Russian Invasion of UkraineWhat Happened on Day 83 of the War in Ukraine

The government’s order for hundreds of remaining fighters to stand down offers Russia a propaganda victory, but prospects for a prisoner swap seem unclear at best.

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Oleksandr, 36, worked to repair the roof of his house, in Novoselivka, Ukraine, on Tuesday. The house was badly damaged by a Russian airstrike in early March.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Follow our live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war.

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Here’s the latest on the war in Ukraine.

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Ukrainian servicemen in a bus after they were evacuated from Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant on Tuesday. They are now in Russian custody and their futures are unclear.Credit...Alexei Alexandrov/Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine — Hundreds of die-hard Ukrainian soldiers who had made a last stand against Russian forces from a Mariupol steel mill faced an uncertain future Tuesday under Kremlin custody after Ukraine’s military ordered them to surrender.

The surrender directive, issued late Monday, made the soldiers prisoners and ended the most protracted battle so far of the nearly three-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Even as Russia has struggled on other battlefronts, the surrender at Mariupol solidified one of Russia’s few significant territorial achievements — the conquest of a once-thriving southeast port. The surrender also gave Russia’s state-run media the ingredients for claiming its side was winning.

Still, Mariupol has been largely reduced to ruin, Ukrainian officials say that more than 20,000 inhabitants were killed, and the city has come to symbolize the war’s grotesque horrors.

By early Tuesday, many of the fighters ensconced in a warren of shelters under the Azovstal steel mill, a Soviet-era complex besieged by the Russians for weeks, had emerged and surrendered. They were transported to Russian-held territory aboard buses emblazoned with “Z” — the Russian emblem for what President Vladimir V. Putin has called his country’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian authorities said little about the terms of the surrender except to assert that the Ukrainian fighters were heroes and that as prisoners they would soon be exchanged for Russian prisoners held by Ukraine.

“The only thing that can be said is that the Ukrainian state is doing everything possible and impossible” to save the soldiers, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

But Russian officials said nothing about an exchange — on the contrary, they raised the prospect that at least some of the prisoners would be treated as war criminals.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s equivalent to the F.B.I., said Tuesday that investigators would interrogate the captured fighters to “check their involvement in crimes committed against civilians.”

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Russia-backed fighters in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Tuesday.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

And the prosecutor general’s office asked Russia’s Supreme Court to declare the military unit to which most of the captured fighters belong, the Azov battalion, a terrorist organization. Russian news media have seized on the Azov battalion’s connections to far-right movements to provide a veneer of credibility to the Kremlin’s false claims that Russia’s forces were fighting Nazis in Ukraine.

The Russian threats against the prisoners raised questions about the viability of the terms Ukraine had negotiated with Moscow to surrender, and whether the hundreds of troops still remaining inside the steel plant would abide by the deal.

News of Ukraine’s surrender order to its own fighters, widely seen domestically as heroes who have stared down deprivation and doom, was greeted with anxiety in the country, where antipathy toward Russia has only deepened since the war.

Many expressed fears that the last defenders of Mariupol would suffer as prisoners of Russia — though the most likely alternative was certain death inside the steel works.

“I am waiting for news and praying,” said Natalia Zarytska, who was part of a delegation of wives and mothers of men inside Azovstal who had sought the intervention of Turkey, which has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, to assure a safe evacuation route for their loved ones.

The Ukrainian government sought to extol the valor of the fighters, who refused to surrender until ordered.

“83 days of Mariupol defense will go down in history as the Thermopylae of the XXI century,” Mykhailo Podolyak, one of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, said on Twitter, referring to the 480 B.C. battle in which an outnumbered force of Greeks faced a much larger Persian army. He said the defenders in Azovstal had “ruined” Russia’s plan to capture eastern Ukraine and “completely changed the course of the war.”

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Protesters rallied in front of the Chinese Embassy in Kyiv on Tuesday. The protesters had called upon President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China to help assure the safe evacuation of Ukraine fighters from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. Credit...Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Still, the fate of the captured soldiers could create political problems for Mr. Zelensky, whose leadership through the war has boosted his popularity at home and in friendly Western countries.

Mr. Putin could also face an awkward decision over releasing any of the captives — even in a prisoner swap — since he has repeatedly sought to cast Azov battalion members as Nazis. Repatriating them could undercut that fictitious narrative.

Ukraine’s decision to halt the armed defense at the plant appeared to end the last vestige of resistance preventing Russia from fully controlling a swath of southeastern Ukraine stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula, which was seized by Russia eight years ago.

The developments in the south underscore how much territory Moscow has captured and suggest that Ukrainian forces will face steep challenges in trying to regain it. At the same time, Ukraine’s military has been emboldened by its successes against Russian forces elsewhere, so the prospects for a negotiated settlement have dimmed.

Both sides acknowledge that talks have basically collapsed amid publicly aired recriminations.

Along a path stretching more than 500 miles from Luhansk in the east to Kherson on the Black Sea, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces were building defensive positions, installing governments with fealty to the Kremlin and taking steps to “Russify” the population.

In Zaporizhzhia, a region west of Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said that Russian forces had been destroying roads and bridges to slow Ukrainian counterattacks. Moscow’s troops also erected concrete barriers and dug trenches around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in the city of Enerhodar, which Russia seized in the first month of the war, Ukraine’s nuclear power company said.

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The steel plant in Mariupol under shelling this month.Credit...Alexei Alexandrov/Associated Press

In the Russia-occupied Kherson region, the nation’s agricultural heartland, the Ukrainians have been mounting counterattacks for weeks, slowly trying to reclaim lost ground, but have yet to launch a major offensive.

The Ukrainian military said Tuesday evening that Russia was taking steps to prepare for a long-term military occupation. “The war is entering a protracted phase,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. “We see how in the Kherson region, in the Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian invaders are actively carrying out engineering and fortification work to move to defense if necessary.”

Still, Ukrainian forces, backed by an increasing flow of heavy weapons from Western allies, have mounted fierce resistance on other battle fronts, driving Russian forces first from the capital, Kyiv, and in recent days from the northeastern city of Kharkiv.

Ukrainian officials said Tuesday that more than 50 “seriously injured” fighters from Mariupol were being transported to a hospital in Novoazovsk, a Ukrainian town near the Russian border that is controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. Another 211 people were evacuated via a humanitarian corridor to Olenivka, also under Russian control.

Ukrainian officials said that the soldiers would be returned to Ukrainian-held territory “under an exchange procedure.”

However, it was unclear who was guaranteeing the security of the servicemen and whether any procedure had been agreed upon before the evacuation began.

“Those 211 people who were evacuated to Olenivka, their fate is paramount to negotiate about right now,” Kira Rudik, a member of parliament and leader of the Holos party, involved in negotiations about Azovstal, said on Tuesday afternoon.

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A Russian military helicopter flying over buses carrying Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered at the Mariupol steel plant to a detention facility in Russian-controlled territory on Tuesday.Credit...Alexei Alexandrov/Associated Press

In recent days, Western countries have reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, and against Russian interests.

The leaders of Sweden and Finland said Tuesday that they would jointly submit their applications to join the NATO alliance this week and would visit Washington to meet with President Biden, who strongly supports their plans.

In Brussels, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen exhorted European Union nations to increase their spending on Ukraine to help it cope with the economic crisis and rebuilding that will be required because of the Russian invasion.

“Our joint efforts are critical to help ensure Ukraine’s democracy prevails over Putin’s aggression,” Ms. Yellen, in the midst of a weeklong trip to Europe, told the Brussels Economic Forum.

Congress has already approved a $13.6 billion emergency spending package for Ukraine and is expected to approve a further $40 billion worth of aid.

Valerie Hopkins reported from Kyiv, Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Alan Rappeport from Brussels, Safak Timur from Istanbul, and Johanna Lemola from Helsinki.

Erin Mendell
May 17, 2022, 10:43 p.m. ET

Australia imposed sanctions on more people and groups tied to Russia and Belarus, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said. The measures targets people and media spreading disinformation, as well as the Wagner Group, a private military force with ties to President Putin.

Alexandra Petri
May 17, 2022, 9:41 p.m. ET

The International Criminal Court has sent a team of 42 investigators, forensic experts and support personnel, its largest-ever field deployment, to assist with I.C.C. investigations in Ukraine, the court's prosecutor, Karim Khan, said in a statement. “Now more than ever we need to show the law in action,” Khan said.

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Alexandra Petri
May 17, 2022, 8:47 p.m. ET

In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the "evacuation mission" was continuing for the Ukrainian fighters who remain at the Azovstal steel complex in Mariupol, and that it was being overseen by Ukraine’s military and intelligence units and involved “the most influential international mediators.” It is unclear how many fighters are still at the plant, but they are believed to number in the hundreds.

Alexandra Petri
May 17, 2022, 7:53 p.m. ET

The State Department announced the launch of Conflict Observatory, a new program designed to help collect, analyze and distribute open-source evidence of war crimes and other atrocities by Russia in Ukraine. The information will be publicly available online “to help refute Russia’s disinformation efforts and shine a light on abuses,” the State Department said in a press release.

Kate CongerDavid Bolaños
May 17, 2022, 6:27 p.m. ET

Kate Conger and

Russian hackers attack Costa Rica, and some suspect retaliation for supporting Ukraine.

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Hackers claiming to be affiliated with Conti broke into Costa Rica’s Ministry of Finance, the government said, and from there the ransomware spread to other agencies.Credit...Mayela Lopez/Reuters

WASHINGTON — A Russian hacking cartel carried out an extraordinary cyberattack against the government of Costa Rica, crippling tax collection and export systems for more than a month so far and forcing the country to declare a state of emergency.

The ransomware gang Conti, which is based in Russia, claimed credit for the attack, which began on April 12, and has threatened to leak the stolen information unless it is paid $20 million. Experts who track Conti’s movements said the group had recently begun to shift its focus from the United States and Europe to countries in Central and South America, perhaps to retaliate against nations that have supported Ukraine.

Some experts also believe Conti feared a crackdown by the United States and was seeking fresh targets, regardless of politics. The group is responsible for more than 1,000 ransomware attacks worldwide that have led to earnings of more than $150 million, according to estimates from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“The ransomware cartels figured out multinationals in the U.S. and Western Europe are less likely to blink if they need to pay some ungodly sum in order to get their business running,” said Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, a principal threat researcher at SentinelOne. “But at some point, you are going to tap out that space.”

Whatever the reason for the shift, the hack showed that Conti was still acting aggressively despite speculation that the gang might disband after it was the target of a hacking operation in the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The criminal group, which pledged its support to Russia after the invasion, routinely targets businesses and local government agencies by breaking into their systems, encrypting data and demanding a ransom to restore it.

Of the Costa Rica hacking, Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft, said that “it’s possibly the most significant ransomware attack to date.”

“This is the first time I can recall a ransomware attack resulting in a national emergency being declared,” he said.

Costa Rica has said it refused to pay the ransom.

The hacking campaign occurred after Costa Rica’s presidential elections and quickly became a political cudgel. The previous administration downplayed the attack in its first official news releases, portraying it as a technical problem and projecting an image of stability and calm. But the newly elected president, Rodrigo Chaves, began his term by declaring a national emergency.

“We are at war,” Mr. Chaves said during a news conference on Monday. He said 27 government institutions had been affected by the ransomware attack, nine of them significantly.

The attack began on April 12, according to Mr. Chaves’s administration, when hackers who said they were affiliated with Conti broke into Costa Rica’s Ministry of Finance, which oversees the country’s tax system. From there, the ransomware spread to other agencies that oversee technology and telecommunications, the government said this month.

Two former officials with the Ministry of Finance, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said the hackers were able to gain access to taxpayers’ information and interrupt Costa Rica’s tax collection process, forcing the agency to shut down some databases and resort to using a nearly 15-year-old system to store revenue from its largest taxpayers. Much of the nation’s tax revenue comes from a relatively small pool of about a thousand major taxpayers, making it possible for Costa Rica to continue tax collection.

The country also relies on exports, and the cyberattack forced customs agents to do their work solely on paper. While the investigation and recovery are underway, taxpayers in Costa Rica are forced to file their tax declarations in person at financial institutions rather than relying on online services.

Mr. Chaves is a former World Bank official and finance minister who has promised to shake up the political system. His government declared a state of emergency this month in response to the cyberattack, calling it “unprecedented in the country.”

“We are facing a situation of unavoidable disaster, of public calamity and internal and abnormal commotion that, without extraordinary measures, cannot be controlled by the government,” Mr. Chaves’s administration said in its emergency declaration.

The state of emergency allows agencies to move more quickly to remedy the breach, the government said. But cybersecurity researchers said that a partial recovery could take months, and that the government may not ever fully recover its data. The government may have backups of some of its taxpayer information, but it would take some time for those backups to come online, and the government would first need to ensure it had removed Conti’s access to its systems, researchers said.

Paying the ransom would not guarantee a recovery because Conti and other ransomware groups have been known to withhold data even after receiving a payment.

“Unless they pay the ransom, which they have stated they have no intention of doing, or have backups that are going to enable them to recover their data, they are potentially looking at total, permanent data loss,” Mr. Callow said.

When Costa Rica refused to pay the ransom, Conti began threatening to leak its data online, posting some files it claimed contained stolen information.

“It is impossible to look at the decisions of the administration of the president of Costa Rica without irony,” the group wrote on its website. “All this could have been avoided by paying.”

On Saturday, Conti raised the stakes, threatening to delete the keys to restore the data if it did not receive payment within a week.

“With governments, intelligence agencies and diplomatic circles, the debilitating part of the attack is really not the ransomware. It’s the data exfiltration,” said Mr. Guerrero-Saade of SentinelOne. “You’re in a position where presumably incredibly sensitive information is in the hands of a third party.”

The breach, among other attacks carried out by Conti, led the U.S. State Department to join with the Costa Rican government to offer a $10 million reward to anyone who provided information that led to the identification of key leaders of the hacking group.

“The group perpetrated a ransomware incident against the government of Costa Rica that severely impacted the country’s foreign trade by disrupting its customs and taxes platforms,” a State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said in a statement. “In offering this reward, the United States demonstrates its commitment to protecting potential ransomware victims around the world from exploitation by cybercriminals.”

Kate Conger reported from Washington, and David Bolaños from San José, Costa Rica.

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Alan Rappeport
May 17, 2022, 5:56 p.m. ET

The U.S. is expected to begin blocking Russian bond payments to American investors.

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The Russian Central bank building in Moscow. Russia is nearing its first default on foreign debt in more than a century.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The Biden administration is expected to begin blocking Russia from paying American bondholders next week, increasing the likelihood of the first default of Russia’s foreign debt in more than a century.

An exemption to American sanctions has allowed Russia to keep paying its debts since February. That exemption expires on May 25.

The decision not to extend the exemption came after the Treasury Department and the State Department analyzed what would happen if Russia defaulted and determined that it would not have a significant economic impact, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

The plan to let the carve-out lapse was reported earlier by Bloomberg News. A default would deal a symbolic blow to Russia, which has continued to make bond payments despite sweeping sanctions that have immobilized half of its foreign currency reserves. Russia has tried to make payments on dollar-denominated bonds in rubles and has threatened to file lawsuits to avoid default.

Russia has bond payments due on May 27 and June 24. It is not clear if it has any additional tools at its disposal to make them with the restrictions in place, which would forbid Americans from receiving interest, dividend, or maturity payments on Russian debt.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said last week that the consequences of allowing Russia to default was still being studied.

“This is something that we are actively examining right now,” Ms. Yellen said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. “We want to make sure that we understand what the potential consequences and spillovers would be of allowing the license to expire.”

She added: “We’re actively involved in an evaluation of the risks and impact of not renewing the license.”

Some Treasury Department officials have argued that the debt payment exemption was a useful way to help drain Russia’s resources. However, the Treasury Department ultimately determined that the remaining dollar bond payments did not represent a significant amount of money, the person familiar with the decision said.

The economic implications of a default for Russia and the world could be relatively small.

Economists estimate that Russia’s total foreign public debt amounts to about $75 billion, while Russia’s annual energy sales are worth about $200 billion. Investors have been anticipating a default since late February, and policymakers have suggested that a default does not pose a threat to the stability of the financial system.

May 17, 2022, 3:45 p.m. ET

Valerie HopkinsMaria Varenikova and

Moscow signals that it may prosecute Mariupol’s defenders, raising questions about the terms of surrender.

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Buses carrying Ukrainian service members who surrendered at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, after holding out for weeks. Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

When Moscow signaled on Tuesday that it might level war-crimes charges against Ukrainian soldiers who were evacuated from the besieged steel plant in Mariupol, it cast a shadow over the negotiations that led to their surrender and raised fears for the fate of the remaining soldiers still holding out at the plant.

At least 264 soldiers were evacuated from the destroyed plant on Monday night and Tuesday — among them 53 gravely injured — after extremely delicate and secretive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and taken to Russian-controlled territory.

While Ukrainian authorities said the fighters would be exchanged for prisoners of war, Russia’s Investigative Committee, its equivalent of the F.B.I., said Tuesday they would be interrogated to “check their involvement in crimes committed against civilians.” And the prosecutor general’s office asked Russia’s Supreme Court to declare the military unit to which most of the captured fighters belong, the Azov regiment, a terrorist organization.

That prospect led to questions about the viability of the deal Ukraine had made with Russia to surrender. Ukrainian officials have declined to discuss the operation in detail or to lay out the terms of the agreement, but a member of the negotiating team said the discussions about the soldiers’ fate had not been completely finalized and were ongoing.

Kira Rudik, a member of Parliament who was involved in negotiations about the Azovstal steel plant, said in an interview on Tuesday afternoon that no mechanism for the prisoner exchange had been hammered out yet.

“We want to extract them to a third party country, like Turkey,” she said. “Russia is against it now. But what else can we do in such situation? We will have to carry on these negotiations.”

It is not known how many Russian prisoners of war are currently in Ukrainian custody. Ms. Rudik said she was unsure if Ukraine had enough prisoners to exchange with Russia.

Ms. Rudik said that Ukraine had received guarantees from organizations like the Red Cross and the United Nations that the soldiers evacuated to Russian territory would be all right. “It was the only reason we agreed to this, because the soldiers were ready to go to the end,” she said.

The Russian threats against the prisoners evacuated so far made it unclear whether the troops still remaining at the steel plant would follow the order from their government to lay down their arms, even though the most likely alternative was certain death inside the steel works.

“I am waiting for news, and praying,” said Natalia Zarytska, who was part of a delegation of wives and mothers of men inside Azovstal who went to Turkey seeking a safe evacuation route for their loved ones, said Tuesday via text message.

The Ukrainian government sought to extol the bravery of the fighters, who refused to surrender until they were ordered to do so. One presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, likened them to the Spartans who held the Persians back at Thermopylae. He said the defenders in Azovstal had ruined Russia’s plan to capture Ukraine and “completely changed the course of the war.”

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Nicole Tung
May 17, 2022, 2:59 p.m. ET

Ukrainian service members and volunteers at the Serhiy Prytula Foundation, a military supply depot in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Serhii, 36, who declined to give his last name, picks up oil spray for gun care. The foundation has raised millions of dollars through crowdfunding campaigns, direct donations and online auctions of artwork to buy military equipment for the Ukrainian armed forces. The equipment is brought into Ukraine to hubs in the west, as well as Kyiv, before being redirected to the east of the country where much of the military operations are now focused.

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Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
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Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 2:34 p.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

The Ukrainian military said Tuesday evening that Russia was taking steps to prepare for a long-term military occupation. “The war is entering a protracted phase,” the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. “We see how in the Kherson region, in the Zaporizhzhya region, the Russian invaders are actively carrying out engineering and fortification work to move to defense if necessary.”

Anushka PatilEleanor Stanford
May 17, 2022, 2:03 p.m. ET

‘The hate of men will pass, and dictators die’: Zelensky quotes Chaplin in an address to Cannes.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed the Cannes audience on Tuesday.Credit...Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine gave a virtual address to the Cannes Film Festival opening ceremony on Tuesday, referencing Charlie Chaplin’s celebrated satire of fascism to urge some of the world’s highest-profile stars and filmmakers to similarly rise to the occasion in the face of a war “that can set the whole continent ablaze.”

“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish,” Zelensky said, quoting Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”

Appearing via satellite in his now signature military green shirt, Zelensky lionized the power of film in his address and received a standing ovation from the crowd gathered on the French Riviera.

“Again, then as now, there is a dictator,” Zelensky said. “Again, then as now, there is a war for freedom. Again, then as now, cinema must not be silent.”

The address was his latest stop on a persistent and wide-ranging virtual diplomatic tour to keep global attention on his country’s plight. Since Russia’s invasion began in late February, he has delivered addresses via video link to governments of countries as large as the United States and as small as Malta on a regular basis.

In April, he made a surprise virtual address at the Grammys, telling the audience that his country’s musicians were wearing “body armor instead of tuxedos.”

“They sing to the wounded in hospitals,” he said, “even to those who can’t hear them.”

Later that month, he made a live-streamed appearance at the Venice Biennale. Speaking at the opening of the exhibition “This is Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky vividly described the horrors that his people were enduring. With a digital Ukrainian flag fluttering behind him, he said: “There are no tyrannies that would not try to limit art. Because they can see the power of art. Art can tell the world things that cannot be shared otherwise.”

Mr. Zelensky’s oratory efforts have been remarkably effective in securing his country the weapons, aid and international support needed to fight Russia. He is a former actor, and starred as an unlikely Ukrainian president in “Servant of the People,” a TV satire that prefaced his own, actual election to the presidency in 2019.

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.

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Anushka Patil
May 17, 2022, 1:17 p.m. ET

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that it had verified 226 attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine, including on hospitals and ambulances. That would be nearly three attacks per day since the war started, said the group’s Europe director, Hans Kluge, who called for an investigation.

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Credit...Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters
Ivan Nechepurenko
May 17, 2022, 12:52 p.m. ET

Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia

Russian investigators will interrogate Ukrainian fighters who have withdrawn from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the country’s top investigative body said in a statement. The officials will identify them and “check their involvement in crimes committed against civilians.” On Monday, the Ukrainian authorities said that the fighters would be eventually exchanged for Russian prisoners of war, but in Russia, lawmakers pressed for them to be tried in court.

Aurelien Breeden
May 17, 2022, 12:45 p.m. ET

Reporting from Paris

President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had a “long and substantial” phone conversation on Tuesday, during which the leaders discussed evacuations from the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, according to the French presidency. The two leaders also discussed “security guarantees that France could provide to Ukraine within the framework of an international agreement,” the statement added.

Anushka Patil
May 17, 2022, 11:56 a.m. ET

There is continued concern about the potential for a cholera outbreak in Mariupol, World Health Organization officials said on Tuesday. Aid groups on the ground have reported that sewage water and drinking water are mixing and that there are swamps in the streets, said Dr. Dorit Nitzan, the W.H.O. health emergencies coordinator for Europe.

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Anton TroianovskiValerie Hopkins
May 17, 2022, 11:43 a.m. ET

With Ukraine taking a firmer stance, peace talks grind to a halt.

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Surveying the damage in Malotaranivka, in the Donbas region of Ukraine, this month.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

After weeks of trying to hammer out a peace deal, negotiators for Russia and Ukraine appear further apart than at any other point in the nearly three-month-long war, with the talks having collapsed in a thicket of public recriminations.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of President Vladimir V. Putin’s delegation, claims that Russia has still not received a response to a draft peace agreement that it submitted to Ukraine on April 15. Rustem Umerov, a top Ukrainian negotiator, responded by saying that Russia was operating with “fakes and lies.”

“We are defending ourselves,” Mr. Umerov said in an interview. “If Russia wants to get out, they can get out to their borders even today. But they are not doing it.”

On Tuesday, both sides further played down the prospects of a deal. Another Ukrainian negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, issued a statement saying that the talks were “on pause” and that given Russia’s faltering offensive, the Kremlin “will not achieve any goals.” And Andrei Rudenko, a Russian deputy foreign minister, told reporters that “Ukraine has practically withdrawn from the negotiating process,” the Interfax news agency reported.

The impasse stems primarily from Russia’s insistence on maintaining control of large swaths of Ukrainian territory, and Mr. Putin’s apparent determination to push ahead with his offensive. But another factor is an emboldened Ukraine: Its successes on the battlefield, combined with anger over Russian atrocities, have the Ukrainian public less willing to accept a negotiated peace that would keep a significant amount of land in Russian hands.

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Vladimir Medinsky, the head of President Vladimir V. Putin’s delegation, in Moscow this month. Credit...Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ukraine is further bolstered by an extraordinary influx of weapons and aid from the West. The U.S. Senate is expected to approve a $40 billion package of military and economic aid for Ukraine as early as Wednesday.

“Now that we feel more confident in the fight, our position in the negotiations is also getting tougher,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told the German newspaper Die Welt in an interview published last week. “The real problem is that Russia does not show the desire to participate in real and substantive negotiations.”

In Russia, officials say that it is the Ukrainians that are intransigent, and that they are being egged on to continue the fight by Western leaders. Prime Minister Kaja Kallas of Estonia, for instance, said the West needed to push for a military defeat of Mr. Putin rather than “a peace that allows aggression to pay off.”

Both sides have stuck to talking points that advanced their own agenda. Mr. Medinsky, in his first interview with a Western news outlet since the beginning of the war, claimed that Ukrainian negotiators had previously agreed to much of the draft deal that he said Russia had submitted to Ukraine last month.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, speaking to the news media in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, last month.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

“But they probably represent that part of the Ukrainian elite that is most interested in reaching a peace agreement,” Mr. Medinsky said, referring to the negotiators. “And there is probably another part of the elite that doesn’t want peace, and that draws direct financial and political benefit from a continuation of the war.”

Discussions among midlevel negotiators have continued for weeks. But in a sign of how far off a peace agreement now appears to be to both sides, negotiators were focused on more granular issues like prisoner exchanges and humanitarian efforts, and on lifting Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Still, the fact that some talks have been taking place at all shows that a negotiated end to the war is not entirely out of reach. On Monday, after weeks of negotiations that both sides worked to keep secret, Ukraine agreed to surrender its fighters sheltering in a steel plant in the port city of Mariupol. Officials said they expected the fighters to be freed by Russia in a prisoner exchange.

Mr. Medinsky, a conservative former culture minister whom Mr. Putin appointed as his chief Ukraine negotiator in February, said that Russia remained interested in a peace deal with Ukraine that would make it a “neutral and peaceful country, friendly to its neighbors.”

He said Russia wanted peace under an “Austrian model” — Austria belongs to the European Union, but not to NATO — that would allow Ukraine to remain an independent country. He would not specify whether Russia was prepared to cede any territory.

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A bus that carried Ukrainian forces from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol after arriving in Novoazovsk, Ukraine, on Monday under the escort of the Russian-backed military.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

He evoked past conflicts between the American North and South, Germany and Austria, and England and Scotland as historical evidence that today’s enmity between Russia and Ukraine would eventually end.

“Sooner or later, peace, mutual interests, harmony and mutually beneficial cohabitation is found, in various forms,” he said. “Our task as negotiators is to make this come sooner, if possible.”

Mr. Medinsky’s comments sounded a more conciliatory note than the hard-line rhetoric increasingly heard on Russian state television, a sign that the Kremlin wanted to keep its options open with its military struggling on the battlefield.

But Mr. Medinsky offered few details of the progress of the talks.

Mr. Umerov, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament from the progressive Holos party, dismissed the notion that the Ukrainians had been resisting constructive talks. He said that it was his “personal opinion” that the Russians lacked interest in reaching a deal.

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Rustem Umerov, a top Ukrainian negotiator, this month in Kyiv. Credit...Dogukan Keskinkilic/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images

“There has been no consistency” in Russia’s negotiating positions, Mr. Umerov said. “They always tend to twist the story that Russia is good, Ukraine is bad.”

Russia has managed to take some territory in Ukraine’s south and east, which makes the chances of a peace deal even more remote. It has already installed a pro-Russian occupying administration in the Kherson region north of Crimea and is transferring the region’s financial system to the Russian currency, the ruble — a possible prelude to annexing it outright.

But in the north, Ukraine has been retaking some territory, emboldening some Ukrainians to envision pushing Russian forces out of the country entirely. Maria Zolkina, a Ukrainian political analyst, said that even a return to the lines of control before the invasion on Feb. 24 — when Russia controlled about one-third of the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas, along with Crimea — would now not satisfy the Ukrainian public.

“The more we resist, the more we believe that we are capable of throwing Russian troops completely off our territories,” Ms. Zolkina said.

Mr. Umerov, an ethnic Crimean Tatar, emphasized that “Crimea and Donbas or any other territory is not for discussion.”

Ms. Zolkina noted that Ukrainians were expecting more defensive and offensive weapons to arrive after President Biden signed legislation speeding up arms shipments, which would help them on the battlefield.

But she also said that the atrocities unearthed in Bucha, Irpin, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and elsewhere had angered society even more, galvanizing people against a possible peace agreement.

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Bodies being loaded onto a truck in April in Bucha, Ukraine, where evidence of Russian atrocities mounted.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

Ivan Timofeev, a Russian foreign policy analyst, said he, too, believed the prospect of peace had become more remote in the last month. Not only is Ukraine emboldened, he said, but Mr. Putin could not afford to make a peace deal at a time when Russia’s war effort is widely seen to be struggling — even by popular, pro-war Russian bloggers.

There can be no concessions “that could be interpreted as a defeat,” said Mr. Timofeev, director of programs at the Russian International Affairs Council, a government-funded think tank. “Each side is striving for some kind of decisive military success.”

And even if there were to be a breakthrough in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, he said, a deal would be unlikely to create the conditions for a lasting peace. Russia’s bigger problem is the lack of an agreement with the West on a European security architecture — a deal that Mr. Putin was seeking before he invaded Ukraine and that now seems out of reach.

“It’s simply impossible to imagine a package deal with the West on equal terms on European security,” Mr. Timofeev said. “And that means that there will be no firm foundation for peace in Ukraine.”

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.

Johanna Lemola
May 17, 2022, 11:12 a.m. ET

Reporting from Helsinki

The leaders of Finland and Sweden say they will jointly submit their NATO applications.

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Leaders of the two Nordic nations said they would submit their NATO applications together, in a coordinated decision to end decades of neutrality amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.CreditCredit...Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency, via Associated Press

Leaders of Finland and Sweden confirmed on Tuesday that the Nordic nations would jointly submit their applications for NATO membership this week, and would travel to Washington to meet with President Biden.

“Sweden has remained our most important partner,” President Sauli Niinisto of Finland said in an appearance with King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the royal palace in Stockholm. “Our security policies have long been similar, and we now take our steps together.”

Mr. Niinisto arrived in Sweden on a long-planned state visit that has acquired major symbolic importance since the two nations decided in recent days to cast aside decades of strategic neutrality and seek NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a speech to Sweden’s Parliament, Mr. Niinisto said that Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership would bolster the Nordic nations, which already “form a strong northern quintet.”

“We are adding security to a very successful brand,” Mr. Niinisto said.

Later, at a joint news conference, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden said: “Finland and Sweden have a long joint history. We now also have a shared future.”

Mr. Niinisto and Ms. Andersson will meet jointly on Thursday with Mr. Biden in Washington, where they will discuss their bids for NATO membership, Russia’s war in Ukraine and “the relationship of Europe and the United States in the changed security situation,” according to a statement from the Finnish presidency.

Sweden’s foreign minister, Ann Linde, signed her country’s application to join NATO on Tuesday morning, telling reporters, “It feels momentous, and it feels like we now have reached what we think is best for Sweden.”

After Finland’s Parliament voted 188 to 8 on Tuesday in favor of the country’s application to join the alliance, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto signed the application. The vote was largely seen as a formality, but the Finnish president and government have stressed the importance of a full democratic process, given the importance of the decision.

Sweden and Finland, which already work closely with NATO, are expected to submit their applications to the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday at the same time. Joining NATO, a process that the alliance has pledged to fast-track, would grant the countries protection under its mutual defense agreement, but the move could also be considered as a threat by Russia, with which Finland shares a more than 800-mile-long border.

All 30 existing NATO members would have to agree to admit them, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has signaled reluctance to allow their accession, voicing harsh criticism of Sweden as a haven for Kurdish separatists whom he regards as terrorists.

Mr. Niinisto said he was surprised by Mr. Erdogan’s comments, because when the two leaders spoke several weeks ago, the Turkish leader did not express opposition to Finland joining NATO.

“Turkey’s statements quickly changed and hardened in recent days,” he said. “But I am sure that we can, with the help of constructive conversations, resolve the situation.”

Christina Anderson contributed reporting from Bastad, Sweden.

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Erika Solomon
May 17, 2022, 10:57 a.m. ET

Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine

Ukraine’s Eurovision winners don’t regret flouting the rules with a plea for Mariupol.

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Kalush Orchestra, the winners of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Tuesday.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

The Kalush Orchestra, Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest winners, had no regrets over pushing the boundaries of the competition’s ban on political content. In fact, the lead singer argued on Tuesday, there was no choice.

The singer, Oleh Psiuk, ended his performance in the internationally televised contest’s grand final on Saturday with an appeal on behalf of the devastated city of Mariupol, and the people trapped beneath its Azovstal steel plant, the last bastion of resistance against a monthslong siege by Russian forces.

“Help Ukraine, Mariupol!” Mr. Psiuk shouted. “Help Azovstal! Right now!”

Mr. Psiuk, 28, said he felt he had to use the platform the band has gained as one of the most effective international voices for a country at war, channeling public sympathy into an overwhelming victory in the contest’s 39-country phone-in vote.

“There were 200 million people watching us. No rule could have stopped us from delivering a message we feel in our souls,” he said. “And our Ukrainian souls tell us: If we can rescue a thousand people, in a way, while breaking the rules of a competition, then let’s do it.”

Since Monday night, when Ukraine ordered an end to armed resistance at Azovstal, dozens of fighters have been transported out, and a tense operation to surrender the plant and evacuate it has been underway.

Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers are believed to be in the plant. It is still unclear what will happen to them, and whether they will be forced to surrender to Russia or become part of a prisoner swap.

The besieged fighters have become a potent symbol of courage and resistance for Ukrainians, with the whole country watching to see what becomes of them.

Mr. Psiuk said he feared for the soldiers’ fate.

“We need the help of the whole world,” he said in an interview, while visiting cheering fans in the western city of Lviv. “It’s really important to be heard.”

Support for the band’s winning song, “Stefania,” an anthemic blend of rap and folk music, has been seen as a form of European solidarity with Ukraine through pop culture.

Written to honor Mr. Psiuk’s mother, it has been reinterpreted during the war as a tribute to Ukraine as a motherland.

In Lviv on Tuesday, children sang the band’s song back to them, as Mr. Psiuk smiled at cheering crowds from beneath the floppy pink hat that has become his signature. The singer and break dancer known as “Carpetman” wore his quirky body suit, patterned like a Ukrainian folk rug, and posed for selfies.

Blending Ukrainian folk motifs into contemporary culture has become increasingly popular in the country ever since war with Russia erupted in 2014, which led to the illegal annexation of Crimea, Mr. Psiuk said.

“People are often a bit ashamed of their old folk or traditional music,” he said. “But if you present it properly, and do it in a modern way, instead you’ll get something really cool.”

Asked what they planned to do next, the band members said they would be touring Europe and promoting donations to Ukrainian forces.

But Mr. Psiuk said money and arms were not the only way to support his country.

“Everyone who speaks about the war in Ukraine is already helping us,” he said. “Help Ukrainian culture, listen to Ukrainian songs. Listen to us, listen to other performers. That also helps us, on every front line.”

Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 10:49 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

Russians target the border city of Sumy for the first time in weeks.

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A damaged building in Okhtyrka in the Sumy region of Ukraine on Tuesday, in a photo shared by the head of Sumy’s Regional Military Administration.Credit...Dmytro Zhyvytsky/Dmytro Zhyvytsky Via Reuters

After more than a month of relative calm, the region around the northeastern city of Sumy is coming under sustained attack and small groups of Russian soldiers have tried to cross the nearby border to infiltrate Ukraine, local officials said on Tuesday.

“This morning started with missile strikes,” Dmytro Zhyvytskyy, the head of the Sumy Regional Military Administration, said at a news conference. “This was a massive airstrike.”

A school, a residential high rise and a church were all damaged, he said, and at least five people were injured.

On Monday, he said, Russians had attacked a border guard station using mortars, grenade launchers, machine guns and submachine guns, as saboteurs tried to cross into the country at the border near the city of Shostka.

The Ukrainian border guards fought the Russians and forced them to retreat, according to officials. One Ukrainian guard was killed.

Mr. Zhyvytskyy said he did not think the Russian assault was a prelude to a larger invasion. The Russians, he said, lacked the forces to make a serious incursion.

But the Russians are stepping up their efforts to probe Ukraine’s defenses and keep its forces occupied in the region, he said.

In recent days, Russia has been routinely shelling villages along the border even as those communities struggle to repair damage done earlier in the war.

The city of Sumy is less than 30 miles from the Russian border and it was one of the first major population centers to be attacked. It almost fell to Russian forces and was bombarded for weeks. But Ukrainians regained control of the city and surrounding area in early April.

Since then, Mr. Zhyvytskyy said, efforts have been made to fortify the border during a respite from the fighting.

He said he could not fully explain the increase in Russian military activity except to speculate that Moscow’s commanders wanted to destabilize the region and keep Ukrainian forces occupied so they could not be redeployed to other parts of the country.

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Neil MacFarquharAnushka Patil
May 17, 2022, 10:12 a.m. ET

On a Russian talk show, a retired colonel stuns his colleagues by pointing out that the invasion isn’t going well.

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A destroyed Russian tank in Malaya Rohan, a village outside Kharkiv that was occupied by the Russians, on Tuesday.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

A military analyst on one of Russian state television’s most popular networks left his fellow panelists in stunned silence on Monday when he said that the conflict in Ukraine was deteriorating for Russia, giving the kind of honest assessment that is virtually banished from the official airwaves.

“The situation for us will clearly get worse,” Mikhail M. Khodaryonok, a retired colonel and a conservative columnist on military affairs, said during the “60 Minutes” talk-show program on the Rossiya network.

It was a rare moment of frank analysis in a country where criticizing the war effort can result in a prison sentence and broadcasters have generally adhered to the Kremlin’s talking points.

The problems that Mr. Khodaryonok referred to, sometimes obliquely, included low morale, the array of Western countries aligned against Russia and the amount of fighters and matériel that Ukraine was assembling.

“We are in total geopolitical isolation and the whole world is against us, even if we don’t want to admit it,” said Mr. Khodaryonok, noting that Russia’s “resources, military-political and military-technical, are limited.”

He urged Russians not to take “informational sedatives.” The clip was first highlighted by Francis Scarr of BBC Monitoring, which tracks Russian broadcasts. Mr. Khodaryonok did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Aside from questioning Russia’s position, it was a remarkable moment because Mr. Khodaryonok noted that Ukraine seemed to have momentum. Russians mistakenly tended to try to extrapolate the problems of a few soldiers in the Ukrainian Army to denigrate its whole military, he said. In reality, they were ready to field a million men if given sufficient weapons, were highly motivated and would be receiving an increasing quantity of military support from the United States and Europe, he added.

News talk shows in Russia are generally a shouting match, with the half dozen panelists each vying to drown out the others. On this episode, however, the other panelists stood in stunned silence. Only Olga Skabeyeva, the host, who religiously follows the Kremlin line, interrupted with official talking points in sometimes tense exchanges.

She attempted to point out that support from China and India was just as good as support from Europe, that perhaps professional soldiers were superior to conscripts and that Russia “had no choice,” the standard Kremlin justification for its invasion by presenting Ukraine as a threat.

Mr. Khodaryonok seemed to be careful not to say anything openly critical of the Russian side, repeatedly stressing that the entire situation was “not normal.” When it came to morale issues, for example, he reached back into history and noted that Marx and Lenin had said that high morale was an important factor for battlefield success. He did not refer directly to recent indications that the Russian Army is suffering from morale problems.

In March, Russia criminalized denouncing its war effort, including even referring to it as a war rather than a “special military operation.”

Mr. Khodaryonok has been critical of the Russian military operations in the past. In an unusual column published in early February, before the invasion, he cautioned against it, saying that it would not be the cake walk that many Russian analysts expected and that it was not in Russia’s “national interests.”

He predicted accurately that the Ukrainians would fight hard to defend their country and that the West would provide extensive arms. “There will be no blitzkrieg in Ukraine,” he wrote in Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, a Russian weekly newspaper supplement on military matters.

Even earlier, about a year after Russia dispatched its military to Syria in 2015 to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, he wrote a column for an internet news service, Gazeta.Ru, suggesting that the Syrian Army was an unworthy ally, pointing out its lack of military success and corruption.

Concerning the war in Ukraine, however, he has previously praised the Russian effort.

In comments on his Telegram channel posted only a week ago, he said that military theorists for years to come would study the special operation as something “unique.” He said Russian advances in the eastern Donbas region were due to the discipline, training, morale of its military, as well as the effectiveness of its artillery. He also repeated the unfounded Russian claim that the Ukrainian side fostered Nazis.

May 17, 2022, 9:57 a.m. ET

After the fall of Mariupol, the fates of hundreds of fighters hangs in the balance.

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Russia-backed troops waited for the evacuation of wounded Ukrainian soldiers from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on Monday.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

KYIV, Ukraine — The fate of the Ukrainian fighters who have held out for weeks at a steel plant in Mariupol remained uncertain on Tuesday after some laid down their weapons and were taken to Russian-held territory, and an undisclosed number of others remained inside.

The evacuation of fighters from the Azovstal steel plant was the product of extremely delicate and secretive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. After more than 200 soldiers were evacuated overnight and transported to Russian-controlled territory, the Ukrainian authorities said the fighters would soon be exchanged for Russian prisoners.

But in a statement on Tuesday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said nothing about a potential swap, claiming that the Ukrainian servicemen, both from the Azov battalion and from regular units, had “laid down their arms and surrendered.”

Inside Russia, there were calls not to release the soldiers but to place them on trial, underscoring the high stakes in the deal for both President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The Russian prosecutor general’s office asked the country’s Supreme Court on Tuesday to declare the Azov battalion a terrorist organization.

Even less clear was what was happening with hundreds of fighters who were believed to remain.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, went on national television to praise the soldiers. “They are all heroes,” he said. “They now have a new order — to save their lives.” But as prisoners of war being held in Russian custody, their ultimate fate was not immediately known.

In the last communication from inside the plant, the garrison’s commander, Lt. Col. Denys Propenko, sounded both philosophical and resigned to a terrible fate.

“The military decision-making process includes at least two scenarios,” he said. “You calculate the risks, weigh the pros and cons, and make the commander’s decision. The first priority is always the task. In the second place is always the preservation of life and health of personnel.”

The Ukrainian military said it would not specify how many soldiers remained inside the Azovstal steel factory while the complex “rescue operation” was underway. “The only thing that can be said is that the Ukrainian state is doing everything possible and impossible” to save the soldiers, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Aware of the deep symbolic place that the city and the garrison’s resistance now hold in public imagination, Mr. Reznikov sought to highlight just how vital a role they had played in the overall war effort.

“Thanks to the heroism of the Mariupol garrison, it was possible to withdraw the troops of the Russian occupiers from Kyiv,” he said, adding that their resistance inflicted huge losses and tied up thousands of Russian forces who could not be redeployed to other battlegrounds.

In Russia, the withdrawal carried its own symbolic value. The Azov batallion has been given outsized coverage by the country’s state-run news media, and its connection to far-right movements gave a veneer of credibility to the Kremlin’s false claims that its forces were fighting Nazis in Ukraine.

Overnight, pro-Kremlin commentators trumpeted the Ukrainian withdrawal as a potential turning point in the war that has frustrated many of them with its slow progress. They made no mention of the cost of capturing Mariupol: the destruction of the city and the death of thousands of its residents.

There were also calls for blood, with some saying that Russia should make no deal to save fighters who had killed so many Russian soldiers.

Anatoly Vasserman, a Russian lawmaker, proposed Tuesday that Parliament pass a law banning an exchange of Azov fighters.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the State Duma speaker, said that committees of the Russian Parliament were ordered to discuss a ban on “exchanges of Nazi criminals.”

“Our country has always treated humanely those who were captured or who surrendered,” Mr. Volodin said in a statement on Tuesday. “But when it comes to Nazis, our position must remain unchanged: these are war criminals, and we need to do everything to bring them to justice.”

Igor Girkin, a conservative critic of the Kremlin’s war policy in Ukraine, said that such an exchange would be akin to “match fixing.”

“If in the coming days ‘the heroes of Azov’ will be covered with flowers in Kyiv, it won’t be possible to talk about anything else but another triumph of sabotage and idiocy in one bottle,” Mr. Girkin wrote on his channel on Telegram.

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Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 9:21 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

The Ukrainian military said it would not specify how many soldiers remained inside the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol because the evacuation effort was underway. “The only thing that can be said is that the Ukrainian state is doing everything possible and impossible” to save the soldiers, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, told a news conference.

Johanna Lemola
May 17, 2022, 9:20 a.m. ET

Reporting from Helsinki

Finland’s president and Sweden’s prime minister will meet jointly with President Biden in Washington on Thursday, the Finnish leader’s office said. The two Nordic leaders will discuss their countries’ bid for NATO membership and Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to a statement.

Johanna Lemola
May 17, 2022, 8:34 a.m. ET

Reporting from Helsinki

Finland’s Parliament voted 188 to 8 in favor of the country’s application to join NATO. The overwhelming approval paves the way for the government to formally submit its application, which is likely to occur this week.

Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 6:54 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.

Hundreds of die-hard Ukrainian soldiers who had made a last stand against Russian forces from a hulking Mariupol steel mill faced an uncertain future under Kremlin custody Tuesday after Ukraine’s military ordered them to surrender.

The surrender directive, issued late Monday, effectively ended the most protracted battle so far of the nearly three-month-old Russian invasion. Even as Russia has struggled on other fronts in Ukraine, the surrender solidified one of Russia’s few significant territorial achievements — the conquest of a once-thriving southeast port.

Still, Mariupol has been largely reduced to ruin, tens of thousands of its inhabitants have been reported killed, and the city has come to symbolize the war’s grotesque horrors.

By early Tuesday, more than 200 of the fighters ensconced in the Azovstal steel mill, besieged by the Russians for weeks, had surrendered as prisoners of war, evacuated to Russian-held territory aboard buses emblazoned with “Z” — the Russian emblem for what President Vladimir V. Putin has called his country’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian authorities said little about the terms of the surrender except to assert that the Ukrainian prisoners would soon be exchanged for Russian prisoners held by Ukraine.

But Russian officials said nothing about a possible exchange.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s equivalent to the F.B.I., said Tuesday that investigators would interrogate the captured fighters to “check their involvement in crimes committed against civilians.”

And the prosecutor general’s office asked Russia’s Supreme Court to declare the military unit to which most of the captured fighters belong, the Azov battalion, a terrorist organization. Russian news media has seized on the Azov batallion’s connections to far-right movements to provide a veneer of credibility to the Kremlin’s false claims that its forces were fighting Nazis in Ukraine.

The Russian threats against the prisoners raised questions about the viability of the deal Ukraine had made with Russia to surrender, and whether the hundreds of troops still remaining at the steel plant would abide by it.

The surrender, if it is completed, would end the last resistance preventing Russia from full control over a vast sweep of southern Ukraine, stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula, which was seized by Russia eight years ago.

Even as Russia’s onslaught in eastern Ukraine struggles, the developments in the south underscore how much territory Moscow has captured and suggest that Ukrainian forces will face steep challenges in trying to regain it.

In other developments:

  • Leaders of Finland and Sweden confirmed on Tuesday that the Nordic nations would jointly submit their applications for NATO membership this week, and would travel to Washington to meet with President Biden. Mr. Putin has said that the alliance’s expansion poses “no direct threat to us,” but that Russia would respond “based on the threats that are created.”

  • After weeks of trying to hammer out a peace deal, negotiators for Russia and Ukraine appear farther apart than at any other point in the nearly three-month-long war.

  • There is continued concern about the potential for a cholera outbreak in Mariupol, World Health Organization officials said on Tuesday.

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Jane Arraf
May 17, 2022, 6:50 a.m. ET

Readers ask: How do Ukrainians see the Western response to the war?

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People receiving humanitarian aid supplies in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Thursday.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Readers submitted questions about the Western response to the war in Ukraine. Ellen Winter-Kirchhoff of Stuttgart, Germany, asked: “How do you Ukrainians view the response from the rest of the world?” We asked Jane Arraf, a correspondent who has been reporting from Lviv and Kyiv.

Generally, from people and officials in Ukraine, you hear a lot of gratitude for the support for Ukraine from Western countries. But that’s often followed up with “But we need you to do more.”

“You” of course means governments that were reluctant to send advanced weapons at the beginning of the war, fearful of turning it into an even wider conflict.

That barrier has pretty much been broken in the United States. Short of sending troops or air support, the country has dramatically increased the pace of arms deliveries, which are making a difference in Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

What Ukrainians and their government continue to want, though — and what they know they are unlikely to get — is a no-fly zone patrolled by the United States and its allies. In Lviv there’s a big sign reading, “Close the skies, not your eyes.”

A lot of Ukrainians that I have spoken to point out that if there were Western fighter jets fending off Russian fighter planes, it would save countless lives. But that remains a step too far for NATO members, who desperately want to stop this war, but believe they can help do so without sending in their own military personnel and coming into direct military conflict with Russia.

The war, which has now lasted more than two months, is expected to go on for at least several more. But in devastated cities Ukrainian forces have taken back from Russian troops, there is already an expectation that Western governments will help rebuild. A lot of Ukrainians mention the Marshall Plan, the U.S. initiative that provided billions of dollars in aid to rebuild infrastructure and restart economies in Europe after World War II.

There is also, of course, gratitude for the support from ordinary people in the United States and other countries. The Russian invasion of a weaker country and Ukraine’s struggle against occupation has deeply touched citizens in the West, who have offered donations and moral support.

In the United States, along with other places, people are sending humanitarian supplies, and even funding weapons to send to the Ukrainian military. Several thousand foreigners have come here to fight.

The armed conflicts that I regularly cover in the Middle East generally fade from Western public attention quite quickly, even when it rises to the level of genocide, like the ISIS takeover of Iraq and Syria eight years ago. This war, though, is seen by many people in Western countries as much closer to home, and Ukrainians are grateful for the outpouring of support.

Ivan Nechepurenko
May 17, 2022, 5:40 a.m. ET

Reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that 265 fighters who had been holding out in the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol had “laid down their arms and surrendered.” Earlier on Monday, the Ukrainian authorities said that the fighters’ combat mission had ended and that they would be eventually exchanged for Russian prisoners of war.

Valerie Hopkins
May 17, 2022, 5:42 a.m. ET

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

The extraction of Ukrainian soldiers from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol is underway, Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereschuk said Tuesday afternoon. Severely wounded soldiers were transferred to Russian-held territory for medical treatment.

“In the interests of saving lives, 52 of our severely wounded servicemen were evacuated yesterday,” she wrote on Facebook. “We are working on the next stages of the humanitarian operation. God willing, everything will be fine.”

Alan Rappeport
May 17, 2022, 5:15 a.m. ET

Janet Yellen calls on Europe to increase Ukraine aid.

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Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned that Ukraine does not have enough funding to sustain its government and fend off Russia’s attacks.CreditCredit...Janek Skarzynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BRUSSELS — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen urged European nations on Tuesday to step up their spending to support Ukraine as Russia’s attacks on the country’s critical infrastructure showed few signs of abating.

The United States and Europe have coordinated closely in enacting sweeping sanctions against Russia in the nearly three months since its president, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered an invasion. But they have been less aligned on the need to help prop up Ukraine’s economy and to assist with its rebuilding once the war ends.

Congress has already approved a $13.6 billion emergency spending package for Ukraine and is expected to approve another $40 billion worth of aid. While the European Union and international financial institutions have also been making large aid contributions, Ms. Yellen said that more must be done.

“I sincerely ask all our partners to join us in increasing their financial support to Ukraine,” Ms. Yellen said in a speech at the Brussels Economic Forum, according to her prepared remarks. “Our joint efforts are critical to help ensure Ukraine’s democracy prevails over Putin’s aggression.”

The Treasury secretary is in the midst of a weeklong trip to Europe, with stops in Warsaw, Brussels and Bonn, Germany, where she will meet her counterparts at the Group of 7 finance ministers summit. Aid to Ukraine is expected to be a central topic at that meeting.

Ms. Yellen said that Ukraine’s financial needs are immediate and that it lacks funding to pay soldiers, pensioners and employees to keep its government running.

“What’s clear is that the bilateral and multilateral support announced so far will not be sufficient to address Ukraine’s needs, even in the short term,” she said.

Whether her call will be heeded remains to be seen. European nations are facing their own economic strain, including rapid inflation and soaring energy costs, and big challenges lie ahead as they look to wean themselves off Russian energy.

Ms. Yellen said that the United States would help break Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, in part by increasing American exports of liquefied natural gas. She acknowledged some climate goals to reduce emissions could be set back by the need to rely on coal and fossil fuels, but she said the current predicament should be a reminder of the need to “redouble our efforts on clean and renewable energy.”

Energy is another major issue that policymakers will discuss at the Group of 7 finance ministers’ summit in Bonn later this week. The United States is expected to press the European Union to consider alternative options ahead of its plan to phase in a Russian oil embargo by the end of the year.

Treasury Department officials said on Tuesday that they wanted Europe to consider pricing mechanisms such a price cap or tariff that would eat away at much of Russia’s oil profits while still giving the country enough incentive to keep producing.

The Treasury officials declined to share their estimates for what impact an embargo would have on the price of oil, but they said that constraining global oil supplies risked pushing prices sharply higher at a time when inflation is already running hot.

Following a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, Ms. Yellen told reporters that she believes that tariffs on Russian oil could be enacted quickly and combined with the phaseout proposal that Europe is considering.

“They’re talking about next year as a time frame and in the meantime it might be possible to combine a phaseout with a price mechanism,” Ms. Yellen said, referring to a tariff or price cap. “It is critically important that they reduce their dependence on Russian oil; we’re very supportive of it.”

She added that the United States would help to ensure that Europe has energy supplies to meet its needs.

In her speech, Ms. Yellen said Russia’s decision to cut of gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria should be a lesson that Western nations should not trade national security for cheaper resources. That situation has now left them vulnerable to countries that can use their abundance of natural resources to disrupt markets.

She cited China as a concern in that regard because of its supply of rare earth minerals that are used to make airplanes, cars and high-tech batteries.

“China is building a consequential market share in certain technology products and seeks a dominant position in the manufacture and use of semiconductors,” Ms. Yellen said. “And China has employed a variety of unfair trade practices in its efforts to achieve this position.”

Still, Ms. Yellen made clear that she was not calling for more protectionism or a reversal of globalization. Instead, she said, nations should not put all their eggs in one basket when it comes to international trade.

“My point is to suggest that we should consider ways to maintain free trade and at the same time lessen some of these risks,” she said.

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Jane Arraf
May 17, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

In Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that became a symbol of death and atrocity, life is returning.

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A couple in Bucha, Ukraine, last Wednesday. The city outside of Kyiv has been working hard to clear debris from the Russian occupation.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

BUCHA, Ukraine — A breeze rustles through the cherry blossoms in bloom on almost every block in this small city, the white petals fluttering onto streets where new pavement covers damage left by Russian tanks just weeks ago.

Spring has arrived in Bucha in the six weeks since Russian soldiers withdrew from this bedroom community outside Kyiv, leaving behind mass graves of slaughtered citizens, many of them mutilated, as well as broken streets and destroyed buildings.

A semblance of normal life has returned to the city. Residents have been coming back to Bucha over the past few weeks, and the city has raced to repair the physical damage wrought by the invading Russian troops and their weapons. Now, on the leafy springtime streets of the city, it is hard to imagine the horrors that unfolded here.

On a newly paved street with freshly painted white lines, the rotating brushes of a street cleaning machine whisked away what was left of shattered glass and bits of iron shrapnel. In one of the neighborhoods where many of the roughly 400 bodies of Ukrainian citizens were discovered in April, technicians were laying cable to restore internet service. At one house, a resident was removing pieces of destroyed Russian tanks still littering his garden.

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Repairing phone and internet lines in Bucha last week. The city moved quickly to restore utilities after Russian forces withdrew.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Sweeping away as many traces as possible of the destruction caused by the Russian occupation was an important step in healing the wounds suffered by Bucha’s residents, said Taras Shapravsky, a City Council official.

Mr. Shapravsky said 4,000 residents had stayed in the city while it was occupied, terrified and many hiding in basements without enough food. Even after the Russian soldiers withdrew, many residents remained traumatized.

“They were in very bad psychological condition,” he said. “Specialists explained to us that the faster we clear away all possible reminders of the war, the faster we will be able to take people out of this condition.”

Mr. Shapravsky said phone reception was restored a few days after the Russians left, and then water and electricity. He said about 10,000 residents had returned so far — roughly a quarter of the prewar population of this small city 20 miles from Kyiv, the capital.

In a sign of life returning to normal, he said the marriage registration office reopened last week and almost every day, couples are applying for marriage licenses.

Bucha was a city where many people moved to for quieter lifestyles, a place where they could raise families away from the bustle of the capital, to which many commuted to work. It was a place where people from Kyiv might drive to on a nice weekend to have lunch.

Six years ago, Sergo Markaryan and his wife opened the Jam Cafe, where they served Italian food, played old jazz and sold jars of jam. He described the cafe as almost like their child, and he has decorated it with an eclectic mix of hundreds of pictures and strings of photos of customers.

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Larysa Ihnatenko mopping the floor of the Jam Cafe, an Italian restaurant in Bucha, last week ahead of its re-opening. Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

When Russia invaded, Mr. Markaryan, 38, drove his wife and 3-year-old son to the border with Georgia, where he is from. As a Georgian citizen he could have stayed outside the country, but he came back to Ukraine to volunteer, sending food to the front lines.

Two weeks ago, when the electricity was restored, Mr. Markaryan came back on his own to Bucha to see what was left of the cafe and repair the damage caused by the Russian soldiers.

“They stole the knives and forks,” he said, ticking off missing items. He said the soldiers dragged the dining chairs out to use at checkpoints and stole the sound system. And, he said, despite the working toilets, they had defecated on the floor before leaving.

Two days before it was due to reopen last week, the cafe and its outdoor terrace looked spotless and Mr. Markaryan was taste-testing the espresso to see if it was up to par.

“Many people have already returned but some are still afraid,” Mr. Markaryan said. “But we have all definitely become much stronger than we were. We faced things that we never thought could happen.”

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Workers repaired tracks at the main train station in Bucha last week. The city is a bedroom community of Kyiv, about 20 miles away.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

On the other side of town, in a row of closed shops with peaked roofs and boarded-up windows, Mr. B — a former cocktail bar run by Borys Tkachenko has been patched up and turned into a coffee bar.

Mr. Tkachenko, 27, came back to Bucha a month ago, repaired the roof, which like most of the buildings on the street appeared to have been damaged by shrapnel, and found that the espresso machine was still there. He reopened to sell coffee — or in the case of customers who were soldiers or medical workers, give it away.

Mr. Tkachenko, who had worked in clubs in Florida and Canada and studied the hotel business in Switzerland, opened the bar with his savings last December. Russia invaded two months later.

He said he knew they had to leave when his 14-month-old daughter started running around their apartment, covering her ears and saying “boom, boom, boom” at the sound of explosions.

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Borys Tkachenko behind the counter of his former cocktail bar, Mr. B, in Bucha. He reopened the establishment as a coffee shop after the Russians retreated.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Mr. Tkachenko drove his family to the border with Slovakia, where they eventually made their way to Switzerland. He returned to Ukraine to volunteer, helping to send supplies to the front and to displaced civilians.

“We had big plans for this place,” Mr. Tkachenko, who despite everything had a wide smile that matched a tattoo on his arm reading, “Born to be happy,” said of his bar.

He said that when the war ended he would probably join his wife and daughter in Switzerland.

“I don’t see a future here right now,” he said.

While the frenetic activity of city workers and residents has helped clear the city of much of the debris of the Russian occupation, the scars of what happened here run deep.

On one quiet street corner, a bunch of dandelions and lilies of the valley had been laid out on a flowered scarf in a modest sidewalk memorial.

Volodymyr Abramov, 39, said the memorial honored his brother-in-law, Oleh Abramov, who was taken out of his house at gunpoint by Russian soldiers, ordered to kneel and shot. (Oleh Abramov and his wife, Iryna, were the subject of a Times article published this month.)

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The sidewalk memorial to Oleh Abramov, the neighborhood resident who was forced to kneel and shot dead by Russian soldiers, pictured in April.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

“He was not even interrogated,” he said.

Mr. Abramov’s home was destroyed by Russian soldiers who tossed grenades into his house. But he said that was nothing compared with the suffering of his 48-year-old sister, Iryna Abramova, who lost her husband as well as her house.

“I try to help her and take care of her so she doesn’t kill herself,” he said. “I tell her that her husband is watching her from heaven.”

Mr. Abramov, a glazier, said he was now wondering if he should rebuild his house. “I want to run away from here,” he said.

Outside the city’s morgue, where French and Ukrainian investigators are still working to identify bodies from the massacres by Russian troops, a small group of residents gathered, hoping to find out what happened to family members.

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Valentyna Nechyporenko, 77, at the grave of her 47-year-old son Ruslan, in April. Ruslan was killed by Russian soldiers on March 17, while delivering humanitarian aid to neighbors in Bucha.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

Yulia Monastyrska, 29, said she had come to try to get a death certificate for her husband, whose body was among those discovered in April. His hands were bound, he had been shot in the back and the legs, and one of his eyes was burned out, she said.

Ms. Monastyrska said her husband, Ivan, was a crane operator who disappeared while she and her 7-year-old daughter, Oleksandra, hid in the basement of their apartment building.

Oleksandra, wearing glasses and sneakers with princesses on them, leaned against her mother as she listened to details that were clearly now familiar to her.

“As far as I know, everyone wants to come back here, but they are still afraid,” Ms. Monastyrska said. “We were born here, we lived here, a lot of good things happened here.”

Yulia Kozak, 48, accompanied by her daughter Daryna, 23, and Daryna’s 3-year-old son, Yehor, had come to take a DNA test to see if there was a match among the unidentified remains of her missing son, Oleksandr, 29, who had fought in the war against Russia in 2017.

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Yulia Kozak, right, with her daughter Daryna and grandson Yehor, at the apartment building of Ms. Kozak’s son, Oleksandr. She last spoke to him in March.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Prosecutors found his military ID, dirty and moldy, in a basement where the Russians held prisoners.

Sobbing, she said the last time she spoke by phone with her son, in March, he had told her he was being shot at. In his apartment, there is a bullet hole in the window, on which the sign of the cross had been etched.

Ms. Kozak, a cook, said she planned to stay in Bucha until she found her son.

“I am sure he is alive, 100 percent sure,” she said. “I feel that he is somewhere, I just don’t know where.”

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Neighborhood children moving a dumpster in Bucha on April 20. Residents began to return to the city just days after Russian soldiers pulled out in late March.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 4:29 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

A Russian missile struck a village near the northeastern city of Chernihiv, the third time in recent days the region was targeted, though it had been liberated by Ukrainian forces in early April. “We have dead and many wounded,” said Vyacheslav Chaus, the head of the regional military administration.

Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 6:55 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

At least eight people were killed in the airstrike, according to the regional office of the State Emergency Service. Another 12 were injured.

Marc Santora
May 17, 2022, 4:23 a.m. ET

Reporting from Krakow, Poland

Five Russian missiles struck a residential area near the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine on Monday morning, setting a warehouse on fire and damaging several houses, the regional government said in a statement. At least five people were injured, they said.

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Christina Anderson
May 17, 2022, 4:04 a.m. ET

Reporting from Bastad, Sweden

Sweden’s foreign minister, Ann Linde, signed her country’s application to join NATO on Tuesday morning. “It feels momentous,” she told reporters, “and it feels like we now have reached what we think is best for Sweden.” The application is expected to be submitted this week, along with Finland’s.

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Credit...Henrik Montgomery/EPA, via Shutterstock
Erika Solomon
May 17, 2022, 3:03 a.m. ET

Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine

A Russian missile hit and damaged railway infrastructure in the Yavoriv region near the Polish border overnight, according to regional authorities. There were no reports of casualties.

Victoria KimMarc Santora
May 17, 2022, 1:57 a.m. ET

As Ukraine gives up fighting at the Mariupol steel plant, commanders focus on saving fighters’ lives.

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The Azovstal steel plant had been the final area of resistance to Russia’s bid to create a land bridge between the Crimean Peninsula and places it controls in the east.Credit...Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

Ukraine says it has given up fighting at the Azovstal steel complex in Mariupol, allowing hundreds of its fighters who had been taking a last stand there to be moved to Russian-controlled territories, securing for Russia a hard-fought and costly victory to seize a swath of the country’s south.

The steel plant had been the final pocket of resistance to Russia’s bid to create a land bridge between the Crimean Peninsula and areas it controls in the east. Mariupol and its residents had sustained some of the worst and most brutal attacks since it was surrounded in early March because the city stood squarely in the way.

As dawn broke over the ruins of what had once been a thriving port city, it appeared that one of the most brutal episodes of the war was drawing to a close. It was not known how many soldiers remained in the bowels of the sprawling plant, but Ukrainian commanders instructed them to turn their focus to saving lives rather than continuing the fight, the military said. President Volodymyr Zelensky praised their bravery and said, “We hope that we will be able to save the lives of our guys.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukrainian officials say, tens of thousands have been killed in the city. Satellite imagery has shown at least three mass graves to bury the dead on the outskirts of Mariupol.

The soldiers who defended the city held out weeks longer than most military analysts thought possible — inflicting a high toll on Russian forces and disrupting their broader offensive by forcing Moscow to turn its attention from the battle in the city and then the plant.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian forces were struggling to advance and experiencing setbacks, including near the northeastern city of Kharkiv, where a small group of Ukrainian soldiers managed to reach the border with Russia.

And President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appeared as isolated as ever, when in a meeting with the country’s five closest military allies, only Belarus spoke in support of his war. As an emboldened NATO practiced war games, more of its members indicated support for the alliance’s expansion to include Sweden and Finland.

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