A Deadly Strike in Eastern Ukraine Signals Russia’s Wider Ambitions

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CHASIV YAR, Ukraine — Soldiers and emergency crews combed the rubble of a bombed apartment complex throughout the day on Sunday in a desperate search for survivors after a deadly Russian airstrike in the eastern village of Chasiv Yar, a dozen miles from the front line.

A sixth survivor was pulled from the rubble Sunday evening, almost 24 hours after the rockets hit, but Ukrainian officials said at least 15 people had been killed and a number of other people could still be trapped beneath the debris.

“There are 15 names in the list of the dead and, unfortunately, this is not the final number,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram on Sunday night. He added, “Everyone who gives orders for such strikes, everyone who carries them out targeting our ordinary cities, residential areas, kills absolutely deliberately.”

The war is intensifying in Donetsk Province, with a string of towns and villages coming under bombardment in the last week as Russian troops turn their firepower farther west after seizing control of the last city under Ukrainian control in neighboring Luhansk Province. The attacks often seem random and without purpose, but taken as a whole they make clear that Russia’s next aim is to capture another slice of Donetsk.

Even as the Russian military command announced an operational pause, its forces have bombarded the five main towns and cities in this region — Bakhmut, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka — as well as surrounding villages in varying degrees.

Four rockets slammed into the town of Druzhkivka just after dawn on Saturday, shaking the city, smashing windows and damaging a shopping center and other public buildings, but causing no casualties. The neighboring town of Kostiantynivka came under two cluster-bomb attacks on Saturday afternoon, and in the evening at around 9 p.m. rockets slammed into the apartment complex in the village of Chasiv Yar.

In Druzhkivka, Ukrainian soldiers bunked down in a sports hall may have been the target, but soldiers said it was not hit and they had escaped injury. Police officers inspecting the bomb sites said the rockets were not precision-guided munitions and so pinpointing the target was impossible. Two landed in parks and one in the forecourt of a shopping center.

“It will not break Donbas,” said Yevgeny, 45, an I.T. programmer who was retrieving his car covered in dust but undamaged from a rented garage.

But many of the residents of these towns have come from settlements farther east, already displaced by the war that has been raging since 2014, and say they recognize the signs of strengthening attacks.

“It’s just the beginning,” said Lyudmyla, 61, her face pale from shock as she stared at damage to the cultural center in Druzhkivka, near one of the parks that was hit.

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine — The young man had been trapped for more than 20 hours, pinned under the rubble of his devastated apartment complex in the eastern Ukraine village of Chasiv Yar.

He emerged from the wreckage on Sunday evening, pulled out by rescuers who quickly covered his dust-covered body with a blue blanket before gently placing him on a stretcher.

The man — whose rescue was captured in a video filmed by Ukraine’s military and shared with The New York Times — was the sixth person dug out alive during a grim search-and-rescue operation that began after a Russian airstrike hit the complex late Saturday night, shearing off part of the building.

Soldiers and emergency crews had already combed the rubble overnight and throughout the day on Sunday, finding at least 26 bodies.

Ukraine’s military condemned the attack as “another act of terrorism,” saying in a statement that Russia had used multiple rocket launchers in the strike, which caused the building to collapse.

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The attack, a dozen miles from the front line, was a grim reminder that the war is intensifying in Donetsk Province, with a string of towns and villages coming under deadly bombardment in the last week.

On Sunday, one resident of Chasiv Yar watched the rescue operation, as machines pulled away concrete slabs and emergency workers flung bricks aside.

“My grandmother was here,” he said. “That’s her bed,” he said pointing to the pile of rubble. “I hope they will find her and I can give her a funeral.”

And emergency crews did keep at the arduous task, finding a bit of success in late day amid the despair. By late Sunday videos posted to Telegram by Ukraine’s emergency services and online by state media showed rescuers clambering on a mountain of debris, then falling quiet as they knelt in the wreckage.

“Alive?” one calls out. “Give us a sound.” The video then shows several emergency workers gathered around a small gap in another area of the rubble, some extending their hands.

Then the young man’s head poked out, and soon he was freed, wide-eyed and seemingly alert. With him safely on a stretcher, the rescuers picked their way through the pile to a waiting ambulance.

And so as evening fell, the search continued. Estimates varied but a number of people were still thought to be trapped in the wreckage. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the death toll would rise.

For the moment, emergency service officials said, there was still some hope.

Russian forces on Sunday conducted attacks on the Kharkiv region of northeast Ukraine, where Russia has unveiled a new flag that could indicate it plans to annex the parts of the industrial province it now occupies.

In the city of Kharkiv, volunteers swept up glass shards at a school hit by a rocket in the Slobidsky district early on Sunday. Video taken by a volunteer showed shattered windows, collapsed ceilings and twisted metal on the ground. Pink paper hearts still decorated a blackboard in one of the classrooms, empty for the summer holiday.

It was one of two rocket attacks to hit the city early Sunday, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s office said.

The target of the attack that struck the school was unclear; a nearby police station remained untouched. School is out of session for the summer.

The commander of the largest group of foreign recruits fighting with the Ukrainian army said he believed Russia deliberately attacked the school to try to panic civilians. About half of the population of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city, has already left.

“They are trying to spread panic among the people — that is the way Russia fights,” said Mamuka Mamulashvili, commander of the Georgian Legion.

Mr. Mamulashvili said reports from Russia’s Defense Ministry that it had hit two bases of foreign fighters near Dementiivka, between the city of Kharkiv and the Russian border, on Saturday were untrue. The head of Kharkiv’s regional military administration said Ukrainian forces had repelled a Russian assault in the same location.

Mr. Mamulashvili said Russia was preparing to launch bigger attacks on Kharkiv. “We have information that they are getting ready for missile attacks and artillery attacks and we are from our side getting ready too,” he said.

Ukrainian officials estimate that Russia occupies about 30 percent of the Kharkiv region. Four days ago, Russia established a civilian administration in the border areas of Kharkiv province that it now controls, unveiling a flag which the state news agency Tass said “symbolizes historical links of the Kharkiv region with the traditions” of Russia.

The Institute for the Study of War said the local occupation government’s description of the flag, which has the Russian double-headed eagle and 18th century imagery, as a “symbol of the historical roots of Kharkiv Oblast as an inalienable part of Russian land,” was an indication that the Kremlin intends to annex the territory rather than declare it a pro-Russian republic.

Borys Shelahurov, Maria Varenikova and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

CHICAGO — Brittney Griner’s fellow W.N.B.A. players honored her during the league’s All-Star Game in Chicago on Sunday, wearing jerseys bearing her name and number for the second half.

Griner, who had played for the Phoenix Mercury since 2013, has been detained in Russia on drug charges since February. On Sunday, with Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, seated at courtside, the All-Stars lined up after halftime in matching No. 42 jerseys with “Griner” on the back.

Several players hugged Cherelle Griner, who said during the ESPN broadcast that she was grateful they had not forgotten her wife.

A’ja Wilson, a Las Vegas Aces forward who was one of the team captains, said wearing the jerseys was “a statement in itself.”

“We are not going to stop until everyone understands how serious this really is,” she said.

Griner, a seven-time All-Star who won a championship with the Mercury in 2014 and has two Olympic gold medals, was also named an honorary starter for the game by the league.

Griner had been in Russia to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional team, when she was accused of having hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow. Last week, she pleaded guilty to the drug charges, but she has not been convicted formally. She faces up to 10 years in a penal colony.

The U.S. State Department has said that Griner was “wrongfully detained” and that it would work to secure her release.

Dozens of W.N.B.A. players also compete for international teams, often earning significantly more overseas than they do in the W.N.B.A. But Griner’s detention has highlighted a potential danger of doing so.

On Sunday, the W.N.B.A. commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, said at a news conference that Griner’s situation had affected players’ decisions about international play. Several players who usually compete in Russia have signed with teams in other countries for the coming off-season.

“We’re not going to say you can’t go play overseas,” Engelbert said.

W.N.B.A. players are free to play overseas, but can be fined for showing up late to training camp or the start of the season — a common occurrence because of the international schedule. Starting next year, players can be barred from league competition if they are not back for the beginning of the W.N.B.A. season.

The league and teams also offer incentives to encourage players to stay in the United States, such as marketing deals and bonuses. Engelbert said the league planned to spend $1.5 million on player marketing deals this cycle, an increase of several hundred thousand dollars over the last cycle.

Hummus long ago surpassed its roots as a Middle Eastern staple to become a familiar treat around the globe. Now the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have the creamy, chickpea-based dish in short supply.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world’s biggest exporters of chickpeas — Russia alone accounts for roughly a quarter of the global chickpea trade — and the supply of the legume may be reduced by as much as 20 percent this year, according to an estimate by the Global Pulse Confederation.

The fighting in Ukraine as well as the economic sanctions levied against Russia are the biggest disrupters of the flow of chickpeas, according to the industry group, which represents growers and traders of pulses, the dried seeds of legumes including peas, beans and lentils. Rising freight prices, which have been driven in part by higher oil costs, are another problem.

“Globally, chickpea prices may rise by 15 to 20 percent — the same value as the fall of the supply,” said Navneet Singh Chhabra, an analyst at the trade association and the director of Shree Sheela International, a global chickpea trader.

Russia is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of chickpeas, producing about 250,000 tons of chickpeas a year. But economic sanctions are limiting the ways its growers can get chickpeas out of the country, Mr. Chhabra said.

The problem is different in Ukraine: Much of its crop is usually planted in Kharkiv Province, where fighting has hampered planting. Ukraine usually produces between 30,000 and 50,000 tons of chickpeas a year, but will produce a maximum of 5,000 tons this year, Mr. Chhabra estimated.

Russia is an important supplier of a smaller variety, called Kabuli chickpeas, that is particularly preferred for hummus, Mr. Chhabra said.

Russia’s biggest export markets are Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and India, and demand from those markets will cause ripples around the world, he said.

“The South Asian market will buy whichever chickpea is cheaper, but in the Middle East and in the U.S., there is a strong preference for the smaller, smoother Kabuli chickpea, because that is what makes the best, wrinkle-free hummus,” Mr. Chhabra said. “And Russia exports the best and the biggest amount of Kabuli chickpeas to the world.”

Canada’s government said it would permit the return of a turbine to Germany that’s needed to operate a key Russian pipeline, a step intended to help Berlin ease a natural-gas shortage that has sent prices soaring but one that was taken over the objections of Ukraine.

The turbine had been sent to Canada for repairs, but its return had been held up by sanctions against Russia.

Russia last month slashed natural gas flows through the pipeline, Nord Stream 1, which connects Germany’s northern coast with Russian gas fields, saying Canada had not returned the turbine “in due time.” Siemens Energy, the Munich-based maker of the turbine, largely confirmed a statement from Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, that the turbine was essential to providing the amount of gas normally sent to Germany.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy and Russia’s biggest European gas customer, has for years relied on Russia for most of its gas. It quickly shelved plans for another Russian gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February, but it continues to buy Russian natural gas.

Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, had been working to get the turbine returned — even making a public appeal — and had warned that the country was in a “gas crisis” that could worsen in coming months.

Canada’s minister of natural resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, said in a statement Saturday that his government would grant “a time-limited and revocable” permit to allow for the turbine’s return to Germany.

He said the decision to effectively exempt the turbine from sanctions was taken after discussing the matter with allies, and was intended to support Europe’s access to “reliable and affordable energy as they continue to transition away from Russian oil and gas.”

“Absent a necessary supply of natural gas, the German economy will suffer very significant hardship,” he said in a statement.

Ukraine’s government called on Canada to reconsider the decision, saying in a statement that it amounted to changing sanction terms to suit “the whims of Russia” and predicting “it will strengthen Moscow’s sense of impunity.” The chief executive of Ukraine’s national gas monopoly told state media on Sunday that the decision set a “very bad precedent.”

Wilkinson said in his statement that Canada was “unwavering” in its determination to continue punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The Nord Steam 1 pipeline is scheduled to be shut down for 10 days starting Monday for annual maintenance. The dispute over the turbine had raised fears that it might remain offline for longer.

Lviv Dispatch

LVIV, Ukraine — The tiny wail of newborn babies echoes out from the incubators and cribs lining a small room with mint green walls in a maternity hospital in Lviv.

Twenty-seven years ago, Liliya Myronovych, the chief pediatrician in the neonatal department, delivered a baby boy, Artemiy Dymyd, here. Last week, she watched out the front window as his funeral was held in the cemetery across the road, the dirge of the military band mingling with the cries of the newborns.

“It was my boy,” said Dr. Myronovych, 64, said of Mr. Dymyd, who was killed in the fighting in eastern Ukraine in mid-June. “It was my baby.”

Dissonant images of life and death play out side by side in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. They can be stark, as when babies are born steps away from the now overflowing military cemetery where Ukraine’s young soldiers are laid to rest.

But they can also be subtle.

At the front of the maternity hospital, windows decorated with paper storks are also covered in masking tape to prevent them from shattering in an explosion.

The air raid sirens that once sent Lviv’s residents scrambling into basements no longer cause the same level of alarm as they did in February and March — though anxiety was heightened last week when a barrage of missiles was unleashed from Belarusian airspace within striking distance of the city.

Lviv has remained relatively peaceful, becoming a hub for humanitarian aid and a place of refuge for those fleeing the fighting in the east. Yet death still comes, evident in the steady stream of fallen soldiers whose funerals are held here, sometimes several times in one day.

The funerals overtake the daily rhythms of city life. Trams stop. Bus passengers wipe tears from their eyes.

“Every time we say goodbye to them as if it is the first time,” said Khrystyna Kutzir, 35, who stood on a Lviv street one afternoon in late June, waiting for the passage of the latest funeral along the route to the military cemetery.

WASHINGTON — Relief at the gas pump coupled with this past week’s news that businesses continue to hire at a blistering clip have tempered many economists’ fears that America is heading into a downturn.

But while President Biden’s top aides are celebrating those economic developments, they are also worried the economy could be in for another serious shock later this year, one that could send the country into a debilitating recession.

White House officials fear a new round of European penalties aimed at curbing the flow of Russian oil by year-end could send energy prices soaring anew, slamming already beleaguered consumers and plunging the United States and other economies into a severe contraction. That chain of events could exacerbate what is already a severe food crisis plaguing countries across the world.

To prevent that outcome, U.S. officials have latched on to a never-before-tried plan aimed at depressing global oil prices — one that would complement European sanctions and allow critical flows of Russian crude onto global markets to continue but at a steeply discounted price.

It is a novel and untested effort to force Russia to sell its oil to the world at a steep discount. Administration officials and Mr. Biden say the goal is twofold: to starve Moscow’s oil-rich war machine of funding and to relieve pressure on energy consumers around the world who are facing rising fuel prices.

Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, fired his ambassador to Germany, a week after the diplomat gave an interview in which he defended the legacy of a World War II nationalist leader who collaborated with the Nazis.

Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany since 2014, was one of the most recognized faces of the Ukrainian cause in Germany, never shying away from leveling fierce criticism of what many saw as Germany’s slow response to the Russian invasion and often provoking the ire of the country’s political elite.

But in an interview on the show Jung & Naiv, which streamed on YouTube on June 29, Mr. Melnyk defended the memory of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during World War II. The nationalist group, which espoused fascist ideology, collaborated with German forces when they occupied Ukraine and some of those forces assisted in the mass murders of Poles and Jews.

Mr. Bandera was not directly involved in the killings, because he was arrested in Ukraine in 1941 and placed in “honorable internment” by the Nazis in a concentration camp outside Berlin for trying to establish an independent Ukraine. Assassinated by Soviet spies in Munich in 1959, Mr. Bandera is still revered by a part of the Ukrainian population for his leadership of the nationalist cause, particularly in the west, where there are statues of Mr. Bandera and streets named after him.

But in Germany, which prides itself on its commitment to acknowledging Nazi crimes and commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, questioning that chapter in history is a red line.

Mr. Melnyk already raised eyebrows in Germany several years earlier for visiting Mr. Bandera’s grave in Munich. When confronted in the June 29 interview about the history of the OUN’s role in massacres, and Mr. Bandera’s anti-Semitic views, Mr. Melnyk said there was no proof for the claims, which are undisputed in academic circles.

“That is the narrative that the Russians are pushing to this day, and that has support in Germany, in Poland, and also in Israel,” he said.

Mr. Melnyk’s comments immediately stirred condemnation from German officials, as well as from Israel’s embassy in Germany. Two ministers in Poland, one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters since the Russian invasion, also decried the statements. That prompted Kyiv to distance itself from Mr. Melnyk, saying his views did not represent Ukraine’s position.

A fluent German speaker, Mr. Melnyk was known in Germany for his passionate advocacy for more weapons for Ukraine to defend itself against the Russian invasion. He did not shy away from colorful criticism, such as calling Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “insulted liverwurst” for delaying a visit to Kyiv in the spring. The German expression, which loosely translates into being a prima donna, outraged much of Germany’s political establishment. But it won him avid supporters in Germany among those frustrated with their country’s sluggish support.

Despite the frequent controversies stirred by Mr. Melnyk’s comments, he had been seen as an asset to raising attention to Ukraine in a country where pacifist leanings within the political establishment have led to hesitancy in supplying weapons.

Mr. Zelensky announced Mr. Melnyk's dismissal along with that of the ambassadors of India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary. Mr. Zelensky later called the change a rotation that is part of normal diplomatic practice.

KYIV, Ukraine — A huge explosion in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine jolted residents awake on Saturday morning and sent up a plume of thick smoke as Ukrainian forces continued to pound Russian positions in the area in expectation of a possible offensive to take back occupied territory, officials said.

It was not immediately clear what the target was. But Serhii Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa military administration, said the explosion had occurred near the airport in the town of Chornobaivka, “where the Russians usually huddle around their equipment.”

Video sent to The New York Times from a local resident shows a plume of gray smoke rising miles into the sky, along with the flashes and bangs from numerous explosions.

As Ukrainian forces have lost ground in the eastern Donbas region, they appear to be intensifying their efforts in the south, particularly in the Kherson region, a lush agricultural area bracketing the Dnipro River that was the first to fall to Russian troops after the war began on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian artillery units have made a particular focus of trying to strike at Russian ammunition and equipment depots, though they have also targeted concentrations of Russian soldiers.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials have characterized the fighting in the south as chipping away at Russian positions and taking back some territory, though the progress has been slow. While Ukrainian officials have refrained from discussing details, there are signs that the military could be preparing to start some kind of offensive in the region.

On Friday evening, Iryna Vereshchuk, a deputy prime minister of Ukraine, urged residents of the Kherson region to evacuate — even if that meant fleeing temporarily to Russia.

“You need to find a way to leave, because our armed forces are coming to de-occupy,” she said on Ukrainian television. “There will be a massive fight. I do not want to scare you, but I want you to understand.”

Four Russian veterans of the war in Ukraine recently published short videos online to complain about what they called their shabby treatment after returning to the Russian region of Chechnya, after six weeks on the battlefield.

One claimed to have been denied a promised payment of nearly $2,000. Another grumbled that a local hospital declined to remove shrapnel lodged in his body.

Their public pleas for help got results, but not the kind they were hoping for. Instead, an aide to Ramzan Kadyrov, the autocrat who runs Chechnya, berated them at length on television as ingrates and forced them to recant. “I was paid much more than they promised,” said Nikolai Lipa, the young Russian who had claimed that he had been cheated.

Ordinarily, these sort of complaints might be ignored, but the swift rebuke underscores how Russian officials want to stamp out any criticism about military service in Ukraine. They need more soldiers, desperately, and are already using what some analysts call a ‘‘stealth mobilization’’ to bring in new recruits without resorting to a politically risky national draft.

To make up the manpower shortfall, the Kremlin is relying on a combination of impoverished ethnic minorities, Ukrainians from the separatist territories, mercenaries and militarized National Guard units to fight the war, and promising hefty cash incentives for volunteers.

“Russia has a problem with recruitment and mobilization,” said Kamil Galeev, an independent Russian analyst and former fellow at The Wilson Center in Washington. “It is basically desperate to get more men using any means possible.”

As President Vladimir V. Putin warns that Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine has barely begun, attacks on three fronts this weekend suggest that — after suffering major setbacks early in its war — Moscow’s appetite for the conflict remains undiminished.

In parts of the northeast it has seized, in Kharkiv Province near its border, Russia has moved to reinforce control. In the east, it conducted a series of attacks, while farther south it was forced to defend its positions.

In the wake of its failure to seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, at the start of the war, Russia has used its superior firepower to gain ground in the eastern Donbas region. The final city in Luhansk Province fell to Russian forces this month, and Russia is believed to be taking time to rotate in fresh troops.

But its forces have nonetheless escalated strikes on Donetsk Province. At least five urban centers in Donetsk have come under fire since Saturday. Mr. Putin told Russia’s Parliament last week: “We haven’t started anything yet.”

Rescue workers scrambled on Sunday and into Monday to pull survivors from the wreckage of a five-story residential block in the eastern village of Chasiv Yar, in Donetsk, that was targeted by Russian missiles. Thirty people were killed and nine people had been rescued.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a speech on Saturday that he hopes that an influx of weapons supplied by the West — including $400 million in military aid announced by the Biden administration on Friday — would help redress its disadvantage and “reduce Russian attack capabilities.”

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While the war has shattered civilian lives, it has also reconfigured geopolitics, leaving Russia isolated, giving NATO a fresh sense of purpose and prompting the United States and European nations to issue sanctions.

In an effort to expand the coalition willing to punish Moscow, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken urged China’s foreign minister at the end of a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia to join the United States and its partners in NATO and the West to “stand up” against Russia’s war.

While Ukraine is Europe’s largest country, recent fighting has focused on a crescent-shaped slice of the country’s east running from the second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the northeast, through Donbas to southern cities such as Mariupol and Kherson, both of which are now in Russian hands.

Moscow, which seized Crimea in 2014, already controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, and it aims to annex the territory it has seized since the war began. Last week, Russia established a civilian administration in the parts of Kharkiv Province that it now controls, unveiling a flag that the state news agency Tass said “symbolizes historical links” between the region and Russia.

In the south, in Kherson Province, Ukrainian forces appear to be intensifying their efforts to strike at Russian ammunition and equipment depots as well as at concentrations of Russian soldiers. A huge explosion in the region on Saturday morning sent up a plume of thick smoke as Ukrainian forces continued to pound Russian positions in the area in expectation of a possible counteroffensive to take back occupied territory, officials said.