Ukraine pulls back from Severodonetsk

KYIV — Ukraine is running out of shells for the majority of its artillery in part because of a clandestine Russian campaign of bullying and sabotage over the past eight years. The operation included bombings of key munitions depots across Eastern Europe that officials have linked to Moscow, according to Ukrainian government officials and military analysts.

Fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine is almost exclusively a near-constant exchange of artillery fire, and Ukraine’s shortage of shells has exacerbated what was already a mismatch on the battlefield. Russia is firing more than 60,000 shells per day — 10 times more than the Ukrainians, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar told The Washington Post.

Most of Ukraine’s artillery pieces date to the Soviet Union, meaning they rely on the same 122 mm and 152 mm rounds that Russia uses. But outside Russia, very little supply exists. That’s in large part because Russia spent years targeting Ukrainian and other Eastern European ammunition storage facilities and suppliers before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February. Russia has also taken other steps to acquire the ammunition or otherwise prevent its sale to Ukraine.

RIGA, Latvia — Popular Russian rave band Little Big released an antiwar song “Generation Cancellation” on YouTube Friday, calling for an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine and expressing disgust at the nation’s military propaganda.

The release comes after President Vladimir Putin’s regime has criminalized protests and sent activists to prison for even mild forms of dissent, meanwhile recruiting schoolchildren for demonstrations of support for the war.

“We adore our country, but we completely disagree with the war in Ukraine,” said the band’s founder Ilya Prusikin in a statement to Meduza, Latvia-based Russian independent media outlet. “Moreover, we believe that any war is unacceptable. We condemn the actions of the Russian government, and we are so disgusted by the Russian military propaganda machine that we decided to drop everything and leave the country,” the statement said. The band said it is now based in Los Angeles.

Evocative imagery in the song’s video clip depicts old men with currency signs instead of eyes, ubiquitous surveillance cameras, and machines pumping fake news into the heads of zombified TV audiences. Young people are shown with zippers instead of lips. A city under bombardment transforms into cigar embers in a politician’s ashtray.

Lyrics include:

“Iʼve got no, Iʼve got no, Iʼve got no voice.

“Die or leave, die or leave. Iʼve got no choice.”

Since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, thousands of Russian creative artists, dancers, musicians, novelists, journalists, activists and political analysts have fled the country, as well as IT innovators, scientists and others. Putin has welcomed their departures, saying Russia must purge itself of traitors.

The video ends with a politician reaching into a silver brief case and hitting a big red button: “Cancel.”

With Ukrainian forces retreating from the eastern city of Severodonetsk, the fighting is pivoting across the river to the sister city of Lysychansk.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its troops had blocked Lysychansk, in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, from the south after breaching Ukraine’s defensive line.

But the Ukrainian military’s general staff said in its latest update Friday that Ukrainian forces had “successfully repulsed the assault near the southern outskirts of Lysychansk.” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has said Russian forces are trying to encircle the city.

“The enemy, with the support of artillery, launched an assault in the direction of Vovchoyarivka” a village south of Lysychansk, the military’s statement said. “The fighting continues.”

Russian troops entered Hirske, a city about 16 miles south of Lysychansk, and took over the district on Friday, Mayor Oleksiy Babchenko said on Ukrainian television, RFE/RL reported. A spokesperson for the regional administration told Reuters, “There is a red flag flying over the municipal administration” in Hirske.

The Washington Post could not independently confirm the accounts.

Letters written, tanks in position as battle for Lysychansk looms

Many residents of Lysychansk have already fled the city. Officials and Ukrainian soldiers were readying this week for the coming Russian attack, digging trenches and preparing to seal the city.

David L. Stern, Steve Hendrix and Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this report.

European Union leaders gave a grim assessment of the continent’s energy security at a summit in Brussels, accusing Moscow of “weaponizing” energy as its war in Ukraine drives inflation and a Russian company slashed gas supply to Europe.

“Inflation is a major concern for all of us,” European Council President Charles Michel said at a news conference at the two-day gathering, which concluded Friday. “Russia’s war of aggression is pushing up the price of food, energy and commodities.”

But leaders did not agree on a continentwide cap on gas prices, a measure supported by Italy, Belgium and Greece and opposed by Germany and the Netherlands, among others. Spain and Portugal have implemented their own temporary cap of 40 euros per megawatt.

Last week, Russian state-controlled energy company Gazprom cut by 60 percent the amount of gas it delivers via a pipeline to Germany and other European countries. European countries had been trying to stockpile gas for the winter. Germany on Thursday triggered the next stage of its emergency gas plan — a tiered approach that could include gas rationing, the New York Times reported.

The cuts to gas flow came after European countries have hit Russia with sanctions in reaction to Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The European Union depended on Russia for about 40 percent of its natural gas. One E.U. official told Reuters ahead of the talks Friday that it was “only a matter of time” before Russia completely halted gas shipments.

“There will not be a return to cheap fossil fuels, I think,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “And therefore, alongside temporary and targeted support to vulnerable families and businesses, it is essential to help our economies and societies adapt to the new conditions. The root cause of our problem is our dependence on fossil fuels, which we must get rid of.”

Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, told Der Spiegel magazine that Germany could face a gas shortage if Russian supplies remain at current levels — meaning that some industries would have to shut down this winter.

The search for new energy sources has preoccupied European leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine four months ago. They have tried to juggle their goals of reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and of making progress toward meeting countries’ climate targets.

The United States has stepped up deliveries of liquid natural gas (LNG) to Europe, and Norway and Azerbaijan have increased pipeline gas deliveries. Israel agreed this month to send billions of dollars’ worth of natural gas to Europe via Egypt.

Von der Leyen said the commission will propose a plan next month to prepare for additional gas cuts from Russia. E.U. leaders will consider options that could include alternative energy market designs at the next summit in October, she said, according to Reuters.

Neighbors Russia and Belarus must work more closely to improve their defense capabilities, including air defense, amid the current climate, Russia’s defense minister has said.

Defense minister Sergei Shoigu held a “working meeting” in Moscow with his Belarusian counterpart this week and said circumstances dictate “the need to take urgent joint measures” with Belarus to strengthen defense capabilities, improve combat readiness and create a “unified regional air defense system.”

“Belarus is the most important strategic partner, the closest friend and ally for us,” Shoigu said in a statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry. “The bilateral military cooperation is currently developing in the conditions of the pressure from the West, and an undeclared war against our countries,” he added.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is a stalwart ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has accused Ukraine and the United States of fueling the war that he says has “dragged on.” Belarus has in the past allowed Russian troops to assemble for joint military drills and in February served as a staging ground for the war in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky may be used to addressing politicians from around the world, but on Friday he made a more unusual appearance: Speaking in a recorded message, the Ukrainian president called on revelers at Britain’s largest music festival to “spread the truth about Russia’s war.”

The five-day Glastonbury Festival, which was paused for two years because of the pandemic, resumed Wednesday, with more than 200,000 fans expected to come to watch stars including Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar.

“We in Ukraine would also like to live the life as we used to and enjoy freedom and this wonderful summer,” Zelensky said in his video address, which was played before rock band the Libertines stepped onstage. “But we cannot do that because the most terrible has happened. Russia has stolen our peace.”

“Glastonbury is the greatest concentration of freedom these days, and I ask you to share this feeling with everyone whose freedom is under attack,” Zelensky continued, urging festivalgoers to help Ukrainian refugees, donate money and put pressure on their politicians.

“Time is priceless and every day is measured in human lives,” he said.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned Friday that conditions have become “untenable” at the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, which Russian forces took over in March.

“We are informed that Ukrainian staff are operating the facility under extremely stressful conditions while the site is under the control of Russian armed forces. The recent reports are very troubling and further deepen my concern about the well-being of personnel there,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in a statement.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant, one of Ukraine’s four nuclear-power stations, in early March, after a projectile set a part of the plant ablaze, triggering global alarm. Russian troops cut off internet access and some mobile networks around the site, and they took control of the plant’s operations.

Grossi has been trying to organize an IAEA-led international mission to check on safety and security at the plant. The agency was able to work with the plant’s operator to restore remote transmission of data on safeguards to IAEA headquarters after that communication was interrupted for nearly two weeks. But some “essential nuclear material verification” cannot be done remotely, the statement said.

“This week, I dispatched safeguards inspectors to Ukraine to conduct essential verification activities at the South Ukraine NPP. Unless I am able to do the same for the Zaporizhzhya NPP as soon as possible, the implementation of safeguards in Ukraine will be compromised,” Grossi said, using an alternative spelling for the plant.

Grossi said last month that there had been no release of radiation from the Zaporizhzhia plant from the fire there in early March, “but we cannot rely on this good fortune to continue.”

The history of the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl has loomed large since the Russian invasion, with international regulatory bodies and scientists concerned that the fighting could cause another nuclear accident in Ukraine.

BERLIN — Top world officials met in the German capital Friday to urge swift global action in the face of a mounting food crisis, as the war in Ukraine worsens conditions that have pushed millions of people into hunger.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio, for a summit aimed at finding solutions to the crisis, which the United Nations says has made nearly 200 million people acutely food insecure.

Officials have described a slow-building confluence of climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and a spate of global conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, a major grain exporter whose crops are a key source of food for countries including Egypt and Lebanon.

U.S. officials at the summit stressed the need to compensate for the dramatic reduction in grain exports from Ukraine, which before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion exported some 6 million tons of grain a month by sea.

Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports has left millions of tons of grain stuck in silos. Russian forces have also bombed grain silos and ports. Around the world, prices for many basic commodities and agricultural inputs have soared.

Russia, also a major exporter, has been blaming Western sanctions for growing hunger in Africa and elsewhere. Group of Seven leaders hit back Friday, saying in a statement that sanctions “include exemptions to allow Russian food and agricultural products to get to global markets.”

“This narrative that Russia has been pushing out that somehow our sanctions are contributing to food scarcity, that is entirely wrong, and it is Russia’s aggression against Ukraine that exacerbated what was already a terrible preexisting condition,” Blinken said at a news conference after the summit.

Earlier Friday, Baerbock accused Russia of “waging a cynical grain war.”

While the meeting was not intended to solicit new donations for countries in need, some fresh funding from the world’s leading economic powers may come this weekend, when the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will host President Biden and other leaders of the G-7 bloc of nations in the Bavarian Alps.

Though the effects of the Ukraine conflict have focused attention on mounting hunger, experts say that food security has been eroding for years, driven in part by a global food supply chain that is increasingly concentrated and vulnerable to disruption.

5 countries hit hard by the grain crisis in Ukraine

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned of a coming worldwide “catastrophe,” calling the global hunger crisis “unprecedented.”

“This year’s food access issues could become next year’s global food shortage,” he said, the Associated Press reported. “No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of such a catastrophe.”

Officials are trying to help Ukraine get its crops out by land, but so far that has provided only a fraction of that trade. “It’s virtually impossible to balance out the closing of the sea ports,” said Martin Frick, director of the U.N. World Food Program’s (WFP) global office in Berlin.

Officials describe a host of additional challenges, including persuading countries to drop export controls and convincing companies that ship and insure commodity transport to get Russian grain and fertilizer onto the world market. Many companies have been reluctant to do so because of sanctions on Russia, despite the fact that the sanctions don’t cover trade in food, a concern officials describe as “over-compliance.”

WFP officials say they need $22 billion this year to deal with emergency food needs but expect that they might be able to raise just half that.