belarusian capital, Minsk, re-enacted a counterattack to liberate territory seized by the enemy. Signaling the power that Moscow has on hand in the event of a real war, a Russian Tupolev strategic bomber flew over the pretend battlefield escorted by fighter jets.

“If you want peace, you prepare for war,” said Aleksandr Volfovich, the state secretary of the Belarus security council. He declared the exercises a success that demonstrated the “determination and readiness” of Belarusian and Russian forces to successfully repel any attack.

Asked whether Belarus would assist Russia in any invasion of Ukraine, he said: “Belarus is not helping Russia seize Ukraine. Russia does not need to seize Ukraine. Belarus is a country of goodness and peace. We very much hope to live with everyone in peace.”

Western officials have expressed concern that Russian troops may stay behind in Belarus rather than return to their often distant home bases in Russia. Mr. Volfovich declined to comment on that possibility, but said that forces taking part in the exercises would carry out “checks” for several days after the official end of the maneuvers on Sunday.

“After that, a decision will be made,” he said.

Dmitri Mezentsev, a Russian politician and official who serves as state secretary of the Union State, a merger of Russia and Belarus that began in the 1990s and is only now taking on a serious concrete form, dismissed Western warnings of imminent aggression. Claims that the current military exercises pose a threat, he said, are “wrong and baseless.”

Asked about the possibility of Russia and Belarus invading Ukraine, a young soldier who gave only his first name, Kiril, laughed and said: “I have other plans. I’m going to see my grandmother tomorrow in Vitebsk,” a Belarusian town on the opposite side of the country near Russia and far from Ukraine.

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Vice President Kamala Harris said the United States and its allies and partners would impose “unprecedented economic costs” on Russia if it invaded Ukraine.CreditCredit…Pool photo by Andrew Harnik

MUNICH — Vice President Kamala Harris told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the Western alliance faced a “defining moment” in the Ukraine crisis and warned Russia’s leaders that if they invaded Ukraine, the United States and its allies would target not only financial institutions and technology exports to Russia, but also “those who are complicit and those who aid and direct this unprovoked invasion.”

The speech was the first time Ms. Harris has stepped into the hurricane of the diplomacy and signaling surrounding a high-stakes international crisis, so every word — and how she delivered it — was watched with care.

Her text hewed closely to the message that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken delivered on Thursday at the United Nations. “This playbook is all too familiar to us all,” she said of the events unfolding near Ukraine’s borders. “Russia will plead ignorance and innocence. It will create false pretexts for invasion, and it will amass troop and firepower in plain sight.”

“Russia continues to claim it is ready for talks, while at the same time it narrows the avenues for diplomacy,” Ms. Harris said. “Their actions simply do not match their words,” a phrase that French officials have also used in denouncing threatening posture by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The vice president met on Saturday afternoon with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who flew to Munich for a few hours at the moment his country faces the most acute threat of full invasion in its history. Several Biden administration officials expressed concern about his travels to Germany, saying that they expected Russia to claim he had fled the country. A few worried about whether Moscow would try to block his return.

But in meeting Ms. Harris and speaking at the conference, where he last appeared two years ago to talk about cracking down on corruption and bolstering the Ukrainian economy, Mr. Zelensky hoped to bask for a brief moment in the embrace of partners who have promised to aid him but have said they will not send troops to face the Russian military.

Ms. Harris argued in her speech that the crisis had driven NATO allies together. “As President Biden has said, our forces will not be deployed to fight inside Ukraine,” she said, touching on — but not exploring — the decision to leave the fighting to Ukraine’s own military. “But they will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Later, the vice president added, “our strength must not be underestimated.”

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Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — Every February seems to be difficult for Julia Po. It is the month she had to leave her home in Crimea in 2014 after Russian troops annexed it and pro-Moscow separatists took control of parts of eastern Ukraine.

But this February has been particularly painful, with Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders and the United States and its allies warning that an invasion looks imminent. On Friday, President Biden, while still pressing for a diplomatic solution, said he believed that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had made a final decision to invade within a week and target Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

American officials said that as many as 190,000 Russian troops and members of aligned militias were arrayed near the borders and in the eastern regions held by the separatists. In the east, separatist leaders called for mass evacuations, claiming that Ukraine’s military was planning a large-scale attack — an assertion that Mr. Biden dismissed as a lie intended to give Russia a pretext to invade.

The crisis has taken a toll on many Ukrainians, including Ms. Po, an artist. She had been planning an exhibition in western Ukraine, but she forgot about it until the last moment, overwhelmed by stress over the Russian troop buildup.

She decided to go — but then began to worry that if worst-case scenarios about the invasion come true, she would be stuck in the western city of Lviv for a long time.

“I read the news and think to myself, ‘How I can go if I have a cat here?’” said Ms. Po, 36. “And I cancel everything. The next day it gets calmer and I book again.”

Ms. Po said her background made it hard to be an optimist. “When you are from the Crimea and have already lost your home, you understand that everything is possible,” she said.

In Kyiv, there has been an air of unreality about the situation, and stoic resolve. Despite the smoldering eight-year conflict with the separatists in the east, many Ukrainians have tried to keep moving forward.

But the recent warnings from the White House have had a powerful effect, though Ukraine’s government has sought to discourage people from panicking.

Anna Kovalyova, a writer with three small children, moved with her family from Kyiv to Lviv on Sunday. She did so after the U.S. Embassy said it would move its operations there.

“We moved temporarily, because we really felt growing panic in Kyiv,” Ms. Kovalyova, 29, said in an interview.

“The atmosphere in Lviv is completely different,” she said. “You don’t feel so anxious here. And there are a lot of people like us here from Kyiv, mostly with children, who came for a week or two to spend uncertain times.”

At least one school in Ukraine was striving to offer reassurances to parents, sending messages to say that if phone service went out, they should rest assured that their children were in school.

The messages also noted that the school had a basement, presumably to be used as a shelter for the children in the event of an attack. Some elementary schools were conducting drills to prepare students for the possibility of bombardment.

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Credit…Ronald Wittek/EPA, via Shutterstock

MUNICH — Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany warned Russia on Saturday that an invasion of Ukraine would be a “grave mistake” that would prompt immediate and heavy “political, economic and strategic” consequences.

“To put it bluntly: Nothing justifies the deployment of well over 100,000 Russian soldiers around Ukraine,” Mr. Scholz told an audience of heads of state and security chiefs at the Munich Security Conference. In one of his strongest statements yet against Moscow’s efforts to extend its sphere of influence, he added, “No country should be another’s backyard.”

In his first speech on security policy since becoming chancellor in December, Mr. Scholz outlined a Germany that would be less squeamish when it comes to military deterrence and equally committed to European and trans-Atlantic unity. He urged a “repositioning of Europe in the world” and a strengthening of NATO’s military capabilities.

He also vowed that Germany would do its part and suggested that its military spending — long a bugbear of allies — would rise.

“The developments of the past few months show us how necessary it is to concentrate on the issue of alliance defense in the North Atlantic area,” Mr. Scholz said. “We have to muster the skills that are required for this. And yes, that also applies to Germany.”

He then proceeded to outline what this would mean: “airplanes that fly, ships that can set sail, soldiers that are optimally equipped for their dangerous tasks.”

Other NATO members have long criticized Berlin for not living up to a commitment to increase military spending to 2 percent of economic output, made in the wake of the last Russian invasion of Ukraine. German military spending has increased in recent years but remains at 1.5 percent of the country’s economic output.

“A country of our size, which bears a very special responsibility in Europe, must be able to afford” a functioning military, Mr. Scholz said, adding, “We also owe it to our allies in NATO.”

Since taking over from Angela Merkel, his respected and long-serving predecessor, Mr. Scholz has faced sharp criticism at home and abroad for his lack of leadership in one of the most serious security crises in Europe since the Cold War. But in recent weeks he has noticeably changed the pace, meeting almost daily with fellow Western leaders and this week traveling to Moscow for a four-hour meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

On Saturday in Munich, Mr. Scholz said that possible Ukrainian NATO membership, which Mr. Putin vehemently opposes, was not currently “on the agenda” but stressed that “in principle” NATO’s door remained open.

Mr. Scholz was not the only European leader striking a tough note at the security gathering. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, warned Moscow of “massive sanctions” in the event of any further violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

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Allegations of a car bomb and unsubstantiated claims of an imminent attack by Ukrainian forces have heightened tensions in areas of Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists.CreditCredit…Baza via Telegram

Allegations of a car bomb and unsubstantiated claims of an imminent attack by Ukrainian forces have heightened tensions in areas of Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists. The New York Times collected footage from the day to analyze some of the claims:

  • Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine made unverified claims that Ukraine used an explosive to target the vehicle of one of their military leaders on Friday. Footage filmed at the scene by pro-Russian news media outlets shows the damaged vehicle in flames.

  • Earlier on Friday, separatist leaders had warned of an imminent attack by Ukrainian forces — an allegation for which there is no evidence, and which Ukraine has denied.

  • Civilians were urged to evacuate, captured on camera forming lines at gas stations and A.T.M.s and appearing to flee the region.

  • Just after midnight on Saturday, verified footage showed another possible explosion, this time in Luhansk.

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Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Two founding members of the Soviet Union — Russia and Ukraine — are once again at a flash point. Here are some pivotal moments that have led to Russia’s troop buildup on its western border with Ukraine:

February 2014 — Protesters in Ukraine overthrow President Viktor Yanukovych, who was friendly to Russia’s interests. During the revolution, more than 100 people are killed in protests that centered on the main square in the capital Kyiv, often called the Maidan.

The interim government that followed this pro-Western revolution eventually signs a trade agreement with the European Union that is seen as a first step toward membership of the bloc.

BELARUS

RUSSIA

POL.

Kyiv

UKRAINE

ROMANIA

Approximate

line separating

Ukrainian and

Russian-backed

forces

Luhansk

CRIMEA

Black Sea

Donetsk

UKRAINE

RUSSIA

50 MILES

Sea of Azov

50 MILES

Approximate

line separating

Ukrainian and

Russian-backed

forces

UKRAINE

Luhansk

Donetsk

RUSSIA

Sea of Azov

RUSSIA

Kyiv

UKRAINE

ROMANIA

CRIMEA

Black Sea

April 2014 — Russia invades and then annexes the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. Two secessionist regions, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the neighboring Luhansk People’s Republic, break off from Ukraine.

The war continues in the eastern Ukrainian region known as Donbas. It then spreads west. Roughly 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians eventually die in the conflict. The front lines have barely shifted for years.

2014 and 2015 — Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany sign a series of cease-fire agreements known as the Minsk Accords. Many view these accords as ambiguous.

April 2019 — A former comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, is elected by a large majority as president of Ukraine on a promise to restore Donbas to the country.

2021-2022 — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia seeks to prevent Ukraine’s drift toward the United States and its allies. Mr. Putin demands “security guarantees,” including an assurance by NATO that Ukraine will never join the group and that the alliance pulls back troops stationed in countries that joined after 1997.

Many Russians view the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, as the birthplace of their nation and cite the numerous cultural ties between the two countries.

Here is a brief recap of their relations in the 20th century:

1922 — Russia and Ukraine became two of the founding members of the Soviet Union.

1932 and 1933 — A famine caused by Stalin’s policy of collectivization kills millions of people, mainly ethnic Ukrainians in a country that is known as the bread basket of the Soviet Union. The disaster is known as the Holodomor.

1941-1944 — Nazi Germany and the Axis powers occupy the country during World War II.

1991 — The Soviet Union is terminated via a treaty. Ukraine becomes independent and begins a transition to a market economy. It also comes into possession of a significant stockpile of nuclear weapons that had belonged to the Soviet Union.

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The New York Times traveled with a paramilitary group that says it refuses to leave the front lines in Ukraine’s war in the east. But the government denies that they’re even there. What role can they have in a larger conflict with Russia?CreditCredit…Andriy Dubchak for The New York Times

MARIUPOL, UKRAINE — Paramilitary groups are actively preparing for a Russian invasion near Ukraine’s front line with Russia-backed separatists.

The Ukrainian government insists that independent armed groups have no part in its war in the east, and that these fighters don’t exist there. But New York Times journalists recently contacted three paramilitary groups that claim to operate near the front line of the conflict. One allowed us to film them this month.

We followed Ruslan Postovoit and Yuriy Ulshin, who first took up arms in 2014 as part of the nationalist volunteer movement that was formed during the protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Square.

Now, they are preparing for a possible larger war with Russia and commanding a unit of about a dozen paramilitary fighters.

“If a full-scale war breaks out tomorrow in Ukraine, there will be tens if not hundreds of thousands of volunteers, just like me,” said Mr. Postovoit, who goes by the call name “Pauk” or “Spider.”

By 2015, the government said it had mostly disarmed all volunteer battalions and integrated the fighters into the official armed forces.

“There are no volunteers outside of structured battalions right now in Ukraine,” said Serhiy Sobko, chief of staff of the Territorial Defense Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “I don’t have personal evidence of the existence of these unofficial groups,” he added.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry declined to comment further about Mr. Postovoit and Mr. Ulshin’s group.

On the ground hundreds of miles from Kyiv, the presence of paramilitary units is an open secret. Local commanders say they see them as an asset to help regular soldiers. And Ukraine’s chief commander of the armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnny, shared a photo on Facebook posing with Mr. Ulshin and other volunteer fighters.

Mr. Ulshin and Mr. Postovoit said they grew frustrated with the military chain of command and orders not to fight. Today, they say, they fight on their own terms, but that they collaborate and coordinate with local military commanders on missions like drone reconnaissance.

Mr. Ulshin and Mr. Postovoit led The Times to a local military command post near the front line town of Vodiane, and it was evident that the two groups had a rapport.

Paramilitary units can receive weapons and supplies through crowdsourcing and a network of volunteers, including Ukrainians abroad.

“You have the official armed forces, and you have the volunteer world, operating parallel to what the government does,” said Jonas Ohman, a Lithuania-based financier who supplies drones and anti-drone jammers to fighters like Mr. Ulshin and Mr. Postovoit.

“We told them, if you want to kill the enemy, tell us what you need and we will get it for you,” Mr. Ohman said, referring to the moment he began financing Ukraine’s volunteer fighters, in 2014.

Military experts and paramilitary members and suppliers say there are dozens, if not hundreds, of fighters like Mr. Ulshin and Mr. Postovoit operating near front lines in the Donbas region.

The role paramilitary fighters will play in any conflict with Russia is uncertain. Politically, the groups present a liability. But Mr. Ulshin and Mr. Postovoit say their fighters want to continue defending their country.

“It’s simple,” Mr. Postovoit said. “This is our land. Do you understand? We don’t have anywhere to go but onward.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/19/world/ukraine-russia-news