News

Feb 11, 2024

Russia Moves to Expand Conscription, Bolstering Its Army

A proposed law could add millions of trained soldiers to the recruitment pool for Russia’s war in Ukraine, sparing the Kremlin a general mobilization that could sap support for the conflict. Russia,

A proposed law could add millions of trained soldiers to the recruitment pool for Russia’s war in Ukraine, sparing the Kremlin a general mobilization that could sap support for the conflict.

Russia, seeking a bigger army, moves to raise the top age for military service.

New U.S. aid to Ukraine includes artillery, air defenses and mine-clearing equipment.

Ukraine works to secure its grain export routes in the face of attacks by Moscow.

Russian shelling killed two children at play and injured others in eastern Ukraine, a local official reports.

A former U.S. Marine freed in a prisoner swap was injured while fighting in Ukraine.

The U.N. dismisses Russian claims about P.O.W.s from Mariupol.

In a heavily damaged Odesa cathedral, a morning Mass is held in front of caution tape.

Russian lawmakers on Tuesday voted to raise the top age for military conscription, aiming to expand the pool of trained recruits who could potentially join the battle in Ukraine.

The measure, if approved by the full Parliament, applies to the year of military service required of all Russian men. Starting next year, those ages 18 to 30 would be required to serve; currently, it is 18 to 27. The bill also prohibits men who have been conscripted from leaving the country, an attempt to cut down on draft dodging.

The measure reflects the Kremlin’s desire to bolster the military without resorting to a general mobilization, in which Russian men who have served in the military — up to 70 years old in the highest ranks — could be called up. President Vladimir V. Putin has carefully tried to avoid a larger mobilization in order to maintain support for the war, but one is still possible in case other measures fail to deliver a sufficient force.

The legislation, along with a number of other measures Russian legislators have approved this year, makes clear the intent of the Kremlin to strengthen the military for what it has depicted as an existential conflict with the West.

Though Russian men are required to serve a year in the military, many find ways to avoid it, including on medical grounds, for education or by going abroad. And last September, with the country at war, protesters took to the streets across Russia after the announcement of a “partial mobilization” aimed at pressing 300,000 men into service. Many other men fled the country.

For the most part, Russia has fended off Ukraine’s attempts to pierce its lines, but the fighting on Ukrainian soil has been slow and bloody. The vote by the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday to expand the pool of recruits is the latest sign that Mr. Putin, facing heavy battlefield losses, is bracing for a long war.

While the Russian president has promised that conscripts serving for a year would not be sent to Ukraine, they are deployed in regions on its border and represent trained recruits who could be called upon to sign contracts and be sent to battle.

It was uncertain how long it will be before the effects of the new measures aimed at strengthening the military will begin to be seen.

“It is clear that not earlier than before the fall conscription campaign — that is, in effect, not earlier than winter,” said Dmitri Kuznets, who analyzes the war for Meduza, an independent Russian news website. “This is a preparation for the planned expansion of the army in the future.”

The draft law still needs approval by the upper house of Parliament, the Russian Federation Council, whose speaker already promised support. It then goes to be signed by Mr. Putin.

When the conscription age plan was first announced by Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu at the end of last year, together with an effort to expand the Russian Army to 1.5 million servicemen from around 1.15 million, it called for raising the age of conscription, and making the range 21 to 30. But last week, lawmakers made it 18 to 30.

Andrei Kartapolov, a Russian lawmaker and the main backer of the draft law, told the Russian news agency Interfax that the change was made because the “demographic situation is serious” in Russia, which affects “the volume of the mobilization resource” in the country.

Last week, Parliament also extended by five years the maximum age at which men can be part of a general mobilization for the army, raising the age for the highest-ranking officers in the reserves to up to 70. Earlier changes to the Russian legislation also made it more difficult for potential recruits to dodge general mobilization or the mandatory draft.

The Russian Defense Ministry has also been moving aggressively to recruit new volunteers to fight in Ukraine. On July 4, Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s former president and now a high-ranking security official, said that more than 185,000 recruits had joined the Russian Army since the beginning of this year.

Mr. Kuznets, the war analyst, said it all appeared to be part of a larger strategy.

”I think that the increase in the draft contingent, the attempt to recruit tens of thousands of contract soldiers and the preparation for a new wave of mobilization complement each other,” he said. “This is an attempt to implement a plan for a protracted war of attrition, for which you need to replenish your resources faster than the enemy does.”

— Ivan Nechepurenko

U.S. officials said on Tuesday that the Biden administration was sending up to $400 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, including artillery, air defenses and mine-clearing equipment, in an effort to help replenish Kyiv’s forces as their counteroffensive grinds on.

Included in the package drawn from Pentagon stockpiles are 32 Stryker armored personnel carriers, mine-clearing equipment and munitions for Patriot antimissile systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, the officials said.

The package also includes munitions for Stinger antiaircraft systems and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as well as munitions for Javelin and other anti-tank weapons.

The United States is also sending more ammunition for 155-millimeter and 105-millimeter artillery, Hydra-70 aircraft rockets, Hornet microdrones, night-vision devices and spare parts for damaged equipment.

The latest military aid comes as Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the country’s southeast advances more slowly than expected through dense Russian minefields and other defenses. Russia has also recently launched some of the war’s most ferocious attacks on Odesa, a Ukrainian port city, after the Kremlin pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement that allowed for the export of Ukrainian grain by sea.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called on Western allies to supply more air defense equipment and other military aid after Russian attacks hit Odesa’s cultural sites and port infrastructure.

“We must defend Odesa,” Mr. Zelensky said in a Twitter post after speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, adding: “Ukraine urgently needs to strengthen its air defense to protect its historical heritage and continue the Black Sea Grain Initiative.”

The new American assistance package brings the total amount of U.S. military aid delivered or committed to Ukraine to $43 billion since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“The people of Ukraine continue to bravely defend their country against Russia’s aggression while Russia continues its relentless and vicious attacks that are killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying civil infrastructure,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement.

— Eric Schmitt reporting from Washington

Ukraine and the United Nations attempted to shore up the country’s export routes on Tuesday from Russian attempts to choke them off following Moscow’s decision last week to terminate a deal that had enabled Ukraine to ship its grain across the Black Sea.

Without the deal in place, Ukraine has sought other ways to export its grain — and Russia has responded by trying to eliminate other options, including a drone attack that damaged grain warehouses at a Danube River port in the Odesa region a day earlier and a series of attacks on the Port of Odesa.

Global wheat prices, which fell slightly on Tuesday, have risen around 16 percent since the grain deal ended. Sal Gilbertie, the president of Teucrium, a U.S.-based investment advisory firm, said that grain markets were coming to terms with the likelihood that the volume of Ukrainian grain exports would be sharply reduced.

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, on Tuesday renewed his call for a resumption of the grain deal, which food aid organizations consider critical to stabilizing prices and continuing the supply of grain to hungry nations in Africa and the Middle East. But Moscow has said it will not revive the agreement until its demands — mostly centered around its own agricultural exports — are met.

With Ukraine unable to use its Black Sea ports, other routes — on roads, rails and barges — are now of greatly increased importance. On Monday, in tough language, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine urged the European Union not to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain shipments through neighboring countries beyond Sept. 15, instituted to protect those countries’ domestic grain prices. He said he was in touch with all parties to push Kyiv’s case.

“Any extension of the restrictions is absolutely unacceptable and outright non-European,” he said in his nightly address.

But extending the restrictions is exactly what five Eastern European countries — including Poland, a staunch supporter of the government in Kyiv — called on the European Commission to do on Tuesday, during a meeting of E.U. agriculture ministers in Brussels..

Ukraine last week said that it wanted to explore setting up a new deal with Turkey and the United Nations — the arrangement’s original brokers — to ship its grain across the Black Sea, this time operating without Russia’s consent. But a warning last week by Moscow that it would consider any commercial vessel approaching a Ukrainian Black Sea port to be potentially carrying military cargo effectively quashed the idea.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain called Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday to tell him that the “Russian military may expand their targeting of Ukrainian grain facilities further to include attacks against civilian shipping in the Black Sea,” according to Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward.

Safak Timur contributed reporting.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Russian forces fired shells at a small reservoir miles behind the frontline in eastern Ukraine on Monday evening, killing three people, including two children, and wounding three other children who had been playing in the summer heat as well as three adults, a senior local official said on Wednesday.

The attack hit the town of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the regional military administration. He said that a girl born in 2011 and a 10-year-old boy had been killed, while a 12-year-old boy and two girls including a 5-year-old had been injured.

“The Russians once again prove that they are at war with civilians, and in their desire to kill they stop at nothing,” Mr. Kyrylenko said. “I appeal to parents once again: There is no place for children in a war zone! Take care of them. Evacuate.”

Ukraine has urged civilians to leave the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since last summer, but many remain.

Mr. Kyrylenko said that the Russian forces had used cluster munitions, and posted pictures on the Telegram messaging app of the aftermath of the attack. One showed a pool of blood on a patch of sand next to a body of water. Another showed the remains of an abandoned picnic. A water pistol, some flotation aides and a pair of sandals lay on a rug spread over the grass.

There was no independent confirmation of the attack and the authenticity of the photographs has not been verified. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities.

The town is around 12 miles southwest of the city of Bakhmut, which was seized by Russian forces in May after some of the bloodiest fighting since Russia launched its full-scale invasion 17 months ago. Ukraine has regained some ground in the outlying areas north and south of the city amid heavy fighting.

Russian forces have struck many civilian sites in the Donetsk region during the invasion. For example, more than 50 people died at a train station platform packed with civilians fleeing the city of Kramatorsk in April 2022, while 11 people, including 14-year-old twin sisters and another teen, died last month in an attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk, which is around 15 miles northwest of Kostyantynivka.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who was detained in Russia for nearly three years and later freed in a prisoner swap, was injured while fighting in Ukraine, the State Department said on Tuesday.

Mr. Reed’s condition was not immediately clear. He is receiving medical care in Germany, said Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman. The news of his injury was first reported by The Messenger.

Mr. Reed was visiting his Russian girlfriend in Moscow in August 2019 when he was arrested on what his family said were bogus charges of assaulting police officers. The United States considered him wrongfully detained, and after months of diplomatic negotiations and mounting public pressure on the Biden administration, Mr. Reed was freed in April 2022 as part of a prisoner swap for a Russian pilot imprisoned on cocaine trafficking charges in the United States.

Mr. Reed’s decision to return to the region and become a volunteer fighter for Ukraine created some “exasperation” within the Biden administration, an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters said on Tuesday. The United States has repeatedly warned American citizens not to travel to Ukraine or participate in the war, though untold numbers of them have done so anyway.

“I want to be explicitly clear about something: Mr. Reed was not engaged in any activities on behalf of the U.S. government,” Mr. Patel said at a news briefing, adding that the country was “not in a place to provide assistance” to evacuate Americans who traveled to Ukraine.

A U.S. Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, said on Tuesday that the United States was working with its partners and allies to address Mr. Reed’s situation, and the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters that President Biden had been briefed on the matter. But Mr. Reed, now a private citizen, was transported to Germany through the help of an N.G.O. and not through U.S. government efforts, Mr. Patel said. Citing privacy reasons, he declined to specify whether Mr. Reed was being treated at a military or civilian hospital.

Mr. Reed’s release last year had renewed hopes for other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia, including the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner, who was freed in December through a separate prisoner swap. Two other Americans who are considered wrongfully detained remain: Paul Whelan, also a former U.S. Marine, and Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Asked about concerns that Mr. Reed’s decision to fight in Ukraine could jeopardize negotiations to secure the freedom of Mr. Whelan and Mr. Gershkovich, Mr. Patel said the United States would “continue to engage directly with the Russian Federation.”

— Anushka Patil and Helene Cooper

As part of Russia’s ongoing efforts to strengthen ties with Asian allies, President Vladimir V. Putin will travel to a conference in China in October, while the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, will join a Chinese delegation at a celebration in North Korea this week, according to Russian state news media.

Mr. Putin will meet with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to discuss bilateral trade and economic cooperation at an international forum, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency.

The relationship between China and Russia has deepened during the war in Ukraine, as both countries seek to counteract Western sanctions and curtail American power and influence. As trade with the West has diminished, China now provides an estimated 40 percent of Russia’s imports, much of it in goods like automobiles.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin most recently met in Moscow in March. Though Chinese officials framed it as a peace mission, U.S. officials said China was considering giving Russia weapons to use in Ukraine.

Days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Mr. Putin accusing him of war crimes in Ukraine — the same warrant deterring Mr. Putin from traveling to South Africa for a diplomatic summit in August — Mr. Xi invited Mr. Putin to visit China, underscoring Beijing’s support.

On Tuesday, a Russian military delegation headed by Mr. Shoigu arrived in North Korea, according to Tass. The Russian delegation will join a Chinese delegation led by Li Hongzhong, a member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, in Pyongyang to celebrate “Victory Day,” the 70th anniversary of what the North calls its triumph in the Korean War, which technically never ended.

The visit is the first by high-level foreign delegations to North Korea since the country shut its borders in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

North Korea has backed Russia in the Ukraine war. In May, Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, sent Mr. Putin a letter saying that Russia would “smash all challenges and threats posed by hostile forces” under his leadership.

Washington has also accused North Korea of shipping weapons and ammunition to Russia, which both Russia and North Korea have denied. North Korea uses extensive Russian military equipment.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency, in an English-language dispatch, said Mr. Shoigu’s visit will help strengthen friendly ties between the two countries “in keeping with the demand of the times.”

— Gaya Gupta and Neil MacFarquhar

The United Nations’ top human rights official on Tuesday dismissed Russian claims that a U.S.-made missile caused a blast that killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war in a Russian-controlled detention center in eastern Ukraine last July, a notorious episode in the bitter, grinding war set off by Russia’s invasion 17 months ago.

The explosion struck the Olenivka penal colony in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine late on July 28. Within hours, Russian commentators claimed that Ukraine had targeted the prison with a HIMARS rocket in order to keep captured members of the Azov Regiment from divulging details of war crimes they had supposedly committed in their long and ultimately unsuccessful defense of the city of Mariupol.

The explosion “was not caused by a HIMARS rocket,” the United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, said in a statement on Tuesday.

U.N. officials have not been able to visit Olenivka or Russia-occupied areas of the east because Russia had not provided necessary security guarantees or permission. But U.N. human rights investigators were able to interview 55 Ukrainian survivors of the blast over a period of four months starting in September 2022, including eight who were in a barracks building demolished by the blast. The investigators also analyzed and had access to satellite imagery of the detention center before and after the explosion, as well as videos and photos from inside and outside it.

Experts concluded a HIMARS rocket would have inflicted much greater damage than that observed at Olenivka, Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman for Mr. Turk said. The barracks hit by the explosion suffered only partial damage to the roof, walls, ceilings and windows, while satellite imagery did not reveal any craters or debris near the building. Moreover, bunks and other furniture that “would have been completely decimated” by a HIMARS rocket also sustained only partial damage, she said.

“The prisoners of war who were injured or died at Olenivka, and their family members, deserve the truth to be known,” Mr. Turk said in the statement, “and for those responsible for breaches of international law to be held accountable.”

— Nick Cumming-Bruce reporting from Geneva

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called on Tuesday for more weapons aid to protect his country’s historical heritage as the United Nations began assessing the damage to landmarks in Odesa after near-nightly attacks recently by Russian forces on the city.

The U.N. said on Monday that its top official in Ukraine, Denise Brown, was in Odesa to examine the toll of a week of attacks that have killed civilians, destroyed agricultural facilities and damaged sites including the city’s most important cathedral.

The intentional destruction of cultural sites could amount to a war crime, UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency, said in a statement on Sunday. Russia has denied targeting the landmarks and blamed the destruction on Ukraine’s air defenses. Russia has bombarded Odesa and other ports in southern Ukraine in an apparent attempt to keep Ukraine from shipping grain.

The missile attacks have damaged at least 25 historic landmarks, the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported on Sunday.

Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Twitter on Tuesday that he had spoken to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain and discussed Russia’s attacks on Odesa’s cultural sites and port infrastructure.

“We must defend Odesa,” Mr. Zelensky said in the Twitter post. “Ukraine urgently needs to strengthen its air defense to protect its historical heritage and continue the Black Sea Grain Initiative.”

The attacks on the Odesa region took a new turn on Monday, with Russia’s striking a port on the Danube River in Ukraine, close to the Romanian border. It is the closest Moscow has come to hitting a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

The attack destroyed a grain hangar, continuing Russia’s efforts to damage Ukraine’s agriculture infrastructure, which is central to its economy. It also heightened the risk of a more direct confrontation with the United States and American allies in Europe.

The assault on the port, in the town of Reni, across the river from Romania, targeted Kyiv’s alternative export routes for grain. Russia cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, the usual way to move the commodity, when it terminated the grain initiative last week.

Under that deal, Ukraine had been able to ship agricultural products from Black Sea ports, including the one in Odesa, for nearly a year.

Even as Moscow targets Odesa, it has continued to strike at other parts of the country. Ukrainian forces intercepted a drone attack early Tuesday on Kyiv, the capital, the head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damages, he said.

On Sunday, Russia attacked a cultural site that the United Nations had used as a humanitarian center in the city of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region, leaving it inoperable and destroying relief items and medical supplies, the global body said. It was the fourth attack in July that had targeted humanitarian aid facilities, the U.N. noted.

In Odesa, the Transfiguration Cathedral, which was founded in 1794 and is a UNESCO heritage site, was among the damaged landmarks.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet on Wednesday, at the request of both Ukraine and Russia, to discuss the attacks in Odesa and on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Also on the agenda will be Moscow’s claim that Kyiv is persecuting the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia.

— Farnaz Fassihi and Daniel Victor

There are no walls behind the altar of Transfiguration Cathedral, the Odesa landmark that was heavily damaged on Sunday when Russian missiles struck the port city.

So when the breeze from the nearby Black Sea blows, it interrupts the stillness inside one of Ukraine’s largest places of worship, and a dangling chandelier in the nave swings like a slow pendulum from side to side. Detritus floats down from the roof, as workers, United Nations employees and priests don hard hats to inspect the damage to an icon of the city’s cultural heritage.

“We hope God will protect the heart of our cathedral,” said Father Oleksii after a morning Mass held in front of the red-and-white caution tape roping off the main part of the church.

Outside, residents gathered around the entrance to the cathedral, which is now boarded up with plywood. Many stopped to kiss an icon of the patroness of their city, which an employee of the church said had been pulled from the rubble. Others walked by to witness the destruction.

Founded in 1794, the cathedral became the most important church in Novorossiya, the name given by the Russian Empire to land along the Black Sea and Crimea that is part of present-day Ukraine. It was destroyed during a Soviet campaign against religion in 1936 and was not rebuilt until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

“This is inhumanity,” said Ludmila Partinchuk, who came by with her husband, Oleh.

Ms. Partinchuk said that getting rest during the past week had been “a big problem” because “when you feel the night coming, you cannot go to sleep.”

The repeated missile strikes this week are new for Odesa, which has largely been spared from the widespread attacks that have hit cities including nearby Mykolaiv and the capital, Kyiv.

“Before, the Russians focused on targeting us with drones and most were shot down,” said Petro Obukhov, a member of the Odesa City Council. The Black Sea Grain initiative, a compromise brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to allow Ukraine to continue shipping grain from its Black Sea ports, also provided a modicum of security until Moscow pulled out of it a week ago.

“We felt we were relatively safe, but now this feeling is gone,” Mr. Obukhov said.

Odesa has been one of the most visited cities in Ukraine for domestic and foreign tourists, drawn by its cobble-stoned city center, much of it built in the late 19th century. Its history as a port city resulted in a widely diverse corner of Ukraine, with French, Italian and Greek merchants mixing with Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish families. On Tuesday, many of the cafes and restaurants were largely empty.

“Many tourists are staying away,” said Oleksii Khalykhin, 20, a tour guide, who said he was continuing his work so that locals and visitors could get a deeper sense of Odesa’s diverse history — and remember it in case it is obliterated.

“They are trying to destroy the identity of the city, he said. “Now we are trying to do everything possible to make sure that Odesa’s culture and heritage lives in the souls of its people.”

— Valerie Hopkins Reporting from Odesa, Ukraine

Early in the morning they were at their frontline positions, firing artillery at Russian forces. Hours later, wearing the same uniforms and body armor, they passed their final test — an obstacle course — to officially become Ukrainian marines.

Running through puddles and mud, climbing under barbed wire and across simulated anti-tank ditches, they shouted, “Glory to Ukraine!” and “I love the marines!” Commanders barked orders and made them drop for push-ups.

When they were done, they piled into pickup trucks and drove back to the front to rejoin Ukraine’s counteroffensive in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military, straining to replenish its ranks in the middle of war, trains soldiers and puts them through qualifying tests even after they are deployed to the front. The obstacle course the marines went through on a warm summer afternoon recently was one example: built just a few miles from the actual fighting, including the same kinds of trenches, bunkers and barbed wire used in the war against Russia.

Candidates from the 36th Marine Brigade were rotated off the front line to run the course. To take part, candidates needed at least three months of combat experience. Many in the first group of 40 artillerymen had seen more than that.

“I am fighting for eight months already and all the time at the hardest parts of the front,” said Lieutenant Arseniy, who, like others interviewed for this article, asked to be identified only by his first name and rank for security reasons. Though an artillery platoon commander, he had not yet qualified to wear the marine beret.

Muddy and exhausted, the men nevertheless were in good spirits, greeting one another before running the course.

“A day has come when you can show that you are a true marine,” Maj. Nazariy Tofan, who was helping to lead the training, told the candidates. “You should remember this race for the rest of your life.”

As Ukraine fights along hundreds of miles of front line in a war that has lasted 17 months and shows no sign of easing, it must replace fallen soldiers and continue training those who deployed without completing formal preparation. The 36th Marine Brigade fought in the southern city of Mariupol after Russia began its full-scale invasion last winter, holding out for weeks in a steel factory that was pounded relentlessly by Moscow’s forces.

Many died or were wounded, and more than a thousand were captured. The brigade’s former commander is still a prisoner of war in Russia.

Only about 200 marines escaped the encirclement. Survivors were redeployed to fight in the southern Kherson region and new troops were called up. The 36th is now around the typical size of a brigade, about 4,000 marines.

The obstacle course was designed to simulate as closely as possible actual combat conditions. Smoke grenades and fireworks went off. There was an ambush. Fellow marines fired blanks and yelled at the candidates.

Private Serhiy, 54, started to fall behind. A doctor came to check on him, found he had high blood pressure and administered an injection. He did not pass the course.

“This war is not for me anymore,” he said.

“It’s not for any of us in Ukraine,” the doctor replied.

The other candidates ran on, struggling through mud and burning tires. When the course was over, 39 of the 40 had qualified.

After other groups completed the challenge, a ceremony was held where the newly minted marines swore their oath — to be brave and not leave brothers in arms behind — and received their berets. Then they returned to the front.

— Maria Varenikova and David Guttenfelder reporting from Pokrovske, Ukraine

For shipping companies looking for a way to bring Ukrainian grain to global markets, the options keep dwindling, escalating a trade crisis that is expected to add pressure on global food prices.

Russia last week pulled out of an agreement that had allowed for the safe passage of vessels through the Black Sea. On Monday it threatened an alternative route for grain, attacking a grain hangar at a Ukrainian port on the Danube River that has served as a key artery for transporting goods while the Black Sea remains blockaded.

“It’s opening a new front in the targeting of Ukrainian grain exports,” said Alexis Ellender, an analyst at Kpler, a commodities analytics firm, adding that the route had been considered safe because of its proximity to Romania, a NATO member.

“This will potentially close off that route,” he said. It could also raise rates for shipping insurance and further cripple Ukraine’s ability to export grain.

Hours after the predawn attack on the hangar at the Ukrainian port of Reni, dozens of vessels that had been bound to collect grain from Ukraine were clustered at the mouth of the Danube.

Global grain prices were up about 16 percent on Tuesday from eight days earlier, before Russia pulled out of an agreement that, since it was signed a year ago, had allowed Ukraine to export nearly 33 million metric tons of food.

Global markets have adequate supplies of grain because of robust harvests in Brazil and Australia, but a prolonged shortage of exports from Ukraine is likely to make prices more volatile in the event of droughts, floods or other extreme weather events. Russia stepped up the attacks on Ukraine after India, a top producer of rice, halted exports of non-basmati white rice last week because extreme weather had hit production and caused domestic prices to jump.

Even before Russia terminated the Black Sea agreement last week, Ukraine, which produces about 10 percent of the world’s wheat and 15 percent of its corn, had increasingly relied on alternative routes for its exports: by land and through the Danube River, Europe’s second-longest river. Shippers turned to these options in anticipation that Russia would eventually pull out of the Black Sea agreement.

Monday’s attack, which was carried out by drone, threw those options into doubt.

— Jenny Gross and Patricia Cohen

The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday that its inspectors had observed mines inside the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the frontline facility occupied by Russian forces that the agency has monitored to help avert a possible catastrophe.

The I.A.E.A., the United Nations’ nuclear agency, reported last month that it was aware of land mines having been placed at “particular places” inside the plant’s perimeter, without offering further details. On Monday, the agency disclosed that its team had identified anti-personnel mines in a restricted area between the plant’s internal and external barriers.

The mines were placed in an area that plant workers cannot access, according to the agency’s statement. It did not specify when the mines had been placed. An email to the I.A.E.A. was not immediately returned on Monday.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in a statement that the agency’s initial assessment was that any detonation of the mines wouldn’t affect the security of the plant. But, he added, “having such explosives on the site is inconsistent with the I.A.E.A. safety standards and nuclear security guidance and creates additional psychological pressure on plant staff.”

Mr. Grossi said in the statement that agency staff members had raised the matter with officials at the plant and been told that it was, in his words, a “military decision.”

No mines were spotted within the inner perimeter of the site, according to the agency.

Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear plant in Europe and has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, shortly after Moscow began its full-scale invasion. The nuclear agency has long expressed concerns about safety risks posed by shelling and fighting in the plant’s vicinity. Both militaries blame the other for the shelling, which has caused damage around the plant and, at times, cut off its supply of outside power.

Five of the plant’s six reactors are in a cold shutdown, with the other in a so-called hot shutdown, meaning it produces steam for certain plant operations. Even in a cold shutdown, power is still necessary for critical cooling functions.

An additional hazard materialized on June 6, when the nearby Kakhovka dam was destroyed. The resulting flood drained the reservoir from which the plant drew water to cool its reactors and spent fuel rods, but I.A.E.A. officials soon determined there was no immediate danger.

Although the plant is controlled by Russian forces and lies in a region that Moscow illegally annexed last September, it is still being operated by the Ukrainian employees who worked there when the invasion began.

Ukrainian officials, who blamed Russia for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, have repeatedly suggested that Russia could stage an attack at the plant.

— Gabriela Sá Pessoa