The Ukraine war has created food security challenges for many countries, especially for low income food import-dependent ones and vulnerable population groups, according to Qu Dongyu, director-general of the UN agriculture agency.He was addressing a three-day meeting Friday on the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its wider impact on food and energy prices.Under the theme "securing global food security in times of crisis," Qu told agriculture ministers from the G7 nations in Stuttgart, Germany, that the most significant threats stem from conflict, and the associated humanitarian impact, together with multiple overlapping crises.Based on the Global Report on Food Crises released on May 4, last year around 193 million people in 53 countries or territories were officially in the crisis phase or worse.Other 2021 data revealed that 570,000 people in four countries were in the category of the catastrophe phase.Just over 39 million in 36 countries faced emergency conditions and more than 133 million in 41 countries were in the crisis phase. A total of 236.2 million people in 41 countries were living in stressed conditions.Price increases always have food security implications, particularly for the poorest, Qu said.On top of already "high prices driven by robust demand and high input costs" resulting from Covid recovery, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) chief noted Ukraine and Russia as important players in global commodity markets, saying uncertainty surrounding the war has prompted further price increases.

Ukraine said its forces struck and seriously damaged the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, dealing a potentially major setback to Moscow’s troops as they try to regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital. Russia said Thursday the entire crew of the Moskva, a warship that would typically have 500 sailors on board, was forced to evacuate after a fire overnight and also reported it was badly damaged. But it did not acknowledge any attack, which, in addition to any practical impact, would also deal a major blow to Russian prestige seven weeks into a war that is already widely seen as a historic blunder. The damage to the ship came hours after some of Ukraine’s allies sought to rally new support for the embattled country. On a visit with leaders from three other EU countries on Russia’s doorstep who fear they could next be in Moscow’s sights, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda declared that “the fight for Europe’s future is happening here.” Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden, who called Russia’s actions in Ukraine “a genocide” this week, approved $800 million in new military assistance to Kyiv. He said weapons from the West have sustained Ukraine’s fight so far and “we cannot rest now.” The news of the flagship’s damage overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where they have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war — at a horrific cost to civilians. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that 1,026 troops from the Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade surrendered at a metals factory in the city. But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, rejected the claim, telling Current Time TV that “the battle over the seaport is still ongoing today.” It was unclear when or over what time period a surrender may have occurred or how many forces were still defending Mariupol. Russian state television broadcast footage that it said was from Mariupol showing dozens of men in camouflage walking with their hands up and carrying others on stretchers. One man held a white flag. Read: UN says Ukraine war threatens to devastate many poor nations Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would put a swath of territory in its control that would allow its forces in the south, who came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to link up with troops in the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive. Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence of the rebel regions in the Donbas. But the loss of the Moskva, which fires missiles, could set those efforts back. Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC show the Moskva steaming out of the port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula on Sunday. Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odesa region, across the Black Sea to the northwest of Sevastopol, said the Ukrainians struck the ship with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.” Russia’s Defense Ministry said ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire and that it was investigating the cause of the blaze. The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine and based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the missiles can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. It was not clear if the ship was totally disabled, but even serious damage could be a major blow to Russia, which already saw its tank carrier Orsk hit late last month. Hours after the damage to the ship was reported, Ukrainian authorities said on the Telegram messaging service that explosions had struck Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port. They urged residents to remain calm and said there is no danger to civilians. Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of rapidly seizing Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly replacement. But the ground advance stalled in the face of strong Ukrainian resistance with the help of Western arms, and Russia has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee. A U.N. task force warned that the war threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war is “supercharging” a crisis in food, energy and finance in poorer countries that were already struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and a lack of access to funding. The war has also unsettled the post-Cold War balance in Europe — and particularly worried countries on NATO’s eastern flank that fear they could next come under attack. As a result, those nations have been some of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters. Read: Sri Lankan protesters mark new year near president’s office The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia traveled Wednesday to war-ravaged areas in Ukraine and demanded accountability for what they called war crimes. They met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and visited Borodyanka, one of the towns near Kyiv where evidence of atrocities was found after Russian troops withdrew to focus on the country’s east. “There are no doubts that they committed war crimes. And for that, they should be accountable,” Latvian President Egils Levits said. Nauseda of Lithuania called for tougher sanctions, including against Russian oil and gas shipments and all the country’s banks. Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who is also defense minister, visited Kyiv on Thursday. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy noted that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court visited the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, which was controlled by Russian forces until recently and where evidence of mass killings and more than 400 bodies were found. “It is inevitable that the Russian troops will be held responsible. We will drag everyone to a tribunal, and not only for what was done in Bucha,” Zelenskyy said late Wednesday. He also said work was continuing to clear tens of thousands of unexploded shells, mines and trip wires left in northern Ukraine by the departing Russians. He urged people returning to homes to be wary of any unfamiliar objects and report them to police.

When President Joe Biden declares Russia’s Ukraine war “genocide,” it isn’t just another strong word. Calling a campaign that’s aimed at wiping out a targeted group “genocide” not only increases pressure on a country to act, it can oblige it to. That’s partly because of a genocide treaty approved by the U.N. General Assembly after World War II, signed by the United States and more than 150 other nations. The convention was the work of, among others, a Polish Jew whose family was murdered by Nazi Germany and its accomplices. The advocates pushed for something that would make the world not just condemn but actually prevent and ensure prosecution for future genocides. In comments Tuesday, Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.” Other world leaders have not gone as far. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said Russia’s behavior in Ukraine “doesn’t look far short of genocide,” but the U.K. has not officially used the term, saying only a court can make such a designation. A look at what’s involved in that decision, and what it means when a world leader declares a genocide: WHAT DOES ‘GENOCIDE’ MEAN? It’s a surprisingly modern word for an ancient crime. A Jewish lawyer from Poland, Raphael Lemkin, coined it at the height of World War II and the Holocaust. Lemkin wanted a word to describe what Nazi Germany was then doing to Europe’s Jews, and what Turkey had done to Armenians in the 1910s: killing members of a targeted group of people, and ruthlessly working to eradicate their cultures. Lemkin paired “geno,” a Greek word meaning race, and “cide,” a Latin word meaning kill. Lemkin dedicated his life to having genocide recognized and criminalized. In 1948, after Adolf Hitler and his accomplices systematically murdered 6 million Jews in Europe, the U.N. General Assembly approved the Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. WHAT’S THE LEGAL DEFINITION? Under the genocide convention, the crime is trying to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in part or in whole. Read: Neighbors back Ukraine, demand accountability for war crimes That includes mass killings, but also actions including forced sterilization, abuse that inflicts serious harm or mental suffering, or wrenching children of a targeted group away to be raised by others. IS RUSSIA COMMITTING GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE? The case may hang in part on Putin’s own words. Russian forces are widely accused of carrying out wholesale abuses of Ukraine’s civilians, including mass killings. Those would be war crimes. But do they amount to genocide? It’s all about intent, argues Bohdan Vitvitsky, a former U.S. federal prosecutor and former special adviser to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. “Any attempt to determine whether the crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine are driven by genocidal intent must necessarily focus on the statements of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Vitvisky wrote for the Atlantic Council think tank this week. Putin long has denied any standing for Ukraine to exist as a separate nation, or Ukrainians as a separate people. He cites history, when Ukraine was part of the Russian empire, and later of the Soviet Union. In a long essay last year, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin made clear the depth of his determination on the matter. He called the modern border dividing Russia and Ukraine “our great common misfortune and tragedy.” Putin and Russian state media falsely call Ukrainian leaders “Nazis” and “drug addicts.” Putin has called his military campaign in Ukraine one of de-Nazification. Gissou Nia, a human-rights lawyer who worked on war crime trials at the Hague, points to two alleged acts by Russia in Ukraine as also possibly showing intent of genocide: Reports of deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, and an account, from Ukraine’s government, of Russian soldiers telling 25 detained women and girls in Bucha that the Russians aimed to rape them to the point that they never bear any Ukrainian children. WHY DOES IT MATTER IF WORLD LEADERS USE “GENOCIDE” TO DESCRIBE RUSSIA’S ACTIONS? Embedded in the genocide convention is an obligation that the U.S. and other signers of the treaty have treated warily — if they acknowledge a genocide is occurring, they’re committed to ensuring investigation and prosecution, at the least. People and countries committing genocide “shall be punished,” the treaty declares, seeking to crush any wiggle room. U.S. leaders for decades dodged using the word “genocide” to avoid increasing the pressure on them to act as mass killings targeted classes of people or ethnic groups in Cambodia, Bosnia, Iraq, Rwanda and elsewhere. Regretting his failure to do more to stop the killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, Bill Clinton in June 1999 became the first U.S. president to recognize an act of genocide as it was playing out, saying Serb forces carrying out a deadly campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were attempting genocide. NATO intervened, lobbing 78 days of airstrikes that forced Serbian fighters’ withdrawal from Kosovo. An international tribunal charged Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic with war crimes, although Milosevic died before his trial concluded. Read: UN says Ukraine war threatens to devastate many poor nations Starting in 2005, world also leaders embraced – in principle – responsibility for collective action to stop genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Atrocities and targeted campaigns against groups continue around the world, however, and the so-called responsibility to protect is seldom invoked. WHAT HAPPENS IF THE U.S. DOES DECLARE RUSSIAN ACTIONS TO BE GENOCIDE? U.S. leaders long have feared that acknowledging genocide would require them to intervene, even to send in troops, with all the risks, costs and political backlash that would entail. It’s been a main reason leaders limit themselves to angry statements and humanitarian aid. Biden is adamant the U.S. will not use its own military to confront Russian forces on behalf of Ukraine. Doing so would risk World War III, he says. He and allies in Europe and elsewhere already are intervening by sanctioning Russia and by sending weapons and other support to Ukraine for its defense. Biden and other Western leaders also have called for war crimes trials. The International Criminal Court already has started an investigation. But longstanding U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, over worries that U.S. troops could face prosecution there one day, complicates such prosecutions. So can Russia’s veto power on the U.N. Security Council. And practically speaking, bringing Putin before a court is a long shot. In the past, Americans’ opposition to entanglement in foreign wars also has helped discourage U.S. leaders from doing more to stop possible acts of genocide. But Russia’s invasion of a neighboring country and brutality against Ukraine’s people have angered Americans in a way that genocidal campaigns in Cambodia, Kurdish areas of Iraq and elsewhere did not. A recent poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 40% of people in America believe the U.S. should have a “major role” in ending Russia’s invasion. Just 13% think the U.S. shouldn’t be involved at all.

Twenty-five years ago, Joe Biden visited Warsaw, Poland, with a warning: Even though the Soviet Union had collapsed, some of NATO’s original members weren’t doing enough to ensure the alliance’s collective defense. “Now it is time for the people of Western Europe to invest in the security of their continent for the next century,” said Biden, then a U.S. senator. Biden, now president, speaks again here Saturday as European security faces its most precarious test since World War II. The bloody war in Ukraine has entered its second month, and Western leaders have spent the week consulting over contingency plans in case the conflict mutates or spreads. The invasion has shaken NATO out of any complacency it might have felt and cast a dark shadow over the continent. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the speech will outline the “urgency of the challenge that lies ahead” and “what the conflict in Ukraine means for the world, and why it is so important that the free world stay in unity and resolve in the face of Russian aggression.” Read: Yemen rebels strike oil depot in Saudi city hosting F1 race Biden’s remarks will end a four-day trip that included an earlier stop for a series of summits in Brussels. While in Warsaw, he also planned to visit with Polish President Andrzej Duda and meet with Ukrainian refugees and the aid workers who have been helping them. Some 3.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country, half of them children, according to the European Union. More than 2 million have gone to Poland. Biden previewed his closing speech during appearances Friday in Rzeszow. “You’re in the midst of a fight between democracies and oligarchs,” the president told members of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as he visited their temporary headquarters. “Is democracy going to prevail and the values we share, or are autocracies going to prevail?” During a later briefing on the refugee response, Biden said “the single most important thing that we can do from the outset” to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war “is keep the democracies united in our opposition.” Biden praised the humanitarian effort as being of “such an enormous consequence” given the scope of the crisis, which adds up to the largest flow of refugees since World War II. He appeared to lament that security concerns “understandably” will keep him from visiting Ukraine. Read: Putin’s war in Ukraine nearing possibly more dangerous phase Duda, who appeared with Biden on Friday, said the refugees are “guests.” “We do not want to call them refugees. They are our guests, our brothers, our neighbors from Ukraine, who today are in a very difficult situation,” he said. The U.S. has been sending money and supplies to aid the refugee effort. This week, Biden announced $1 billion in additional aid and said the U.S. would accept up to 100,000 refugees. The U.S. and many of its allies have imposed multiple rounds of economic and other sanctions on Russian individuals, banks and other entities in hopes that the cumulative effect over time will force Putin to withdraw his troops. Biden was scheduled to return to Washington after his speech in Warsaw on Saturday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at a huge flag-waving rally at a Moscow stadium and praised his country’s troops Friday as they pressed their lethal attacks on Ukrainian cities with shelling and missiles. “Shoulder to shoulder, they help and support each other,” Putin said in a rare public appearance since the invasion three weeks ago that made Russia an outcast among nations. “We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he added to cheers from the crowd. Moscow police said more than 200,000 people were in and around the Luzhniki stadium for the celebration marking the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, seized from Ukraine. The event included well-known singer Oleg Gazmanov singing “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.” Seeking to portray the war as a just one and commend Russia’s troops, Putin paraphrased the Bible to say, “There is no greater love than giving up one’s soul for one’s friends.” And he continued to insist his actions were necessary to prevent “genocide,” a claim flatly denied by leaders around the globe. Standing on stage in a white turtleneck and a blue down jacket, Putin spoke for about five minutes. Some people, including presenters at the event, wore T-shirts or jackets with a “Z” — a symbol seen on Russian tanks and military vehicles in Ukraine and embraced by supporters of the war. Read: Russian strikes hit Ukrainian capital and outskirts of Lviv His quoting of the Bible and a Russian admiral of the 18th century reflected his increasing focus in recent years on history and religion as binding forces in Russia’s post-Soviet society. Meanwhile, Russian troops continued to pound the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and launched a barrage of missiles on the outskirts of the western city of Lviv. The early morning attack on Lviv’s edge was the closest strike yet to the center of the city, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or fight. In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked. Rescue workers searched for survivors in the ruins of a theater that served as a shelter when it was blasted by a Russian airstrike Wednesday in the besieged southern city of Mariupol. Ludmyla Denisova, Ukrainain parliament’s human rights commissioner, said at least 130 people had survived the theater bombing. “But according to our data, there are still more than 1,300 people in these basements, in this bomb shelter,” Denisova told Ukrainian television. “We pray that they will all be alive, but so far there is no information about them.” At Lviv, black smoke billowed for hours after the explosions, which hit a facility for repairing military aircraft near the city’s international airport, 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the center. One person was wounded, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyy, said. Multiple blasts hit in quick succession around 6 a.m., shaking nearby buildings, witnesses said. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea, but the Ukrainian air force’s western command said it had shot down two of six missile in the volley. A bus repair facility was also damaged, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said.

Russian forces pressed their assault on Ukrainian cities Friday, with new missile strikes and shelling on the capital Kyiv and the outskirts of the western city of Lviv, as world leaders pushed for an investigation of the Kremlin’s repeated attacks on civilian targets, including schools, hospitals and residential areas. The early morning barrage of missiles on the outskirts of Lviv were the closest strike yet to the center of the city, which has become a crossroads for people fleeing from other parts of Ukraine and for others entering to deliver aid or fight. Black smoke billowed for hours after the explosions, which hit a facility for repairing military aircraft near the city’s international airport, only six kilometers (four miles) from the center. One person was wounded, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyy, said. Multiple blasts hit in quick succession around 6 a.m., shaking nearby buildings, witnesses said. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea, but the Ukrainian air force’s western command said it had shot down two of six missile in the volley. A bus repair facility was also damaged, Lviv’s mayor Andriy Sadovyi said. Lviv lies not far from the Polish border and well behind the front lines, but it and the surrounding area have not been spared Russia’s attacks. In the worst, nearly three dozen people were killed last weekend in a strike on a training facility near the city. Lviv’s population has swelled by some 200,000 as people from elsewhere in Ukraine have sought shelter there. Early morning barrages also hit a residential building in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, killing at least one person, according to emergency services, who said 98 people were evacuated from the building. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 19 were wounded in the shelling. Two others were killed when strikes hit residential and administrative buildings in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, according to the regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko. Read: Hundreds feared trapped in Ukraine theater hit by airstrike In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety have been attacked. Rescue workers searched for survivors in the ruins of a theater that served as a shelter when it was blown apart by a Russian airstrike in the besieged southern city of Mariupol Wednesday. In Kharkiv, a massive fire raged through a local market after shelling Thursday. One firefighter was killed and another injured when new shelling hit as emergency workers fought the blaze, emergency services said. The World Health Organization said it has verified 43 attacks on hospitals and health facilities, with 12 people killed and 34 injured. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that American officials were evaluating potential war crimes and that if the intentional targeting of civilians by Russia is confirmed, there will be “massive consequences.” The United Nations political chief, Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo, also called for an investigation into civilian casualties, reminding the U.N. Security Council that international humanitarian law bans direct attacks on civilians. She said many of the daily attacks battering Ukrainian cities “are reportedly indiscriminate” and involve the use of “explosive weapons with a wide impact area.” DiCarlo said the devastation in Mariupol and Kharkiv ”raises grave fears about the fate of millions of residents of Kyiv and other cities facing intensifying attacks.” About 35,000 civilians left Mariupol over the previous two days, Kirilenko said Friday. Hundreds of civilians were said to have taken shelter in a grand, columned theater in the city’s center when it was hit Wednesday by a Russian airstrike. On Friday, their fate was still uncertain, with conflicting reports on whether anyone had emerged from the rubble. Communications are disrupted across the city and movement is difficult because of shelling and fighting. “We hope and we think that some people who stayed in the shelter under the theater could survive,” Petro Andrushchenko, an official with the mayor’s office, told The Associated Press Thursday. He said the building had a relatively modern basement bomb shelter designed to withstand airstrikes. Other officials said earlier that some people had gotten out. Video and photos provided by the Ukrainian military showed the at least three-story building had been reduced to a roofless shell, with some exterior walls collapsed. Satellite imagery on Monday from Maxar Technologies showed huge white letters on the pavement outside the theater spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian — “DETI” — to alert warplanes to the vulnerable people hiding inside. Read: Rescuers search theater rubble as Russian attacks continue Russia’s military denied bombing the theater or anyplace else in Mariupol on Wednesday. In Chernihiv, at least 53 people were brought to morgues over 24 hours, killed amid heavy Russian air attacks and ground fire, the local governor, Viacheslav Chaus, told Ukrainian TV Thursday. Ukraine’s emergency services said a mother, father and three of their children, including 3-year-old twins, were killed when a Chernihiv hostel was shelled. Civilians were hiding in basements and shelters across the embattled city of 280,000. “The city has never known such nightmarish, colossal losses and destruction,” Chaus said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early Friday he was thankful to President Joe Biden for additional military aid, but he would not get into specifics about the new package, saying he did not want Russia to know what to expect. He said when the invasion began on Feb. 24, Russia expected to find Ukraine much as it did in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea without a fight and backed separatists as they took control of the eastern Donbas region. Instead, he said, Ukraine had much stronger defenses than expected, and Russia “didn’t know what we had for defense or how we prepared to meet the blow.” In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven leading economies accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of conducting an “unprovoked and shameful war,” and called on Russia to comply with the International Court of Justice’s order to stop its attack and withdraw its forces. Both Ukraine and Russia this week reported some progress in negotiations. Zelenskyy said he would not reveal Ukraine’s negotiating tactics. “Working more in silence than on television, radio or on Facebook,” Zelenskyy said. “I consider it the right way.” Read: Who’s a war criminal, and who gets to decide? Putin spoke by phone Friday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who urged the Russian president to agree to an immediate cease-fire and called for an improvement to the humanitarian situation, a spokesman for Scholz said. In a statement about the call, the Kremlin said Putin told the German chancellor that Ukraine had “unrealistic proposals” and was dragging out negotiations. The Kremlin also said it was evacuating civilians, and accused Ukraine of committing war crimes by shelling cities in the east. While details of Thursday’s talks were unknown, an official in Zelenskyy’s office told the AP that on Wednesday, the main subject discussed was whether Russian troops would remain in separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after the war and where the borders would be. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Ukraine was insisting on the inclusion of one or more Western nuclear powers in the negotiations and on legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine. In exchange, the official said, Ukraine was ready to discuss a neutral military status. Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine to the alliance or station forces there. The fighting has led more than 3 million people to flee Ukraine, the U.N. estimates. The death toll remains unknown, though Ukraine has said thousands of civilians have died.

Asian stock markets rebounded Wednesday after Wall Street slid on anxiety over President Vladimir Putin’s authorization to send Russian soldiers into eastern Ukraine. Shanghai, Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia advanced. Oil prices edged higher on concern about possible disruption to Russian supplies. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. Global stock prices sank Tuesday as traders tried to figure out the impact of Russia’s moves and sanctions imposed by Washington, Britain and the 27-nation European Union on its banks, officials and business leaders. “Current U.S. sanctions on Russia are less-than-feared by the market,” said Anderson Alves of ActivTrades in a report. However, Alves noted American officials have more “acute options” including reducing Russia’s access to the SWIFT system for global bank transactions. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index lost 1% on Tuesday to 4,304.76. That puts it 10.3% below its Jan. 3 all-time high and into what traders call a correction, or a decline of at least 10% but less than 20%. On Wednesday, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.4% to 3,469.57 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained 0.6% to 23,657.49. Read: World shares drop after Putin orders troops to east Ukraine The Kospi in Seoul advanced 0.2% to 2,712.69 and Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 added 0.4% to 7,186.30. New Zealand and Indonesia gained. Singapore and Bangkok declined. Also Tuesday, Wall Street’s Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.4% to 33,596.61. The Nasdaq composite lost 1.2% to 13,381.52. U.S. stocks were already off their early Jan. 3 peak due to uncertainty about the impact of the Federal Reserve’s decision to withdraw ultra-low interest rates and other economic stimulus. Markets were rattled after Putin recognized the independence of rebel-held areas in Ukraine and sent in troops in defiance of U.S. and European pressure. Wheat prices rose on concern about supplies from Russia and Ukraine being disrupted. Prices of nickel and aluminum, for which Russia is a major supplier, also rose. European natural gas prices jumped after Germany withdrew a key document needed for certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude rose 43 cents per barrel to $91.94 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.28 on Tuesday to $92.35. Brent crude, the price basis for international oils, advanced 4 cents to $93.89 per barrel in London. It gained $1.45 the previous session to $96.84. The dollar was little-changed at 115.08 yen. The euro declined to $1.1324 from $1.1334.

Russia set the stage for a quick move to secure its hold on Ukraine’s rebel regions on Tuesday with new legislation that would allow the deployment of troops there as the West prepares to announce sanctions against Moscow amid fears of a full-scale invasion. The new Russia bills, which are likely to be quickly rubber-stamped by the Kremlin-controlled parliament, came a day after President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the regions in eastern Ukraine. The legislation could be a pretext for a deeper move into Ukrainian territory as the U.S. and its allies have feared. Quickly after Putin signed the decree late Monday, convoys of armored vehicles were seen rolling across the separatist-controlled territories. It wasn’t immediately clear if they were Russian. Russian officials haven’t yet acknowledged any troop deployments to the rebel east, but Vladislav Brig, a member of the separatist local council in Donetsk, told reporters that the Russian troops already had moved in, taking up positions in the region’s north and west. Putin’s decision to recognize the rebel regions as independent states follows a nearly eight-year old separatist conflict that has killed more than 14,000 and devastated Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called Donbas. The latest developments and move by Putin were met with reprehension by many countries around the world. Ever since the conflict erupted weeks after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Moscow of backing the separatists with troops and weapons, the charges it has denied, saying that Russians who fought in the east were volunteers. Putin’s move Monday formalizes Russia’s hold on the regions and gives it a free hand to deploy its forces there. Read: War fears grow as Putin orders troops to eastern Ukraine Draft bills that are set quickly sail through both houses of Russian parliament Tuesday, envisage military ties, including possible deployment of Russian military bases in the separatist regions. Several senior lawmakers suggested Tuesday that Russia could recognize the rebel-held territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine in their original administrative borders, including the chunks of land currently under the Ukrainian control. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to project calm, telling the country in an address overnight: “We are not afraid of anyone or anything. We don’t owe anyone anything. And we won’t give anything to anyone.” His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, would be in Washington on Tuesday to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the State Department said. “The Kremlin recognized its own aggression against Ukraine,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Twitter, describing Moscow’s move as a “New Berlin Wall” and urging the West to quickly slap Russia with sanctions. The White House responded quickly, issuing an executive order to prohibit U.S. investment and trade in the separatist regions, and additional measures — likely sanctions — were to be announced Tuesday. Those sanctions are independent of what Washington has prepared in the event of a Russian invasion, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. Other Western allies also said they were planning to announce sanctions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday the U.K. will also introduce “immediate” economic sanctions against Russia, and warned that Putin is bent on “a full-scale invasion of Ukraine ... that would be absolutely catastrophic.” Johnson said Putin had “completely torn up international law” and British sanctions would target not just the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk but “Russian economic interests as hard as we can.” EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said that “Russian troops have entered in Donbas,” adding that “I wouldn’t say that (it is) a fully-fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil” and the EU would decide on sanctions later on Tuesday. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak also said in a radio interview Tuesday he could confirm that Russian forces entered the territories, describing it as a violation of Ukraine’s borders and international law. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday said China would “continue to stay in engagement with all parties,” continuing to steer clear from committing to back Russia despite the close ties between Moscow and Beijing. Read: Protester drives at New Zealand police as cordon tightens While Ukraine and the West said the Russian recognition of the rebel regions shatters a 2015 peace deal, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, challenged that, noting that Moscow isn’t a party to the Minsk agreement and arguing that it could still be implemented if Ukraine chooses so. The 2015 deal that was brokered by France and Germany and signed in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, required Ukraine to offer a sweeping self-rule to the rebel regions in a diplomatic coup for Russia after a series of Ukrainian military defeats. Many in Ukraine resented the deal as a betrayal of national interests and a blow to the country’s integrity, and its implementation has stalled. Putin announced the move in an hourlong televised speech, blaming the U.S. and its allies for the current crisis and describing Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as an existential challenge to Russia. “Ukraine’s membership in NATO poses a direct threat to Russia’s security,” he said. Russia says it wants Western guarantees that NATO won’t allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members — and Putin said Monday that a simple moratorium on Ukraine’s accession wouldn’t be enough. Moscow has also demanded the alliance halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West. Putin warned Monday that the Western rejection of Moscow’s demands gives Russia the right to take other steps to protect its security. Sweeping through more than a century of history, Putin painted today’s Ukraine as a modern construct used by the West to contain Russia despite the neighbors inextricable links. In a stark warning to Ukraine, the Russian leader charged that it has unfairly inherited Russia’s historic land granted to it by the Communist rulers of the Soviet Union and mocked its effort to shed the Communist past in a so-called “decommunization” campaign. “We are ready to show you what the real decommunization would mean for Ukraine,” Putin added ominously in an apparent signal of his readiness to raise new land claims. With an estimated 150,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, the U.S. has warned that Moscow has already decided to invade. Still, President Joe Biden and Putin tentatively agreed to a meeting brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron in a last-ditch effort to avoid war. Macron’s office said Biden and Putin had “accepted the principle of such a summit,” to be followed by a broader meeting that would include other “relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe.” If Russia moves in, the meeting will be off, but the prospect of a face-to-face summit resuscitated hopes in diplomacy to prevent a conflict that could devastate Ukraine and cause huge economic damage across Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy. Tensions have continued to fly high in eastern Ukraine, with more shelling reported along the tense line of contact between the rebels and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine’s military said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another 12 were wounded by shelling over the last 24 hours. It has rejected the rebel claims of shelling residential areas and insisted that Ukrainian forces weren’t returning fire.

A long-feared Russian invasion of Ukraine appeared to be imminent Monday, if not already underway, with Russian President Vladimir Putin ordering forces into separatist regions of eastern Ukraine. A vaguely worded decree signed by Putin did not say if troops were on the move, and it cast the order as an effort to “maintain peace.” But it appeared to dash the slim remaining hopes of averting a major conflict in Europe that could cause massive casualties, energy shortages on the continent and economic chaos around the globe. Putin’s directive came hours after he recognized the separatist regions in a rambling, fact-bending discourse on European history. The move paved the way to provide them military support, antagonizing Western leaders who regard it as a breach of world order, and set off a frenzied scramble by the U.S. and others to respond. Underscoring the urgency, the U.N. Security Council held a rare nighttime emergency meeting on Monday at the request of Ukraine, the U.S. and other countries. Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo opened the session with a warning that “the risk of major conflict is real and needs to be prevented at all costs.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sought to project calm, telling the country: “We are not afraid of anyone or anything. We don’t owe anyone anything. And we won’t give anything to anyone.” His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, would be in Washington on Tuesday to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the State Department said.The White House issued an executive order to prohibit U.S. investment and trade in the separatist regions, and additional measures — likely sanctions — were to be announced Tuesday. Those sanctions are independent of what Washington has prepared in the event of a Russian invasion, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. The State Department, meanwhile, said U.S. personnel in Lviv — in Ukraine’s far west — would spend the night in Poland but return to Ukraine to continue their diplomatic work and emergency consular services. It again urged any American citizens in Ukraine to leave immediately. Read: US, Egypt launch group to prepare for COP27 climate summit The developments came during a spike in skirmishes in the eastern regions that Western powers believe Russia could use as a pretext for an attack on the Western-looking democracy that has defied Moscow’s attempts to pull it back into its orbit. Putin justified his decision in a far-reaching, pre-recorded speech blaming NATO for the current crisis and calling the U.S.-led alliance an existential threat to Russia. Sweeping through more than a century of history, he painted today’s Ukraine as a modern construct that is inextricably linked to Russia. He charged that Ukraine had inherited Russia’s historic lands and after the Soviet collapse was used by the West to contain Russia. “I consider it necessary to take a long-overdue decision: To immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic,” Putin said. Afterward he signed matching decrees recognizing the two regions’ independence, eight years after fighting erupted between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces, and called on lawmakers to approve measures paving the way for military support. Until now, Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of supporting the separatists with arms and troops, but Moscow has denied that, saying that Russians who fought there were volunteers. At an earlier meeting of Putin’s Security Council, a stream of top officials argued for recognizing the regions’ independence. One slipped up and said he favored including them as part of Russia — but Putin quickly corrected him. Recognizing the separatist regions’ independence is likely to be popular in Russia, where many share Putin’s worldview. Russian state media released images of people in Donetsk setting off fireworks, waving large Russian flags and playing Russia’s national anthem. Ukrainians in Kyiv, meanwhile, bristled at the move. “Why should Russia recognize (the rebel-held regions)? If neighbors come to you and say, ‘This room will be ours,’ would you care about their opinion or not? It’s your flat, and it will be always your flat,” said Maria Levchyshchyna, a 48-year-old painter in the Ukrainian capital. “Let them recognize whatever they want. But in my view, it can also provoke a war, because normal people will fight for their country.” With an estimated 150,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, the U.S. has warned that Moscow has already decided to invade. Still, President Joe Biden and Putin tentatively agreed to a meeting brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron in a last-ditch effort to avoid war. If Russia moves in, the meeting will be off, but the prospect of a face-to-face summit resuscitated hopes in diplomacy to prevent a conflict that could devastate Ukraine and cause huge economic damage across Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy. Russia says it wants Western guarantees that NATO won’t allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members — and Putin said Monday that a simple moratorium on Ukraine’s accession wouldn’t be enough. Moscow has also demanded the alliance halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West. Read: Biden-Putin meeting discussed as Ukraine war fears loom Macron’s office said Biden and Putin had “accepted the principle of such a summit,” to be followed by a broader meeting that would include other “relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe.” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, meanwhile, said the administration has always been ready to talk to avert a war — but was also prepared to respond to any attack. During Monday night’s emergency meeting, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Putin “has put before the world a choice” and it “must not look away” because “history tells us that looking the other way in the face of such hostility will be a far more costly path.” China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun called for restraint and a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Putin’s announcement shattered a 2015 peace deal signed in Minsk requiring Ukraine to offer broad self-rule to the rebel regions, a major diplomatic coup for Moscow. That deal was resented by many in Ukraine who saw it as a capitulation, a blow to the country’s integrity and a betrayal of national interests. Putin and other officials argued Monday that the Ukrainian government has shown no appetite for implementing it. Over 14,000 people have been killed since conflict erupted in the eastern industrial heartland of Donbas in 2014, shortly after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Potential flashpoints multiplied. Sustained shelling continued Monday along the tense line of contact separating the opposing forces. Unusually, Russia said it had fended off an “incursion” from Ukraine — which Ukrainian officials denied. And Russia decided to prolong military drills in Belarus, which could offer a staging ground for an attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Ukraine and the separatist rebels have traded blame for cease-fire violations with hundreds of explosions recorded daily. While separatists have charged that Ukrainian forces were firing on residential areas, Associated Press journalists reporting from several towns and villages in Ukrainian-held territory along the line of contact have not witnessed any notable escalation from the Ukrainian side and have documented signs of intensified shelling by the separatists that destroyed homes and ripped up roads. Some residents of the main rebel-held city of Donetsk described sporadic shelling by Ukrainian forces, but they added that it wasn’t on the same scale as earlier in the conflict. The separatist authorities said Monday that at least four civilians were killed by Ukrainian shelling over the past 24 hours, and several others were wounded. Ukraine’s military said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed over the weekend, and another serviceman was wounded Monday. Ukrainian military spokesman Pavlo Kovalchyuk insisted that Ukrainian forces weren’t returning fire. In the village of Novognativka on the Ukraine government-controlled side, 60-year-old Ekaterina Evseeva said the shelling was worse than at the height of fighting early in the conflict. “We are on the edge of nervous breakdowns,” she said, her voice trembling. “And there is nowhere to run.” In another worrying sign, the Russian military said it killed five suspected “saboteurs” who crossed from Ukraine into Russia’s Rostov region and also destroyed two armored vehicles and took a Ukrainian serviceman prisoner. Ukrainian Border Guard spokesman Andriy Demchenko dismissed the claim as “disinformation.” With fears of invasion high, the U.S. administration sent a letter to the United Nations human rights chief claiming that Moscow has compiled a list of Ukrainians to be killed or sent to detention camps after the invasion. The letter, first reported by The New York Times, was obtained by the AP. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the claim was a lie and no such list exists. Karmanau reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Cook from Brussels. Lori Hinnant in Kyiv; Angela Charlton in Paris; Zeke Miller and Aamer Madhani in Munich, Germany; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Eric Tucker, Ellen Knickmeyer, Robert Burns, Matthew Lee and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

Russia made two overtures to ease tensions around Ukraine — reporting a pullback of troops near its neighbor and welcoming talks with the West. But the United States and its allies said they needed evidence of the troop movements and that the threat of a Russian invasion still loomed. For the second day Tuesday, there were signs of hope that Europe might avoid war following weeks of escalating East-West tensions as Moscow massed around 150,000 troops on three sides of Ukraine and held massive military drills. Those moves led to dire warnings from Washington, London and other European capitals that Russia was preparing to roll into Ukraine. But the tenor changed this week. President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia does not want war and would rely on negotiations in its efforts to eliminate any chance that Ukraine could one day join NATO — his key demand in the crisis. At the same time, he did not commit to a full pullback, saying Russia’s next moves in the standoff will depend on how the situation evolves. Russia also offered few details of the pullback, and President Joe Biden said American officials had not verified Russia’s claim. He promised that the U.S. would give diplomacy “every chance,” but he struck a skeptical tone about Moscow’s intentions. “Two paths are still open,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “But let there be no doubt: If Russia commits this breach by invading Ukraine, responsible nations around the world will not hesitate to respond. If we do not stand for freedom where it is at risk today, we’ll surely pay a steeper price tomorrow.” Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly sought to project calm but also strength during the crisis. In an apparent show of defiance, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that Wednesday would be a “day of national unity,” calling on citizens to display the blue-and-yellow flag and sing the national anthem in the face of “hybrid threats.” Read: Risk of a Ukraine war spreading in Europe rests on unknowns Even amid the glimmers of hope, Biden said 150,000 Russian forces are now massed near Ukraine and in neighboring Belarus — an increase from an earlier U.S. estimate of 130,000 troops. Russia’s claim that it pulled back troops “would be good, but we have not yet verified that,” Biden said. “Indeed, our analysts indicate that they remain very much in a threatening position.” Russia has denied having any invasion plans. It wants the West to keep Ukraine and other former Soviet nations out of NATO, halt weapons deployments near Russian borders and roll back forces from Eastern Europe. The U.S. and its allies have roundly rejected those demands, but they offered to engage in talks with Russia on ways to bolster security in Europe. Speaking after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said the West agreed to discuss a ban on missile deployment to Europe, restrictions on military drills and other confidence-building measures — issues that Moscow put on the table years ago. He said Russia is open to discuss “some of those elements,” but added that it would do so only in combination “with the main issues that are of primary importance for us.” While Scholz reiterated that NATO’s eastward expansion “is not on the agenda — everyone knows that very well,” Putin retorted that Moscow will not be assuaged by such assurances. “They are telling us it won’t happen tomorrow,” Putin said. “Well, when will it happen? The day after tomorrow? What does it change for us in the historic perspective? Nothing.” Read: Russia makes moves to ease Ukraine tensions; West skeptical Scholz also said diplomatic options are “far from exhausted,” and he praised the announcement of a troop withdrawal as a “good signal,” adding: “We hope that more will follow.” The Russian Defense Ministry released images of tanks and howitzers rolling onto railway platforms and more tanks rolling across snowy fields. It did not disclose where or when the images were taken, or where the vehicles were headed, other than “to places of permanent deployment.” Ukraine expressed skepticism. “We won’t believe when we hear, we’ll believe when we see,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. And NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that there have been no signs, so far, of a reduced military presence on Ukraine’s borders. Meanwhile, a series of cyberattacks knocked out the websites of the Ukrainian army, the defense ministry and major banks. There was no indication that the relatively low-level denial-of-service attacks might be a smoke screen for more serious cyber mischief. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. has not yet determined who was behind the attacks. Despite the worst East-West tensions in decades, few Russians expect a war. In a village in Russia’s Belgorod region, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Ukraine’s border, residents carried on with life as usual, even as more military personnel have been passing through village streets. “We are really on the border, we really have relatives here and there, everyone has somebody” on the Ukrainian side, villager Lyudmila Nechvolod said. “No one wants war.” Russian lawmakers urged Putin to recognize rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine as independent states. The State Duma, Russia’s lower house, voted to submit an appeal to Putin to that effect. Putin said the request reflects the Russian public’s sympathy for the suffering of people trapped in the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed over 14,000 since 2014. He noted, however, that Russia continues to believe a 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany should serve as the main vehicle for a settlement of the separatist conflict.