No Early Sign of Radiation Leak, Experts Say

Ukraine’s spirited defense has slowed the Russian advance near Kyiv, the capital, where Ukrainian forces have attacked a vast armored convoy bearing down on the city, helping stall an advance plagued by shortages of fuel and food. But Russia is adding forces from the south and west in its efforts to take the city, and several large explosions shook central Kyiv Friday morning. It was not yet clear what had been hit. Here are the latest developments:

• In the south, the Russians were trying to add to their victories. Already in control of Kherson, they were bearing down on another important city, Mykolaiv, in what appears to be a bid to seize control of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and cut the country off from international shipping.

• Ukraine’s defense minister said its navy had deliberately sunk the flagship of its Black Sea fleet so that the Russians could not seize it in any assault. The Ukrainian military says it believes that the Russian naval fleet is preparing for an amphibious attack as part of a plan to move on Odessa, a vital southern port city.

• NATO on Friday rejected Ukraine’s pleas to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said at a news conference after a meeting of foreign ministers.

• Russian bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has devastated residential areas and business districts, videos verified by The New York Times’s Visual Investigations team show.

• The U.S. is imposing sanctions on eight members of Russia’s elite and placing visa restrictions on 19 oligarchs and their families, the White House said. The Biden administration also said it would allow some Ukrainians to stay temporarily in the country, and the European Union and Canada announced similar measures for Ukrainians fleeing the invasion.

Chinese social media users said that the state-run broadcaster CCTV censored part of the speech, however. They said that beginning when Mr. Parsons said, “At the I.P.C. we aspire to a better and more inclusive world, free from discrimination, free from hate, free from ignorance and free from conflict,” the broadcast ceased both the live translation and the sign language interpretation for about one minute.

During the procession of athletes, Ukraine’s delegation of about 20 athletes and staff entered the stadium to applause, many with fists raised above their heads.

It is a core tenet of the Olympics and Paralympics to avoid politics and remain neutral. But in an announcement banning Russians and Belarusians from participating on Thursday, Mr. Parsons said, “The war has come to our precious Games.”

He did not specify any other kind of weapon.

Anti-personnel cluster munitions are rockets, missiles, artillery shells and bombs that deploy a large number of small explosives over a wide area, intended to attack infantry formations. The Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty banning such weapons, took effect in August 2010.

NATO forces used cluster bombs during the Kosovo war in 1999, and the United States dropped more than 1,000 cluster bombs in Afghanistan from October 2001 to March 2002, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

“We will provide support, but we will not be part of the conflict,” he said.

Ukrainian officials have called for a no-fly zone to be imposed over Ukraine’s air space, but NATO is resisting such an escalation for fear that it could draw member states into direct conflict.

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Russia, represented by a senior diplomat but not its ambassador to the United Nations, dismissed the resolution as a waste of resources that would be better used in Ukraine. It found support only from Eritrea in opposing the move, however, an extraordinary council defeat for a major power and council member, underscoring its international isolation over the conflict.

China said it opposed the creation of a commission of inquiry but abstained in the vote. Cuba and Venezuela — friends of Russia and inveterate opponents of country-specific resolutions in the council — similarly abstained.

The council will now set up a three-person commission of inquiry responsible for collecting and preserving evidence of possible war crimes and other violations, and identifying people who may be responsible.

The commission is intended to complement the work of more than 50 human rights monitors deployed by the United Nations human rights office. The evidence it compiles can be shared with other judicial entities, including the International Criminal Court, which announced this week that it was opening an investigation into possible war crimes and has dispatched some of its staff to Ukraine to start it.

The commission is also required to investigate violations and abuses “in the context of” Russia’s aggression, including “facts, circumstances and root causes” of the invasion of Ukraine, a broad mandate that rights groups say empowers it to include the crackdown on protests and human rights activists in Russia.

When she left home, her daughter was 7, her son 15, and she got to see them every summer, cramming a year’s worth of mothering into two months. “It was hard,” Ms. Mala said.

In a speech to Parliament this week, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Italy was “grateful” to the 236,000 Ukrainians who live in his country, “for the contribution you make every day to the life of our country.”

These weren’t empty words. A significant majority of Ukrainians living in Italy work for Italian families, looking after older people and the ill, an alternative — for those who can afford it — to gaps in the country’s welfare system in a rapidly aging society.

“There are many of us, and my story is the same as that of many others,” said Ms. Mala, who now cares for Lidia, an 84-year-old woman who requires assistance after getting Covid-19.

Watching the news of the past week “has been like being in a bad dream,” she said. She found comfort in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who comes from Rome every Saturday to celebrate Mass.

“I can’t imagine what it would have been like without the church,” she said. “It has helped me to survive, now more than ever.”

There are more Ukrainians living in Italy than in any other European Union country, according to Eurostat data.

“Italy offered this market,” said Svitlana Kovalska, the president of an association for Ukrainian women who work in Italy.

The war has made familial separation even harder. “Your thoughts, your heart, your soul — they are in Ukraine,” she said. But being far away “makes it worse.”

Ms. Kovalska said she had tried to persuade some of her family members in Kyiv to come to Italy but was told no. “They don’t want to be refugees,” she said.

Ms. Mala, on the other hand, was relieved because her daughter Khrystyna had managed to make it to Italy, arriving by bus at dawn on Thursday. “She’s exhausted,” Ms. Mala said.

Ms. Mala said the war had made her want to be back home with her family. “It’s my home, my house,” she said.

But now that her daughter had arrived in Italy, she had decided to stay. “I want to help my daughter, save my daughter. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

International observers and Ukrainian officials said that as of 6 a.m. the facility was still able to function safely.

There was damage to “the structure of the reactor compartment” at one of the six reactors, which the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine said did “not affect the safety of the power unit.” That information came after the fire was put out but before it was clear that the Russians were in control of the facility.

However, there were many remaining dangers — from workers being able to do their critical jobs while the plant is occupied to the possibility of unreported damage at one of the reactors.

The company that oversees the complex, Energoatom, warned that any statements being made by workers from the time of the takeover could be being made under duress. The company also warned against trusting statements from local officials.

“There is a high probability that the recent speech of the mayor of Enerhodar was recorded under the barrel of a machine gun,” the company said, referring to a video the mayor had posted shortly after the Russians seized control and telling the public not to provoke them.

Only hours earlier, the mayor, Dmitry Orlov, had made an urgent plea for help and described fighting so fierce that emergency workers had been unable to move wounded people from the nuclear complex to a hospital.

The potential for catastrophe had set off alarm bells among world leaders. As the fire raged, President Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, with all calling for an urgent halt to the Russian advance on the complex. Mr. Johnson said he would seek an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

The Russian defense ministry blamed Ukrainian saboteurs for threatening the plant, saying that Russian forces had taken control of the facility to foil a “monstrous provocation” by the Ukrainian government.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex is on the Dnieper River roughly 100 miles north of Crimea. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, its six reactors produce a total of 6,000 megawatts of electric power.

In comparison, the Chernobyl plant in northern Ukraine produced 3,800 megawatts. (A megawatt, one million watts, is enough power to light 10,000 hundred-watt bulbs.) The four reactors of the Chernobyl complex were shut down after one suffered a catastrophic fire and meltdown in 1986.

Besides the threat of fighting to Zaporizhzhia’s reactors and their cores full of highly radioactive fuel, the site has many acres of open pools of water where spent fuel rods have been cooled for years. Experts fear that errant shells or missiles that hit such sites could set off radiological disasters.

For days, social media reports have detailed how the residents of Enerhodar set up a giant barrier of tires, vehicles and metal barricades to try to block a Russian advance into the city and the reactor site. Christoph Koettl, a visual investigator for The New York Times, noted on Twitter that the barricades were so large that they could be seen from space by orbiting satellites.

“The recruitment of volunteers, mercenaries or foreign combatants on Senegalese territory is illegal and punishable by the penalties provided for by law,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Thirty-six people had signed up, according to the Ukrainian ambassador, the ministry said.

The Japanese government also said it wanted the Ukrainians not to seek military volunteers in Japan. “We have issued an evacuation advisory throughout Ukraine,” Hikariko Ono, a foreign ministry official, said on Wednesday. “We do not want people to travel to Ukraine for any purpose.”

About 70 people in Japan have registered, according to the local news media.

The debate over Mr. Putin’s next moves is linked to an urgent re-examination by intelligence agencies of the Russian leader’s mental state, and whether his ambitions and appetite for risk have been altered by two years of Covid isolation.

So its captain, according to Mr. Reznikov, “carried out the order to sink the ship.”

“It is difficult to imagine a more difficult decision for a courageous man and his crew,” Mr. Reznikov added. “But we will build a new fleet.”

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The plane, which can seat about 20 people, landed at the Yellowknife Airport in the Northwest Territories on Tuesday night, according to Robert Collinson, a ministerial special adviser to the local government there. Mr. Collinson said the Russian citizens were let off the plane and were now dealing with officials at the Canada Border Services Agency.

Patrick Mahaffy, a spokesman for the agency, declined to answer specific questions about the flight, citing national privacy laws.

The Canadian transport minister, Omar Alghabra, wrote on Twitter that the plane “has been held” at the airport and that “we will continue to hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine.”

The fire did not affect essential equipment at the plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Twitter, citing its communication with the Ukrainian government.

About an hour after dawn, Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory inspectorate said in a statement that Russian military forces were now occupying the complex. It said that all of the site’s power units remained intact and that no changes in radiation levels had been observed.

The fire broke out after a Russian attack on a training building outside the perimeter of the plant, according to a statement by Ukraine’s state emergency service. A spokesman for the nuclear plant, Andriy Tuz, was quoted by The Associated Press as telling Ukrainian television that shells had set fire to one of the plant’s six reactors that was under renovation and not operating.

Ukraine’s nuclear inspectorate later said in its statement that one unit of the six units was operating, another was in “outage,” two were being cooled down, and two others had been disconnected from the grid.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had accused the Russian military of deliberately attacking the complex and said an explosion there would have been “the end for everybody, the end of Europe.”

“Only immediate actions by Europe could stop the Russian army,” he added.

President Biden spoke with Mr. Zelensky about the fire and joined him in urging Russia to “cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site,” the White House said. Local reports later said that emergency crews had gained access.

Mr. Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer M. Granholm, said on Twitter that the United States had not detected elevated radiation readings in the area, echoing an earlier assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “The plant’s reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down,” she said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said he would seek an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council about the blaze at the complex, according to his office.

Before the fire was reported by Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, the director general for the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that “a large number of Russian tanks and infantry” had entered Enerhodar, a town next to the plant. The director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that troops were “moving directly” toward the reactor site.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, on the Dnieper River roughly a hundred miles north of Crimea, is the largest in Europe. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, its six reactors produce a total of 6,000 megawatts of electric power.

In comparison, the Chernobyl plant in northern Ukraine produced 3,800 megawatts — about a third less. (A megawatt, one million watts, is enough power to light 10,000 hundred-watt bulbs.) The four reactors of the Chernobyl complex were shut down after one suffered a catastrophic fire and meltdown in 1986.

The reactors’ cores are full of highly radioactive fuel. But an additional danger at the Zaporizhzhia site is the many acres of open pools of water behind the complex where spent fuel rods have been cooled for years. Experts fear that errant shells or missiles that hit such sites could set off radiological disasters.

For days, social media reports have detailed how the residents of Enerhodar set up a giant barrier of tires, vehicles and metal barricades to try to block a Russian advance into the city and the reactor site. Christoph Koettl, a visual investigator for The New York Times, noted on Twitter that the barricades were so large that they could be seen from outer space by orbiting satellites.

Starting this past Sunday, three days into the invasion, Ukraine’s nuclear regulator began reporting an unusual rate of disconnection: Six of the nation’s 15 reactors were offline. On Tuesday, the Zaporizhzhia facility was the site with the most reactors offline.

John Yoon, Marc Santora and Nathan Willis contributed reporting.