Author: Phoebe Martekie Doku

A Belarusian court sentenced Ales Bialiatski, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for his decades of defending human rights in Belarus, to 10 years in prison on Friday, according to Viasna, the group that he helped found.

Mr. Bialiatski has been a pillar of the human rights movement in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s, when Belarus was part of the Soviet Union. Most members of Viasna are now in prison or living in exile from the country’s authoritarian government, which is one of Russia’s closest allies and a key supporter of its war in Ukraine.

Mr. Bialiatski was arrested in 2021 on charges of tax evasion, an accusation that rights groups denounced as fraudulent. A sweeping and brutal crackdown on dissent unfolded across the country after huge street protests erupted in 2020, including the arrest of an opposition journalist the following year after the Belarusian authorities forced a commercial plane on which he was a passenger to land in Minsk, the capital.

The country’s authoritarian leader, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, repaid the Kremlin for its support in helping quash those protests by allowing Russian forces to use Belarusian territory as a staging ground for their invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

Mr. Bialiatski’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk, said in October that she had sent a telegram to her husband in jail to inform him of the Nobel Peace Prize, and that she had not seen him since a few days before his arrest in July 2021.

When the award was announced, Natalia Satsunkevich, a Viasna activist living in exile, told Dozhd, an online Russian television channel that has been shut down in Russia and now operates from abroad, that giving Mr. Bialiatski the accolade, along with recipients from Ukraine and Russia, was “very symbolic.”

She said it highlighted “how closely these countries are now connected by war,” although that concept met with criticism from some in Ukraine.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine — As Russian forces launched assaults from multiple directions aimed at encircling Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern city of Bakhmut, the information campaign around the battle was also intensifying.

Signs are mounting that Ukraine might be forced to retreat from the decimated city. But on Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, accused “Russian propagandists” of “spreading the narratives that are intended to demoralize the Ukrainian military and society.”

As if on cue, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary force that has helped lead Russia’s assault on Bakhmut, released a video saying that the Ukrainians only had one road left to escape the city and urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to order a withdrawal.

“The pincers are closing,” he said.

It is not the first time Mr. Prigozhin has made bold proclamations, many of which have proven false. But the precariousness of the Ukrainian grip on Bakhmut has been evident for weeks. While President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at one point vowed that “fortress” Bakhmut would not fall, in recent days Ukrainian officials have been preparing the public for a possible retreat even as they rush reinforcements to the area.

Col. Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukraine Eastern command, told reporters on Thursday that Ukrainian forces would conduct a tactical retreat from Bakhmut if necessary.

Bakhmut has taken on a deep symbolic resonance for both sides, which have incurred staggering numbers of casualties. The main question for Ukraine at the moment is ensuring that if a withdrawal was deemed necessary how they would do so in a way that minimizes losses.

The gravest risk for Ukrainian forces is that they would be encircled, trapped and killed in large numbers. But the more immediate risk is that Russia makes it impossible to resupply the Ukrainian fighters in and around Bakhmut.

The road from Bakhmut to Chasiv Yar — three miles to the west — is the last major supply line for Ukrainian soldiers in and around Bakhmut. Volodymyr Nazarenko, a deputy commander in Ukraine’s national guard, often travels that road and said on Friday that the route is coming under regular shelling.

“The enemy tries to advance and conducts assaults not even every day, but almost every hour,” Mr. Nazarenko said, but added that Ukraine has continued to defend the supply line.

If that changes — which it could any day — then the calculations of Ukraine’s military and political leaders would also likely shift.

The commander of a Ukrainian drone unit who has offered frequent updates on the situation from inside Bakhmut said on Thursday that Kyiv still controlled the city but warned that the situation was growing more difficult by the day.

“It is getting harder and harder to hold it,” the commander, who goes by the call sign Magyar, said in a video message, noting Russian efforts to cut the last supply lines to the city.

On Friday, he posted a video saying his unit had been ordered to withdraw from the city to another position. He offered no other details.

— Marc Santora and Natalia Yermak

The United States is set to send more aid to Ukraine, most of it ammunition for equipment such as HIMARS rocket launchers, ahead of an anticipated Russian assault this spring.

At a press briefing in Washington on Thursday, John F. Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, declined to give details on the size of the new aid package and did not offer a timeline for when it would be delivered. More information is expected to be released on Friday, he said.

Ukraine is running low on ammunition after a year of fighting Russia. The world’s biggest producers of ammunition can’t keep up with the pace of fighting, which is straining global arms production. Ukraine’s allies, including members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are moving billions of dollars of equipment to Ukraine but are hampered by a patchwork of rules and the need to replenish their own stockpiles.

Last week, the Pentagon said it would spend $2 billion on equipment for the Ukrainian military so the country could sustain its long-term needs. The United States will buy that equipment, which includes ammunition for artillery and long-range rocket systems, from manufacturers instead of drawing from its own stockpile. That will delay the delivery by months or years.

With last week’s offering, Washington has provided $32 billion in military aid to Ukraine since February 2022.

There will be no state dinners, no press entourage and little fanfare. On a two-day visit to Washington to see President Biden, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, wants to get straight to business. The question many in Berlin are asking is what that business is.

“What is the purpose of your trip to Washington today? Why are you traveling there? You should have actually explained that here,” Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s main opposition party, the Christian Democrats, said to Mr. Scholz in a speech at the German Parliament on Thursday.

The chancellor’s press office published a one-line statement announcing the visit to Washington in advance of the trip: The two leaders will discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine one year on, and support for Kyiv.

The quiet nature of the visit — with no traveling press invited, and no news conferences, and not even an outline of his plans in his speech to German Parliament before his journey — has led some within Berlin’s foreign policy circles to wonder whether it is a reflection of a growing sense of urgency, on both sides of the Atlantic, to find a new road map for ending the conflict in Ukraine.

“I think we are at a difficult moment, because the question about the endgame is becoming louder, bigger and more important in the U.S., but also in Europe,” said Ulrich Speck, a German foreign policy analyst. “So I think it is one year on and looking back, it’s also looking forward, and to the question: How will this end?”

Mr. Scholz’s representatives say the muted nature of the trip is an “exception” but have stressed that it is not a reflection of any grave situation, merely the “work focus” of the visit.

Speculation has been growing in Europe and Washington that despite vocal public statements that they would back Kyiv “as long as necessary,” as Mr. Scholz has put it, some Western leaders worry how long a strong, unified front can last.

European leaders are fretting over how support for Ukraine will fare during a U.S. presidential election next year, with parts of the Republican Party skeptical of military support for Kyiv. The White House said on Thursday that it would announce more military aid to Ukraine on Friday.

Nearly all Western leaders have concerns over whether their populations may tire of sustained and costly backing of Ukraine, especially as the war exposes many shortcomings in their own countries — including military preparedness and energy supplies.

In Berlin, a protest over military backing for Ukraine last Saturday drew 13,000 people, the police said — underscoring that a notable portion of Germany’s population remains leery of Western involvement in the war.

Trying to balance between that domestic wariness and European allies’ calls for bolder military support for Ukraine from Germany, Mr. Scholz gave a measured statement reaffirming support for Ukraine before setting off for Washington.

“The majority of citizens want our country to continue to stand by Ukraine,” he said. “And to do so as we have since the beginning of the war: decisively, in a balanced way, closely coordinated with our friends and partners.”

The Biden administration has restricted sales of some U.S. technology to 37 companies and organizations, saying that their activity threatened national security.

Three-quarters of the companies included in the announcement, which was made on Thursday, are based in China. They include entities that the Commerce Department said had supported Beijing’s military modernization or produced technology that risked being diverted for military purposes. The Biden administration has warned in recent weeks that China could be gearing up to provide military support to Russia ‌for its war in Ukraine.

Tensions have been brewing between the United States and China over the potential for Beijing to get involved in the war. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said last month that he had warned China of “serious consequences” if Beijing were to supply arms or ammunition to Russia.

China’s Foreign Ministry responded on Friday by accusing the United States of creating excuses to suppress Chinese businesses and discriminate against them. It also denied that China had provided weapons to Russia but did not address whether it was considering doing so in the future.

“China is strongly unsatisfied and opposes this action,” said Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the ministry.

The companies on the list include units of the Chinese genetics company B.G.I. The Biden administration said that B.G.I. had contributed to Chinese government surveillance programs that were used to repress ethnic minorities by collecting and analyzing genetic data. The companies’ technology could also be used in China’s military programs, the Commerce Department said.

The Chinese cloud computing company Inspur was added to the list for trying to acquire American technology to support the modernization of China’s military.

The Biden administration added the companies to what is known as the entity list, which bars them from buying American parts and technology unless their suppliers obtain a special license.

Some of the Chinese companies were accused of supplying or trying to supply an Iranian electronics company that was previously punished for ties to Iran’s defense ministry. Other Chinese companies blacklisted on Thursday contributed to “ballistic missile programs of concern,” including Pakistan’s, the Commerce Department said.

Also added to the list were companies from Belarus, Russia and Taiwan that the administration said had significantly contributed to Russia’s military industry. The administration said it was increasing efforts to clamp down on intermediaries who help Russia evade sanctions meant to restrict its ability to fund the war.

The notice issued jointly by the Commerce, Treasury and Justice Departments said that transfer points in China, including Hong Kong and Macau, could be used to illegally redirect shipments to Russia and Belarus.

Olivia Wang contributed reporting.

Though not widely known in the West before he was honored with last year’s Nobel Peace Prize along with recipients from Ukraine and Russia, Ales Bialiatski has been a pillar of the human rights movement in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s, when Belarus was still part of the Soviet Union but, inspired by the reforms of Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow, was slowly shaking off decades of paralyzing fear.

He was active in Tutajshyja, or “The Locals,” a dissident cultural organization that helped lay the groundwork in the late Soviet period for a movement calling for the independence of Belarus.

After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the 1994 election of Belarus’s authoritarian leader, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Mr. Bialiatski helped found and lead Viasna, or Spring, a rights group whose members are now nearly all in prison or living in exile abroad.

He served for a time as the director of a museum honoring Maksim Bahdanovic, a poet who is considered a founder of modern Belarusian literature but was forced out of that post when Mr. Lukashenko, who has now been president for almost three decades, started cracking down on the Belarusian language and promoting Russian.

When Andrei Sannikov, a former deputy foreign minister who resigned his post in 1996 to protest Mr. Lukashenko’s increasingly repressive policies, was put on trial in 2011 for taking part in peaceful protests, Mr. Bialiatski testified on his behalf — and was arrested shortly afterward. Put on trial on trumped-up charges of tax evasion, Mr. Bialiatski was sentenced to four and a half years in jail. He was released on amnesty in 2014.

In October, Natalia Satsunkevich, a Viasna activist who now lives in exile, told Dozhd, an online Russian television channel that has been shut down in Russia and now operates from abroad, that Mr. Bialiatski was being held in “inhuman conditions” in a decrepit prison inside a 200-year-old Minsk fortress.

WIESBADEN, Germany — With winter almost behind them, senior American generals hosted Ukrainian military officials this week for a set of “tabletop” exercises designed to help Kyiv map out the next stage of its battle to reclaim territory from dug-in Russian troops.

During a war-game session at the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, the military officials rehearsed a range of options for an offensive that Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been telegraphing for some time.

The sessions, attended on Thursday by President Biden’s most senior generals responsible for American efforts to help Ukraine, were meant to strategize, officials said, mapping out the risks and benefits of a variety of moves that Ukraine might make against Russian positions in the coming months.

Ukrainian officials will ultimately decide which course to follow, with the American military officials described as serving like a sounding board.

After one session on Thursday, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander for Europe, praised the Ukrainian military’s “phenomenal” adaptability and said, “We’re going to help them adapt more.”

The United States and NATO, he said, “can keep going as long as necessary.”

BRASÍLIA — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil expressed his willingness to help bring about peace talks with Russia on Thursday in a video call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in their first meeting since Mr. Lula’s inauguration in January, according to a statement released by his office.

Mr. Lula stressed that Brazil was willing to participate “in any effort to bring together a group of nations capable of talking with both sides of the conflict to promote peace,” while underscoring that Brazil defended Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the statement said.

Since taking office, the Brazilian leader has been presenting his nation as a potential mediator for peace talks. In meetings with foreign leaders, including President Biden and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, he has introduced the idea of a dialogue led by countries that are not involved in the conflict. Mr. Lula told the Ukrainian leader that he would discuss the idea with China and Russia.

In a Twitter message posted after their meeting, Mr. Zelensky said that the two leaders had “discussed diplomatic efforts to bring peace back to Ukraine and the world” and that he had invited Mr. Lula to visit Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

Mr. Lula did not immediately accept Mr. Zelensky’s invitation to visit Ukraine but expressed a willingness to do so “at an appropriate time,” the statement from his office said.

Prospects for negotiations to end the war remain dim. Mr. Zelensky has insisted that peace talks are not possible until Russia withdraws its forces from Ukraine and returns captured lands. The Kremlin has made it clear that any settlement would have to take into account territory Russia has occupied and now claims to have annexed.

On Wednesday, Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, held a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on the sidelines of a Group of 20 conference in India, to hear about the Russian perspective on the war and prospects for peace, the Brazilian foreign ministry said.

Last week, Brazil voted in favor of a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly laying down broad principles for a lasting peace in Ukraine, which included respecting the country’s “sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.” Brazil’s diplomats introduced language into the resolution calling for the “cessation of hostilities.” Russia opposed the resolution.

In January, Mr. Lula suggested that he was open to Russia’s point of view when he made remarks implying that both Russia and Ukraine held some responsibility for the conflict. “It takes two to begin a fight,” he said.

Two Kansas men were arrested on Thursday on federal charges that they broke U.S. export laws by selling aviation-related technology to Russia, the Justice Department said.

The men, Cyril Gregory Buyanovsky, 59, of Lawrence, Kan., and Douglas Edward Robertson, 55, of Olathe, Kan., owned and operated KanRus Trading Company, which supplied electronics installed in aircrafts to Russian companies and provided repair services for equipment used in Russian-manufactured aircrafts.

The scheme, which also included repairing equipment, was already illegal when it started in 2020, the Justice Department said in a statement. But it was uncovered as the United States has cracked down on illegal exports to Russia since it invaded Ukraine a year ago.

After the invasion in February 2022, the men continued exporting Wester avionics — the electronics that include communications, navigation, flight control and threat detection systems — without seeking or obtaining a license from the U.S. Commerce Department.

Mr. Buyanovsky, the company’s president, and Mr. Robertson, a commercial pilot who helped operate the company, each face 13 criminal counts, including conspiracy, exporting controlled goods without a license, falsifying and failing to file electronic export information, and smuggling goods contrary to U.S. law.

Maximum penalties for each count range from five to 20 years in prison. It was unclear whether the men had legal representation.

In one incident from November 2020 detailed in the indictment, Mr. Buyanovsky listed the value of a computer component at $100 on an invoice when the true value of the transaction was $10,950.

In January 2021, Mr. Robertson quoted a client $28,769 for repairs on a piece of equipment, but the shipping label and invoice undervalued the repaired equipment at $2,275.

Mr. Robertson told a client in 2022 that an invoice needed to state a transaction as less than $50,000 to avoid “more paperwork and visibility.”

“This is NOT the right time for either,” Mr. Robertson said in an email, according to the indictment.

Mr. Buyanovsky and Mr. Robertson arranged for goods to be shipped to “transshipment points” in Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus and Armenia to conceal Russia as their final destination, the indictment said.

The United States has imposed a wide range of sanctions against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, including cutting off Russia’s largest banks, placing trade restrictions and reducing technology sales. The Justice Department’s KleptoCapture task force, which led the investigation into KanRus, has pushed for enforcing sanctions and export controls placed on Russia.

“The task force will continue to leverage all of the department’s tools and authorities to combat efforts to evade or undermine the collective actions taken by the U.S. government in response to Russian military aggression,” the Justice Department said.

COPENHAGEN — The Danish capital’s beloved and much vandalized statue of a fairy-tale Little Mermaid has once again come under assault, and this time the perpetrator painted its stone base in broad stripes of white, dark blue and red, in apparent imitation of the Russian flag.

It was not immediately clear who had painted the stone or why, though the act was widely interpreted as indicating support for Russia in its war in Ukraine. The paint appeared overnight, and the Danish police said that officers had been dispatched immediately when they were alerted to the vandalism on Thursday morning. Within hours, workers were washing the paint from the stone.

Neither the Russian nor Ukrainian Embassies in Denmark offered any information about the incident on their websites.

Denmark has been a supporter of Ukraine since Russia invaded a year ago. According to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark has given Ukraine about 659 million euros, or $697 million, in military support and €192 million in humanitarian aid. On Tuesday, the Danish Parliament voted 95 to 68 in favor of dropping Great Prayer Day, a religious holiday that dates back more than three centuries, a decision that allows the government to devote more of its spending to military purposes.

The bronze sculpture, a favorite among Copenhagen’s residents and tourists, was created by the artist Edvard Eriksen and erected on the Copenhagen waterfront in 1913. It was inspired the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid,” written by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen and published in 1837, which tells the tragic story of a mermaid who falls in love with a human prince.

The Little Mermaid statue has been vandalized and restored numerous times. In April 1964, the figure was decapitated, and decades later, an artist who had been part of a politically oriented movement admitted that he had been the culprit. The figure suffered another decapitation in January 1998, but the head was returned a few days later.

She also lost her right arm in 1984 (two teenage boys turned themselves in after a drunken night); has been splashed with red, pink, blue and white paint over the years for various reasons; and was once dressed in a burka. In January 2020, “Free Hong Kong” was painted on the stone base. An explosion damaged the work on Sept. 11, 2003.

— Jasmina Nielsen

For Kormotech and its 1,300 employees, Russia’s invasion disrupted everything. After nimble decision-making and good fortune, sales are up, providing Ukraine with much-needed tax revenue.

It was exactly a year ago, and the Ukrainian pet food maker Kormotech had concluded its annual meeting. The mood was buoyant. Business was booming, the factory was running 24/7, and sales were projected to grow by double digits. “We had a beautiful budget,” Rostyslav Vovk, the company’s chief executive and founder, recalled almost dreamily.

The next morning, air sirens sounded.

Russia had invaded. Mr. Vovk called his top managers to meet at a nearby hotel, avoiding the company’s windowed seventh-floor headquarters in Lviv. They had a plan for what had been considered a very unlikely risk — Russian aggression — but it soon proved wholly inadequate.

“We were not ready,” Mr. Vovk said. He closed the plant. Raw materials couldn’t get into the country, and deliveries headed abroad couldn’t get out. Staff from the besieged eastern part of the country needed to be evacuated. Employees were joining the military. And the company’s biggest export market, Belarus, was a close ally of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president.

“We would make decisions,” Mr. Vovk said of that first week after the invasion, “and then the next morning, we would change all the information.”

Like leaders at tens of thousands of companies throughout Ukraine, Mr. Vovk and his team were suddenly confronted with a new and bewildering responsibility: keeping a business going through the chaos and danger of war.