Russia-Ukraine live updates: Ukrainians retake northeastern town from Russians, U.S. defense official says

Yuriy Vitrenko, the chief executive of Ukraine’s natural gas utility Naftogaz, had just made it down to an air raid shelter Saturday, along with three of his board members. He wouldn’t disclose the location, because he wanted to avoid Russian troops or missiles — three of which had just landed within earshot.

One month into the war, the state-owned gas company provides a window into the conflict’s geopolitics and the extent of Ukraine’s destruction. Naftogaz serves 12 million households, Vitrenko said, but it has been forced to cut off 300,000 households that have been heavily damaged by Russian missiles.

“If we cannot repair them, we have to shut them down,” Vitrenko said. “Sometimes an entire block. It can be also dangerous.” In the opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, two of the company’s workers were killed inside a heating plant in Kherson, he added.

Naftogaz is also caught in a complex geopolitical game. Even as Russia rains missiles onto Ukraine, it is still sending approximately 30 percent of the gas it sells in Europe through the country it has invaded. And although Ukraine’s leaders have called for the continent to immediately halt imports of Russian gas, it is doing nothing to interfere with the gas flowing through its pipelines at a rate of 40 billion cubic meters a year, to customers including Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Ukrainian forces have taken back from Russian troops a town in the northeastern part of their country that is home to about 20,000 people, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday.

The town of Trostianets, about 30 miles south of Sumy, is the latest area that Ukrainian forces have regained since going on the offensive in several parts of the country.

The Pentagon said Monday that those offensives were ongoing, with the Russians in a defensive crouch north of the capital city of Kyiv and unable to push into several other major cities, including Kharkiv and Chernihiv.

The senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said he also was aware of Ukrainian officials announcing that they had taken back control of Irpin, a Kyiv suburb, but could not confirm that.

The Russians continue to shell civilian areas in numerous cities, with a special emphasis on Mariupol, a southern port city that has been under attack for days. The city is “nearly encircled,” with Ukrainian troops there “under incredible pressure by the Russians,” the senior U.S. defense official said.

The Russians also were advancing from the town of Izyum toward the Donbas area in eastern Ukraine, the Pentagon said. U.S. officials have said that seizing control of the Donbas area is now a primary objective of the Russians, after their earlier efforts to capture Kyiv and other key cities failed.

Kherson, a southern city that Russian forces previously had full control of, is now being contested by Ukrainian troops, the senior defense official said.

A Russian court ruled that Facebook and Instagram users who don’t violate the nation’s laws can continue using those platforms, according to state-owned RIA News, despite the Kremlin’s designation of their parent company as an “extremist” organization.

In early March, Moscow labeled Meta Platforms, the Silicon Valley-based company that operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, an “extremist organization” for allowing some calls to violence against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s top prosecutor said the government was opening a criminal case against Meta, and Russia’s Internet regulator announced it would block Facebook. But a Russian court ruled that the ban doesn’t extend to people who aren’t taking part in “activities prohibited by law,” according to a translation of RIA’s Telegram post.

“These measures of judicial protection do not limit the actions on the use of Meta’s software products by individuals and legal entities that do not take part in activities prohibited by law,” according to the Telegram post.

Meta representatives declined to comment Monday.

The incremental escalations between Russia and the tech giants in recent weeks has forced the companies to rethink the ways they police speech online, rewriting their rules as they go in response to the fast-moving conflict. Social platforms are critical tools for the public to communicate and share information during wartime, but Russian propaganda outlets have also used them to spread disinformation about the war.

Stocks turned negative Monday and oil prices fell sharply as investors closely monitored the war in Ukraine and a new coronavirus wave in Shanghai.

The Dow Jones industrial average was trading down more than 275 points, or 0.8 percent, at midday. The broader S&P 500 was off nearly 0.5 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index shed 0.4 percent. The S&P and the Dow are coming off a two-week winning streak, erasing much of their losses in the aftermath of the Russian invasion in late February.

Oil prices slid after China’s financial hub announced a lockdown to contain a coronavirus resurgence. The move in Shanghai came after weeks of denial that blanket restrictions would be imposed and as governments elsewhere are relaxing coronavirus restrictions as cases decline. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was down 5.4 percent and near $108 per barrel, while Brent crude, the global benchmark, shed 5.3 percent to $114 per barrel.

Fuel prices, meanwhile, remain significantly elevated. As of Monday, the U.S. average for a gallon of gasoline stood at $4.25, according to AAA. That’s 65 cents higher than a month ago and $1.39 more than last year.

Investors will be focused on several key economic reports this week, including the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), ADP’s private payrolls report and the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report

The Pentagon is deploying six Navy electronic warfare aircraft and about 240 troops to Germany as it reinforces security in Eastern Europe, but the jets will not be jamming Russian communications, a senior defense official said Monday.

The EA-18G Growlers are with Electronic Attack Squadron 134 and are expected to arrive Monday at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state, said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. The planes are a specialized version of the F/A-18 Super Hornets that can jam radar and other electronic communications.

“They are not being deployed to be used against Russian forces in Ukraine,” Kirby said. “They are being deployed completely in keeping with our efforts to bolster NATO’s deterrence and defense capabilities.”

The planes are not being deployed because of an “acute” threat, but as a “prudent decision,” Kirby said. While they’ll be based in Germany, he said, they will be flying missions to bolster security in Eastern Europe.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland’s relations with its close allies, the United States and the European Union, were, at best, strained. Charging Warsaw with democratic backsliding, the E.U. slapped punitive fines on the right-wing Polish government. Polish President Andrzej Duda — a staunch ally of former president Donald Trump — took several weeks to officially congratulate President Biden after the 2020 elections. That came after Biden, on the campaign trail, had lumped Poland in with a rogues gallery of nations he accused of tilting away from democracy.

But Warsaw’s beef with its Western allies seemed to melt away Friday, as Duda and Biden clasped hands at a Polish airport less than 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. Duda gushed over the strength of U.S.-Polish ties, heralding Washington’s role in maintaining “stability and world peace” in the face of “Russian aggression” against “democratic and free nations.”

That moment crystallized what observers see as an attempt by Warsaw to mend fences with Washington and Brussels amid a growing Russian threat, with Warsaw reluctantly moving to address concerns that it is out of step with the rest of democratic Europe.

As President Biden moves to admit up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to the United States, lawmakers and advocates are urging him not to forget about the other refugee crisis facing his administration: the thousands of Afghans still waiting to be admitted to the country.

The White House says its push to accept Ukrainian refugees — announced last week while Biden was in Europe — won’t divert resources or attention from its ongoing effort to help Afghans who aided U.S. forces come to the United States with their families.

“Our commitment to resettling Afghans — particularly those who served on behalf of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan — remains steadfast,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “That commitment will not wane as we open our doors to Ukrainians.”

Some lawmakers aren’t so sure.

Russia’s Novaya Gazeta — the last newspaper publishing independent news about Russia’s war against Ukraine — Monday announced it was suspending publication, after receiving a second warning from Roskomnadzor, Russia’s technology and communications regulator.

The newspaper’s management made the announcement in a brief two-paragraph statement shortly after the warning was given. Under Russian law, a newspaper can be stripped of its license to publish if it gets two warnings in a year.

Russian authorities have blocked or shut down almost all of Russia’s independent media, including Dozhd television and Echo of Moscow radio, the latter disbanded by its board, which is controlled by state-owned gas company Gazprom.

Novaya Gazeta, edited by Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov, continued to publish what news it could within the narrow boundaries of Russia’s tough wartime censorship law, where even the word “war” is banned.

Its story Saturday from Elena Kostyuchenko, for example, from Russian-occupied Kherson in Ukraine, reported on civilian casualties, including children; civilian rallies against Russian occupation; Russia’s blocking of Ukrainian humanitarian aid to the city; and Russia’s abductions and beatings of Kherson journalists, activists, organizers of protests and Ukrainian service members. The article also identified a secret prison where those arrested were taken.

Novaya Gazeta management announced it was suspending all publication — online, in social media and in print — until the end of the military operation.

Muratov said Novaya Gazeta was grateful to its readers but did not comment on what would happen to the newspaper’s staff or its future in comments to online publication Meduza.

Asked the reasons for suspending work, Muratov said, “Everything we said in our statement is exhaustive. We have our own policy, and that doesn’t mean it has to be public.”

Tass news agency reported that Roskomnadzor issued a second warning to Novaya Gazeta because it had failed to identify a nongovernmental organization as a “foreign agent.” Roskomnadzor did not identify which article was missing the label, according to Novaya Gazeta.

Many independent Russian journalists have fled the country, but independent media still use YouTube and Telegram to distribute news.