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22 June 2022

Ukraine News: Kremlin Calls 2 Captured Americans ‘Soldiers of Fortune’


The Kremlin’s chief spokesman told NBC News on Monday that two American fighters who went missing in Ukraine, Alex Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, were “soldiers of fortune,” and had been taken into custody. The spokesman also claimed that the two men were not protected by the Geneva Conventions as prisoners of war.

In the first comments the Kremlin has made about the two men, the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that they had been involved in shelling and firing on Russian forces and should be “held responsible for the crimes they have committed.” He said they were being held while their case was investigated.

The U.S. State Department released a statement urging Moscow and the authorities in Russian-occupied Ukraine to abide by international law. “We call on the Russian government — as well as its proxies — to live up to their international obligations in their treatment of any individual, including those captured fighting in Ukraine,” the statement from the State Department press office said.

Representatives of the men’s families said on Monday that they were not surprised by the Kremlin’s stance, but they argued vehemently that Mr. Drueke and Mr. Huynh should be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

“They are not soldiers of fortune, they are not mercenaries, they were volunteers in the Ukrainian military and they should be treated as lawful combatants,” Darla Black, the mother of Mr. Huynh’s fiancée, Joy Black, said by phone. “They are prisoners of war.”

Mr. Drueke’s aunt, Dianna Shaw, suggested that calling the men mercenaries was a strategic move by Moscow. “They are trying to position themselves in a favorable light as negotiations continue,” she said.

The families of the men reported them missing last week, and on Saturday the State Department described them as “reportedly captured by Russia’s military forces in Ukraine.” Both are U.S. military veterans who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.

The two were fighting with a small group of foreign soldiers and went missing in action when their platoon came under heavy fire in a village near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is about 25 miles from the Russian border.

Under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war must be treated humanely and are protected from prosecution for taking part in hostilities. The only exception is prosecutions on war crimes charges.

But Mr. Peskov said the men were not part of the Ukrainian army and so were not entitled to Geneva Convention protections granted to combatants. Mr. Drueke is a former U.S. Army staff sergeant who served two tours in Iraq, while Mr. Huynh is a former Marine.

The case of the two men has underlined the perils facing thousands of foreign volunteers who have gone to fight in Ukraine. Earlier this month, a court in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine sentenced three foreign fighters to death, accusing the men, from Britain and Morocco, of being mercenaries who intended to carry out terrorist acts. Legal experts said the trial and draconian sentences appeared calculated as a warning to foreign volunteers not to take up arms against Russia.

The State Department said on Saturday that it had reviewed photos and videos online that appeared to show the two Americans, although it declined to comment on the authenticity of the images or on the men’s conditions.

American officials were in contact with the men’s families, the Ukrainian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross, a State Department spokesman said.

On Friday, short videos purporting to show the two men were posted on YouTube in which they each said in Russian, “I am against war.” It was unclear when the videos were recorded or by whom.

Then the Russian state broadcaster RT said it had interviewed the men. The broadcaster reported that the two men had surrendered to Russian troops and were at a detention center controlled by Russian-allied forces.

Russian authorities on Monday threatened Lithuania, a member of NATO, with retaliation if the Baltic country does not swiftly reverse its ban on the transportation of some goods to Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad by rail.

Citing instructions from the European Union, Lithuania’s railway on Friday said it was halting the movement of goods from Russia that have been sanctioned by the European bloc.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters the situation was “more than serious.” He called the new restrictions “an element of a blockade” of the region and a “violation of everything.”

Accustomed to Russian threats, officials in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, took Moscow’s warnings as mostly bluster — the latest in a series of increasingly intemperate statements by a country that is severely stretched militarily by its invasion of Ukraine.

“We are not particularly worried about Russian threats,” said Laurynas Kasciunas, chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament’s national security and defense committee. “The Kremlin has very few options for how to retaliate.”

A military response by Russia, he added, “is highly unlikely because Lithuania is a member of NATO. If this were not the case, they probably would consider it.”

Russia’s fury at Lithuania followed a warning earlier on Monday by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that Moscow would initiate “greater hostile activity” against Ukraine and European countries in the coming days in response to his nation’s efforts to join the European Union.

Up to 50 percent of all rail cargo shipped between mainland Russia and Kaliningrad — which Russian officials said includes construction materials, concrete and metals among other items — will be affected by the ban announced last week. The restrictions exposed the acute vulnerability of the region, which is part of Russia but not connected to the rest of the country. It borders the Baltic Sea, but is sandwiched between two NATO members, Lithuania and Poland.

Kaliningrad, which the Soviet army seized from Germany in 1945, was once touted by Russia as a symbol of its growing ties with the Europe. But it has lately become a volatile East-West fault line.

In the 1990s, Russian authorities promoted Kaliningrad’s past ties to Germany as a tourist draw, celebrating its role in the life and work of the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was born and lived in Konigsburg, the regional capital now named Kaliningrad.

More recently, however, Moscow has sought to wipe out traces of Germany’s deep historical ties to the region — even though Germany makes no claim to Kaliningrad and has shown no interest in getting it back, a sharp contrast with Russia’s views of former Soviet territory, including Ukraine.

Gripped by increasingly aggressive nationalism, Russia has ditched policies that promoted Russia as part of Europe and moved advanced Iskander missiles into Kaliningrad. Lithuania’s defense minister said in April that Russia has stationed nuclear weapons in the region, which Moscow denies.

Russia’s foreign ministry summoned Lithuania’s top envoy on Monday over what it called “openly hostile” restrictions.

“If cargo transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the Russian Federation via Lithuania is not fully restored in the near future, then Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests,” the ministry said in a statement.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis defended the restrictions on shipments to Kaliningrad, saying that his country was only fulfilling the terms of E.U. sanctions.

“It is not Lithuania doing anything, it is European sanctions that started working,” he told reporters in Luxembourg on Monday before a meeting of European foreign ministers.

Аnton Alikhanov, the governor of Kaliningrad, said his government was already working to find alternative routes for cargo shipments, in particular those containing metals and construction materials. He said one option could be moving cargo by sea, which would require up to seven ships to fill the demand before the end of the year.

He added that the local government was considering at least three retaliatory options to propose to the Kremlin, including a possible ban on the shipment of goods to Lithuanian ports via Russia.

Russia’s relations with Lithuania, formerly part of the Soviet Union, have never been close but unraveled dramatically in recent months as Lithuania took a leading role pushing for tough European Union sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Just two weeks ago, a member of Russia’s parliament from Mr. Putin’s United Russia party submitted a draft law declaring Lithuania’s 1990 declaration of independence illegal. The bill aims to reverse the dissolution of the Soviet Union, something that Mr. Putin has lamented as “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”

But, as the halting progress of Russian troops in Ukraine has shown, there is a yawning gap between Mr. Putin’s desire to roll back history and his country’s capabilities. Any military action against Lithuania would bring Russia’s already battered military into direct confrontation with NATO.

The Black Sea blockade that is preventing Ukraine from exporting food and other goods is a “war crime” and Russia will be held accountable if it continues, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said on Monday.

Ukraine was a major exporter of grain, cooking oil and fertilizer before the Russian invasion in February, but the blockade — along with Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian farmland and its destruction of agricultural infrastructure — have caused Ukraine’s exports to collapse. The latest blow came Monday, when Ukrainian regional authorities said that a Russian missile strike in Odesa had burned down a food logistics warehouse.

The drop in exports has contributed to a spike in global food prices, exacerbated by rising demand as the world economy emerges from the pandemic. The United Nations has warned of hunger or even famine in some countries as a result, particularly in Africa.

“You cannot use the hunger of people as a weapon of war,” Mr. Borrell said after arriving in Luxembourg for a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers. “Millions of tons of wheat remain blocked in Ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering hunger. This is a real war crime, so I cannot imagine that this will last much longer.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made the same point in a remote address to the African Union on Monday. Moscow has deep ties to many African countries, which have been reluctant to criticize the invasion.

“If it was not for the Russian war against Ukraine, there simply would be no shortage in the food market,” Mr. Zelensky said. “If it was not for the Russian war, our farmers and agricultural companies could have ensured record harvests this year.”

Moscow’s naval dominance of the Black Sea, however, gives it significant diplomatic leverage. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has said he will lift the blockade if sanctions, imposed by Western and other governments because of the war, are removed.

The European Union, the United States and others are working on improving land routes for Ukraine exports, but Mr. Zelensky said that a “much smaller volume can be supplied via new routes, and it takes much more time.”

“We are holding complex multilevel negotiations to unblock our Ukrainian ports,” he told the African Union. “But you see that there is no progress yet because no real tool has yet been found to ensure that Russia does not attack them again.”

Ukraine has struck three Russian drilling rigs in the northwestern Black Sea, a Russian official said on Monday.

The Russian state news agency Tass reported that the leader of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, said the strikes had hit natural gas rigs belonging to Chernomorneftegaz, the breakaway Crimean arm of Ukraine’s national gas company. He later said that gas supplies were not affected by the strike.

“So far, gas is being supplied as usual,” Mr. Aksyonov told Rossiya-24 TV channel, according to Tass. “There are no risks whatsoever to Crimea’s gas supply.”

It was not clear what weapons Ukraine would have used to hit the rigs, which were more than 40 miles from Ukrainian-controlled shores, but it has demonstrated before that it can strike targets even farther at sea. In April, Ukrainian missiles sank the Russian cruiser Moskva about 65 miles offshore.

There was no immediate confirmation of the strikes from Ukraine’s military. The head of Odesa’s regional military, however, called the platform a valid military target, noting that it had been “stolen” by the Russians in 2014.

“Karma, what a thing,” he wrote on Telegram.

There were 109 employees on the rigs, Mr. Aksyonov was quoted as saying. He said that 21 had been evacuated and that the search for the rest continued.

Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 gave it not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size, with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars — namely vast oil and gas reserves.

DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — A small town has become a flash point in the country’s struggle to defend a slowly shrinking pocket around two strategically important cities that stand between Russia and its control of more of eastern Ukraine.

Reports came in over the weekend that Russian forces had broken through the Ukrainian front line in Toshkivka, a town about 12 miles southeast of the metropolitan area of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. It was a troubling development for Ukrainian forces defending a swath of territory roughly 30 miles wide that has come to be known as the Sievierodonetsk pocket — where Ukraine’s leaders say the fate of the country’s Donbas region could be decided.

The pocket is about three-quarters encircled by Russian forces, leaving only a small gap — traversed by a mix of country roads and highways buffeted by artillery fire — where Ukrainian forces can shuttle supplies and troops into Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

The twin cities, at the northernmost edge of the pocket, are the last major population centers in the Luhansk province of Donbas not to have fallen to Russia, as Moscow’s forces intensify their push to seize more of eastern Ukraine.


Sievierodonetsk is almost completely controlled by Russian forces while Lysychansk, which lies on higher ground on the western bank of the Siversky Donets River, is preparing for an all-out assault. On Sunday, Ukrainian troops had dug fresh defenses in parts of Lysychansk and were emplacing destroyed vehicles to create choke points on some roads.

As of Monday afternoon it was still unclear which side held control of Toshkivka. Russian forces claimed to have captured it, with the pro-Moscow leader of Chechnya, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, proclaiming its “liberation” in a post on Telegram, the messaging app. The claim could not be immediately verified.

The small town has served as a key Ukrainian defensive line in the southeastern side of the pocket. If Russian forces control Toshkivka, it would bring them that much closer to Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk — and more important, closer to threatening the Ukrainian supply lines to both cities, leaving thousands of Ukrainian troops at risk of being cut off.

Videos posted online in recent days showed a column of what were apparently Russian tanks advancing into the western edge of Toshkivka. Ukrainian military officials said that they expected the Russians to continue to advance from Toshkivka westward toward the village of Myrna Dolyna, bringing them to within three miles of the edge of Lysychansk.

Ukrainian soldiers on the ground in the Donbas, a region of rolling hills and industrial towns where Toshkivka lies, told The New York Times on Sunday that the town had fallen, despite Ukrainian officials’ assurances that the Russian advance had been thwarted.

Serhiy Haidai, the regional military governor, acknowledged that the Russians had “had success” in the Toshkivka area on Sunday, but added that Ukrainian artillery had halted their advance. Hours before Mr. Haidai’s statement on Telegram, Ukrainian tanks and rocket launchers were seen barreling toward the front line around Toshkivka.

Mr. Haidai also confirmed that Russian forces had seized Metolkine, just east of Sievierodonetsk, after Moscow claimed on Sunday that it controlled the town. He described the situation in the area as “hell” amid a blizzard of Russian shellfire, with battles flaring “in multiple villages” around the two cities.

Kyiv’s battle to hold the Sievierodonetsk pocket centers on a strategy of drawing enemy forces into close urban combat, where tall buildings and cramped streets reduce the impact of the Russians’ overwhelming firepower, and make it harder for Moscow’s forces to call in artillery strikes without hitting their own troops.

But that decision could backfire if Russian forces manage to sever the supply lines into both cities, leaving Ukrainian forces there in a situation reminiscent of the siege of the southeastern city of Mariupol earlier in the war. Those troops would in effect be cut off and subject to capture, and Russia would be able to claim complete control over Luhansk, which forms roughly half of the Donbas.

KYIV, Ukraine — Shelling in and around Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv has grown worse, weeks after Ukrainian fighters pushed Russian forces back from the northeastern city.

“The shelling is intensifying today, and sharply intensifying since last night,” Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said on Ukrainian television on Monday. “Night, morning, day — various districts in the city of Kharkiv are constantly being shelled.”

Ten neighborhoods or villages around the city had been attacked in the past 24 hours, Kharkiv’s head of regional administration, Oleh Synebuhov, said in a Facebook post on Monday. Several people were injured, he wrote, and an elderly man in the village of Tsurkuny, about 10 miles outside of Kharkiv, died when he stepped on a land mine.

“The Russians continue to terrorize the civilian population,” Mr. Synebuhov added.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, warned on Monday that Russia was “trying to gather forces to attack Kharkiv again.”

“We de-occupied this region,” he said in an address to a conference of international policy experts in Italy. “And they want to do it again.”

Last month, the Ukrainian army appeared to have pushed Russian forces back as far as to the border in some parts of the region. But the area around Kharkiv is crucial to Russia’s efforts elsewhere in Ukraine.

The Russian military is using railway lines around Kharkiv to supply troops that appear to be preparing for an assault on the city of Sloviansk, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a research group based in Washington. Military analysts have also said that Russian forces are trying to keep the Ukrainian army occupied along the long front line so that it does not focus all of its energy on the battle for the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk or its counteroffensive in Kherson.

Last week, Amnesty International issued a report accusing Russian forces of launching “a relentless campaign of indiscriminate bombardments against Kharkiv.” In May, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration estimated that 23 percent of the more than eight million Ukrainians who have had to flee to other parts of the country were from the Kharkiv region.

As brutal battles rage in Ukraine, a parallel culture war is underway.

Ukraine’s Parliament on Sunday voted to ban the distribution of Russian books and the playing or performance of Russian music by post-Soviet-era artists.

The National Gallery in London has renamed Degas’s “Russian Dancers” as “Ukrainian dancers,” a salvo against the Russification of Ukrainian culture.

And in Canada, performances by the 20-year-old Russian pianist prodigy Alexander Malofeev, who has publicly condemned the invasion, were canceled in Vancouver and Montreal.

To some, the moves to cancel Russian culture, both high and low, are a fitting show of solidarity with Ukraine. But others counter that Russian artists shouldn’t be blamed for an invasion beyond their control and that ostracizing them only stokes nationalist sentiment in Russia.

“It is profoundly ironic that those who react to the war in Ukraine by aggressively or indiscriminately canceling or restricting artists and artistic works simply for being Russian are reflecting the same kind of nationalist thinking driving the Russian invasion in the first place,” Kevin M.F. Platt, a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a recent opinion essay in The New York Times.

Russian art, music, painting and film, he argued, do not belong to the Kremlin, and Russian artists at home and abroad have long played an important role of resistance in the face of state repression.

In Ukraine, the government has sought to promote the Ukrainian language over Russian and to suppress various forms of Russian artistic expression. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine must still sign the bills passed on Sunday into law, but they have broad support across the political spectrum.

The proposed laws will not ban all Russian media. They only block work by artists who held Russian citizenship after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. One prohibits playing Russian-language music in public, on television and on the radio. It also increases national quotas for Ukrainian-language music and speech on television and radio.

Another bill bans the publishing of books by Russian citizens, unless the authors become citizens of Ukraine. It also blocks books printed in Russia, Belarus or occupied Ukrainian territory from being distributed.

The issue of language is especially sensitive in Ukraine, where researchers estimate about one in every three Ukrainians speaks Russian at home, a legacy of centuries of being dominated by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

In 2019, the government made Ukrainian the mandatory language used in most aspects of public life, including schools. Russia pointed to this law before its invasion to argue that Russian speakers in Ukraine were under attack.

After that law passed, human rights organizations called on Ukraine to protect the rights of minority language speakers. They were again alarmed in January when, under Mr. Zelensky, the government began requiring that print media outlets publish in Ukrainian.

Since the war began, many Russian-speaking Ukrainians — outraged by the invasion — have been switching to Ukrainian in a show of defiance.

Russian cultural and sporting events in Europe and North America also have been canceled and boycotted as part of the global protest against the war. Russia was recently banned, for instance, from the Eurovision Song Contest, the wildly popular singing event that helped launch Celine Dion and Abba.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal removed the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev from its program. And The International Chess Federation, the game’s global governing body, has canceled events in Russia and Belarus.

At the same time, some in the art world have argued that it is imperative to elevate Ukrainian culture at a time when Mr. Putin has justified the invasion by claiming Ukraine and Russia “are one people.” A wartime effort to quickly translate work by Ukrainian novelists, poets and historians is underway to highlight the country’s distinct literary and linguistic heritage.

Ukrainian soldiers at a military depot after it was hit by at least one projectile on Monday night, in the eastern town of Druzhkivka. At least two Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the strike on Druzhkivka, about 20 miles from the front lines.

Finland and Sweden failed to break the deadlock over Turkey’s objections to their bids to join NATO in a meeting Monday with Turkish officials in Brussels, but all sides vowed to keep negotiating about what would be the alliance’s most ambitious expansion in decades.

Spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two Nordic countries last month applied to join NATO, but that move would require unanimous agreement by all 30 member nations. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has threatened to block it, citing Swedish and Finnish support for Kurdish militants whom Turkey sees as terrorists.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, invited senior representatives from the three countries to Brussels on Monday in an attempt to overcome the impasse. They met for more than five hours, focused on security concerns raised by Turkey, NATO officials said.

Petri Hakkarainen, the Finnish representative to the talks, said that although there was clear progress on certain matters, “there is still more to be done” in order to “reach mutual understanding.”

But Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesman for Mr. Erdogan, told reporters in Brussels after the meeting that further progress now depended “on the direction and speed at which these countries will take steps” regarding Ankara’s demands.

Mr. Stoltenberg said the meeting was “constructive” and called Ankara’s objections “legitimate security concerns over terrorism that we need to address,” adding that the talks will continue in the coming days. He said over the weekend that the alliance took seriously the concerns of the Turkish government, but he did not offer details on a possible resolution.

Leaders of NATO countries are set to meet for a high-level summit next week in Madrid.

Turkish resistance to Sweden and Finland joining the alliance has slowed a process that other members have been keen to fast-track, as the West seeks to demonstrate unity in the face of President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, Sedat Onal, told reporters in Brussels, “We do not consider ourselves bound with a deadline.”

The discussions on Monday come as Russia continues to pummel eastern Ukraine with strikes, resulting in mounting losses of life on both sides in a war that Western leaders have warned could last years.

Foreign Minister Ann Linde of Sweden urged patience, telling the Swedish news agency TT, in comments published on Monday: “I hope that the negotiations will go well, but we are also prepared that this is a process that can take a long time.”

In May, President Biden met with President Sauli Niinisto of Finland and Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden at the White House and vowed to speed up their membership. He characterized their inclusion in the alliance as almost a formality, noting that both countries had contributed forces to conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia to become China’s largest source of petroleum last month, as Chinese companies stepped in to buy oil that has fallen under widening sanctions in the West.

China imported 8.4 million metric tons of crude oil from Russia in May, compared with 7.8 million metric tons from Saudi Arabia, according to data released Monday by China’s General Administration of Customs.

The volume of Russia’s crude oil exports to China grew by 28 percent from the previous month, hitting a record level for its trade with China. But Saudi Arabia remained the leader by revenue, taking in $6.3 billion for its crude oil sales to China last month, versus Russia’s $5.7 billion, as sanctions pushed down the price of Russia’s exports.

The United States banned the import of Russian oil in March, and the European Union decided last month to prohibit the vast majority of oil imports from Russia by the end of the year. But China and other nations are free to continue buying from Russia, a key line of support for Moscow as it faces increasing economic isolation.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, declared there were “no limits” to their nations’ friendship just weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. China has remained a key supporter in the months since, with Mr. Xi offering to deepen cooperation in a phone call last week with Mr. Putin.

China has followed Russia’s lead in not calling the invasion of Ukraine a “war,” and has instead referred to it as an “issue” or “conflict.” Beijing also routinely places blame on the United States and NATO for creating an environment that led to the war and for continuing to provide arms to Ukraine, while downplaying Russia’s responsibility.

Still, there appear to be some limits to the support. China’s defense minister said recently that his country had never provided any material support for Russia in Ukraine. And while China has denounced the sanctions against Russia, it has also been careful to avoid violating them.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine warned late Sunday of increased Russian aggression ahead of a European Union decision this week on whether to accept his country as a candidate for inclusion in the bloc.

“Obviously, we should expect greater hostile activity from Russia,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address. “Purposefully, demonstratively. This week exactly.”

Although he did not detail the threats, he said they were aimed not just at Ukraine “but also against other European countries.”

On the battlefield, Russia has moved closer to capturing Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, two key cities in the east of Ukraine that have been pounded for weeks by bombardments and street fighting. Mr. Zelensky said Russia had recently attacked fuel infrastructure and was concentrating forces near Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, and in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.

Beyond Ukraine, Russia’s key role as an energy provider also reverberated across Europe last week, as Germany, Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic all reported reductions in natural gas flows. While Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy company, said the cuts were caused by repairs to a compressor station, they came as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy traveled to Kyiv and expressed support for Ukraine’s E.U. candidacy.

Mr. Zelensky has pushed Ukraine’s bid for E.U. membership, which he applied for after Russia invaded in February. The body’s executive arm, the European Commission, recommended last week that Ukraine be granted candidate status, and European Union leaders will consider that question at a meeting on Thursday and Friday in Brussels.

But the process could take years, and the European Commission’s recommendation was contingent on legal overhauls in Ukraine to clamp down on corruption and protect rights.

Asked by reporters on Monday if he thought Ukraine would become an E.U. member, President Biden said, “I think that’s very likely to happen.”

The Dutch government said on Monday that Russia’s tightening of gas supplies to Europe had prompted it to declare an “early warning” stage of a natural gas crisis, a move that will allow more electric power to be generated by burning coal.

Russia’s actions in recent days — chiefly the reduction of flows by about 60 percent through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany — have markedly darkened the mood in Europe on energy. Governments and industry in Europe are now convinced that Moscow plans to use gas as a political weapon against the largest European economies in the coming months. This means that major European nations, not just a handful like Bulgaria and Poland, are likely to see gas supplies trimmed or cut completely and need to take steps to reduce their vulnerability.

Already gas flows have been cut not only to Germany but to other countries, including Italy and France, analysts and government officials say. The Dutch government said there were as yet “no acute gas shortages” in the Netherlands but that declining supplies “could have consequences.”

“We now see that the total gas supplies from Russia to Europe are declining rapidly,” said the energy and climate minister, Rob Jetten, in a statement. Mr. Jetten said that without taking measures the Netherlands and Europe generally would not be guaranteed to be able to fill up gas storage facilities “sufficiently in preparation for the winter.”
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The industrial port and Nord Stream pipeline, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, in Lubmin, Germany.Credit...Lena Mucha for The New York Times

Most European countries build up gas stocks in the summer when demand is low, in preparation for the winter, when gas consumption soars for heating. Insufficient reserves could lead to higher prices and increase Europe’s vulnerability to Russian blackmail on energy.

The Dutch government said it was taking immediate steps to curb consumption of gas. These include lifting limits on coal-fired electric power stations until 2024. The government also said it would encourage residents and businesses to save gas, including by giving a financial incentive to large industrial users to cut their consumption.

Over the weekend the German government took similar steps with regard to coal, and Austria said it would allow the conversion of a gas-fired power plant to coal.

The Dutch government is resisting some calls to ramp up output at the Groningen gas field, a major provider in the north of the country that officials have scheduled to close because of earthquakes triggered by the extraction of the fuel. The government appears to be trying to keep its options open on Groningen, which is operated by a joint venture owned by Shell and Exxon Mobil.

The government said in its statement that it had decided not to shut “any wells definitively this year” because of what it called “uncertain geopolitical developments.”

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