Russia

Kyiv June 9, 6:13 p.m.

Moscow June 9, 6:13 p.m.

Washington June 9, 11:13 a.m.

Russia and Ukraine are presenting divergent accounts of fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, where analysts warn that Kyiv faces a difficult battle against Moscow's entrenched forces.

Zelensky cites progress in ‘very tough battles’ as fighting intensifies in the southeast.

Two are killed in Russian shelling in the flood zone, Ukrainian officials say.

A U.S. official says spy satellites detected an explosion just before the dam collapsed.

A drone factory that Iran is helping Russia build could be operational next year, the U.S. says.

Sweden says it will allow NATO troops on its soil even before it joins the alliance.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — The Ukrainian Army has achieved "step by step" results in fierce battles in southeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky says, offering a rare if limited update on a surge in offensive operations that Ukrainian officials have cloaked in secrecy.

Each side is presenting its own take on the uptick in fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, where military analysts have warned that Kyiv will face losses as it tries to break through heavily fortified Russian defenses. Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Friday that the "enemy remains on the defensive" as they strike the area with aerial bombardments, while Russia said its forces were still repelling Ukrainian attacks.

The most recent battle erupted in an area of table-flat steppe in Ukraine's south, an unforgiving landscape for war with little cover for advancing troops, and where Russia has laid mine belts and dug layer upon layer of defensive trenches.

Ukraine's military on Friday confirmed fighting south of the town of Orikhiv, but offered no details.

That area is near where military analysts have said for months that the Ukrainians might focus the brunt of a counteroffensive operation, armed with their newly acquired arsenal of Western tanks and armored personnel carriers. Kyiv's push there, analysts say, is part of an effort to drive a wedge into land that Russia has seized since launching its full-scale invasion last year, splitting the territory into two and cutting Moscow's supply lines to the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

About 60 miles to the east of Orikhiv, Ukraine was also attacking across the plains near the town of Velyka Novosilka, where a deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said on Thursday that a battle was being fought. Ukrainian officials have also said they are attacking Russian positions on the outskirts of the eastern city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russian forces last month after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. Ukraine's military said on Thursday that it had advanced by several hundred yards near Bakhmut.

Mr. Zelensky, speaking in an overnight address on Thursday, said that he had been in touch with military commanders about "very tough battles" along the front. "But there is a result," he added, "and I am grateful to everyone who ensures this result." He did not clarify what the result was.

The attack near Orikhiv is plowing directly into a dense line of Russian defenses, suggesting that Ukraine might try a direct assault on one of the shortest routes to splitting Russian-held territory. Commercial satellite images have shown multiple lines of Russian defenses in the area, where Moscow's forces have spent months laying mine belts, digging bunkers and setting out concrete barriers for tanks.

The Institute for the Study of War, a United States-based analytical group, said in its daily assessment of the war on Thursday that Ukraine was attacking in three areas but had achieved only "differential outcomes." The group said that seesaw fighting should be expected as assault teams push forward and are beaten back, along with casualties on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine will also most likely lose some of its newly secured Western armored vehicles, the group said.

"Ukrainian forces will suffer losses," it said.

For its part, Ukraine has remained mostly silent on details of the fighting and closed access to the front line in Zaporizhzhia to news outlets.

— Andrew E. Kramer

As floodwaters started to recede in the city of Kherson for the first time since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, Ukrainian officials warned on Friday that coastal communities across southern Ukraine faced new perils as explosive devices wash up on beaches and debris threatens to trigger maritime mines close to shore.

Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military southern command, said that even seemingly innocuous-looking materials washing up on shores as far as Odesa could contain explosive devices.

Kherson sits at the mouth of the Dnipro River, where the destroyed dam is, and is the last major city before the river empties into the Black Sea. As floodwaters spread west, like ink spilled on paper, they are bringing wreckage to cities and towns along the seashore, including Odesa, a coastal city more than 100 miles from the dam, where a demolition team has already detonated a land mine that washed ashore.

Odesa residents have also reported roofs of houses, wall fragments, dead animals and even tombstones among the debris floating into the city.

Mr. Humeniuk, speaking at a news conference on Friday, said the humanitarian relief effort was being complicated by Russian forces’ direct targeting of evacuation points in the flood-stricken southern region of Kherson. She said that 20 people were injured on Thursday in a series of attacks and that Russian forces continued their bombardment at night, dropping four glide bombs on the flooded village of Beryslav.

At least two people were killed in the attacks in the Kherson region on Thursday, local officials said.

Emergency workers have enough aid supplies for the moment, she said, so Ukraine is limiting the number of humanitarian groups allowed to enter the region because of the risk of injuries from shelling that could further tax already strained medical services.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the shelling of evacuation points, including one he visited on Thursday in Kherson, "a manifestation of evil that perhaps no terrorists in the world, except for Russian ones, have ever done."

Mr. Zelensky also called on international aid organizations to demand that Moscow allow them to provide humanitarian assistance in flood-hit areas under the control of Russian forces. About 2,200 people have been evacuated from Ukrainian-controlled areas, according to United Nations officials, but less is known about the conditions in Russian-occupied territory.

Vladimir Saldo, the Kremlin-appointed head of the occupied part of Kherson, said on Friday that about 5,800 people had been rescued, though that figure could not be independently verified because Russia does not allow independent observers into occupied areas.

The destruction of the Russian-controlled dam early Tuesday morning unleashed torrents of water from a reservoir that held about the same volume as the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and it continued to drain on Friday. The dam is the last in a series of six that run the length of the Dnipro River, starting just outside Kyiv.

Officials at Ukrhydroenergo, the company that controlled the dam before Russian forces seized it in the first weeks of their full-scale invasion last year, said they were accumulating water in reservoirs farther upstream on the Dnipro to help ensure supplies for drinking, agriculture and other needs.

Even as floodwaters near the dam began to recede — falling by about a half-foot in Kherson by Friday morning — they are still rising further downriver. Experts said it would still be some time before the full extent of the devastation is revealed.

But Ukrainian environmental officials said the ecosystem in the vast estuary where the Dnipro River and the Black Sea meet was already ravaged. Ruslan Strilets, the Ukrainian minister of environmental protection and natural resources, said it would "be almost impossible to restore these ecosystems in their original form as created by nature."

"And no amount of money in the world will return our unique nature to us," he said.

Victoria Kim and Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting.

— Marc Santora

WASHINGTON — A senior Biden administration official says that U.S. spy satellites detected an explosion at the Kakhovka dam just before it collapsed, but American analysts still do not know who caused the dam's destruction or how exactly it happened.

The official said that satellites equipped with infrared sensors detected a heat signature consistent with a major explosion just before the dam collapsed, unleashing huge floodwaters downstream.

American intelligence analysts suspect that Russia was behind the dam's destruction, the senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. But he added that U.S. spy agencies still did not have any solid evidence about who was responsible.

Engineering and munitions experts have said a deliberate explosion inside the Kakhovka dam, which is controlled by Russia, most likely caused its collapse on Tuesday. They added that structural failure or an attack from outside the dam were possible but less plausible explanations.

The administration official did not rule out the possibility that prior damage to the dam or mounting water pressure might have contributed to the collapse, but American officials believe the explosion, whether deliberate or accidental, was the most likely trigger.

Experts had cautioned earlier this week that the available evidence was very limited, but they said that a blast in an enclosed space, with all of its energy applied against the structure around it, would do the most damage. Even then, they said, it would require hundreds of pounds of explosives, at least, to breach the dam.

An external detonation by a bomb or missile would exert only a fraction of its force against the dam, and would require an explosive many times larger to achieve a similar effect.

— Eric Schmitt

WASHINGTON — The military partnership between Moscow and Tehran is deepening, White House officials said on Friday as they released newly declassified information about a drone factory that Iran is helping Russia build.

Russia has repeatedly used Iranian-made drones to attack Ukraine in recent months, including strikes on civilian targets, buildings and electrical infrastructure as part of a push to break Ukrainian morale. And as Moscow's own weapons stocks have diminished, Iran has become a key supplier of military aid to Russia.

The new factory, which is planned for a warehouse in the Yelabuga region several hundred miles east of Moscow, would allow Russia's military to have its own domestically produced source of attack drones. Iran is providing materials for the plant, said John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, who added that the facility could be operational next year.

Plans for the plant have been known for some time. The Wall Street Journal reported plans for a potential drone factory in Yelabuga in February, and the White House released a satellite image of the factory's intended site that was dated in early April.

An examination of satellite imagery by The New York Times shows a series of new buildings constructed in the industrial area since 2021. Construction on the buildings highlighted by the White House in the declassified intelligence started at the end of January 2021, and a small structure was recently added, the Times review showed.

By releasing the declassified information, American officials are trying to raise the pressure on Iran and make it more difficult to complete the work. On Friday, Mr. Kirby also said the United States would release a new advisory intended to help businesses around the world ensure that "they are not inadvertently contributing" to Iran's drone program.

A key part of America's strategy for helping Ukraine is to prevent Russia from gaining access to new military equipment or rebuilding its depleted stocks. And hindering trade between Russia and Iran is one of the most important elements of that effort.

Currently, according to the White House, Russian ships transport drones from Amirabad, Iran, across the Caspian Sea to Makhachkala, Russia. From there, they are transported to two bases: one northeast of Ukraine and one east of Ukraine. They are then used to attack Ukrainian targets.

Mr. Kirby said the arms trade between Iran and Russia was flowing both ways.

"Russia has been offering Iran unprecedented defense cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defense," he said, adding that Iran had finalized a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia and was seeking attack helicopters, radars and combat trainer aircraft.

Washington believes that the drone purchases are violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions and has imposed sanctions on Iranian companies involved in designing, building and transporting the drones.

Mr. Kirby described the cooperation between Iran and Russia as "a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Iran's neighbors and to the international community."

— Julian E. Barnes and Christoph Koettl

BRUSSELS — As optimism that Sweden will soon be able to join NATO rises, the Swedish government says it will allow the alliance to base troops on its territory even before formally joining the group.

"The government has decided that the Swedish Armed Forces may undertake preparations with NATO and NATO countries to enable future joint operations," Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Defense Minister Pal Jonson said in an article for the Dagens Nyheter newspaper this week.

Those preparations could include the "temporary basing of foreign equipment and personnel on Swedish territory," they wrote. "The decision sends a clear signal to Russia and strengthens Sweden's defense."

Sweden applied last year to join NATO as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Objections from Turkey and Hungary have delayed the bid, and Sweden now hopes to join before a NATO summit in Lithuania next month.

A senior NATO-country ambassador said there was more confidence now that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, just re-elected for another five-year term, would support Sweden's membership.

Turkey's new foreign minister spoke to his Swedish counterpart on Wednesday. And next week, Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance's secretary general, will meet with representatives of Finland, Sweden and Turkey.

Mr. Stoltenberg has said that Sweden has fulfilled Turkey's demands, but Mr. Erdogan blocked Sweden's membership during his re-election campaign, arguing that Stockholm has not done enough to fight terrorism — especially from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist group — and that it has not extradited some people Turkey wants.

But Sweden has in the last year amended its Constitution and toughened its antiterrorism law, which went into effect on June 1. It has also lifted an embargo on arms sales to Turkey.

In addition, the Swedish high court this week ruled that the government can extradite a Kurd who Turkey says is a supporter of the P.K.K. and is wanted in Turkey. The man, Mehmet Kokulu, was convicted in 2014 in Turkey for cannabis possession and was sentenced to four years and seven months in prison. After his release on parole, he legally traveled to Sweden in 2018, but Turkey has demanded his extradition, saying that he must complete his prison sentence there.

Should the optimism about Sweden prove accurate, Hungary is also expected to go along with ratifying Swedish NATO membership.

As negotiations among NATO allies continue before the Vilnius summit meeting next month, officials say there is a growing consensus that Denmark's prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, could succeed Mr. Stoltenberg at the helm of the alliance. Ms. Frederiksen, 45, would be the first woman to hold the post and recently returned from a trip to Washington, where on Tuesday she met President Biden and other officials whose support would be vital.

A Social Democrat, she has been Denmark's prime minister since 2019 and has promised to increase the country's military spending to reach NATO's target of 2 percent of economic output.

A senior NATO official said that France and others were insisting that a new secretary general come from a country that is part of the European Union, which would rule out Britain's defense secretary, Ben Wallace, who has expressed interest in the job.

There is also the view, the official said, that candidates from Central Europe and the Baltics are too closely associated with an aggressive stance on Russia and rapid Ukrainian membership of the alliance to be able to achieve consensus. All 31 NATO countries must agree on a new secretary general.

— Steven Erlanger

BERYSLAV, Ukraine — The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam is physically reshaping the nearby front, but not necessarily in ways that will impede Ukraine's long-planned counteroffensive with its newly acquired arsenal of Western weaponry.

The main thrusts are expected in a different theater of the war, on the open plains of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions to the east. The changes on this part of the front line formed by the Dnipro River benefit and harm both militaries.

Below the dam, soldiers who had faced one another in positions a mile or so apart across the river are now separated by miles of floodwater. Upstream, the reservoir, broad enough to be difficult to see across in places, is disappearing into mud flats, potentially drawing the two sides closer together, though the area is a smelly, boggy wasteland now without clear military utility.

"This will have a certain impact as the landscape of the future battlefield has changed significantly and even the front line itself has changed," Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's southern military command, told local news outlets. "But this is not a critical change."

The military had planned for the possibility that Russia would blow up the dam, she added. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has warned of the same.

The flood will have little effect on Ukraine's counteroffensive, as its military never intended to make fighting along the river a major part of the overall campaign, Mykhailo Samus, a director of the Army, Conversion and Disarmament Center in Kyiv, said in a telephone interview.

Ukraine's threats of a riverine assault were designed to force Russia to deploy troops away from the main area of attack, he said.

"Before the flood we needed to cross the Dnipro and after the flood it is the same, just harder," he said. "Auxiliary and diversionary maneuvers can still be conducted."

— Andrew E. Kramer

WASHINGTON — President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain affirmed their support for Ukraine on Thursday, pledging to continue drumming up financial and military support for Kyiv as fighting intensifies on Russia's front lines.

Mr. Sunak, who made his first visit as prime minister to Washington and is intent on establishing a post-Brexit Britain as a competent and reliable global player, said that his country would not turn away from supporting Ukraine, even as both he and Mr. Biden face economic headwinds and domestic concerns about the length of the war.

"There is no point in trying to wait us out," Mr. Sunak said at a news conference with Mr. Biden in the East Room of the White House, addressing Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom he accused of wrongly assuming that the West would tire of providing support. "We will be here as long as it takes."

Mr. Biden said he was confident that he could persuade a divided Congress to support a new round of funding for Ukraine, though he would not put a dollar amount on the package.

"I believe we’ll have the funding necessary to support Ukraine as long as it takes," Mr. Biden said, adding that the "vast majority" of his critics in Congress would agree that funding Ukraine would be better than allowing Russia to go unchecked.

— Katie Rogers

When floodwaters from the Dnipro River swelled toward Serhiiy Boyko's doorstep in Kherson, Ukraine, early Tuesday, he thought it was finally time to leave his hometown.

"I have lived through shelling and Russians trying to claim my home," said Mr. Boyko, 55, who had managed to hold out in Kherson with his wife, 88-year-old father, two dogs and four cats since Russia's invasion last year.

But the water stopped some 30 feet from his front door, sparing his home. "It is apocalyptic, but we are alive," he said. "It is not the end."

While the family home may have been spared, he said that the floods had completely submerged his 8-year-old vintage clothing business across town.

"Everything is gone; I am exhausted," he said.

Over the past two days, Mr. Boyko said, he had rushed to help desperate neighbors who were retrieving belongings from flooded homes in the town of Antonivka — about 10 minutes up the river from Kherson's city center. He said he had been caring for scores of animals across Kherson left behind by fleeing residents.

Mr. Boyko's home lost electricity and gas in the flooding, and shelling has resumed in the evenings. But he said he now had no intention of leaving.

"It is a new challenge, but we are well-practiced in crisis," he said. "Besides, who will care for all the animals in this city when I leave?"

— Cora Engelbrecht