Ukraine-Russia War: Live Updates – The New York Times

“Russian troops have changed their tactics and are trying to remove the killed people from the streets and basements of the occupied territory,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address on Wednesday. They would not succeed in hiding evidence, he said, “because they killed a lot. Responsibility cannot be avoided.”

Europe and the United States have moved to provide more weapons to Ukraine’s military and further ostracize Russia economically with new penalties, including restrictions on its leading banks and on the assets of President Vladimir V. Putin’s children. Russia has appeared to move closer to default on its foreign debt because of U.S. currency restrictions.

The European Union is weighing a batch of sanctions that, if approved, would its harshest since the Russian invasion. The bloc is also considering a ban on coal from Russia, the leading provider of fossil-fuel energy to Europe.

Deliberations over the ban and other sanctions were set to continue into Thursday, and European Union officials and diplomats anticipated that the measures would be approved. The process reflected the challenges of reaching agreement among all 27 member nations on the penalties, which would also include banning Russian ships from E.U. ports.

NATO foreign ministers, meeting this week, have been discussing how to further help Ukraine prosecute the war without entangling the alliance in direct combat with Russian forces.

The war, they said, is far from over, noting that however badly Russia’s forces have performed, and their retreat from areas around Kyiv notwithstanding, they are making slow and brutal progress in the separatist east.

“Moscow is not giving up its ambitions in Ukraine,” said Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general.

In other major developments:

• Oleg Synegubov, the state administrator for the Kharkiv military region, said Wednesday in a post on Telegram that the Ukrainian army would evacuate two towns in the east because fighting was escalating there.

• In the eastern Donetsk region, at least two people were killed and five injured when Russian forces attacked a humanitarian aid site in the town of Vugledar, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the Donetsk governor.

• In the eastern Luhansk region, Russian forces now control 60 percent of the town of Rubizhne, according to the governor there, Serhiy Haidai, who said the attackers had scaled up their offensive this week.

Anushka Patil, Megan Specia, Cora Engelbrecht and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

“We want to show the world community Ukrainian music, our spirit and how unbreakable we are. We really need support in this difficult time,” the band said, according to the broadcaster Suspline, which runs the contest to pick Ukraine’s representative.

Even though contest rules expressly bar political speech, gestures or lyrics, Russia’s war in Ukraine is very much becoming a factor in the shindig that last year was viewed by 183 million people worldwide. In February, a day after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine, the European Broadcasting Union barred Russia from this year’s competition, saying it would sully an event designed to promote European unity and cultural exchange.

Ukraine’s initial top pick for the contest, Alina Pash, withdrew from the competition before the war in mid-February, after a controversy over a 2015 trip she made to Russian-occupied Crimea.

Kalush Orchestra performed their Eurovision entry, “Stefania,” Saturday at a town square in Lviv in western Ukraine for the first time since the war. The band’s frontman has said in interviews he’s been volunteering in war relief efforts, and one of his bandmates has served in a territorial defense unit.

The group arrived in Israel this week to perform at a pre-Eurovision concert in Tel Aviv. They separately announced plans for a promotional tour ahead of the main Eurovision event to raise funds for Ukraine.

Oddsmakers are predicting Ukraine will win the final in Turin, Italy, which is decided by votes from the public and a jury. Ukraine last won with the singer Jamala’s 2016 song “1944,” which references Soviet abuses in Crimea under Stalin, just two years after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed Crimea.

In the 2009 contest, Georgia’s entry was a disco number entitled “We Don’t Wanna Put In.” Organizers rejected that song as being overtly political for its less-than-subtle reference to Mr. Putin after Russia’s war with Georgia the previous year.

The bill, which mirrored similar legislation approved unanimously in the Senate last month, passed 418 to 6, with most Republicans lining up on the House floor to support the measure.

“We rise today not as Republicans, Democrats, but as Americans, as a united Congress on behalf of the American people condemning these atrocities,” said Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas and the co-author of the bill.

The six Republicans who opposed the legislation did not immediately explain their votes, but nearly all of them were members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus and have argued against interventionist foreign policy.

Some, like Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, had previously tweeted in support of Ukraine, while others, like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, had parroted misinformation spread by Russia.

The other four lawmakers who opposed the bill were Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Paul Gosar of Arizona.

As he has many times in the past few weeks, Mr. Zelensky spoke directly to the Russian people, calling on them to demand an end to the war if they felt “even a little bit of shame” over Russian troops killing civilians in Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky also welcomed a new raft of sanctions against Russia from the European Union and the United States, but said his government would continue to insist on a full international blockade of the Russian banking system and a total ban on imports of Russian oil.

He excoriated Western allies for continuing to debate how to take such measures without compromising their own economies.

“That’s why people go into politics. To solve such problems, difficult tasks. To solve them quickly and in a principled fashion,” he said. “If you are not capable, then you shouldn’t have started political activity.”

Although European Union talks have thus far suggested that an agreement to expand a ban on Russian coal to include oil and gas would be difficult, Mr. Zelensky expressed his belief that it was inevitable.

“The only question is how many more Ukrainian men and women the Russian military will have time to kill, so that you, some politicians — and we know you — can borrow a little determination somewhere,” he said.

The European Union was expected to continue talks Thursday on the latest round of sanctions, which if approved would be the harshest enforced by the bloc since the invasion.

“For him to bet the farm, this way, I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago,” he said.

Mr. Obama went on to say that what is happening in Ukraine is “not isolated” but rather “a reversion back to old ways of thinking about power and place and identity.” He added that he was encouraged by Europe’s reaction to the invasion.

Speaking at a conference about misinformation and its threat to democracy, he told the audience in the hourlong speech that he didn’t appreciate the dangers of misinformation, which began to thrive during his presidency with the popularity of smartphones and social media.

“The degree to which information, disinformation, misinformation was being weaponized,” Mr. Obama said. “We saw it, but I think I underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to it as they were, including ours.”

The Pentagon announced last month it was sending 100 Switchblade drones to Ukraine as part of a $800 million military aid package to Ukraine. More are on the way. Military officials call the weapon, which is carried in a backpack, the “kamikaze drone” because it can be flown directly at a tank or a group of troops and is destroyed when it hits the target and explodes.

Bigger armed drones, like U.S.-made Predators or Reapers, would be difficult for Ukrainians to fly and would be easily destroyed by Russian fighter planes. But Pentagon officials said the small, portable kamikaze drones could prove to be a more cost-effective and elusive weapon against Russian armored convoys.

When Pentagon officials realized that about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers had arrived in the United States on an educational assignment that was scheduled long before the February invasion, they decided to give the troops a quick course on using the killer drones.

“We took the opportunity, having them still in the country, to give them a couple of days’ worth of training on the Switchblade,” John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Wednesday. Mr. Kirby said the Ukrainians don’t typically use this weapon, but he noted that it is easy to learn.

“An individual could be suitably trained on how to use the Switchblade drone in about two days or so,” he said.

The Ukrainian soldiers are wrapping up their impromptu drone training at a military base in the southern United States that officials would not identify for security reasons. By the time they arrive back home in the coming days, officials said, the Switchblades will be waiting for them.