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    In a Sharp Reversal, Biden Opens a Path for Ukraine to Get Fighter Jets

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    The president told allied leaders that he would allow Ukrainian pilots to be trained on American-made F-16s, and is prepared to approve other countries’ transferring the jets to Ukraine.President Biden told U.S. allies on Friday that he would allow Ukrainian pilots to be trained on American-made F-16 fighter jets, several U.S. officials said, adding that the president is prepared to let other countries give F-16s to Ukraine — a major upgrade of the Ukrainian military and a sharp reversal.Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine 15 months ago, officials in Kyiv have pleaded for advanced warplanes to overcome Russian air superiority. But Mr. Biden has resisted, concerned that the jets could be used to hit targets deep inside Russia, and prompt the Kremlin to escalate the conflict. Pentagon officials have said that other weapons, especially air defenses, were needed more urgently, and the high cost of the F-16s could squeeze out other matériel.But several European countries that belong to the NATO alliance and have F-16s in their arsenals have called for an international effort to provide the training and transfer of their jets to Ukraine. Doing so would require American permission, because the weapons were first sold to them by the United States. Though not the most advanced U.S. fighter, the F-16 carries powerful radar that can spot targets from hundreds of miles away and modern missiles and other technology that American officials do not want duplicated or falling into hostile hands.Mr. Biden told other leaders of the Group of 7 nations, the world’s wealthiest democracies, of his decision on pilot training, opening a path to supplying Ukraine with fighter jets, at their summit meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, according to several officials who requested anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive deliberations.They said the United States and its allies would discuss in the coming months how to supply Kyiv with the jets themselves, and one senior administration official said the White House was prepared to approve that step. The United States is not expected, at least under current plans, to send its own F-16s.A group of F-16s flying over Washington, in March. Ukraine has said it needs the jets to compete effectively with Russia’s air force.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I welcome the historic decision of the United States and @POTUS to support an international fighter jet coalition. This will greatly enhance our army in the sky,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who is expected to address the Group of 7 this weekend, wrote on Twitter.In a joint statement, the allied leaders said they were committed “to continuing our security assistance to Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s aggression, tailoring our support to Ukraine’s needs.” The group vowed to provide “financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support Ukraine requires for as long as it takes.”Earlier on Friday, Mr. Zelensky had addressed an Arab League summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he challenged the neutral stance many Arab countries have adopted on the war and implored them to help save Ukrainians “from the cages of Russian prisons.” “Unfortunately there are some in the world, and here among you, who turn a blind eye to those cages and illegal annexations,” he said. “I am here so that everyone can take an honest look, no matter how hard the Russians try to influence.”Western officials said Mr. Zelensky planned to travel to Hiroshima this weekend to attend the summit meeting. Ukrainian officials gave conflicting accounts, however, with some saying he would appear in person and others saying he would speak to the leaders by video link. The vagueness appears to reflect security concerns as Mr. Zelensky moves across the globe seeking aid and arms; he was in several European countries last week, as well as Saudi Arabia on Friday.Ukraine is expected to launch a major counteroffensive soon, hoping to retake more territory seized by Russia in the war’s early days. Any delivery of fighter jets would be months away, too late to affect that plan.The Group of 7 leaders in Hiroshima spent much of the day discussing the coming counteroffensive and its chances of forcing Russia to the negotiating table to discuss some form of an armistice that would stop the fighting, even if it did not resolve the central issues of the war.They are also poised to unveil a slew of new sanctions and export controls to clamp down further on the Kremlin’s ability to fund the war, and to crack down on third-party nations that have been secretly providing Russia with banned technologies that can be used in weapons systems.Earlier on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told a gathering of the Arab League not to “turn a blind eye” to the atrocities committed by the Russian forces.Saudi Press Agency/EPA, via ShutterstockThe allies appear determined to demonstrate unified resolve to support Ukraine at a time when President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia seems to be betting that their interest and commitment will wane.Mr. Biden’s changed stance on F-16s is his latest about-face on allowing Ukraine to field advanced weapons, including HIMARS rocket launchers, Patriot air defense missile systems and Abrams tanks. In each case, the president at first refused, only to change his mind under pressure from European allies.Top Pentagon officials have consistently said that they do not believe Ukraine needs F-16s at this stage of the conflict.Celeste A. Wallander, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee last month that advanced Western fighter aircraft ranked only “about eighth” on Ukraine’s priority list. She said officials have focused on resources with the “highest priority capabilities, and that has been air defense, artillery and armor.”But the push for F-16s by Ukraine and its supporters in Congress was reinforced this week when Yahoo News reported that an internal U.S. Air Force assessment concluded it would take only four months to train Ukrainian pilots to operate the fighters, a far shorter time frame than Pentagon officials had cited previously.The document, which a senior Air Force official confirmed and said was shared with several NATO allies who fly F-16s, contained a detailed assessment undertaken in late February and early March at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Ariz. Two Ukrainian pilots were given “no formal training” on the F-16, according to the assessment, other than a brief familiarization, and then were tested on a flight simulator for several hours.A Ukrainian soldier passes a crater caused by Russian bombardment in the village of Heorhiivka in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv says F-16s would greatly increase their forces’ ability to defend against aerial attacks.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesAn appearance by Mr. Zelensky at the Group of 7 would be a strong rebuff to Mr. Putin and a reminder of how thoroughly relations with Russia have deteriorated. Thirty years ago, President Clinton met with Boris Yeltsin, then the president of Russia, in Japan to begin to map the integration of a post-Soviet Russia into the world economy, as Mr. Clinton promised to seek the repeal of Cold War sanctions. Five years later, Russia joined what became the Group of 8.Now all that has been reversed. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it was suspended from the group, and left it entirely three years later. Russia’s economy is struggling under sanctions imposed since the invasion last year, particularly the price cap on its oil sales, and more are coming.Britain on Friday said it was implementing a ban on Russian diamonds, copper, aluminum and nickel. Australia also said on Friday it was imposing new financial sanctions targeting 21 entities and three individuals, including Russia’s largest gold company, petroleum and steel companies and defense entities.The United States also rolled out a “substantial package” of restrictions, including cutting off 70 more firms from American exports and adding more than 200 individuals and entities to its sanctions list. The measures are meant to crack down on people or companies that are helping Moscow to evade existing sanctions.The fresh round of penalties “will further tighten the vise on Putin’s ability to wage his barbaric invasion and will advance our global efforts to cut off Russian attempts to evade sanctions,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement on Friday.Until now, the Ukraine war has seemed far away from daily life in Moscow, but Russian leaders are growing increasingly nervous about the repercussions of a promised Ukrainian counteroffensive.Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe United States will broaden sanctions to cover more corners of the Russian economy, striking at its avenues to acquire semiconductors and other high-tech goods from Group of 7 nations, which American officials said Friday are critical to Russia’s ability to build weapons. Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, said in a release that the new sanctions would take aim at components Russia needs to build a drone that is currently being deployed in Ukraine.The new penalties also seek to squeeze Russia’s ability to drill for oil and gas, and to crimp venture capitalists and financial services firms that American officials said were aiding sanctioned Russian businesses.Goods that Western businesses are now prohibited from selling to Russian buyers often reach them through middlemen — changing hands, legal jurisdictions and free-trade zones multiple times. The trade is hard to track and harder to enforce, especially for “dual use” goods that have both civilian and military applications.With many of Russia’s other revenue streams squeezed by previous rounds of sanctions, officials have homed in on diamonds as a lucrative trade still providing Moscow with funding for its war. Russia is the world’s largest supplier of small diamonds, exporting more than $4.5 billion in 2021, making the gem its top non-energy export by value. More

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    U.S.-Made Technology Is Flowing to Sanctioned Russian Airlines

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    Russian customs data shows that millions of dollars of aircraft parts made by Boeing, Airbus and others were sent to Russia last year despite sanctions.Last August, Oleg Patsulya, a Russian citizen living near Miami, emailed a Russian airline that had been cut off from Western technology and materials with a tempting offer.He could help circumvent the global sanctions imposed on Rossiya Airlines after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by shuffling the aircraft parts and electronics that it so desperately needed through a network of companies based in Florida, Turkey and Russia.“In light of the sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation, we have been successfully solving challenges at hand,” Mr. Patsulya wrote, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday with the U.S. District Court in Arizona.Mr. Patsulya and his business partner were arrested Thursday on charges of violating U.S. export controls and international money laundering in a case that illustrates the global networks that are trying to help Russia bypass the most expansive technological controls in history.Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States has acted in partnership with nearly 40 other governments to impose sanctions on Russia, including limits on Moscow’s access to weapons, computer chips, aircraft parts and other products needed to fuel its economy and its war. The sanctions also applied to Russian airlines including Aeroflot, its subsidiary Rossiya and others.But despite these far-reaching sanctions, thousands of shipments of aircraft parts were successfully sent into Russia last year, according to a trove of Russian customs data obtained by The New York Times.The data, which was compiled and analyzed by Import Genius, a U.S.-based trade data aggregator, shows that tens of millions of dollars of aircraft parts were sent to Russian airlines explicitly sanctioned by the Biden administration, including to Rossiya Airlines, Aeroflot, Ural Airlines, S7 Airlines, Utair Aviation and Pobeda Airlines.Those shipments were made possible by illicit networks like Mr. Patsulya’s, which have sprung up to try to bypass the restrictions by shuffling goods through a series of straw buyers, often in the Middle East and Asia.For instance, dozens of shipments of copper wires, bolts, graphite and other parts marked as made in the United States by Boeing slipped into the warehouses of Aeroflot last year. They traversed obscure trading companies, free-trade zones and industrial parks in the United Arab Emirates and China, and then traveled into Russia, to help patch up Aeroflot’s dilapidated fleet.The data captures more than 5,000 individual shipments of aircraft parts into Russia over a period of eight months in 2022, from simple screws to a Honeywell-branded aircraft engine starter valued at $290,000.In all, it shows that $14.4 million of U.S.-made aircraft parts were sent into Russia during the eight months, including $8.9 million of parts that are described as being manufactured or trademarked by the U.S. plane maker Boeing and sold into Russia via third parties.Boeing said it had fully complied with U.S. sanctions and had suspended providing parts, maintenance and technical support for customers in Russia in early 2022. Experts in the aviation supply chain said the parts probably came from a variety of sources, such as existing overseas stocks from airlines and repair facilities or resellers who trade in scrapped parts.A Boeing plant in Renton, Wash. Millions of dollars of parts described as being manufactured or trademarked by the U.S. plane maker were sold into Russia via third parties.Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesMost of the products were routed through countries like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, China and the Maldives, according to the data. But a handful of shipments — including to Rossiya — were sent directly from the United States or Europe.The shipments also increased over the course of last year as Russia recruited global businesses to help it bypass the sanctions. The trend suggests that “networks for evading sanctions took time to establish during the immediate post-export-control scramble but are now in a position to help Russian airlines source some key parts,” said William George, the director of research at Import Genius.The Russian nationals taken into custody on Thursday began setting up their scheme last May to send aircraft parts from the United States to Russia in violation of export regulations, according to the criminal complaint.The men are accused of fielding requests for parts, including expensive brake systems for a Boeing 737, from at least three Russian airlines, including two that had been strictly barred from purchasing U.S.-made products through a so-called temporary denial order issued by the Commerce Department. F.B.I. agents raided a condo owned by the men’s company in the Trump Towers in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., on Thursday, The Miami Herald reported.Lawyers for the men did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Despite the level of sanctions evasion, airplane shipments into Russia remain significantly lower than before the war. U.S. officials say Russian airlines have been forced to cannibalize planes, breaking them down for spare parts to keep others in operation, as well as turning to Iran for maintenance and parts.Russia’s imports of aircraft and aircraft parts fell from $3.45 billion annually before the invasion to only about $286 million afterward, according to The Observatory of Economic Complexity, a data visualization platform that explores global trade dynamics.According to Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington nonprofit, China has been the leading overall exporter of parts for aircraft, spacecraft and drones to Russia since the invasion, accounting for about half of all shipments, followed by India. The number of single-aisle planes in use in Russia fell about 16 percent from the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022, after the invasion, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. The number of larger twin-aisle planes, often used on international routes, was down about 40 percent.Aviation experts say it will become more challenging for Russian airlines to continue flying planes without access to Western suppliers and help from Boeing and Airbus. The manufacturers regularly consult with airlines to assess any damage and strictly control access to technical documentation used by mechanics.But for now, Russian airlines have been kept alive with the help of international shipments and the use of hundreds of foreign jets that were stranded there after the war began.Tens of thousands of flights are expected to crisscross Russia this month, according to schedules published by Cirium. More than 21,000 flights — over half of them operated by Russian airlines — are expected to carry passengers to and from countries in Central Asia, as well as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, China and Thailand.Half a dozen export control lawyers and former government officials consulted by The New York Times said that many of the shipments in the Import Genius data likely violated sanctions, but that plane makers like Boeing or Airbus were not necessarily at fault. The aviation supply chain is complex and global, and the parts could have come from a variety of sources.“There is pretty clearly a violation,” said William Reinsch, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who oversaw export controls during the Clinton administration. “Less clear is the guilty party.”Aircraft parts originating in the European Union, including those marked as being manufactured or trademarked by Airbus, were also shipped into Russia last year, according to the data.Working on an Airbus A320 plane at a hangar in Haikou, China, in May. Airbus parts were also shipped into Russia last year.Zhang Liyun/Xinhua, via Getty ImagesJustin Dubon, a spokesman for Airbus, said that the company keeps track of genuine parts and documentation provided to its customers and conducts due diligence on all parties requesting spare parts. Restrictions in the United States and Europe mean that “there is no legal way that genuine aircraft parts, documentation and services can get to Russian carriers,” he said.U.S. restrictions technically allow companies to apply for a special license to continue sending products to Russian carriers for “safety of flight” reasons, but both Boeing and Airbus said that they had neither sought nor received such a license. In addition, Airbus said that E.U. laws prevent it from shipping such goods to Russia, regardless of U.S. licensing.Current and former U.S. officials say that some shipments into Russia are to be expected. Kevin Wolf, a partner at the law firm Akin Gump who oversaw export controls during the Obama administration, said the restrictions “can never block everything,” but that the rules were still significantly degrading Russia’s capabilities.He added that the scope of the new rules still exceed current methods of tracking and enforcement in other allied countries. Until the invasion of Ukraine, trade in aircraft parts was mostly unrestricted by the United States and other countries, except to Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Syria.“It’s improving,” Mr. Wolf said, “but it’s still way, way behind.”Compared with other countries that mostly limit their scrutiny to goods crossing their own borders, the United States is unparalleled in its attempt to police commerce around the world.In the past three years, the United States has imposed new technology restrictions for Russia, China and Iran that apply extraterritorially: Products made in the United States, or in foreign countries with the help of American components or technology, are subject to U.S. rules even when changing hands on the other side of the world.Both the United States and the European Union have been ramping up penalties for companies that violate sanctions, and dispatching officials to countries like Kazakhstan to try to persuade them to clamp down on shipments to Russia through their territory. The U.S. government has nine export control officers stationed in Istanbul, Beijing and other locations to trace shipments of sensitive products, and it is setting up three more offices.But providing parts can be a lucrative business. James Disalvatore, an associate director at Kharon, a data and analytics firm that has been monitoring Russia’s efforts to bypass sanctions, said the value of some aircraft parts imported by Russian airlines since the invasion had risen fourfold or more.“I don’t think there’s any secret what’s going on,” said Gary Stanley, a trade compliance expert who advises businesses in aerospace and other industries. “How long have we had Cuban sanctions? How long have we had North Korean sanctions? How long have we had Iranian sanctions? It never seems to put these folks out of business.” More

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    The ‘Peace Dividend’ Is Over in Europe. Now Come the Hard Tradeoffs.

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    Defending against an unpredictable Russia in years to come will mean bumping up against a strained social safety net and ambitious climate transition plans.In the 30 years since the Iron Curtain came crashing down, trillions of dollars that had been dedicated to Cold War armies and weapons systems were gradually diverted to health care, housing and schools.That era — when security took a back seat to trade and economic growth — abruptly ended with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.“The peace dividend is gone,” Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, recently declared, referring to the mountains of cash that were freed up when military budgets shrank. “Defense expenditures have to go up.”The urgent need to combat a brutal and unpredictable Russia has forced European leaders to make excruciating budgetary decisions that will enormously affect peoples’ everyday lives. Do they spend more on howitzers or hospitals, tanks or teachers, rockets or roadways? And how to pay for it: raise taxes or borrow more? Or both?The sudden security demands, which will last well beyond an end to the war in Ukraine, come at a moment when colossal outlays are also needed to care for rapidly aging populations, as well as to avoid potentially disastrous climate change. The European Union’s ambitious goal to be carbon neutral by 2050 alone is estimated to cost between $175 billion and $250 billion each year for the next 27 years.“The spending pressures on Europe will be huge, and that’s not even taking into account the green transition,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard. “The whole European social safety net is very vulnerable to these big needs.” After the Berlin Wall fell, social spending shot up. Denmark doubled the money it funneled to health care between 1994 and 2022, according to the latest figures compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while Britain increased its spending by more than 90 percent. Over the same period, Poland more than doubled funding for culture and recreation programs. Germany ramped up investments in the economy. The Czech Republic increased its education budget.President Biden with NATO allies in Warsaw in February. Military budgets started to rise after Russia annexed Crimea. Doug Mills/The New York TimesMilitary spending by European members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Canada reached a low point in 2014 as the demand for battle tanks, fighter jets and submarines plummeted. After Russia annexed Crimea that year, budgets started to rise again, but most countries still fell well below NATO’s target of 2 percent of national output.“The end of the peace dividend is a big rupture,” said Daniel Daianu, chairman of the Fiscal Council in Romania and a former finance minister.Before war broke out in Ukraine, military spending by the European members of NATO was expected to reach nearly $1.8 trillion by 2026, a 14 percent increase over five years, according to research by McKinsey & Company. Now, spending is estimated to rise between 53 and 65 percent.That means hundreds of billions of dollars that otherwise could have been used to, say, invest in bridge and highway repairs, child care, cancer research, refugee resettlement or public orchestras is expected to be redirected to the military.Last week, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that military spending in Europe last year had its biggest annual rise in three decades. And the spendathon is just beginning.The demand for military spending will be on display Wednesday when the European Union’s trade commissioner, Thierry Breton, is expected to discuss his fact-finding tour to determine whether European nations and weapons manufacturers can produce one million rounds of 155-millimeter shells for Ukraine this year, and how production can be increased. Poland has pledged to spend 4 percent of its national output on defense. The German defense minister has asked for an additional $11 billion next year, a 20 percent increase in military spending. President Emmanuel Macron of France has promised to lift military spending by more than a third through 2030 and to “transform” France’s nuclear-armed military.Some analysts argue that at times cuts in military budgets were so deep that they compromised basic readiness. And surveys have shown that there is public support for increased military spending, pointedly illustrated by Finland and Sweden’s about-face in wanting to join NATO.Polish military units train Ukrainian soldiers on the German-made Leopard tanks at a military base, in Poland in February.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesBut in most of Europe, the painful budgetary trade-offs or tax increases that will be required have not yet trickled down to daily life. Much of the belt-tightening last year that squeezed households was the result of skyrocketing energy prices and stinging inflation.Going forward, the game board has changed. “France has entered into a war economy that I believe we will be in for a long time,” Mr. Macron said in a speech shortly after announcing his spending blueprint.But the crucial question of how to pay for the momentous shift in national priorities remains. In France, for instance, government spending as a percentage of the economy, at 1.4 trillion euros ($1.54 trillion), is the highest in Europe. Of that, nearly half was spent on the nation’s generous social safety net, which includes unemployment benefits and pensions. Debt has also spiraled in the wake of the pandemic. Yet Mr. Macron has vowed not to increase what is already one of the highest tax levels in Europe for fear of scaring off investors.Debates over competing priorities are playing out in other capitals across the region — even if the trade-offs are not explicitly mentioned.In Britain, on the same day in March that the government unveiled a budget that included a $6.25 billion bump in military spending, teachers, doctors and transport workers joined strikes over pay and working conditions. It was just one in a series of walkouts by public workers who complained that underfunding, double-digit inflation and the pandemic’s aftermath have crippled essential services like health care, transportation and education. The budget included a $4.1 billion increase for the National Health Service over the same two-year period.Romania, which has been running up its public debt over the years, has pledged to lift military spending this year by 0.5 percent of national output. And this month it agreed to buy an undisclosed number of F-35 fighter jets, which have a list price of $80 million a piece. While the increase will enable the country to hit NATO’s budget target, it will undercut efforts to meet the debt limits set by the European Union.Romania has pledged to lift military spending this year by 0.5 percent of national output.Andreea Campeanu for The New York TimesThe shift in government spending is perhaps most striking in Germany, where defense outlays plunged after the reunification of the former East and West German nations in 1990.“Defense was always the place to save, because it was not very popular,” said Hubertus Bardt, the managing director of the Institute of the German Economy.Germany, the largest and most powerful economy in Europe, has consistently devoted less money to the military as a percentage of gross domestic output than either France or Britain.It’s a “historic turning point,” the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said when he announced a special $112 billion defense fund last year. Yet that pot of money did not include any spending for ammunition. And when the fund is depleted, Germany will need to find an additional $38 billion to level up with its NATO partners.Mr. Rogoff, the Harvard economist, said that most Europeans have not yet absorbed how big the long-term effects of a fading peace dividend will be. This is a new reality, he said, “and governments are going to have to figure out how to rebalance things.”Melissa Eddy More

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    Ukraine Grain Deal Raises Tensions for European Farmers

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    When Russia’s war blocked vitally needed grains at Ukrainian ports, officials succeeded in finding other routes out. But the solution brought its own problems.In Britain, food prices were up 19 percent last month from the previous year. In Spain, farmers are worried that a lack of rainfall will irreversibly damage wheat and barley production. And in West and Central Africa, record numbers of people are facing potentially dire food shortages.Nonetheless, a handful of European nations including Poland and Hungary have blocked the entry of farm products from Ukraine — one of the world’s biggest grain exporters — arguing that the flood of cheap imports is ruining local farmers. Now, to quell the rising discord, the European Union is considering a temporary ban on grain imports to five nations.The combination of spiraling prices for consumers in one part of the world and plummeting incomes for farmers in another illustrates the maddening complexities of the global food market.Long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, climate change, violent conflicts, supply-chain bottlenecks related to the pandemic and burdensome debts were contributing to food shortages and hunger around the world. But the war in Ukraine threatened to seriously worsen the crisis by reducing the country’s grain exports and driving up food and fertilizer prices.With sea shipments from Ukrainian ports blocked or restricted by Russian forces, the European Union suspended tariffs and quotas on food from Ukraine and rushed to transport as much as possible by rail and truck through neighboring countries. The idea was to create an alternate pathway that would funnel grain from Ukraine’s breadbasket to the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia, where it was most needed.The plan worked, at least to some degree, easing anxieties over shortages. Food prices have dropped by more than 20 percent from a peak in March 2022, according to a food price index calculated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.Much of the Ukrainian grain was getting to far-off markets by traveling through Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, as well as Bulgaria — but not all of it. And that is what has set off the tensions.“Enough makes its way to local markets, and makes it more difficult for European farmers to get the price they want,” said Monika Tothova, an economist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.Trucks were lined up for more than 10 kilometers at the Ukrainian-Polish border on Tuesday.Yuriy Dyachyshyn/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe uproar in rural areas has created political headaches for government leaders.With a national election coming up in Poland, which has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki last week imposed a unilateral ban on Ukrainian grain and certain other farm imports, a violation of European Union rules.As early as last summer, some farmers in Romania were complaining about the glut of Ukrainian grain, saying it had pushed down prices for their own products at a time when the costs of fuel, pesticides and fertilizer were rising.Hoping to dampen the growing internal discord, the European Union promised on Wednesday to offer “comprehensive proposals” to address the concerns of the five Eastern and Central European countries and provide 100 million euros ($110 million) to compensate farmers.On Thursday, an E.U. official confirmed that one of the measures under consideration was a temporary ban on certain Ukrainian food exports to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, if those five countries canceled any unilateral measures.It was not clear if the countries would all go along with the plan, which some European officials said did not go far enough.“We have to expand this product range,” the Hungarian agriculture minister, Istvan Nagy, wrote on Facebook late Wednesday, adding, “We must also apply restrictions on eggs, poultry and honey” coming in from Ukraine.The prohibitions on Ukrainian grain to neighboring countries come at the same time that Russia is threatening to back out of a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to allow grain shipments to leave Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. That deal is set to expire on May 18, although talks about an extension are continuing.Even with the deal in place, though, passage through the Bosporus in Turkey is slow, uneven and expensive. Ukraine is already harvesting 40 percent less than it did before the war. High shipping fees add to the costs and may cause farmers to plant even less next year, and in turn further reduce food production.“There is no global food crisis,” Ms. Tothova said. “There are many crises in different countries. The problem last year was a problem of access. Grain was available but many did not have enough resources to buy it.”Even as Europe’s leaders skirmished over Ukrainian grain, Ukraine itself was given encouragement on Thursday that it would eventually be accepted into the European military fold.On a visit to Kyiv — his first since the Russian invasion over a year ago — Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, said Ukraine’s “rightful place” was in the alliance.“I am here today with a simple message: NATO stands with Ukraine,” Mr. Stoltenberg said at a news conference with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr. Stoltenberg said the issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership would be “high on the agenda” at a NATO summit in Lithuania in July.Though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the alliance has helped coordinate its requests for nonlethal assistance and supports deliveries of humanitarian aid. And some NATO members have provided major military assistance to help Ukraine fend off Russian forces.Even those NATO members who are open to the entry of Ukraine have made it clear that it is a long-term goal.But Mr. Zelensky, who has been invited to attend the NATO summit, said it was important that Ukraine be invited to join the alliance.“There is no objective barrier to the political decision to invite Ukraine into the alliance,” he said.On Thursday, Mr. Zelensky also tried to win over lawmakers from Mexico, which has said little publicly about the Russian invasion.“Ukrainians and Mexicans hurt equally when we see innocent lives taken by cruel violence, where true peace could reign,” he said, addressing them remotely.The Ukrainian president has spoken to dozens of legislatures over the past year, often using the occasions to ask for military aid. But speaking to the Mexican lawmakers, Mr. Zelensky seemed content just to ask for their support.Victoria Kim More

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    Russia Is Importing Western Weapons Technology, Bypassing Sanctions

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    Western technology goods are winding up in Russian missiles, raising questions about the efficacy of sanctions.Late last month, American and European Union officials traded information on millions of dollars’ worth of banned technology that was slipping through the cracks of their defenses and into Russian territory.Senior tax and trade officials noted a surge in chips and other electronic components being sold to Russia through Armenia, Kazakhstan and other countries, according to slides from the March 24 meeting obtained by The New York Times. And they shared information on the flow of eight particularly sensitive categories of chips and other electronic devices that they have deemed as critical to the development of weapons, including Russian cruise missiles that have struck Ukraine.As Ukraine tries to repel Russia from its territory, the United States and its allies have been fighting a parallel battle to keep the chips needed for weapons systems, drones and tanks out of Russian hands.But denying Russia access to chips has been a challenge, and the United States and Europe have not made a clear victory. While Russia’s ability to manufacture weaponry has been diminished because of Western sanctions adopted more than a year ago, the country is still gaining circuitous access to many electronic components.The result is devastating: As the United States and the European Union rally to furnish Ukrainians with weapons to keep fighting against Russia, their own technology is being used by Russia to fight back.American officials argue that the sweeping sanctions they have imposed in partnership with 38 other governments have severely damaged Russia’s military capacity, and raised the cost to Russia to procure the parts it needs.“My view is that we’ve been very effective in impeding Russia’s ability to sustain and reconstitute a military force,” said Alan Estevez, who oversees U.S. export controls at the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Commerce Department, in an interview in March.“We recognize that this is hard, hard work,” Mr. Estevez added. “They’re adapting. We’re adapting to their adaptations.”There is no doubt that the trade restrictions are making it significantly harder for Russia to obtain technology that can be used on the battlefield, much of which is designed by firms in the United States and allied countries.Direct sales of chips to Russia from the United States and its allies have plummeted to zero. U.S. officials say Russia has already blown through much of its supply of its most accurate weapons and has been forced to substitute lower-quality or counterfeit parts that make its weaponry less accurate.But trade data shows that other countries have stepped in to provide Russia with some of what it needs. After dropping off sharply immediately after the Ukrainian invasion, Russia’s chip imports crept back up, particularly from China. Imports between October and January were 50 percent or more of median prewar levels each month, according to tracking by Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank.Sarah V. Stewart, Silverado’s chief executive, said the export controls imposed on Russia had disrupted pre-existing supply chains, calling that “a really positive thing.” But she said Russia was “still continuing to get quite a substantial amount” of chips.“It’s really a supply chain network that is very, very large and very complex and not necessarily transparent,” Ms. Stewart said. “Chips are truly ubiquitous.”A Ukrainian serviceman holding an electronic unit of an unmanned aerial vehicle used by Russia against Ukraine, during a media briefing of the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine in Kyiv last week.STR/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesAs Russia has tried to get around restrictions, U.S. officials have steadily ratcheted up their rules, including adding sanctions on dozens of companies and organizations in Russia, Iran, China, Canada and elsewhere. The United States has also expanded its trade restrictions to include toasters, hair dryers and microwaves, all of which contain chips, and set up a “disruptive technology strike force” to investigate and prosecute illicit actors trying to acquire sensitive technology.But the illicit trade in chips is proving hard to police given the ubiquity of semiconductors. Companies shipped 1.15 trillion chips to customers globally in 2021, adding to a huge worldwide stockpile. China, which is not part of the sanctions regime, is pumping out increasingly sophisticated chips.The Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents major chip companies, said that it was engaging with the U.S. government and other parties to combat the illicit trade in semiconductors, but that controlling their flow was extremely difficult.“We have rigorous protocols to remove bad actors from our supply chains, but with about one trillion chips sold globally each year, it’s not as simple as flipping a switch,” the association said in a statement.So far, the Russian military appears to have been relying on a large stockpile of electronics and weaponry it accumulated before the invasion. But that supply may be drying up, making it more urgent for Russia to obtain new shipments.A report issued Tuesday by Conflict Armament Research, an independent group that examines Russian weaponry recovered from the battlefield, revealed the first known example of Russia’s making weapons with chips manufactured after the invasion began.Three identical chips, made by a U.S. company in an offshore factory, were found in Lancet drones recovered from several sites in Ukraine this past February and March, according to Damien Spleeters, who led the investigation for C.A.R.Mr. Spleeters said his group was not revealing the chip’s manufacturer while it worked with the company to trace how the product ended up in Russia.These chips were not necessarily an example of an export control violation, Mr. Spleeters said, since the United States did not issue restrictions on this specific type of chip until September. The chips were manufactured in August and may have been shipped out soon thereafter, he said.But he saw their presence as evidence that Russia’s big prewar stockpile of electronics was finally running out. “Now we are going to start seeing whether controls and sanctions will be effective,” Mr. Spleeters said.The parent company of the firm that designed the drone, the Kalashnikov Group, a major Russian weapons manufacturer, has publicly challenged the West’s technology restrictions.“It is impossible to isolate Russia from the entire global electronic component base,” Alan Lushnikov, the group’s president, said in a Russian-language interview last year, according to a translation in a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “It’s a fantasy to think otherwise.”That quote included “some bluster,” Gregory Allen, one of the report’s authors, said at an event in December. But he added: “Russia is going to try and do whatever it takes to get around these export controls. Because for them, the stakes are incredibly, incredibly high.”As the documents from the March meeting show, U.S. and European officials have become increasingly concerned that Russia is obtaining American and European goods by rerouting them through Armenia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.One document marked with the seal of the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security said that in 2022, Armenia imported 515 percent more chips and processors from the United States and 212 percent more from the European Union than in 2021. Armenia then exported 97 percent of those same products to Russia, the document said.In another document, the Bureau of Industry and Security identified eight categories of chips and components deemed critical to Russian weapons development, including one called a field programmable gate array, which had been found in one model of Russian cruise missile, the KH-101.The intelligence sharing between the United States and Europe is part of a nascent but intensifying effort to minimize the leakage of such items to Russia. While the United States has deeper experience with enforcing sanctions, the European Union lacks centralized intelligence, customs and law enforcement abilities.The United States and the European Union have both recently dispatched officials to countries that were shipping more to Russia, to try to cut down that trade. Mr. Estevez said a recent visit to Turkey had persuaded that government to halt transshipments to Russia through their free trade zone, as well the servicing of Russian and Belarusian airplanes in Turkish airports.Biden administration officials say shipments to Russia and Belarus of the electronic equipment they have targeted fell 41 percent between 2021 and 2022, as the United States and its allies expanded their restrictions globally.Matthew S. Axelrod, the assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Bureau of Industry and Security, said the picture was one of a “broad decrease.”“But still there are certain areas of the world that are being used to get these items to Russia,” he said. “That’s a problem that we are laser-focused on.”John Ismay More

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    Support Grows to Have Russia Pay for Ukraine’s Rebuilding

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    Although U.S. officials have cautioned against seizing Russia’s reserves in foreign banks, others say it’s “crazy” not to after Moscow’s war of aggression.When the World Bank released its latest damage assessment of war-torn Ukraine this week, it announced that the price of recovery and rebuilding had grown to $411 billion. What it didn’t say, though, was who would pay for it.To Ukraine, the answer seems obvious: Confiscate the roughly $300 billion in Russian Central Bank assets that Western banks have frozen since the invasion last year. As the war grinds on, the idea has gained supporters.The European Union has already declared its desire to use the Kremlin’s bankroll to pay for reconstruction in Ukraine. At the urging of a handful of Eastern European and Baltic nations, the bloc convened a working group last month to assess the possibility of grabbing that money as well as frozen assets owned by private individuals who have run afoul of European sanctions.“In principle, it is clear-cut: Russia must pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine,” said Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, who holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union.At the same time, he noted, turning that principle into practice is fraught. “This must be done in accordance with E.U. and international law, and there is currently no direct model for this,” Mr. Kristersson said.The working group, which has a two-year mandate, is scheduled to meet in Brussels next week.Other top officials, in the United States and elsewhere, have sounded more skeptical. After visiting Kyiv last month, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen reiterated her warnings of formidable legal obstacles. The Swiss government declared that confiscating private Russian assets from banks would violate Switzerland’s Constitution as well as international agreements.The legal debate is just one skein in the tangle of moral, political and economic concerns that the potential seizure of Russia’s reserves poses.Departing a Mass in Lviv, Ukraine. Some U.S. officials worry about side effects from seizing assets in order to rebuild the country. Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesMs. Yellen and others have argued that seizing Russia’s accounts could undermine faith in the dollar, the most widely used currency for the world’s trade and transactions. Foreign nations might be more reluctant to keep money in U.S. banks or make investments, fearing that it could be seized. At the same time, experts worry that such a move could put American and European assets held in other countries at higher risk of expropriation in the future if there is an international dispute.There are also concerns that seizure would erode faith in the system of international laws and agreements that Western governments have championed most vocally.But Russia’s pummeling of Ukraine’s infrastructure, charges of war crimes against President Vladimir V. Putin, and the difficulty of squeezing Russia economically when demand for its energy and other exports remains high have helped the idea gain ground.Also, there is the uncomfortable realization that the cost of rebuilding Ukraine once the war is over will far outstrip the amount that even wealthy allies like the United States and Europe may be willing to give.The United States, the European Union, Britain and other allies have funneled billions of dollars into Ukraine’s war effort, as well as tanks, missiles, ammunition, drones and other military equipment. And this week the International Monetary Fund approved its biggest loan yet — $15.6 billion — just to keep Ukraine’s battered economy afloat.But public support for continued funding is not inexhaustible.“If it’s difficult to get funding now for maintaining the infrastructure or housing, why is it going to be easier to get funding later?” asked Tymofiy Mylovanov, the president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former government minister.It’s hard enough for Ukraine to get money and equipment “while we are being killed,” Mr. Mylovanov said. “Once we’re not being killed, we’ll have difficulty getting anything.”Laurence Tribe, a university professor of constitutional law at Harvard, has argued that a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, gives the U.S. president the authority to confiscate sovereign Russian assets and repurpose them for Ukraine.The U.S. authorities previously seized Iraqi and Iranian assets and redirected them to compensate victims of violence, settle lawsuits or provide financial assistance.Mr. Tribe concedes that calculations about the ripple effect on the dollar or invested assets will ultimately matter more to policymakers than legal ones. But he finds those broader political concerns unpersuasive.“It’s crazy to argue that it’s more destabilizing to have assets seized than to have wars of aggression,” Mr. Tribe said in an interview on Friday. “The survival of the global economy is far more threatened by the way Russia behaved” than by any financial retaliation.And, he added, taking billions of dollars is much more meaningful either as a deterrent or punishment than bringing war crime charges.A destroyed garage in Hostomel, a Kyiv suburb. Prominent Americans like Laurence Tribe and Lawrence Summers argue that seizing Russian assets would be the right thing to do.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesOther prominent voices in the United States have endorsed the notion. Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary; Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank and U.S. trade representative; and Philip D. Zelikow, a historian at University of Virginia and a former State Department counselor, made their case this week in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.“Transferring frozen Russian reserves would be morally right, strategically wise and politically expedient,” they wrote.A few countries in addition to Ukraine have taken steps to pry loose foreign assets owned by Russian individuals and entities and use the money for reconstruction. In December, the Canadian government began the process of seizing $26 million owned by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich after passing a law easing the forfeiture of private Russian assets from individuals who are under sanctions.A federal judge in Manhattan gave the go-ahead last month to confiscate $5.4 million from another Russian businessman facing sanctions, Konstantin Malofeev. And Estonia is also seeking to pass legislation that would give the government there similar powers.But Mr. Tribe, Mr. Summers and others argue that the main focus should be not on seizing private assets, which would be legally much more complicated and time-consuming, but on the hundreds of billions owned by Russia’s central bank.Wherever the money comes from, the bill keeps growing. Over the past year, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a third. The war has pushed more than seven million people into poverty, the World Bank reported, and reversed 15 years of development progress. More

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    Why Russia Has Such a Strong Grip on Europe’s Nuclear Power

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    New energy sources to replace oil and natural gas have been easier to find than kicking the dependency on Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear superstore.The pinched cylinders of Russian-built nuclear power plants that dot Europe’s landscape are visible reminders of the crucial role that Russia still plays in the continent’s energy supply.Europe moved with startling speed to wean itself off Russian oil and natural gas in the wake of war in Ukraine. But breaking the longstanding dependency on Russia’s vast nuclear industry is a much more complicated undertaking.Russia, through its mammoth state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, dominates the global nuclear supply chain. It was Europe’s third-largest supplier of uranium in 2021, accounting for 20 percent of the total. With few ready alternatives, there has been scant support for sanctions against Rosatom — despite urging from the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.For countries with Russian-made reactors, reliance runs deep. In five European Union countries, every reactor — 18 in total — were built by Russia. In addition, two more are scheduled to start operating soon in Slovakia, and two are under construction in Hungary, cementing partnerships with Rosatom far into the future.For years, the operators of these nuclear power plants had little choice. Rosatom, through its subsidiary TVEL, was virtually the only producer of the fabricated fuel assemblies — the last step in the process of turning uranium into the nuclear fuel rods — that power the reactors.Even so, since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, some European countries have started to step away from Russia’s nuclear energy superstore.The Czech Republic’s energy company, CEZ, has signed contracts with Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse Electric Company and the French company Framatome to supply fuel assemblies for its plant in Temelin.Finland canceled a troubled project with Rosatom to build a nuclear reactor and hired Westinghouse to design, license and supply a new fuel type for its plant in Loviisa after its current contracts expire.“The purpose is to diversify the supply chain,” said Simon-Erik Ollus, an executive vice president at Fortum, a Finnish energy company.The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant near St. Petersburg, Russia. Rosatom, a Russian company, dominates the global nuclear supply chain.Sezgin Pancar/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesBulgaria signed a new 10-year agreement with Westinghouse to provide fuel for its existing reactors. And last week, it moved ahead with plans for the American company to build new nuclear reactor units. Poland is about to construct its first nuclear power plant, which will feature three Westinghouse reactors.The State of the WarRussian Strikes: Moscow fired an array of weapons, including its newest hypersonic missiles, in its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine in weeks, knocking out power in multiple regions.Bakhmut: Even as Ukrainian and Russian leaders predicted that the fall of the city could open the way for a broader Russian offensive, the U.S. intelligence chief said that the Kremlin’s forces were too depleted to wage such a campaign.Nord Stream Pipelines: The sabotage in September of the pipelines has become one of the central mysteries of the war. A Times investigation offers new insight into who might have been behind it.Slovakia and even Hungary, Russia’s closest ally in the European Union, have also reached out to alternative fuel suppliers.“We see a lot of genuine movement,” said Tarik Choho, president of nuclear fuel unit at Westinghouse, adding that the Ukraine war accelerated Europe’s search for new suppliers. “Even Hungary wants to diversify.”William Freebairn, senior managing editor for nuclear energy at S&P Commodity Insights, said Russia’s march into Ukraine last year in some ways marked “a sea change.”“Within days of the invasion,” he said, “just about every country that operated a Russian reactor started looking for alternate supply.”In Ukraine, serious efforts to chip away at Russian nuclear dominance began in 2014 after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sent troops to occupy territory in Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine, whose 15 Soviet-era reactors provided half the country’s electricity, signed a deal with Westinghouse to expand its fuel contract.It took roughly five years between the start of the design process and the final delivery of the first fuel assembly, according to the International Energy Agency.Ukraine “blazed a commercial trail,” Mr. Freebairn said. In June, Ukraine signed another contract with Westinghouse to eventually provide all its nuclear fuel. The company will also build nine power plants and establish an engineering center in the country.Technicians in a nuclear plant in Mochovce, Slovakia, last year. Slovakia is among the European countries seeking nuclear fuel suppliers other than Russia.Radovan Stoklasa/ReutersStill, a worldwide turn away from Russia’s nuclear industry would be a slog: The nuclear supply chain is exceptionally complex. Establishing a new one would be expensive and take years.At the same time, Rosatom has proved uniquely successful as both a business enterprise and a vehicle for Russian political influence. Much of its ascendancy is due to what experts have labeled a “one-stop nuclear shop” that can provide countries with an all-inclusive package: materials, training, support, maintenance, disposal of nuclear waste, decommissioning and, perhaps most important, financing on favorable terms.And with a life span of 20 to 40 years, deals to build nuclear reactors compel a long-term marriage.Russia’s tightest grip is on the market for nuclear fuel. It controls 38 percent of the world’s uranium conversion and 46 percent of the uranium enrichment capacity — essential steps in producing usable fuel.“That’s equal to all of OPEC put together in terms of market share and power,” said Paul Dabbar, a visiting fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, referring to the oil dominance of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.As with oil and natural gas, the cost of nuclear fuel supplies has risen over the past year, putting more than $1 billion from exports into Russia’s treasury, according to a report from the Royal United Services Institute, a security research organization in London.The American nuclear power industry gets up to 20 percent of its enriched uranium from Russia, the maximum allowed by a recent nonproliferation treaty, according to the International Energy Association. France imports 15 percent. Framatome, which is owned by state-backed nuclear power operator, Électricité de France, or EDF, signed a cooperation agreement with Rosatom in December 2021, two months before Russia’s invasion, that is still in effect. Framatome declined to comment.The control room of a nuclear power plant in Paks, Hungary, in 2019. Two Rosatom nuclear plants are under construction in Hungary.Tamas Soki/EPA, via ShutterstockAnd even with the slate of new fuel agreements in Europe with non-Russian sources, deliveries won’t begin for at least a year, and in some cases several years.Around a quarter of the European Union’s electricity supply comes from nuclear power. With pending climate disaster prompting a worldwide push to decrease the overall use of fossil fuels, nuclear energy’s role in the future fuel mix is expected to increase.Still, analysts argue that even without formal sanctions, Russia’s position as a nuclear supplier has been permanently compromised.At the height of the debate in Germany last year over whether to keep its two remaining nuclear power plants online because of the war, their reliance on uranium enriched by Russia for the fuel rods emerged as one of the arguments against extending their lives. The last two reactors are to be shut down next month.And when Poland’s Council of Ministers approved the agreement in November for Westinghouse to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, the resolution cited “the need for permanent independence from energy supplies and energy carriers from Russia.”Mr. Choho at Westinghouse was confident about the company’s ability to compete with Rosatom in Europe, estimating that it eventually could capture 50 to 75 percent of that nuclear market. Westinghouse has also signed an agreement with the Spanish energy company Enusa to cooperate on fabricating fuel for Russian-made reactors.A nuclear power plant in Wattenbacherau, Germany, last year. The country’s last two reactors are to be shut down next month.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesBut outside the European Union and United States, in countries where support for Russia’s government has held up, Rosatom’s one-stop shopping and financing remain enticing. Russian-built reactors can be found in China, India and Iran as well as Armenia and Belarus. Construction has begun on Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, and Rosatom has a memorandum of understanding with 13 countries, according to the International Energy Association.As a new report in the journal Nature Energy concluded, while the war “will undermine Rosatom’s position in Europe and damage its reputation as a reliable supplier,” its global standing “may remain strong.”Melissa Eddy More

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    For Ukraine’s Animals, a Home Is Getting Harder to Find

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    The first thing you hear after entering the animal sanctuary in Znesinnya Park near the center of Lviv are the dogs. There are scores of them barking and howling, members of a raucous makeshift orchestra sounding out a discordant opera.They are orphans of war, rescued from bombed-out cities or left by refugees who were uprooted from their homes and unable to care for their pets anymore.Their residence now is a hulking shed, previously abandoned, that has been hastily outfitted with rows of wooden and metal cages, castoff blankets and towers of bagged pet food.Orest Zalypskyi started Domivka: Home of Rescued Animals five years ago primarily to care for endangered and injured wild creatures: foxes that were used to train hunting dogs and had their claws and teeth removed, a circus monkey about to be euthanized, an owl with a clipped wing.But since the Russians invaded last year, Domivka has also become a center for rescued pets — dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, lambs and birds. Before the war, the sanctuary contained roughly 200 animals. Now, it has more than 500.Domivka housed about 200 animals before the war and now is sheltering more than 500.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times“We didn’t have any place for them,” said Viktoria Stasiv, a volunteer. “It was crazy.” They rushed to put together the dog kennel in an old brick and concrete shed that had been used for trash.At a different site, about an hour away, are 170 sheep, goats and llamas that Domivka volunteers are caring for on a plot of donated land. The animals belonged to a petting zoo in Zaporizhzhia that had to be abandoned.Over the past year, the group has hosted thousands of animals, Mr. Zalypskyi said.There was a brief period last spring, after the war began, when animal owners and rescuers were allowed to take animals across the border into other European countries without the usual requirements for things like vaccinations. Busloads of volunteers from Germany and Poland came and took dogs, rabbits and cats back with them. Nearly 5,500 pets were rescued and found new homes outside Ukraine; another 1,500 were adopted inside the country.Oksana Prykhodka, an employee at the shelter.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesBut now, adoptions have slowed. Anyone outside Ukraine who wants to liberate a pet from the misery of war has to pay about 200 euros and pick it up. When it comes to dogs, most people want puppies, Ms. Stasiv said, but most of the abandoned dogs are older and bigger. Some are injured.Chip, a sweet-faced mutt, arrived from Kherson, a heavily besieged city 560 miles away, where he was blinded during an attack. Bonie, a large black dog with tan paws and snout, has a steel rod in his back after his spine was broken in a shelling. Lina Brithna, a rehabilitation worker, is helping him learn to walk again. Zubik, a black and white part-malamute, lost one of his front legs.There are a couple of puppies that were found in a trash can in Lviv. They are kept in a small indoor shelter along with other injured animals and recent arrivals that are quarantined for their first two weeks. They scamper around Ms. Brithna as she cleans their cages. The cats watch, occasionally poking their paws through holes in the plexiglass doors, and wait their turn.Foxes at the Domivka shelter, which was primarily a sanctuary for endangered or injured wild animals before the war.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesAll the dogs are taken for walks three times a day along the snowy grounds — by volunteers, visiting families and sometimes former owners, who would love to keep their pets but are themselves refugees and can’t provide a home.Domivka did not previously have a website, but with so many more animals under its care, the nonprofit is now fund-raising on Facebook and Instagram. Over Christmas it sold branded calendars that featured longtime residents and war evacuees, including a white-tipped eagle named Galya.This small shelter in a Lviv park is one of several domestic and international organizations, like U-Hearts Foundation, UAnimals and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, working to help feed and care for animals during the war.The shelter needs more staff, enclosures and food, Mr. Zalypskyi said through a translator. “The needs are growing every day as the number of animals increase.”A shelter worker walking Zubik, who lost a foreleg in shelling.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesYurii Shyvala contributed reporting. More