Ukraine Claims Gains Near Bakhmut as Deadly Fighting Continues

Ukraine's military said it had reclaimed about three square miles outside the eastern city of Bakhmut, which would be its first significant gains there in weeks.

Ukrainian troops break through a Russian flank near Bakhmut, officials say.

The Wagner leader has escalated criticism of Russia's military leadership.

The Justice Department transfers funds seized for sanctions violations to help rebuild Ukraine, a first.

Russia is resorting to poorly trained soldiers and aging weapons stocks, NATO says.

On one Ukrainian official's screen, a map tells the story of Russia's constant strikes.

Russia eases travel restrictions on Georgian nationals, in the latest sign of thawing ties.

Canada expands training for Ukrainian soldiers to Latvia.

Ukraine Diary: Hardy Kyiv residents use a lull in attacks to try an underground adventure.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian military commanders said on Wednesday that their troops had broken through Russian positions on the southern flank of the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, forcing Russian units back from their positions at an important bridgehead of a canal.

Ukrainian officials and the head of Russia's Wagner militia group said that Russian troops had lost an area of roughly three square miles southwest of the city. If confirmed, it would be the first significant gain for Ukraine in the fight for Bakhmut since pushing Russian forces off a key access road two months ago, although it was far from clear that Ukrainian forces could hold the ground or that it was a turning point in the monthslong battle.

The fighting around the city did not seem to be part of a broader counteroffensive that Kyiv has said will begin soon, but came amid an uptick in Ukrainian strikes behind Russian lines and reports of increased attacks in Russian regions bordering Ukraine. The Ukrainian operation near Bakhmut hit Russian Army troops as they were rotating into position and was an opportunistic strike on a weak link in the Russian front, Ukrainian military officers said.

Russia's Defense Ministry has not commented on the reports.

The Ukrainians said they broke through Russian lines in an area of fields, ravines and thickets of trees to the southwest of Bakhmut. Ukrainian commanders said several units — including the Azov soldiers in the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, a special forces unit; the Adam Tactical Group; and the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, a group that includes civilian volunteers — had carried out the attack.

Andriy Biletsky, a commander of the Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, said in a video statement released in the early hours of Wednesday morning that his troops had seized Russian positions and inflicted heavy losses on Russian troops. Two Russian companies, units typically with about 100 soldiers each, and a reconnaissance team had been "completely destroyed" in the fighting, he said.

His video statement, filmed at night, appeared to corroborate information released by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner militia group that is leading the assault on Bakhmut.

Mr. Prigozhin said in a video statement on Tuesday that the Russian flank had been broken. Known for his outspoken and often self-serving criticism of Russia's military, Mr. Prigozhin accused units of the 72nd Brigade of the Russian Army of abandoning their positions.

"Everyone fled and exposed a front almost two kilometers wide and 500 meters deep," he said.

Mr. Prigozhin's Wagner forces have played a key role in Russia's assault on Bakhmut, but he has frequently blamed Russian military leaders for failing to adequately supply his forces. He released his statement just as President Vladimir V. Putin was attending the traditional Victory Day military parade in Moscow's Red Square to commemorate the Soviet defeat over the Nazis in World War II.

He added that his forces had to move in to prevent a further Ukrainian advance. "It's good we managed to block it somehow," he said.

Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, said in a statement that the attack was part of a "defensive operation" aimed at stalling the Russian assault on Bakhmut, which has been raging for 11 months — one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war. General Syrsky did not mention the long-anticipated counteroffensive that Ukraine and its Western allies have been preparing for months with newly equipped and trained brigades.

Ukrainian commanders fighting in and around Bakhmut have said that their role is to prevent Russian advances while new brigades are trained and assembled to carry out the expected counteroffensive. They also said that they sensed that the Russian Army was demoralized and thinly stretched in places along the front line, making them vulnerable.

A midlevel commander in the 3rd Assault Brigade who asked to be identified by his nickname, Zayan, in keeping with Ukrainian military rules, said of what might come next in the fight for Bakhmut: "Anything is possible."

Andrew E. Kramer and Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Berlin.

— Carlotta Gall and Maria Varenikova

Ukraine's claim of gains in the battle for the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut is playing out against a backdrop of increasingly caustic missives against the Russian military leadership from Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner militia whose forces have been at the forefront of Russia's fight for the city.

In recent days, Mr. Prigozhin has recorded graphic and expletive-laden videos accusing Russia's senior generals of denying his forces necessary supplies, such as ammunition. On Tuesday, he appeared to take his attacks even further, publishing a video that some observers interpreted as a direct criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Ukrainian weapons "kill our soldiers, while a happy grandpa thinks that everything is going well for him," Mr. Prigozhin said in the video. Mr. Putin's opponents commonly refer to him as "grandfather."

On Wednesday, Mr. Prigozhin said that "grandpa" referred to a senior Russian military official whose name he did not specify. Mr. Prigozhin, a tycoon who earned his fortune in part through Kremlin catering contracts, has been careful to avoid direct criticism of Mr. Putin.

The 11-month battle for Bakhmut has taken on a symbolic significance for both sides that goes far beyond the city's immediate strategic value. Russia and Ukraine have poured in troops and sustained high numbers of casualties, though military experts say that casualties have been higher for Russia's forces than for Ukraine's.

Last week, Mr. Prigozhin threatened to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut because of insufficient ammunition, releasing a video that showed him walking among bodies that he claimed were Wagner fighters killed in the battle for the city and blaming top Russian defense officials by name for their deaths. He later walked back that threat, saying that he had been promised more ammunition, but in the video released on Tuesday he repeated his complaints about the lack of supplies.

He warned that Ukrainian forces were mustering forces for an anticipated counteroffensive and that they were doing their utmost to make the Russian front crumble, though he claims that Wagner fighters continue to make grinding progress in the city of Bakhmut itself.

"Today they are tearing the flanks in the Artemovsk direction," he said, using the Russian name for Bakhmut. "They are regrouping in Zaporizhzhia, and in the near future a counteroffensive will begin." Zaporizhzhia is one of two regions of southern Ukraine that Russian forces have partly occupied since launching their full-scale invasion last year.

Despite his dispute over ammunition supplies, Mr. Prigozhin said that his forces would continue fighting in Bakhmut for now. "We’ll keep pushing for a few more days," he said. "Let's fight."

— Anatoly Kurmanaev

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced that it had transferred millions of dollars in assets seized from a Russian oligarch for use in rebuilding Ukraine, the first such use of forfeited funds arising from sanctions violations.

The transfer came under a provision of a law enacted by Congress late last year that authorized the Justice Department to send certain forfeited assets to the State Department to be spent on remediating damage from Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

The Justice Department had seized the funds from a U.S. financial institution after tracing them to sanctions evasion by a Russian oligarch who is a prominent cheerleader of Russia's invasion, Konstantin Malofeyev. The Treasury Department in 2014 had imposed sanctions on Mr. Malofeyev, accusing him of being a major source for financing the Russian promotion of separatism in two Ukrainian regions — the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed that year, and in Donetsk, a region in eastern Ukraine that Russia partly occupies and illegally annexed last year, and where frontline battles are being fought.

In April 2022, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment accusing Mr. Malofeyev, who is not in custody, of violating U.S. sanctions, and moved to seize $5.3 million in a bank account belonging to him. In February, when Andriy Kostin, Ukraine's prosecutor general, visited Washington, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced that he would make the transfer of the funds. That process was completed on Tuesday.

"Those forfeited Russian assets have now been transferred to the State Department and will be dedicated to that purpose," Mr. Garland said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to funds being used for Ukraine. "While this represents the United States’ first transfer of forfeited Russian funds for the rebuilding of Ukraine, it will not be the last."

— Charlie Savage

Ukraine will start using more advanced weapons against Russia in the coming months, NATO's top military official said on Wednesday, a contrast to the aging equipment and poorly trained fighters that Russia is using.

The Ukrainian Army will most likely focus on deploying the modern weaponry, including tanks and missile systems, that have arrived from the United States and Europe, while the Russian Army replenishes its forces, said Adm. Rob Bauer in Brussels at a meeting of defense officials from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Every war eventually becomes about logistics, Admiral Bauer said at a news conference after a meeting of NATO's top defense officials in Brussels. A warring nation, he added, must be able to replenish everything it loses, from ammunition to vehicles to troops. Russia has lost thousands of soldiers in the battle for Bakhmut in the east alone.

Russia will need to rely on conscripts and mobilized people who are not well trained, Admiral Bauer said. They will also have to turn to older ammunition and equipment, which they have a lot of, but which are not as precise or as good as newer ones, he said.

For example, Russian forces are already resorting to older equipment, including T-54 tanks that were designed roughly seven decades ago, the admiral said.

Ukrainian forces, on the other hand, will "focus on quality, with Western weapon systems and Western training," Admiral Bauer said.

The admiral is scheduled to participate in the 2023 European Defense and Security Summit on Thursday in Brussels. The event is a collaboration between the European Commission and the A.S.D., a trade group representing European aerospace, security and defense companies.

Ukraine's defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, is also scheduled to speak about security in Europe and whether forces are ready for a large-scale war on the continent.

The NATO meeting on Wednesday was the first since Finland joined the alliance last month, a process prompted by concern about Russian aggression. A larger meeting in Lithuania is scheduled for this summer, when the results of NATO's efforts to transform itself will be presented, officials said.

As part of those efforts, the alliance is rapidly increasing the readiness of its forces for "large-scale operations to defend every edge" of its territory, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, said after the meeting.

— Anushka Patil

KYIV, Ukraine — Inside the office of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, a digital map of Ukraine was lit up on Tuesday with lines tracing missile trajectories from the latest Russian bombardment.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the council, sat behind his desk looking at the blizzard of lines that lit up his computer screen as he reviewed the strikes of the past week, then the past month, then the past year. In a country about twice the size of Italy, virtually no corner appeared to have been untouched by strikes.

Every one, he said, meant more destruction and potentially more lives lost. Over the past week, the data onscreen also showed a noticeable increase in lines tracing a path toward the capital, Kyiv. The data on the map had been compiled by Ukraine's military and had not been independently verified.

Mr. Danilov said he had no doubt that Moscow would like to strike a deadly blow in the capital and hit the seat of the government.

But he also attributed the recent increase in attacks aimed at the capital to the time of year. On Tuesday, Moscow commemorated Victory Day, a national holiday marking the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany that Moscow has turned into an annual celebration of the country's military might.

Like other senior Ukrainian officials, Mr. Danilov would not be drawn into speculation about when, where and how Ukraine would launch a long-heralded counteroffensive meant to break through the Russian lines.

"If someone tells you he knows when and in which direction the counteroffensive would start," he said, "be sure he doesn't know what he is talking about."

When asked about orders recently issued by the Russian occupation authorities for people to leave towns and cities across the front line, he smiled.

"I would advise them to evacuate from our territories as soon as possible," he said, calling for everyone to leave. "Including Crimea — while the bridge is still working," he added, referring to the Kerch Strait Bridge, a critical artery connecting Russia with Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized illegally in 2014, which was attacked and severely damaged last year.

But Mr. Danilov's outward confidence in Ukraine's ultimate victory and anger at the Kremlin were underpinned by a deep sadness.

"I’m getting sentimental now," he said when asked how he had changed over the past 15 months. "Two of my children are in Germany. Recently, they performed in a concert to raise money to buy an ambulance for a hospital in Ukraine. When I think about what Putin is doing to Ukraine — that children have to raise money for ambulances — and how many children he killed and injured already, it makes me cry."

In multiple interviews over the course of the war, Mr. Danilov has often talked about how he believes that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, will ultimately lead to the breakup of the Russian Federation.

"On Feb. 24, I said it was the beginning of Russia's fragmentation," he said. "And so it would be. Russia will fall apart."

In the meantime, he is constantly confronted with the daily reality of the toll the war is taking. All senior officials in Kyiv get a morning update from Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's supreme military commander.

He read from one sent before dawn on Tuesday morning. At that point, the military had traced 17 missiles streaking across Ukraine. Fifteen were shot down. Two got through the air defenses, he said, but the damage was limited.

"Luckily no losses today," he said.

— Marc Santora

TBILISI, Georgia — President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday ordered the restoration of direct flights from Russia to the mountainous former Soviet republic of Georgia starting May 15 and abolished visa requirements for Georgian nationals, in the latest sign of continued rapprochement between the two nations.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the decisions announced Wednesday were made in line with the "principled approach to gradually improving conditions for communication and contacts between the citizens of Russia and Georgia."

Mr. Putin's decisions highlighted the highly complex relationship between Russia and Georgia, where many members of civil society, pro-Western opposition activists and lawmakers see the Kremlin as the main threat to the country's stability and security. The country's ruling party, however, tacitly supports closer ties with Moscow.

In 2008, Georgia fought a painful five-day war with Russia that resulted in Moscow's military taking control of the two secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, or about one-fifth of Georgia's territory. Since then, Russia and Georgia have had no formal diplomatic relations.

Mr. Putin banned flights between Russia and Georgia in 2019, after anti-Kremlin protests erupted in central Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. Russia began requiring visas of arriving Georgian nationals in 2000, citing a risk of terrorism in the North Caucasus, where it was fighting a war in Chechnya at the time.

Mr. Putin's announcement on Wednesday was met with criticism from pro-Western officials and lawmakers in Georgia. President Salome Zourabichvili, who serves as the country's ceremonial head of state, called Mr. Putin's moves a "provocation" and "unacceptable" while Russia continues waging its war in Ukraine, another former Soviet republic.

She also called on the country's government to convene a meeting of its security council and discuss introducing visa requirements for Russian nationals, who can currently stay and work in the country without a visa for up to a year.

Ms. Zourabichvili has often made sharp statements criticizing the Georgian government as being too subservient to Russia, but it is the country's ruling party, Georgian Dream, that has real power over government policy. The party officially says that it pursues pro-Western policies, but it has also argued for a pragmatic approach in developing ties with the Kremlin.

The relationship with Russia has been a subject of a heated and polarizing debate in Georgia, where many members of the pro-Western opposition argue that the country must impose sanctions on Moscow and be more active in supporting Ukraine.

However, since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Georgia has increased its trade with Russia. It also emerged as one of the key transit hubs for goods shipped between Turkey and Russia, including some from the West. Georgia's opposition asserts that the trade helps Russia evade some Western sanctions, which the Georgian government denies.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled their country in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine and Mr. Putin's order months later to mobilize troops for the war. Many have settled in Georgia, giving the country's economy a boost by relocating their assets there.

Georgia's pragmatic approach to its relationship with Russia has earned praise from Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, who said in January that the decision to refrain from imposing sanctions "commands respect" from Russia.

According to Mr. Putin's order, Georgian citizens will have the right to enter Russia without a visa and stay there for 90 days.

The Russian Transportation Ministry said in a statement that seven flights would operate between Moscow and Tbilisi per week, and that the planes used would all be Russian-made. The Georgian government said that it would only allow flights by airlines that had not been placed under Western sanctions, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency. Most of Russia's leading airlines, including Aeroflot, are under those sanctions.

Roman Gotsiridze, a Georgian opposition lawmaker, said in a statement on his Facebook account that Mr. Putin's decisions on travel and visas had "put Georgia on the same rank" as Belarus, "a friendly state for Russia."

— Ivan Nechepurenko

Canada is expanding its training program for Ukrainian forces into Latvia, the defense ministers of the two NATO members announced on Wednesday, where they will provide instruction in combat engineering, battlefield first aid, the use of Canada's donated tanks, weapons handling and other skills that could give Ukraine a boost as it gears up for an expected spring offensive.

The move comes as part of Operation UNIFIER, a Canadian program started in 2015, the year after Russia illegally seized the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. The program, which already involves about 250 Canadian Armed Forces members in Poland and Britain, has trained more than 36,000 Ukrainian soldiers.

Canada's defense minister, Anita Anand, framed the expansion as "a very significant and important contribution that Canada can make to NATO," speaking alongside her Latvian counterpart, Inara Murniece, at a news conference in Ottawa on Wednesday.

NATO has been bolstering its own eastern flank in Europe, and the site for the new training program is Camp Adazi, a NATO base where about 800 Canadian military members are now stationed. Canada has had a presence there since 2017 as part of a battle group to bolster the alliance's security efforts in the Baltic region.

In her remarks on Wednesday, Ms. Anand recalled visiting the base alongside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year, about two weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine.

"We saw NATO at its very best," Ms. Anand said. "Troops from 11 nations under Canadian command, training together and learning from one another so that they can defend NATO's eastern flank from any threat."

Ms. Murniece said the NATO base's work "provided assurance to Latvian society" and was "the most visible example of how collective defense works in reality."

While Canada faces some internal criticism for failing to meet the alliance's military spending targets, the government has made significant donations to Ukraine and is one of the country's largest suppliers of weapons and equipment.

Last month, Mr. Trudeau announced that Canada would supply Ukraine with another $44 million worth of weaponry and ammunition.

— Vjosa Isai

This is one in an occasional series of dispatches about life amid the war in Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine — Several dozen Kyiv residents donned waders and wielded flashlights on Sunday for a diversion from the threat of Russian attacks, descending into a network of subterranean tunnels under the Ukrainian capital for a dank but illuminating tour led by two urban explorers.

The city was, unknowingly, just hours from one of the largest waves of Russian drone attacks of the war to directly target the capital. But it was already braced for assaults before Victory Day in Russia on May 9, and after explosions over the Kremlin last week that Moscow said involved Ukrainian drones.

Some 80 rivers flow through and under Kyiv, and the tunnels that the tour visited bring together some of them, eventually channeling their waters into the Dnipro. The organizer was Urbex Tour, a Ukrainian company that guides visitors to Cold War bunkers, catacombs in Odesa and even a missile base. Two explorers with the group, who have spent years mapping the underground world of Ukraine's cities, were in charge on Sunday.

The tour participants started by climbing into a manhole under Kyiv's hip Podil neighborhood, armed with a sense of adventure. Their flashlights picked out arched brick walls built in the 19th century to separate the sewage system from the underground rivers, while the sound of trams above rumbled.

They walked along a steady stream of water, skirting the soft mud on its edges. In one long stretch, the ceiling dipped low, forcing them to advance in a crouch for at least 10 minutes. Rain can flood the tunnels, so the tours go ahead only when the weather has been dry.

All sorts of items surfaced: metal parts from the tramway, a rusted butter knife, old Soviet coins. A group of friends enthused about the fungi they saw growing from a concrete section of the tunnel wall.

One of the guides, Artem Forostyanyi, said the appeal of the tunnels was obvious. "People want these extreme tours to take them away from their everyday troubles," he said.

At one point, he asked the participants to turn their flashlights off. The darkness was total. There was nervous laughter when he suggested that they try to take five steps forward.

The laughter after the tour was less anxious, particularly between one married couple, who gave only their first names, Katia and Nikita, both 31.

"My husband decided to take me on a romantic outing," Katia said after climbing back out of a manhole into the light of Kyiv.

— Nicole Tung

Representatives from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations will meet in Istanbul on Wednesday to begin two days of talks aimed at salvaging the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow has threatened to pull out of, as world leaders accused Russia of weaponizing global hunger by holding the deal hostage.

Russia has repeatedly said it would back out of the deal by May 18 if impediments to Russia's own agricultural exports are not resolved. With the fate of the deal unsettled, shipments under the pivotal agreement that has allowed Ukraine's food exports to reach world markets dipped significantly in April.

The United Nations said this week that inspections of empty cargo ships traveling to Ukraine, under a Russian demand that they be searched to ensure they are not carrying weapons, had slowed significantly. On Sunday and Monday, there were no inspections, but they resumed on Tuesday, according to the United Nations.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his British counterpart, James Cleverly, called on Moscow this week to immediately commit to an extension of the deal. The original agreement, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last July, said the deal would be renewed for 120 days at a time. Twice before, it was extended just days before expiration; in March, Russia said it was only agreeing to a 60-day extension unless its demands are met.

Mr. Blinken said on Tuesday that Russia was blockading ships from reaching Ukrainian ports to be loaded with grain, accusing Moscow's troops of stopping food from getting to people in need. "The world shouldn't need to remind Moscow every few weeks to stop using people's hunger as a weapon in their war against Ukraine," he said.

Mr. Cleverly called the delays in the deal's renewal "completely wrong" and said it came at the expense of the world's poorest.

"It is perverse that they are using hunger in the developing world as leverage in their conflict in Ukraine," he said.

Russia's demands for the deal's extension include reconnecting its agricultural bank to the SWIFT global payment system, the lifting of restrictions on maritime insurance and the end of sanctions against major fertilizer companies. Some experts have said the demands are an attempt to soften the blow of sanctions imposed against Russia more broadly by using the deal as a bargaining chip.

— Anushka Patil and Victoria Kim

A deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that has allowed Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain from its ports on the Black Sea despite the war was extended for two more months on Thursday, just a day before Russia had threatened to let it expire.

When the pact was signed in July, it was accompanied by assurances that Russia's agricultural products and fertilizers would also make it to world markets. But Russian officials have repeatedly complained that while it has allowed Ukraine's food exports to get to markets, Western sanctions against Russia continued to affect the sale of Russia's agricultural products.

Here is a look at the agreement and Russia's demands.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was established to alleviate a global food crisis that developed after the beginning of the full-scale invasion last year, when Russia's control of the waterways blocked ships from carrying Ukraine's grain out of its ports on the Black Sea. Ukraine is one of the world's biggest grain exporters, and the blockage swiftly sent grain prices soaring. The agreement allowed exports to resume last August.

The deal has come within days of expiring twice before, in November and in March. Each time, Russia agreed to extend it, but the March extension came with a warning: Moscow said the renewed deal would expire in 60 days if the United Nations failed to resolve "five systemic problems" around Russian agricultural exports. Russian officials have said that the grain deal unfairly favors Ukraine at Russia's expense.

Russia's Foreign Ministry, in a statement last month, said that a parallel U.N. deal brokered last July had failed to remove obstacles hindering its agricultural exports. That agreement said the United Nations would "continue efforts to facilitate the transparent unimpeded access of food and fertilizers."

These are the demands that Russia's Foreign Ministry listed in a statement on April 13:

Reconnect Russia's agricultural bank to the SWIFT payment system. The state-owned Russian Agricultural Bank is one of several institutions barred by Western sanctions from SWIFT, an international messaging service that is critical for cross-border payments.

Lift restrictions on maritime insurance, and on the supply of spare parts used in agricultural machinery. The United States, Britain and the European Union say they have already excluded Russian agricultural goods from their sanctions, but Russian companies have repeatedly complained that Western banks, insurance providers and shipping companies still refuse to work with them, for fear of overstepping the boundaries of the exemptions or of attracting bad publicity.

End sanctions against fertilizer companies and people linked to them. Dmitry Mazepin, the founder of the major fertilizer producer Uralchem, is among the businessmen on the international sanctions lists.

Restore an ammonia pipeline that crosses Ukraine. For months, Russia has demanded that it be allowed to resume exporting ammonia through the Tolyatti-Odesa pipeline, which connects chemical factories in the Russian industrial city of Tolyatti with Ukraine's Pivdennyi Port, near Odesa.

Timothy Ash, a Russia expert and sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management in London, is skeptical. Russian agriculture has seen some benefits from sanctions, he noted, because competitive Western products have been largely excluded from the domestic market.

He added that Russian demands to lift restrictions on maritime insurance had less to do with exporting grain than with Moscow's desire to facilitate seaborne oil exports.

"The Russians are just trying to use the Black Sea grain deal to get leverage to soften sanctions on Russia more generally," he said.

— Cora Engelbrecht, Liz Alderman and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

A video journalist working for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, was killed by rocket fire near the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, Agence France-Presse said on Tuesday. Some of the heaviest battles of the war are being fought in and around the nearby city of Bakhmut.

The journalist, Arman Soldin, 32, and four colleagues were with Ukrainian soldiers when they came under a Grad rocket attack on Tuesday afternoon, the agency said. Mr. Soldin was killed. No one on the rest of the team, which included a security adviser, was injured.

Mr. Soldin is the 17th journalist to be killed in Ukraine since 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. His death came just two weeks after a Ukrainian journalist was killed and an Italian journalist was injured in an attack on their way to the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Mr. Soldin was one of the agency's first journalists to arrive in Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion, and he regularly reported from the front lines. He survived a close rocket attack last week while reporting on soldiers who were digging trenches near Bakhmut.

Being caught under a rain of Grad yesterday with a bunch of trench-diggers is probably one of the worst things that I've experienced since being in #Ukraine, with rockets exploding less than 50 metres away. Pure terror. Sound on #afp #ukraine #bakhmut #Donetsk pic.twitter.com/aiyBHgYXAm

Mr. Soldin also shared lighter moments from the front lines — last month, he rescued an injured hedgehog found after Russian shelling in Chasiv Yar. Mr. Soldin and his colleagues built a makeshift shelter for the hedgehog, whom they named Lucky; collected insects for him to eat; and "started googling what baby hedgehogs need," Mr. Soldin wrote on Twitter.

When Lucky finally accepted water from a bottle improvised out of medical equipment, Mr. Soldin rejoiced: "I AM OFFICIALLY A DAD !"

Sooo.. here is an unusually cute story from our day of reporting around #Bakhmut ! We found a baby hedgehog that was dehydrated and dying at the worst place possible in Chassiv Yar ...Quick thread ! 🧶🧶🧶1/11 #ukraine #animals @dodo pic.twitter.com/DvTVPnjxh5

Mr. Soldin, a French national who was born in Bosnia, was "courageous, creative and tenacious," Phil Chetwynd, the agency's global news director, said in a statement. "He was above all an excellent journalist who was totally committed to the story."

France's president, Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute to Mr. Soldin on Tuesday, tweeting that he had courageously been at the front from the first hours of the conflict "to establish the facts. To inform us." He added, "We share the pain of his loved ones and all his colleagues."

— Anushka Patil