Bombardment of Civilian Areas in Ukraine Intensifies

Russian forces have not achieved a major strategic victory since the first days of the war more than two weeks ago, and have turned to a strategy of trying to flatten whole sections of cities.

Ukraine’s military said on Saturday they had stopped Russian advances, inflicting “heavy losses in manpower and equipment.” The claims could not be independently confirmed but were in line with analyses by the Institute for the Study of War and other military experts.

In Kyiv, artillery battles in the suburbs remained intense, though the Russian advance toward the capital seemed to be on pause. In recent days, attacks by Ukrainian light infantry units and Turkish-built drones had some success in ambushing Russian tanks, artillery and mechanized vehicles as they try to encircle the city.

Here are some of the latest developments:

• The German chancellor and French president tried to persuade President Vladimir V. Putin or Russia in a lengthy telephone call on Saturday to agree to an immediate cease-fire and talks but reported little progress was made, officials said.

• Hundreds of people took to the streets of Melitopol in southern Ukraine on Saturday to protest the detention of the city’s mayor on Friday by Russian forces. The Ukrainian government called the detention a kidnapping and a war crime.

• For two weeks, Russian forces have failed to take the strategic southern city of Mykolaiv and, in turn, have stepped up their bombardment of civilian targets there, causing damage to a cancer hospital and sending residents fleeing into bomb shelters. Once again on Saturday morning, residents awoke to the sounds of artillery fire and explosions.

• Russia warned the United States that convoys with weapons sent to Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for the Russian military, saying the “thoughtless transfer” of weapons such as antiaircraft and antitank missile systems could lead to serious consequences.

• The U.N.’s disarmament chief said the agency had no evidence of any biological weapons program in Ukraine. Russia had accused the United States of a plot involving biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine and migratory birds, bats and insects.

• Deutsche Bank said it was “winding down” operations in Russia, a day after the German bank’s chief financial officer said that doing so would not be practical or “the right thing to do.”

• How we verify our reporting on the Ukraine war: To cut through the fog of propaganda and misinformation on both sides, The New York Times has deployed dozens of reporters, photographers, videographers, audio journalists, writers and others to Ukraine and the countries bordering it to deliver real-time, independent, in-depth coverage of the conflict and its reverberations across the region.

He denounced what he called the kidnapping of the mayor of Melitopol, who had refused to cooperate with Russian troops after they seized the southeastern city in the first days of the invasion, as “a new stage of terror, when they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of the legitimate local Ukrainian authorities.”

Russian forces have not achieved a major military victory since the first days of the invasion more than two weeks ago, and the assaults on Saturday reinforced Moscow’s strategic turn toward increasingly indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets.

Unable to mount a quick takeover of the country by air, land and sea, Russian troops have deployed missiles, rockets and bombs to destroy apartment buildings, schools, factories and hospitals, increasing civilian carnage and suffering, and leading more than 2.5 million people to flee the country.

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In response to American efforts to supply the Ukrainian military with antitank weapons and other matériel, Russia issued a new and more direct threat on Saturday, warning the United States that convoys with weapons sent to Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for the Russian military.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, said on Russian television that Moscow had warned Washington that the “thoughtless transfer of such types of weapons as portable antiaircraft and antitank missile systems” to Ukraine could lead to serious consequences.

The heavy shelling and lack of food, water and medicine for thousands of residents in the besieged city of Mariupol have already led to what Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called “the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.”

At least 1,582 civilians have died since the Russian siege of Mariupol began 12 days ago, he said, and residents are struggling to survive and have been forced to bury the dead in mass graves.

“There is no drinking water and any medication for more than one week, maybe even 10 days,” a staff member who works for Doctors Without Borders in Mariupol said in an audio recording released by the organization on Saturday.

“We saw people who died because of lack of medication, and there are a lot of such people inside Mariupol,” the staff member said.

During a 90-minute call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France urged Mr. Putin to accept an immediate cease-fire, according to the French government, which described the talks as “frank” and “difficult.”

France said that Mr. Putin showed no willingness to stop the war, and said he “placed the responsibility for the conflict on Ukraine” and sounded “determined to attain his objectives.”

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In its summary of the call, the Kremlin said Mr. Putin had discussed “several matters relating to agreements being drafted to meet the well-known Russian demands,” but did not specify those demands.

In the coming weeks, NATO, which has vowed to defend allied countries from any incursion by Russian forces, plans to gather 30,000 troops from 25 countries in Europe and North America in Norway to conduct live-fire drills and other cold-weather military exercises.

The exercises, which Norway hosts biannually, were announced more than eight months ago, NATO said, and are not linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which NATO said it was responding to with “preventive, proportionate and non-escalatory measures.”

But the training has taken on greater significance as Russia steps up its bombardment of Ukrainian population centers.

Around Kyiv, the capital, Russian forces have advanced into the suburbs but have been slowed by Ukrainian troops that have counterattacked with ambushes on armored columns. On Saturday, artillery fire intensified around Kyiv, with a low rumble heard in most parts of the city.

By Saturday, there were no indications of further efforts by the Russian army to move armored columns closer to the capital. Instead, soldiers appeared to be fighting for control of the towns along the highways that encircle it.

In Irpin, a leafy bedroom community northwest of Kyiv, troops were fighting street by street, said Vitaly, a Ukrainian soldier who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons. He spoke outside a gas station minimart, its windows blown out by shelling, on the town’s western edge.

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“We are trying to push them back but we don’t control the town,” he said.

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, residents awoke on Saturday morning to the sounds of a fierce battle hours after Russian shells hit several civilian areas, damaging a cancer hospital and sending residents fleeing into bomb shelters.

The early-morning fight was concentrated in the north of the city, said Col. Sviatoslav Stetsenko of the Ukrainian Army’s 59th Brigade, who was stationed near the front lines.

“They are changing their tactics,” Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the Mykolaiv region, said. “They are deploying in the villages and lodging in village schools and homes. We cannot shoot back. There are no rules now. We will have to be more brutal with them.”

For nearly two weeks, Russian forces have been trying to surround Mykolaiv and cross the Southern Buh River, which flows through the city and is a natural defense against a Russian push toward the west and Odessa, the Black Sea port that appears to be a prime Russian objective.

Russian forces had not crossed the river as of Saturday morning, Colonel Stetsenko said, but “they are continuing to shell Mykolaiv.”

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In Melitopol, hundreds of residents demonstrated in the streets, one day after Russian troops forced a hood over the mayor’s head and dragged him from a government building, according to Ukrainian officials.

“Return the mayor!” the protesters shouted, according to witnesses and videos. “Free the mayor!”

But nearly as soon as the demonstrators gathered, Russian military personnel moved to shut them down, arresting a woman who they said had organized the protest, according to two witnesses and the woman’s Facebook account.

The episode was part of what Ukrainian officials said was an escalating pattern of intimidation and repression. It also illustrated a problem that Russia is likely to face even if it manages to pummel cities and towns into submission: In at least some of the few cities and towns that Russia has managed to seize — mostly in the south and east — they are facing popular unrest and revolt.

Mr. Zelensky sought to tap into public rage in an address to the nation overnight.

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“The whole country saw that Melitopol did not surrender to the invaders,” he said. “Just as Kherson, Berdyansk and other cities where Russian troops managed to enter didn’t.” He said that popular resistance “will not be changed by putting pressure on mayors or kidnapping mayors.”

Melitopol’s mayor, Ivan Fyodorov, had remained stubbornly defiant even after Russian soldiers took over the city after a fierce assault on the first day of the invasion. “We are not cooperating with the Russians in any way,” he had said.

Last weekend, with Mr. Fyodorov’s encouragement, people waving Ukrainian flags took to the streets of Melitopol and other occupied cities. For the most part, Russian soldiers stood aside, even as protesters commandeered a Russian armored vehicle in one town and drove it through the streets.

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While the protests in Melitopol were quickly put down, the Ukrainian government renewed efforts to bring aid to Mariupol, dispatching dozens of buses with food and medicine, Ukrainian officials said.

Similar relief efforts had failed in recent days as fighting raged around the city and land mines pocked roads in the area. In an overnight address, Mr. Zelensky said that the inability to bring aid to the city showed that Russian troops “continue to torture our people, our Mariupol residents.”

Still, he said, “We will try again.”

Marc Santora reported from Lviv, Ukraine, Michael Schwirtz from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and Michael Levenson from New York. Reporting was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer in Kyiv, Ukraine, Ivan Nechepurenko in Istanbul and Norimitsu Onishi in Paris.

France said that fresh economic sanctions would be announced soon.

The Kremlin said in its own statement that Mr. Putin had discussed “several matters relating to agreements being drafted to meet the well-known Russian demands.”

The statement did not specify the demands. Russia has repeatedly demanded guarantees that Ukraine would never become part of NATO.

Mr. Putin also described to his European counterparts “the real state of affairs” in Ukraine, the Kremlin said, referring in the call to “numerous instances of egregious violation of international humanitarian law by the Ukrainian forces.”

The Élysée Palace described those allegations as lies, adding that Mr. Macron and Mr. Scholz also raised concerns with Mr. Putin about the humanitarian situation in the besieged cities of Mariupol and Melitopol. The palace said that there were no plans for a future call.

That the German spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, disclosed the call for a cease-fire at all was unusual: The German government very rarely releases details — let alone readouts — of phone calls that the chancellor has with other leaders.

According to Mr. Hebestreit, the chancellor had spoken with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine earlier in the day.

On Twitter, Mr. Zelensky said that he and the German and French leaders had discussed “countering the aggressor,” “prospects for peace talks” and Russia’s “crimes against civilians.”

“I ask my partners to help in releasing the captive mayor of Melitopol,” he added, referring to Ivan Fyodorov, who Ukrainian officials say was dragged out of a government office building by Russian forces on Friday.

“We will try again,” he said.

Mariupol has been largely cut off since the Russian siege began, with residents struggling to survive and officials being forced to bury the dead in mass graves.

There is no place in the city where people can find food, according to an audio recording released Saturday by Doctors Without Borders of a conversation with a staff member in the city. “There is no drinking water and any medication for more than one week, maybe even 10 days, without drinking water and medication,” the staff member said.

The recording, which was released to the media, was one of the few eyewitness accounts of the current situation since cellular and internet connections have been severed.

“We saw people who died because of lack of medication, and there are a lot of such people inside Mariupol, and many people who were killed and injured, and they’re just lying on the ground, and neighbors just digging the hole in the ground and putting their bodies inside,” the staff member said.

Ukrainians officials said they would also try to get people out of other war-torn cities through a dozen humanitarian corridors on Saturday. A similar effort on Friday was largely unsuccessful.

Mr. Zelensky said on Wednesday and Thursday that about 100,000 people had been evacuated from cities around Kyiv, the capital, and the eastern city of Sumy. On Friday, Mr. Zelensky said, just over 7,000 people had managed to use a corridor to get to safety.

Many cities and towns across the eastern half of the country are being pulverized by Russian forces and struggling with failing infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of residents in places like Kharkiv and Chernihiv are enduring brutal conditions as heating systems fail in freezing temperatures.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called the situation in Mariupol “the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.” He said that at least 1,582 civilians had died in the past 12 days since Russian troops encircled the city and destroyed its critical infrastructure.

The United Nations said on Friday that 564 civilians around Ukraine had been killed and another 982 injured by Russian forces in the war, while also acknowledging that the full casualty toll was probably much higher.

A photographer for The Associated Press has documented people being buried in mass graves in Mariupol.

Under Premier League rules, a disqualified director cannot own a club, and must put it up for sale. But Abramovich had already announced his intention to sell, and the sanctions effectively bar him from any role in the business of the club, which has been allowed to continue operating and playing matches only through a special government-granted license.

The club and the government are now in talks about modifications to the license that would allow the sales process to resume under certain conditions. Whenever a sale happens, though, the government has made clear, Abramovich cannot receive any money while he is under sanctions.

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On Friday evening, Mr. Fyodorov had a bag thrown over his head and was dragged from a government office building by armed Russian soldiers, according to Ukrainian officials. Video filmed in Melitopol’s Victory Square appears to show someone being escorted out of a government building by soldiers. The Times cannot verify the identity of the people in the video.

Since Russian forces captured his city in the first days of the war, he had encouraged resistance, earning him the support of the public and the ire of the occupying army.

On Saturday, hundreds of his townspeople poured out into the streets in an expression of outrage and defiance, despite the presence of troops on their streets.

“Return the mayor!” they shouted, witnesses said and videos showed. “Free the mayor!”

But nearly as soon as people gathered, the Russians moved to shut them down, arresting a woman who they said had organized the demonstration, according to two witnesses and the woman’s Facebook account.

The episode is part of what Ukrainian officials say is a pattern of intimidation and repression that is growing more brutal. It also illustrates a problem that Russia is likely to face even if it manages to pummel cities and towns into submission: In at least some of the few cities and towns that Russia has managed to seize — mostly in the south and east — they are facing popular unrest and revolt.

For anyone who believed the Kremlin propaganda that Russia was on a mission to save Ukraine from drug addled neo-Nazis, Melitopol was the kind of city, run by the kind of mayor, that should have viewed the Russian troops as liberators.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the kidnapping of the mayor demonstrated the falsehood underlying the Russian invasion.

“For years they have been lying to themselves that people in Ukraine were supposedly waiting for Russia to come,” he said. “They did not find collaborators who would hand over the city and the power to the invaders.”

And he sought to tap into public rage in two videotaped speeches released on Saturday.

“The whole country saw that Melitopol did not surrender to the invaders,” he said. “Just as Kherson, Berdyansk and other cities where Russian troops managed to enter didn’t — temporarily managed to enter. And this will not be changed by putting pressure on mayors or kidnapping mayors.”

After people took to the streets, he praised their courage and suggested the war lacked popular support among Russians.

“Do you hear it, Moscow?” he asked. “If 2,000 people are protesting against the occupation in Melitopol, how many people should be in Moscow against the war?”

Mr. Zelelnsky said he had raised the fate of the mayor in calls with the leaders of Germany and France.

“We expect them, the world leaders, to show how they can influence the situation,” he said. “How they can do a simple thing — free one person, a person who represents the entire Melitopol community, Ukrainians who do not give up.”

Melitopol lies only a short distance from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The city came under fierce assault on the first day of the war, Feb. 24, and Russian soldiers entered only days later. While the city fell, Mr. Fyodorov remained defiant.

“We are not cooperating with the Russians in any way,” he said.

As resistance has grown more brazen, the Russian tactics have grown more brutal, according to the Ukrainian government and witnesses. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Friday that Russian soldiers were committing robberies, taking hostages and executing civilians. The reports of executions and hostage taking could not be independently verified, but there have been multiple witness accounts, often recorded on video, of Russian soldiers looting stores and homes.

Mr. Zelensky said the kidnapping of the mayor was part of a broader shift in tactics. “They have switched to a new stage of terror, when they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of the legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,” he said.

Last weekend, people waving the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag took to the streets of Melitopol and other occupied cities.

For the most part, Russian soldiers stood aside, even as protesters commandeered a Russian armored vehicle in one town and drove it through the streets.

Mr. Fyodorov encouraged the demonstration. In his most recent post on Facebook, he thanked business leaders who were helping the community in the moment of strife. “Together we will overcome anything!” he wrote.

His location is now unknown.

Muyi Xiao and Dmitriy Khavin contributed reporting.

“People are not frightened about Covid anymore,” said Dr. Marta Saiko, the head of the therapy department at the Clinical Municipal Emergency Hospital in Lviv, in western Ukraine. “People are frightened of the war.”

The invasion has brought attacks on some of the largest cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, causing an exodus of people and a breakdown in services.

Ukraine has a relatively low Covid vaccination rate, barely one-third of the population, and millions of people fleeing their homes have crowded into evacuation trains, resettlement centers, temporary housing and underground shelters — conditions ripe for a new surge of infections.

Recently, Ukraine has also been grappling with a rare outbreak of polio, which spreads through the kind of unsanitary conditions and water contamination that are common in a refugee crisis. Compounding the threat, vaccination for polio and other diseases has slowed worldwide during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Mr. Kovalchuk, 70, has been subject to American and European sanctions since Mr. Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now, the latest designations announced in Washington on Friday expand those to include other parts of his financial empire and members of his family, including his son, Boris.

The effects remain to be seen, but the latest American move seems unlikely to cause a rift between the two men, given how much Mr. Kovalchuk and others have relied on Mr. Putin’s support to build their fortunes. In an interview in 2014, Mr. Kovalchuk said that Russian people and businesses would be willing to sacrifice for Mr. Putin’s policies. “The fact is, people intuitively feel which side of the barricades business stands on,” he said.

Still, other Russian officials facing sanctions have seen their luxury assets outside Russia targeted by the measures that the United States and the European Union have imposed in the past two weeks.

They include a yacht linked to Igor I. Sechin, the chairman of the state energy giant, Rosneft, and another owned by Gennady N. Timchenko, a former oil and gas trader who now runs an investment firm called Volga Group. The seizures suggest that even those targeted before could still be exposed to expanded sanctions.

American officials are also examining the ownership of a $700 million superyacht sitting in a dry dock at an Italian seacoast town, The New York Times reported on Friday. They believe it could be associated with Mr. Putin.

Of all the tycoons in Mr. Putin’s orbit, Mr. Kovalchuk is believed to be one of his most trusted confidants. They met around the time that Mr. Kovalchuk, a former physicist, purchased the distressed assets of a Communist Party bank, Rossiya. With that he built a business empire that now spans media, insurance and financial services.

In the early 1990s, Mr. Kovalchuk figured in the first corruption scandal that tarred Mr. Putin: a series of deals in which private businesses provided emergency food for the city in exchange for products from what were still state-owned companies.

He received one of the contracts, but little food was ever delivered, prompting an investigation by the city’s legislature and a recommendation that Mr. Putin be fired. Two decades later, offshore accounts linked to Mr. Kovalchuk surfaced in the leak of banking documents known as the Panama Papers.

Mikhail Zygar, the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin,” wrote this week that Mr. Kovalchuk had accompanied the Russian leader throughout his pandemic isolation at one of his official residences in northwestern Russia. That proximity, he suggested, reinforced the insular thinking that led to the war.

“He is also an ideologue, subscribing to a worldview that combines Orthodox Christian mysticism, anti-American conspiracy theories and hedonism,” Mr. Zygar wrote. “This appears to be Mr. Putin’s worldview, too.”

“They are changing their tactics,” Vitaliy Kim, the Mykolaiv region governor said. “They are deploying in the villages and lodging in village schools and homes. We cannot shoot back. There are no rules now. We will have to be more brutal with them.”

For nearly two weeks, Russian forces have been trying to encircle the city and cross the Southern Buh River, which flows through Mykolaiv and is a natural defense against a Russian push toward the west and Odessa, the Black Sea port city that appears to be a prime Russian objective.

Russian forces had not crossed the river as of Saturday morning, Colonel Stetsenko said, but “they are continuing to shell Mykolaiv.”

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Just three weeks ago, the warehouse hummed with the business of Meest-America Inc., a freight-delivery service that specializes in shipping goods to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, including Russia. “Meest” is Ukrainian for bridge.

But on Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, the native country for most of Meest-America’s 108 workers, and business all but stopped. The company was unable to ship to Ukraine, and it could not in good conscience continue shipping to Russia and Belarus.

“Once we saw the images of bombing, it was an easy decision,” said Natalia Brandafi, the company’s chief operating officer.

Overnight, the New Jersey warehouse became a Ukrainian outpost. The lobby was decorated with a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, and the phone system modified to play the Ukrainian national anthem for callers on hold. The entire business model was changed to a single purpose:

Help Ukraine.

Brovary is just eight miles from downtown Kyiv, and the skirmish on the M01 Highway on Wednesday illustrated how close Russian forces have come as they continue to tighten a noose on the nation’s capital — the biggest prize of all in the war. The Russians continued on Friday to try to close in on Kyiv, with combat to the northwest and east that consisted mostly of fierce, seesaw battles for control of small towns and roads.

But the attack by Ukrainian troops in Brovary also cast into sharp relief the strategic challenges — and, military analysts say, the strategic missteps — that have bedeviled Russian forces and prevented them, so far, from gaining control of most major cities.

Though Russian forces greatly outnumber the Ukrainian army and have far superior weaponry, their size and their need to mostly use open roads make them less mobile and susceptible to attack from Ukrainian troops that can launch artillery strikes from several miles away, in tandem with surgical ambushes.

“Urban combat is always difficult, and I don’t think the Russians are any better at it than others,” said Tor Bukkvol, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, a military think tank, and an authority on Russia’s special forces.

DuckDuckGo’s chief executive, Gabriel Weinberg, tweeted on Thursday that the search engine would rank websites “associated with disinformation” lower in its search results.

“Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create,” he wrote.

DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft’s Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Union’s order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik.

But the criticism from the far right was directed at DuckDuckGo. The conservative website Breitbart said DuckDuckGo was “adopting the censorship policies” of Big Tech. In social media channels devoted to conspiracy theories, users vowed to switch to alternatives like the Russian search engine Yandex. The hashtag #DuckDuckGone trended across Twitter in the United States by Friday. And on YouTube, users criticized the company for silencing voices.

“If you’re using DuckDuckGo, I suggest you stop using it and switch to something else,” said Tarl Warwick, a self-described libertarian YouTube user with nearly half a million followers. He added: “I want tens of thousands of people to stop using it.”

In a statement, Kamyl Bazbaz, the vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo, said that the affected sites were engaged in “active disinformation campaigns,” meaning they were similar to other low-quality websites already penalized by search algorithms.

“This isn’t censorship, it’s just search rankings,” he said.

The Russian state media has promoted similar allegations since the war began. There is no evidence to support the claims, which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have all unequivocally denied.

Ms. Nakamitsu said that the United Nations was “not aware of any biological weapons programs,” and that Ukraine and Russia were both signatories to a 1972 convention banning the research, development and stockpiling of biological weapons.

She added that a concerned country could address suspicions about another nation in several ways, such as by reviewing annual reports or lodging a complaint with the council for investigation. She said that reporting mechanism had “never been activated.”

Russia had called the emergency Security Council meeting on Friday to discuss its allegations, saying biological weapons activity threatened peace and security.

“Ukraine agreed to make their country into a biological lab and their citizens as Guinea pigs,” Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, told the council. He accused the United States of ordering Ukrainian forces to clear up any evidence of weaponized biological programs and, in case of an attack, to blame the Russian military.

Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the U.N., said that his country had “noted with concern the relevant information released by Russia” and that its allegations “should be properly investigated.”

The U.S. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, denied the accusations, saying they were an attempt to legitimize Russia’s war against Ukraine and could be a prelude to a chemical attack. She also criticized China, saying it was “spreading disinformation in support of Russia’s outrageous claims.”

“The intent behind these lies seems clear, and is deeply troubling,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said. “We believe Russia could use chemical or biological agents for assassinations, as part of a staged or false-flag incident, or to support tactical military operations.”

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said that Ukraine operated public health laboratories to conduct research on diseases like Covid-19, and that the U.S. assisted the country in its medical lab research “proudly, clearly and out in the open.” The medical research has “absolutely nothing to do with biological weapons,” she said.

There are biological laboratories in Ukraine, and since 2005, the United States has provided backing to a number of institutions to prevent the production of biological weapons.

The council meeting was dominated by Russia, the United States and China trading accusations regarding both biological weapons programs and attempts to control the public narrative with disinformation campaigns.

The 15-member Security Council offered a glimpse into the stalled diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. European members expressed outrage at Russia’s actions. Members such as Kenya, Gabon, India and Brazil said that claims of chemical or biological weapons used in a war should be investigated. The United Arab Emirates, which holds the presidency of the Council, did not make a statement on Friday.

Per protocol because Ukraine is not a member of the council, its ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, spoke last. At earlier sessions, he had accused Russia of lying about the scope and aims of its invasion, and about attacking civilian infrastructure and people fleeing the war.

On Friday, he again accused Russia of lying, this time about biological weapons programs in Ukraine. “Ukrainian people are getting killed,” he said, “as we are listening to Russia’s fakes in the Security Council.”

People briefed on the intelligence would not describe what information they had that indicated the superyacht is associated with Mr. Putin. If American officials know whether or how often Mr. Putin uses the yacht, the people briefed on the information would not share it.

American officials said Mr. Putin kept little of his wealth in his own name. Instead he uses homes and boats nominally owned by Russian oligarchs. Still, it is possible that through various shell companies, Mr. Putin could have more direct control of the Scheherazade.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic Mr. Putin has also spent large amounts of time in the Russian resort city of Sochi on the Black Sea, U.S. officials said. The Scheherazade made trips to Sochi in the summers of 2020 and 2021.

Both the Treasury Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence are investigating the ownership of superyachts associated with Russian oligarchs. A spokesman for the Navy and a spokeswoman for the Treasury both declined to comment.

The Justice Department has set up a task force to go after the assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs. In a discussion with reporters on Friday, a Justice Department official said the task force would be investigating individuals who help sanctioned Russian officials or oligarchs hide their assets. Those individuals could face charges related to sanctions violations or international money laundering charges.

In addition, under recently published Commerce Department rule changes, if more than 25 percent of a plane or a yacht is made of U.S.-manufactured airplane or marine parts, it cannot go to Russia.

If a yacht is in a foreign country and meets the definition of a U.S.-origin or U.S.-made product, it would need a license to go to Russia. To actually seize a yacht, the United States would need to coordinate with a cooperative foreign government — Italy, in the case of the Scheherazade — to prevent the ship from moving to Russian waters.

Some superyachts moved out of European waters as the invasion of Ukraine began and the West began imposing sanctions allowing asset seizures. The Scheherazade is undergoing repairs in Marina di Carrara, a port in Tuscany, and as of earlier this week was in dry dock, unable to get underway.

Guy Bennett-Pearce, the Scheherazade’s captain, said earlier this week that Mr. Putin was not the owner of the superyacht and that the Russian president had not set foot on it.

He declined to give the name of the owner, saying on Monday only that it was not anyone facing sanctions. Captain Bennett-Pearce did not answer his phone on Friday or respond to a text message.

Last week, Italian authorities boarded the Scheherazade and examined certification documents, seeking to learn more about the vessel’s ownership. Captain Bennett-Pearce said earlier this week that he would provide the Italian police with documents that divulged the yacht’s owner.

Italian authorities said they were taking a deep look at the Scheherazade. Under a process that may take as long as a couple of weeks, Italy’s financial police will gather evidence and present it to a government committee, which will then decide whether ownership or use of the ship is connected to someone on the sanctions list.

That connection could be outright ownership of a significant portion of the ship, or evidence that a friend, underling or associate lent his or her name to hide the sanctioned person’s ownership, or that funds used to buy the ship came from illegal profits. If the committee finds that the evidence meets the threshold, the financial police can impound the Scheherazade.

The Italian Sea Group, which owns the shipyard where the Scheherazade is dry-docked, said in a statement on Thursday that based on documents it had and “checks carried out by the relevant authorities,” the Scheherazade “is not attributable to the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

American officials have been stepping up their examination of the superyachts of Russian oligarchs, particularly as the United States and Europe have imposed more sanctions against the wealthy families that support Mr. Putin.

The German-built Scheherazade has been in service since June 2020. The website SuperYachtFan estimated that it cost $700 million. The ship has a full-size gym, two helicopter decks and gold-plated fixtures in the washrooms.

While American intelligence officials have been looking at the Scheherazade, the scrutiny has increased after the publication of the earlier article in The Times.

The Scheherazade appears to have a sister ship, the Crescent, built by the same German manufacturer and put into service in 2018. The Crescent’s project name when it was under construction was “Thunder.” The Scheherazade’s was “Lightning.”

Like the Scheherazade, there is no public information identifying the ship’s owner, other than an offshore shell company. The Crescent last broadcast its position on Nov. 2, when it appeared to be approaching Barcelona, Spain. Satellite images show that as of March 4 it was moored at a marina catering to superyachts near there. Both vessels are registered in the Cayman Islands and both share the same designer.

Katie Benner contributed reporting from Washington, Christoph Koettl from New York, and Gaia Pianigiani from Siena, Italy.