Another rescue effort underway in Mariupol; U.S. intel helped Ukraine sink warship

LVIV, Ukraine — Sure, it looks like a pile of dirt ringed by boxy gray shacks, but that’s not what Anton Kolomyeytsev sees at a construction site here in this western Ukrainian city.

As the city’s chief architect, he envisions a village of container-style housing for families displaced by Russia’s war in Ukraine. He sees playground equipment accessible for wounded children. Meals cooked by students from a nearby culinary institute. And enough greenery to make it “the best courtyard in the whole neighborhood.”

Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have taken vast stores of grain from Ukraine and exported them to Russia, exacerbating the risk of shortages and hunger in areas under Russian control.

Farmers in Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces reported that the Russians were “stealing their grain en masse,” according to a statement released over the weekend by Ukraine’s Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.

Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said on Ukrainian television last week that he had heard a surge of accounts from industry representatives about Russians seizing grain in recent weeks in occupied areas.

A city in western Ukraine has canceled all public events in the coming days and is urging residents to stay inside or leave the area, warning that Moscow may attack ahead of the Russian holiday of Victory Day, the latest example of mounting anxiety over an expanded assault far from the war’s front lines.

Ivano-Frankivsk, a city of just under 250,000 about 80 miles south of Lviv, has largely been free of the conflict’s fiercest fighting and become something of a safe haven for refugees from other parts of Ukraine. But the city’s mayor, Ruslan Martsinkiv, said Thursday that he’s been informed of planned Russian strikes leading up to Monday, when Russia marks the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany with military parades and bombast.

When Russian forces withdrew from the suburbs around Kyiv last month, the horrors they left behind — bodies lying in the streets, signs of summary killings, and reports of torture and mass graves — shocked the Western world and elicited calls for war crimes investigations.

Then there were the accounts of rape and other sexual violence — at a factory in Bucha, in a basement in Irpin, at gunpoint in a village east of Kyiv.

Rape has long been used by the world’s armies as an instrument of war — to humiliate and terrorize populations or as part of a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing. It is also a crime under international law and, after decades of advocacy, has formed the basis of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity cases against perpetrators in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

The United States provided Ukraine with intelligence that helped Kyiv attack and sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, in one of the most dramatic battlefield successes of the 71-day old war, according to people familiar with the matter.

The missile strike by Ukrainian forces in April, an extraordinary embarrassment for the Kremlin that deprived Russia of a key vessel in its military campaign, may not have been possible without the U.S. assistance, these people said, underscoring how deeply Washington has become enmeshed in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. It’s unclear how many Russian sailors died in the attack, but U.S. officials believe there were significant casualties.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet gave a somber account Thursday of the devastating impact of Russia’s war on Ukrainian civilians, offering details of reports that she said amount to gross violations of human rights, including extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, alleged forced disappearances and sexual violence.

As the war rages on, “it seems to be no end in sight to the daily reports of civilian deaths and injuries,” Bachelet said via video link during a U.N. Security Council meeting.

The 22-year-old veteran believed to be the first American killed while fighting in the Ukrainian military was serving as a volunteer, not a private contractor, two fellow fighters said Thursday, contradicting earlier reports suggesting the latter.

Willy Joseph Cancel joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense, the unit created by President Volodymyr Zelensky to encourage foreign fighters to help Ukrainian troops battle against Russian soldiers, and worked on a team with four other Americans, said one of the unit’s members, Cameron Van Camp, 31, of Ellensburg, Wash.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Thursday that nearly 500 civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and its surroundings in recent days.

Two rescue operations, led by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have had “some measure of success,” and a third one is underway Thursday, Guterres said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine. He did not offer details of the ongoing evacuation, seeking to avoid undermining its success.