Russia-Ukraine WarRussia Uses Self-Destructing Drones From Iran in Strikes Near Kyiv

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Russia strikes near Kyiv with ‘kamikaze’ drones supplied by Iran.

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The Russian military detonated self-destructing, Iran-supplied drones at Bila Tserkva, about 50 miles south of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.CreditCredit...Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Russian military flew a dozen self-destructing, Iranian-supplied drones at a town near Kyiv overnight on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the first time such weapons have been used against a target near the Ukrainian capital, which lies hundreds of miles from the front lines.

The flurry of drone strikes highlighted Russia’s growing reliance on so-called kamikaze drones supplied by Iran, which blow up on impact, according to Ukrainian officials.

At least six drones detonated in Bila Tserkva, a town about 50 miles south of Kyiv, Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the regional military administration, said in a post on Telegram. The Ukrainian military said it shot down six others in flight in southern Ukraine.

The Iranian drones first turned up in Ukraine in August in attacks on armored vehicles and artillery in the country’s northeast. In recent weeks, they have emerged as a growing menace on the battlefield, after Tehran began supplying Moscow with the first batch of what is expected to be an order of hundreds of military drones.

Their use in Ukraine marks the first time the weapons have been deployed outside the Middle East, and comes as Moscow finds its arsenal of drones increasingly depleted, with few nations willing to supply it with weapons.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied its drones were deployed in Ukraine. But U.S. and Iranian officials said in August that Iran had delivered to Russia the first batch of its drones, as part of a larger order totaling hundreds of the weapons.

The strikes on Bila Tserkva hit infrastructure, Mr. Kuleba said, without elaborating.

Russia has been targeting electrical power stations, electricity transmission lines, waterworks and other critical infrastructure with long-range weaponry in September as Ukrainian forces routed its soldiers along the front, in what military analysts have suggested is an effort to cripple the economy or undermine support for the war inside Ukraine.

The Iranian Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drone is a delta-wing aircraft launched from the back of a flatbed truck that carries a warhead of about 80 pounds. It drops out of the sky without warning and is accurate enough to hit a howitzer or a vehicle parked in the open. Russians have used the drones to obliterate artillery pieces and armored vehicles and to kill and injure soldiers, Ukrainian military officials said.

In Wednesday’s attack, Russia launched a swarm of 12 drones from territory it controls in southern Ukraine, Yurii Ihnat, the spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force, said in an interview on Ukrainian television. Anti-aircraft units shot down three, Ukrainian jet pilots intercepted another three but the rest got through air defenses, he said.

The United States has supplied Ukraine with Switchblade drones, which are also known as “kamikaze” drones because they are self-destroying. Kyiv has also deployed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, capable of firing guided missiles.

Military analysts have suggested Russia may running low on long-range missiles after seven months of war and thousands of strikes. President Volodymyr Zelensky said in August that Russia had fired about 3,500 cruise missiles at Ukraine by that point.

The E.U.’s plan faces a new hurdle, as oil producers led by Saudi Arabia aim to keep global prices high.

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A crude oil terminal near the port city of Nakhodka, Russia. With oil prices at a high, Russia is raking in billions of dollars in revenue, even as it sells smaller quantities. Credit...Tatiana Meel/Reuters

BRUSSELS — The European Union was pushing ahead with an ambitious plan to limit Russia’s oil revenue, but the Western effort to drain funding from President Vladimir V. Putin’s war machine faced a new hurdle: Global oil producers on Wednesday decided to sharply cut the supply, making Russia’s crude even more valuable on the world market.

OPEC and its allies, including Russia, announced a sharp reduction in crude output at a meeting in Vienna. By reducing supply, the decision by the group known as OPEC Plus, led by Saudi Arabia, was likely to keep global oil prices high, allowing Russia to continue earning significant revenue from its crude exports.

It also could lessen the chances that other major buyers of Russian oil, notably China and India, will go along with the price cap. Without those countries’ cooperation, the price cap plan, championed by the Biden administration, would have far less impact.

The E.U. price cap was expected to gain final approval on Thursday, after negotiators reached an agreement late Tuesday on the measure as part of a fresh package of sanctions against Moscow.

Under the plan, a committee of representatives of the European Union, the Group of 7 nations and others that agree to the price cap would meet regularly to decide on the price at which Russian oil should be sold, and that it would change based on the market price.

Several diplomats involved in the E.U. talks said that Greece, Malta and Cyprus — maritime nations that would be most affected by the price cap — received assurances that the would be permitted to continue shipping Russian oil, the diplomats said.

Those countries had been holding up what would be the eighth package of sanctions the European Union has adopted since the Russian invasion of Ukraine because of worries that a price cap on Russian oil exported outside the bloc would affect their shipping, insurance and other industries, the diplomats said.

The cap — part of a broad plan pushed by the Biden administration that the G7 agreed to last month — is intended to set the price of Russian oil lower than where it is today, but still above cost. The U.S. Treasury calculates that the cap would deprive the Kremlin of tens of billions of dollars annually.

To cut Russian revenue, the United States, Europe and their allies would need to convince India and China, which buy substantial quantities of Russian oil, to purchase it only at the agreed upon price. Experts say that even with willing partners, the cap could be hard to implement.

Under the new rules, companies involved in the shipping of Russian oil — including shipowners, insurers and underwriters — would be on the hook for ensuring that the oil they are helping to transport is being sold at or below the price cap. If they are caught helping Russia sell at a higher price, they could face lawsuits in their home countries for violating sanctions.

Russian crude will come under an embargo in most of the European Union on Dec. 5, and petroleum products will follow in February. The price cap on shipments to other countries has been championed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as a necessary complement to the European oil embargo.

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video from the front lines

As Russian troops retreat, cameras document the devastation they left behind.

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The pull back of Russian forces has revealed a panorama of ruined towns and empty villages left in its wake.CreditCredit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Ukrainians have recaptured land from Russian troops in the south and east of Ukraine in recent days during counteroffensives despite Moscow’s attempts to illegally annex four provinces in those regions. As Russian troops have made a hasty retreat, videos show the devastation in the largely depopulated towns and villages they left behind.

Putin signs annexation laws, plowing ahead with a parallel reality as Russia loses ground in Ukraine.

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia addressed a rally and concert in Red Square last week celebrating Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Vladimir V. Putin signed more than 400 pages of legislation annexing four Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, forging ahead with a parallel reality in which Russia pretends to exercise sovereignty over thousands of square miles of territory that its military does not actually control.

Russia’s economy ministry sought to attach real-world benefits to a largely illusory claim, forecasting that the annexation would raise Russia’s production of metallurgy and sunflowers by 20 percent each, while coal production would increase by 6 percent. The state news agency RIA Novosti released a map purporting to show Russia’s new territory, adding in fine print that part of it was “under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

Russian state television trumpeted the signing on Wednesday as the day’s biggest news story, while playing down or ignoring the fact that Russian forces are in retreat in multiple parts of the front line.

“The only currency unit starting Jan. 1, 2023, will be the ruble, and the territorial organs of the federal authorities will be created by June 1,” intoned the anchor on the 12 p.m. news on Channel 1.

Four laws spelling out the annexation process — one for each region, each numbering more than 100 pages — were published on a government website on Wednesday, with a Kremlin stamp on the last page, dated Oct. 4, standing in for Mr. Putin’s signature. It was an example of how Mr. Putin has long tried to legitimize his actions — however illegal — with a sheen of legality bestowed by Russia’s rubber-stamp institutions.

Later, in a televised videoconference celebrating Teachers’ Day, Mr. Putin pointedly congratulated the teachers “of all the 89 regions of Russia,” a number that includes the newly annexed territories.

The Kremlin has declared that it will fight to capture all of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions — Ukraine still holds several Donetsk cities — but it has been more vague about its goals in the other two regions it is attempting to annex, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. That has sown confusion about what new borders Russia is claiming with its illegal annexation.

While Mr. Putin announced the planned annexation last Friday in a bombastic and angry speech at the Kremlin, followed by a signing ceremony, there was no further fanfare involving the president this week.

“Our country became bigger, de jure, today,” his spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters, according to Russia’s state-run Tass news agency. “This is very important.”

But even the borders of the annexed territory — an annexation that has only been endorsed by North Korea — remained in flux on Wednesday as Ukrainian troops continued their counteroffensive in their country’s south and east. Mr. Peskov bristled when asked whether the annexation was contradicted by the Russian military’s retreats.

“There’s no contradiction here,” Mr. Peskov said. “They will be with Russia forever.”

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Russia says it is nationalizing the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, while Ukraine says it is taking charge there.

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During a media tour arranged by the Russian military last month, service members stood by the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.Credit...Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Kremlin published a decree from President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday saying that he was nationalizing the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, further fueling a struggle with Ukraine over management of the facility.

Russia said on Wednesday it would supervise operations there, while the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company said that he was taking charge. Though Russian troops control the giant plant with its six reactors in March, Ukrainian engineers have been operating it.

In a statement, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would engage in consultations with “the relevant authorities” following reports of Russia’s plans.

Separately on Wednesday, the I.A.E.A. said that its experts at the plant had learned from Ukrainian operating staff there that it “intended to restart one of its six reactors, which are currently all in cold shutdown.”

“It will take some time to complete all preparations, including those related to necessary systems and equipment, before reactor operations can resume,” the energy agency said.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Russia’s attempt to take control of the power plant, and urged that the European Union, the Group of 7 “and other partners” impose sanctions against the Russia’s state nuclear power corporation, Rosatom. The ministry also called on member countries of the I.A.E.A. to limit cooperation with Russia.

The announcement on Wednesday by a deputy foreign minister, Sergei Vershinin, about Russia’s intention to nationalize the plant flowed from the illegal annexation of Zaporizhzhia Province in the south of the country, along with three other provinces.

Mr. Putin of Russia signed legislation formalizing the annexation on Wednesday and the Kremlin said all infrastructure within its new territory, including the plant, is now Russian. Ukraine’s state energy company, Energoatom, said the decree nationalizing the plant had no practical significance, public radio reported.

Ukraine has categorically rejected Moscow’s claim to the annexed provinces, which followed a discredited referendum Ukraine and the West called an illegal sham. No foreign government outside of North Korea has recognized Moscow’s move.

At the same time, fighting is raging in all four of the regions Moscow wants to absorb, with Ukraine making gains.

Still, Russian officials claimed they were seizing the plant, which is territory they still occupy.

“The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is now on the territory of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, should be operated under the supervision of our relevant agencies,” Mr. Vershinin told the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti, according to Reuters.

Fighting nearby has raised international concern about the risk of a nuclear accident. Shelling in recent months has caused the plant to be disconnected at times from Ukraine’s power grid.

In a further sign of instability, the plant’s director general, Ihor Murashov, was abducted on Friday and detained by Russian forces before being released on Monday. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has stationed two staff at the plant since September, said Mr. Murashov, who is responsible for nuclear and radiation safety, would not be returning to his post.

On Wednesday, Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company, Energoatom, said he was taking charge of the plant. In a video message posted on the Telegram social media app, he urged workers there not to sign any documents with its Russian occupiers.

“All further decisions regarding the operation of the station will be made directly at the central office of Energoatom,” Mr. Kotin said.

As a practical matter, it was not clear how Mr. Kotin’s policy could be implemented unless Ukrainian forces recapture the plant, which is on the east bank of the Dnipro River.

Price cap on Russian oil could have unintended consequences, analysts say.

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A gas station in Wuhan, China, in June.Credit...Getty Images

What impact a European price cap on Russian oil may have remains a matter of conjecture because many of the details, including the price, remain to be determined. But some analysts say it could have unintended consequences.

Henning Gloystein, a director at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm, said that the cap might wind up just continuing the status quo, since Russia is already selling oil to China and India at a 30 percent discount. The end result of the cap may be to simply replicate that discount on Russian oil exports to those nations, which have resisted joining the West in imposing sanctions. “It is formalizing something that is already there,” he said.

Others say that the cap, which is expected to gain final approval on Thursday, will add more bureaucratic procedures to a long series of sanctions already in place against Russia. Those extra steps may impede the flow of oil around the world and raise prices, causing the sort of major disruption that Washington appears to be trying to avoid.

“It adds new complexity to the task of redirecting Russian oil to new destinations,” Richard Bronze, head of geopolitics for Energy Aspects, a political risk firm, said.

That the specifics of the cap, including the price, have not been spelled out will likely make life difficult for people buying and selling oil, who need to make decisions several weeks in advance, Mr. Bronze said.

“They would not know what they would need to do or what price they would need to agree with a Russian seller if they wanted to abide by the price cap,” he said. “This is another example of how policymakers are not in tune with what the industry and the market are saying would be necessary to make this policy work.”

China has leaned in favor of Russia during the Ukraine war, repeating Russian disinformation, but so far, Western government experts say, China has refrained from providing Moscow military assistance or helping Russia to evade sanctions.

China’s foreign ministry criticized the concept of price caps soon after the idea was first unveiled by Western leaders a month ago, warning that oil was too important to the global economy to be subject to the planned price controls. “Oil is a global commodity — ensuring global energy supply security is vitally important,” Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Sept. 5.

Four days later, Ben Harris, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury for economic policy, said at a forum that price caps by other countries would allow China to demand deep discounts on the oil it purchases from Russia as well. The United States would be satisfied with that indirect effect on Russia’s prices, he said.

China’s foreign ministry is closed this week for a national holiday, and issued no immediate response to the European action on Wednesday.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in an email on Wednesday that while Russia had profited in recent months from high world energy prices, the country would pay a long-term price.

“It’s clear at this stage that Russia isn’t winning the energy battle,” Mr. Birol said. “Its short-term gain in income from the crisis is outweighed by the long-term loss of both trust and revenues that it has brought about by ruining its relationship with the European Union, its biggest customer.”

Before the invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Birol pointed out, about 75 percent of Russia’s natural gas exports and 55 percent of its oil exports went to Europe. “Finding alternative markets on this scale cannot be done quickly or easily, especially in the case of natural gas,” he said.

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In a rebuke to the West, OPEC and Russia agree to a big cut in oil production.

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A refinery in Italy owned by Lukoil, the Russian oil company. The European Union is seeking to curb the revenue that Russia earns from oil sales. Credit...Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the OPEC Plus energy cartel, agreed on Wednesday to their first large production cut in more than two years in a bid to raise prices, countering efforts by the United States and Europe to choke off the enormous revenue that Moscow reaps from the sale of crude.

President Biden and European leaders have urged more oil production to ease gasoline prices and punish Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine. Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, has been accused of using energy as a weapon against countries opposing its invasion of Ukraine, and the optics of the decision could not be missed.

The White House was not happy. “The president is disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC Plus to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said in a statement.

The cut of two million barrels a day represents about 2 percent of global oil production.

By reducing output, OPEC Plus was also seeking to make a statement to energy markets about the group’s cohesion during the Ukraine war and its willingness to act quickly to defend prices, analysts say.

At a news conference after the meeting, the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said OPEC Plus was acting amid signs of a downturn in the world economy that might cause demand for oil to weaken and prices to fall.

“We would rather be pre-emptive than be sorry,” he said.

The move appeared to have the desired result: The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, which had slumped during the summer, rose more than 1.5 percent after the meeting, extending the gains recorded in recent days and bringing prices back to levels last seen in mid-September. The average price of gasoline in the United States recently began to rise again, tracking the price of oil.

In response to the OPEC Plus announcement, Biden administration officials said the president would order the Energy Department to release 10 million additional barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in November. Earlier this week, the administration said it had no plans to extend a six-month effort to release one million barrels a day, which was scheduled to finish at the end of this month.

Hours before the OPEC Plus meeting, the European Union pushed ahead with an ambitious plan promoted by the Biden administration to cap the price of Russian oil, in coordination with Group of 7 nations and others.

The European Union cap is intended to set the price of Russian oil lower than where it is today but still above the cost of producing it. The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that the program could deprive the Kremlin of tens of billions of dollars annually. But some analysts say the cap would make the logistics of the oil trade more difficult, driving prices higher. And it relies on the participation of non-E.U. nations that are still buying Russian oil.

In China, one of the biggest consumers of Russian oil this year, the foreign ministry has criticized the concept, warning last month that oil is too important to the global economy to be subject to the planned price controls.

“Oil is a global commodity — ensuring global energy supply security is vitally important,” Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Sept. 5.

And the European Union proposal, aimed at pushing down prices, would seem to compete against OPEC Plus’s action to seek to raise oil prices.

But there is uncertainty about how deep the cut in oil production will go. Because of a lack of investment, most members of OPEC Plus regularly fall short of their production quotas and will not need to trim production much if at all. Richard Bronze, the head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a research firm, estimates that the actual cut will be only about one million barrels a day.

And the weakening global economy could undermine the Russian and Saudi-led effort to drive up prices. As economic growth slows, demand for oil would slacken.

Wednesday’s meeting was in person, at the headquarters of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna, for the first time since March 2020 — a sign of the significance of the announcement. Among those attending was Russia’s deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, who has played a key role in fostering cooperation with other major oil-producing countries.

The presence of Mr. Novak, who is subject to U.S. sanctions, could come as an embarrassment to officials in Europe when their citizens face what could be a tough winter because of higher energy prices linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The production cut by OPEC Plus is a major turnabout in the approach of the 23-member group. After a deep reduction in output in the early days of the pandemic, the group gradually restored production over the next two years. Recently, though, Prince Abdulaziz, who chairs OPEC Plus with Mr. Novak, began to shift the group’s direction as prices came under pressure.

Last month, the group signaled concerns about the markets with a nominal cut of 100,000 barrels a day. When markets shrugged off that move and oil prices slipped below $80 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, the Saudis appear to have decided that a much bolder signal was required.

Analysts said the increasing intervention in the markets by Washington and the European Union, such as the move to set a price cap for Russian oil, might be pushing OPEC Plus into more aggressive moves. Russia wants a higher price to offset the steep discounts it has had to give to sell its oil.

Some oil producers may see the price cap as a precedent that “might be an attempt to drive down prices more generally,” Mr. Bronze said. Such worries may explain why OPEC Plus “is willing to take such a big step and one that will be so unpopular in Washington,” he added.

At the news conference, Prince Abdulaziz denied any collusion with Russia, portraying OPEC Plus as a “band of brothers” interested only in preserving the stability of markets. “Where is the act of belligerence?” he asked.

At one point he instructed an assistant to display a chart showing that crude oil has edged up in price only by a single-digit percentage since January, before Russia invaded Ukraine, while the prices of other energy sources, like natural gas in Europe and coal, have soared.

The group also agreed to extend for one year the agreement that created OPEC Plus, a combination of OPEC with Russia and its allies. The alliance, which started in 2016, had been scheduled to expire in December.

In the push for higher oil prices, the Kremlin may be using OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, whose leaders want future cooperation from Moscow on energy matters, to make it more costly for the West to take measures against Russia.

“To the extent that prices rise, it will make it that much more challenging for Europe to proceed with its sanctions on Russian oil in December,” said Bhushan Bahree, an executive director of S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting from Atlanta, Keith Bradsher from Beijing, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels.

The E.U.’s top official says the bloc should consider a price cap on gas.

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday.Credit...Julien Warnand/EPA, via Shutterstock

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s top official said on Wednesday that the bloc should consider a temporary price cap on wholesale natural gas, marking a shift in the discussion on how Europe could manage the mounting energy crisis linked to the war in Ukraine.

The aim would be to “reduce gas prices and limit volatility and the impact of price manipulations by Russia,” Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission’s president, told European lawmakers on Wednesday.

Her call came as the bloc faces soaring energy prices, as inflation rates and utility bills reaching record levels. E.U. leaders are set to meet later this week to discuss solutions to the crisis.

The cap should be temporary and apply to prices of gas used to produce electricity, as well as prices of wholesale gas, she said.

Ms. von der Leyen, who did not elaborate on the details of her proposal, also said that the bloc should step up discussions with other energy suppliers, like Norway, to agree on a better price of imported gas.

Ms. von der Leyen stressed in a letter to national leaders on Wednesday that a price cap would need to be accompanied by measures safeguarding the security of supplies and reducing energy consumption.

The issue of a general gas price cap has divided E.U. nations for months, pitting wealthier member nations concerned over the security of supplies, including Germany and the Netherlands, against poorer countries who argue that a bloc-wide cap on natural gas prices is needed to shield their citizens from bankruptcy and blackouts.

The Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, has been under political pressure to deliver a solution. The pressure was exacerbated last week by the discovery of mysterious leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines linking Germany to Russia.

Until now, however, officials have been hesitant to propose a general gas price cap, because of arguments that it could make the bloc less competitive and send the wrong signal to Europeans, who should be reducing energy consumption.

Russian gas accounted for 40 percent of E.U. consumption before the war began in February, but the bloc has since been on a hunt for other suppliers, with Norway overtaking Russia as the main source of fuel.

The bloc’s leaders are meeting later this week in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, where they are poised to discuss ways to bring down prices for consumers facing a difficult winter. There are several options on the table, ranging from the specific price cap on gas used to produce electricity, a price cap on imported Russian gas and a general price cap on all natural gas coming into the bloc.

If the Commission officially put forward a concrete proposal, it would need to be greenlighted by all member nations to come into effect. For the moment, the timing of a legislative proposal remains unclear, and so are its details.

Fifteen out of 27 member nations last week called for a general gas price cap in a letter to the Commission, calling it “the one measure” to “mitigate the inflationary pressure, manage expectations and provide a framework in case of potential supply disruptions, and limit the extra profits in the sector.”

But the bloc’s energy ministers at their meeting late last week avoided the issue of a general price cap, settling instead for a series of emergency measures, including a tax on energy companies profits and a mandatory reduction in energy consumption.

Experts say the type of price cap supported by Ms. von der Leyen would likely bring down prices for consumers, but some warned that it could backfire in the long term.

“Any intervention aimed at capping energy prices entails the risk of removing a key incentive — high prices — to reduce demand, making Europe worse off,” said Simone Tagliapietra of Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic research institution. “Europe needs to prepare for a new normal without Russian gas.”

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A former Russian TV journalist who protested the war on air says she has escaped house arrest.

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Marina Ovsyannikova, a former state television employee who gained fame after protesting on air, during a court hearing in Moscow in July.Credit...Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

A former Russian state television journalist whose on-air protest against Moscow’s war in Ukraine attracted worldwide attention earlier this year has escaped house arrest, according to a brief video statement released on Wednesday, in which she accused President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of destroying the Ukrainian people and Russia’s male population.

In a written post on her Telegram social media account that accompanied the video Marina Ovsyannikova said that she was freeing herself from the two-month house arrest that was imposed by a Moscow court in August.

“I consider myself completely innocent,” she wrote, and as of Sept. 30, “I refuse to comply with the preventive measure imposed on me in the form of house arrest and release myself from it.”

In the 12-second video, Ms. Ovsyannikova, pointing at the black, court-imposed ankle monitor that she was wearing, said that Mr. Putin should be the one facing trial “for the genocide of the Ukrainian people and for destroying en masse the male population of Russia.” It was not clear when the video was filmed or how Ms. Ovsyannikova freed herself from house arrest.

Ms. Ovsyannikova was on Monday listed on the federal wanted list, but a court in Moscow declined on Wednesday to order her arrest, reported the independent Russian television station, Dozhd, which works in exile. The lack of a ruling was apparently on technical grounds as the prosecutor did not appear and Ms. Ovsyannikova was not in custody, the report said.

Ms. Ovsyannikova faces up to 10 years in prison on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian military, under a law promulgated at the beginning of the war. The charges stem from her one-woman protest outside the Kremlin in July, decrying the killing of hundreds of children in Ukraine by the invading Russian forces.

The charges against her are not linked to her notorious protest in March when the former editor for Channel One appeared live on air holding up a large anti-war poster. Ms. Ovsyannikova left Russia for Germany after that incident, but returned in July due to a custody case against her ex-husband involving their two children.

Her husband was quoted by Russian media as saying that she had fled house arrest with their 11-year-old daughter.

A SpaceX rocket headed to the International Space Station launches with a Russian astronaut aboard.

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Russian astronaut Anna Kikina arriving ahead of the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday.Credit...Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A SpaceX rocket carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station, including a Russian woman, launched on Wednesday.

The rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after noon on Wednesday. It is to arrive at the space station shortly before 5 p.m. on Thursday.

One of the passengers of the mission, Crew-5, is a Russian astronaut, Anna Kikina. Her presence on the spacecraft shows that cooperation is continuing between the United States and Russia on the International Space Station in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The current agreement for both countries to jointly operate the station runs through 2024. The United States would like to extend operations through 2030. Russia has said it will build its own space station, but it has also indicated that it would not leave the I.S.S. until that is ready.

Earlier in the International Space Station program, Russian astronauts regularly flew on the space shuttles, and NASA astronauts flew on Russian Soyuz rockets. After the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011, the Soyuz was the only transportation available for taking astronauts to and from the space station.

When SpaceX’s Crew Dragon became operational in 2020, NASA no longer needed to fly its astronauts on the Soyuz but still wanted to be able to use it. And the space agency wanted Russian astronauts to get rides in the Crew Dragon.

That is to help ensure smooth operations of the space station, which is divided into two segments: one led by Russia and one by NASA and its partners.

“Flying integrated crews ensures there are appropriately trained crew members on board the station for essential maintenance and spacewalks,” NASA said in a statement in July when Ms. Kikina was announced as a member of the Crew-5 mission.

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Returning to a retaken village, Ukrainians face the reality of destruction.

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Inspecting the damage to the Zakharchenko family’s property in the recently recaptured village of Yatskivka.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
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Ukrainian troops at the recaptured village of Yatskivka, Ukraine, on Tuesday.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
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Veronika Zakharchenko inspects the damage at her property in Yatskivka.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

YATSKIVKA, Ukraine — As Ukrainian tanks and howitzers rumbled through the main intersection in this village on their way to the front on Tuesday, a family stood with shocked faces before the wreckage of their property.

Every building around them was damaged or flattened by war. The family’s two sturdy brick stores and café-bar lay smashed and looted. Their house was gutted by fire, the motel rooms behind it ransacked.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” the owner, Nikolai Zakharchenko, 78, said as he looked at the destruction. “We don’t have the means,” his wife, Veronika, 76, added.

The Zakharchenkos were one of the first families to return to this quiet country village in Donetsk Province surrounded by fir forests, which was retaken by Ukrainian troops less than two weeks ago in a sweeping counteroffensive that has broken Russian control of huge swaths of territory in northeastern Ukraine.

Yet amid the euphoria of reclaiming their lands and homes, Ukrainians are only just beginning to understand the scale of the damage the war has wrought after first Russian troops attacked and occupied the area, and then Ukrainian forces mounted a counteroffensive last month.

Ms. Zakharchenko had brought a bag of keys to the doors of their property, but everything had already been broken open — the windows shattered, the doors blown apart. The family had fled without possessions but came back to an empty home and destroyed businesses, and they would not be able to stay. Someone — probably Russian soldiers, they guessed — had stolen even the beds, Mr. Zakharchenko said.

Russian planes bombed the village in March, causing a great conflagration that burned for a day and a night, villagers said. But gradually things quieted down, one man, Oleksandr, 48, said.

The Russians occupied empty houses, fixed the electricity, and paid residents to clean the streets. They handed out food packets and canned meat to those, like Oleksandr, who had no work. “They would throw packets to us,” he said. “They had more cans than bullets.”

Then, in September, Ukrainian troops began advancing, and the two armies shelled each other’s positions. The fighting lasted two days, and this time Ukrainian tank and artillery fire destroyed more of the village, Oleksandr said. Most of the Russian troops pulled out but they left a small force holding positions. Gun battles raged through the night as the Ukrainians attacked, and the next morning they heard Ukrainian voices in the street.

The back and forth of the fighting strained residents to the limit. Svetlana, a kindergarten teacher, said columns of Russian troops and armor withdrew down the road for more than 12 hours on the night of Sept 9. The Russians left some units manning positions in the village, and residents huddled in their cellars for 12 more days as artillery fire whined overhead toward the village beyond before the Ukrainians moved in to attack.

“This is a resort village, people come here to relax,” Svetlana said. “But they turned it into a gray zone.”

Her husband, Oleh, 54, a construction worker, butted in with an appeal to the presidents of both Russia and Ukraine. “Please calm down,” he said. “Let people live in peace. Why do our people have to die?”

New Russian recruits will not be ready to fight effectively for months, a NATO official says.

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New Russian recruits listening to an instructor explain how to fire a shoulder-held missile during training in the Rostov-on-Don region of Russia, near Ukraine’s southeastern border, on Tuesday.Credit...Associated Press

WARSAW — New Russian army units formed from the 300,000 men the Kremlin is calling up for military service will not be an effective fighting force in Ukraine “for a few months,” a senior NATO official said on Tuesday. The hastily mustered conscripts nonetheless are likely to be forced into frontline fighting soon in a desperate effort by President Vladimir V. Putin to stanch Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks, and, as a result, will almost certainly suffer very high casualties, the official said.

Moreover, there is no evidence that the Russian military has the ability to feed, arm and equip such a large influx of fresh conscripts — poorly trained and ill-equipped from the outset — over the next several months, said the official, noting that Moscow has failed to overcome its logistics woes since the war started in February.

“These new troops have to be sustained, but the Russians can’t even supply the ones they already have there,” the official said in an interview on the sidelines of the Warsaw Security Forum.

The assessment by the senior NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal alliance analyses, came as Russian forces in Ukraine were in full retreat across a broad swath of the front lines, and as the Ukrainian military pressed its blitz offensive in the east and made gains in the south.

Mr. Putin ordered the military conscription on Sept. 21 to shore up his battered forces after Ukraine’s startling counteroffensive in the country’s northeast. Instead, the mandate has ignited protests across Russia and failed to halt the disarray of its forces on the ground. On Tuesday, the Russian defense minister said 200,000 men had been called up and were undergoing training.

Pentagon officials said last week that the first small groups of new conscripts had begun showing up on the battlefield. But the NATO official said they were likely to be a drag on any more experienced units they joined and would be entirely unprepared for battle if they were formed into new units of their own.

“Bottom line, new formations will be unable to be combat-effective for a few months,” the official said. But with pressure on Russian commanders to reverse the battlefield losses, the new conscripts will be thrown into the fray anyway, the official said, and will suffer “high attrition” — meaning many will be wounded or killed.

U.S. intelligence officials estimate that about 80,000 Russian soldiers have already been killed or injured since the beginning of the war.

Despite Moscow’s latest setbacks and Ukraine’s newfound momentum, the NATO official noted that Russian troops were still making some incremental gains in parts of the eastern Donbas region — at heavy costs — and predicted that heavy fighting would continue through this year and into early 2023.

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