Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Britain on Wednesday, his first trip to the U.K. since Russia’s invasion began nearly a year ago and only his second confirmed journey outside Ukraine during the war. The British government says Zelenskyy will hold talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, address Parliament and meet with U.K. military chiefs. The U.K. is one of the biggest military backers of Ukraine and has sent the country more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) in weapons and equipment. The visit comes as Sunak announced that Britain will train Ukrainian pilots on “NATO-standard fighter jets.” Ukraine has urged its allies to send jets, though the U.K. says it’s not practical to provide the Ukrainian military with British warplanes. More than 10,000 Ukrainian troops have also been trained at bases in the U.K., some on the Challenger 2 tanks that Britain is sending. “I am proud that today we will expand that training from soldiers to marines and fighter jet pilots, ensuring Ukraine has a military able to defend its interests well into the future,” Sunak said. “It also underlines our commitment to not just provide military equipment for the short term, but a long-term pledge to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine for years to come.” Zelenskyy addressed the U.K. Parliament remotely in March, two weeks after the start of the invasion. He echoed World War II leader Winston Churchill’s famous “never surrender” speech, vowing that Ukrainians “will fight till the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.” Before Sunak took office, Zelenskyy had formed a bond with Boris Johnson, who was one of Ukraine’s most vocal backers while he was U.K. prime minister. Sunak took office in October and has pledged to maintain the U.K.’s support. It will be Zelenskyy’s second known trip visit abroad since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. He visited the U.S. in December. Zelenskyy may be seeking Western pledges of more advanced weapons before potential spring offensives by both Russia and Ukraine. In Brussels, there were increasing expectations that the Ukrainian leader might also make his first visit to European Union institutions since the war began. Leaders from 27-nation bloc will be gathering for a summit in Brussels on Thursday. That would enable Zelenskyy to meet with all major leaders of the bloc in one day. Zelenskyy has often addressed EU summits only through video calls from Ukraine. The EU’s legislature has also slated a special plenary session in Brussels for Thursday in the hopes that Zelenskyy will come following his trip to Britain. The London visit came as Russian forces blasted areas of eastern Ukraine with more artillery bombardments, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, in what Kyiv authorities believe is part of a new thrust by the Kremlin’s forces before the invasion anniversary. Russian forces over the past day launched major shelling attacks on areas near the front line in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, killing a 74-year-old woman and wounding a 16-year-old girl in the border town of Vovchansk, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Russian forces in Ukraine are focusing their efforts on “waging a counteroffensive” in the country’s industrial east, with the aim of taking full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said. Russian troops launched assaults near Bakhmut and Vuhledar, two mining towns in the Donetsk region that have been among Moscow’s key targets, Ukrainian officials said. Seizing Bakhmut could severely disrupt Ukraine’s military supply routes. It would also open a door for Moscow’s forces to drive toward key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk. Ukrainian authorities say the Kremlin’s goal is to complete full control of the Donbas, an expansive industrial area bordering Russia. That would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a major battlefield success after months of setbacks and help him rally public opinion behind the war. Military analysts say that after a Ukrainian counteroffensive that started last summer and recaptured large areas from Russia, the war has been largely static in recent months. Russia is now also trying to break through Ukrainian lines near the towns of Avdiivka and Marinka in Donetsk, as well as near Kreminna, a front-line town in the Luhansk region which lies along a key Russian supply route, the Ukrainian General Staff said. ___ Raf Casert contributed to this report from Brussels.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its 12th day following what Ukrainian authorities described as increased shelling of encircled cities and another failed attempt to evacuate civilians from the besieged southern port of Mariupol. Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour cease-fire Sunday, but Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks quickly closed the safe-passage corridor. A third round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian leaders was planned for Monday. More than 1.5 million Ukrainians had been forced from the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his people to keep resisting, and Ukraine's foreign minister said more than 20,000 people from 52 countries had volunteered to fight in Ukraine's newly created international legion. Russian President Vladimir Putin likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war.” Here’s a look at key things to know about the conflict: VIOLENCE STOPS PLANNED CIVILIAN EVACUATIONS AGAIN Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko blamed Russian artillery fire for halting a second attempt in as many days to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, where food, water and medicine are scarce. A day earlier, Ukrainian officials similarly said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from leaving. Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the effort. Russia has sought to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov in the south. Capturing Mariupol could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Read:Oil prices jump as conflict in Ukraine deepens WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND? Russian forces launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks across the country, including powerful bombs dropped on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of the capital of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. But a miles-long Russian armored column threatening the capital remained stalled outside Kyiv. Sunday evening, heavy shelling also came to Mykolaiv in the south and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. Efforts to evacuate residents from the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin on Sunday were mostly unsuccessful. A senior American defense official said Sunday the U.S. believes that about 95% of the Russian forces that had been arrayed around Ukraine are now inside the country. Ukrainian air and missile defenses remain effective and in use, and the Ukrainian military continues to fly aircraft and to employ air defense assets, the official said. Ukrainian forces were also defending Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port city, from Russian ships, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said. The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday announced plans to strike Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, and it alleged that Ukrainian forces were plotting to blow up an experimental nuclear reactor in Kharkiv and to blame it on Russia. The ministry offered no evidence to back its claims, which could not be independently verified. ZELENSKYY PUSHES CALL FOR NO-FLY ZONE Zelenskyy pushed his call for foreign countries to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Establishing a no-fly zone would risk escalating the conflict by involving foreign militaries directly. Although the United States and many Western countries have backed Ukraine with weapons shipments, they have sent no troops. Zelenskyy said in a video address on Sunday that “the world is strong enough to close our skies" and over the weekend he urged U.S. officials help his country obtain warplanes to fight the invasion and retain control of its airspace. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that some Ukrainian combat planes had redeployed to Romania and other Ukraine neighbors he didn’t identify. He warned an attack from planes operating out of those nations could be deemed an engagement by them in the conflict. DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as a Russian military plane fell from the sky and crashed, according to video released by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of protesters waved blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted, “Go home.” In Mariupol, Associated Press journalists saw doctors make futile attempts to save wounded children. Pharmacies ran bare and hundreds of thousands of people faced food and water shortages in freezing weather. In Irpin, near Kyiv, a sea of people on foot and even in wheelbarrows trudged over the remains of a destroyed bridge to cross a river and leave the city. Assisted by Ukrainian soldiers, they lugged pets, infants, purses and flimsy bags stuffed with minimal possessions. Some of the weak and elderly were carried along the path in blankets and carts. Kyiv’s central train station remained crowded with people desperate to leave, and frequent shelling could be heard from the center of the capital city. Read:Ukraine says Russia steps up shelling of residential areas DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS Intense diplomatic efforts continued, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Moldova pledging America’s support to the small Western-leaning former Soviet republic. The country is coping with an influx of refugees from Ukraine and keeping an eye on Russia’s intensifying war with its neighbor. Blinken says the United States and its allies are having a “very active discussion” about banning the import of Russian oil and natural gas. In a call with Putin that lasted nearly two hours on Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron repeated calls for Russia to halt military operations, protect civilians and allow humanitarian aid. A French official reported that Putin said he does not intend to attack nuclear plants. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Sunday that Ukrainian staff at the country's largest nuclear plant are now required to seek approval for any operation, even maintenance, from the Russians. The Zaporizhzhya plant was seized by the Russians last week. Putin continued to blame the war on the Ukrainian leadership, saying, “They are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood.” In a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, Putin said the invasion could be halted only “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities,” according to a Kremlin account. Israel’s prime minister spoke with Putin on Sunday, a day after they met directly in Russia. Israel is one of the few countries that has good working relations with both Russia and Ukraine. THE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION The death toll of the conflict has been difficult to measure. The U.N. human rights office said at least 364 civilians have been confirmed killed since the Feb. 24 invasion, but the true number is probably much higher. The World Health Organization said it verified at least six attacks that have killed six health care workers and injured 11 others. The U.N. World Food Program says millions of people inside Ukraine, a major global wheat supplier, need food aid “immediately.” Ukrainian refugees continued to pour into neighboring countries, including Poland, Romania and Moldova. The number of people who have left since fighting began has now reached 1.5 million, according to U.N. refugee agency. BUSINESS IN RUSSIA A growing number of multinational businesses have cut off Russia from vital financial services, technology and a variety of consumer products in response to Western economic sanctions and global outrage over the war. Two of the so-called Big Four accounting firms — KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers — said Sunday they were pulling out of Russia, ending relationships with member firms based in the country. TikTok said users won’t be able to post new videos in Russia in response to the government’s crackdown on what people can say on social media about the invasion, and American Express announced it was suspending all operations in Russia and Belarus. Netflix also announced it was suspending its service in Russia.

A Hercules C130 transport aircraft with some 2,000 anti-tank missiles for Ukraine has taken off from Norway. The weapons are to help Ukrainian forces resist Russia’s invasion, which began last week. Norway’s national news agency NTB said the shipment was being sent from Oslo on Thursday to a third country before being transported to Ukraine. Also read: Russia-Ukraine War: What to know on Day 8 of Russian assault Also Thursday, Germany’s economy ministry approved sending 2,700 anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine, the dpa news agency said. The agency quoted unnamed Economy Ministry officials saying the weapons are Soviet-made, shoulder-fired Strela surface-to-air missiles left over from East German army supplies. Germany reversed its previous refusal to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons last week, following Russia’s attack. Also read: Russia-Ukraine War: Vaccine manufacturer braces for complications

Moscow’s war on Ukraine and the ferocious financial backlash it’s unleashed are not only inflicting an economic catastrophe on President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The repercussions are also menacing the global economy, shaking financial markets and making life more perilous for everyone from Uzbek migrant workers to European consumers to hungry Yemeni families. Even before Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine, the global economy was straining under a range of burdens: Surging inflation. Tangled supply chains. Tumbling stock prices. The Ukraine crisis both magnified each threat and complicated the potential solutions. “We are actually in uncharted territory,” said Clay Lowery, executive vice president at the Institute of International Finance, a trade group of global banks. “We know there are consequences that we cannot predict.’’ For now at least, the damage to the overall global economy appears to be relatively slight, if only because Russia and Ukraine are not economic powerhouses. Important as they are as exporters of energy, precious metals, wheat and other commodities, the two together account for less than 2% of the world’s gross domestic product. Most major economies have only limited trade exposure to Russia: For the U.S., it’s 0.5% of total trade. For China, around 2.4%. Barring a major escalation of the war — far from impossible — “the effects on the U.S., China and most of the emerging world should be limited,” said Adam Slater, lead economist at Oxford Economics. He foresees only a 0.2% drop in global GDP this year. Read: Russian forces escalate attacks on Ukraine’s civilian areas Still, Russia is a vitally important supplier of oil, natural gas and metals, and higher prices for those commodities are sure to inflict economic damage around the world. Europe relies on Russia for nearly 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil. For the European continent, Russia’s war has significantly heightened the likelihood of runaway inflation, another economic setback — or both. Here is a deeper look: AN ECONOMIC SIEGE Infuriated by Putin’s aggression, the United States and other Western nations have targeted Russia with sanctions of unprecedented breadth and severity for a major economy. They have thrown major Russian banks off the SWIFT international payment system, limited high tech exports to Russia and severely restricted Moscow’s use of its foreign currency reserves. The rapid and unified international retaliation against Russia appeared to catch Putin’s regime by surprise. “The world — or most of it anyway — is laying economic siege to Russia,” wrote Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. The sanctions quickly caused damage. The Russian ruble plunged to a record low Monday. Depositors lined up at ATMs to try to withdraw their money from the embattled banking system. Cut off from Google Pay and Apple Pay, Russians were stuck at ticket booths at Metro rail lines. The Institute of International Finance foresees the Russian economy enduring a double-digit contraction this year, worse even than its 7.8% drop in the Great Recession year of 2009. Oxford Economics said evidence from wars ranging from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war to the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia suggests that a staggering collapse of the Russian economy of 50% to 60% is possible. HARD TIMES FOR EUROPE With its dependence on energy from Russia, Europe’s economy is now especially at risk. Natural gas prices shot up 20% after the war started, on top of earlier increases, and now are roughly six times what they were at the start of 2021. The gas price shock is feeding higher inflation and swelling utility bills. The result is that households have less money to spend, and hopes for a surge in consumer spending resulting from fewer pandemic restrictions and COVID-19 cases have diminished. Escalating gas prices have caused what economists call “demand destruction” among industrial enterprises, like fertilizer makers, that use a lot of gas and have now slashed production. Farmers are paying more to run machinery and buy fertilizer. Germany’s economy, which sagged by 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2021, would face a technical recession if it shrank again in the first three months of 2022. The economic downdraft could be offset by an increase in German defense spending. In response to the Russian invasion, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said the government would commit 100 billion euros ($111 billion) to a special fund for its armed forces and raise defense spending above 2% of GDP. “The drag from higher prices and the negative confidence affect may lower real GDP growth in the eurozone from 4.3% to 3.7% for 2022,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank. NO SUPPLY CHAIN RELIEF The world’s unexpectedly robust recovery from the pandemic recession left companies scrambling to find enough raw materials and components to produce goods to meet surging customer demand. Overwhelmed factories, ports and freight yards have meant shortages, shipping delays and higher prices. Disruptions to Russian and Ukrainian industries could delay any return to normal conditions. Read: Biden joins allies, bans Russian planes from US airspace Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, noted that Russia and Ukraine together produce 70% of the world’s neon, critical in the making of semiconductors. That is especially worrisome because the world, and automakers in particular, are already enduring a shortage of computer chips. When Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine eight years ago, neon prices shot up 600%, though Zandi notes that chipmakers have since stockpiled neon and sought alternatives to Russian supplies. Russia and Ukraine together supply 13% of the world’s titanium, which is used to make passenger jets and 30% of the palladium, which goes into cars, cellphones and dental fillings, Zandi said. Russia also is a major producer of nickel, used to produce electric car batteries and steel. “It’s impossible for supply chains to catch up,” said Vanessa Miller, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP who specializes in supply chains. TROUBLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD The conflict and sanctions will also do damage to Russia’s neighbors in Central Asia. As its own workforce has aged, Russia has turned to younger migrant workers from such countries such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Those workers’ families have come to rely on the money they send home — remittances. Even at the height of COVID-19 in 2020, remittances from Russia to Uzbekistan topped $3.9 billion and to Kyrgyzstan $2 billion, according to the Russian central bank. “The pressure on the ruble, banking restrictions on foreigners and — in the long run — the collapse of the labor market in Russia will have an immediate and profound economic impact on Central Asia, “Gavin Helf, an expert on Central Asia for the U.S. Institute of Peace, wrote this week. A STRAIN ON FOOD SUPPLIES Ukraine and Russia account for 30% of the world’s exports of wheat, 19% of corn and 80% of sunflower oil, which is used in food processing. Much of the Russian and Ukrainian bounty goes to poor, unstable countries like Yemen and Libya. The threat to farms in eastern Ukraine and a cutoff of exports through Black Sea ports could reduce food supplies just when prices are at their highest levels since 2011 and some countries are suffering from food shortages. Anna Nagurney, a management professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, described the consequences as “extremely troubling.” “Wheat, corn, oils, barley, flour are extremely important to food security,” Nagurney said, “especially in the poorer parts of the globe.” With ports, airports and rail lines closed and young Ukrainian men fighting the Russian invasion, she asked: “Who’s going to be doing the harvesting? Who’d be doing the transportation?” RISING PRICES The Ukraine war coincides with a high-risk moment for the Federal Reserve and other central banks. They were caught off-guard by the surge in inflation over the past year — the consequence, mostly, of the economy’s unexpectedly strong recovery. Read: 520,000+ refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia waged war In January, U.S. consumer prices rose 7.5% from a year earlier, the biggest such jump since 1982. In Europe, figures out Wednesday are likely to show that inflation accelerated to 6% last month from 5.1% in January for the 19 countries that use the euro currency. Now, the fighting and sanctions that have disrupted Russia trade with the global economy threaten to send prices ever higher, especially for energy: Russia and Ukraine, Zandi said, together produce 12% of the world’s oil and 17% of its natural gas. To combat inflation, the Fed is set to begin raising interest rates when it meets in two weeks, reversing the ultra-low-rate policies it adopted in 2020 to help rescue the economy from the pandemic recession. Likewise, the European Central Bank is gradually withdrawing its pandemic stimulus efforts. But now? Central bankers must weigh intensifying inflationary pressure against the risk that the Ukraine crisis will weaken economies. In Europe, for now, “any hints of rate hikes are out of the question,” Carsten Brzeski, chief of global macro at ING bank. Yet the Fed, roundly accused of being slow to recognize inflation’s resurgence, may continue its shift away from easy-money policies. Barring a stock market collapse or a broadening of the war beyond Ukraine, Zandi said, “I don’t expect any change in the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy as a result of the economic cross-currents created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”