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Russia's war in Ukraine is already taking a dramatic toll on the world economy and placing a huge swath of the world's population, especially those in developing nations, at an increased risk of harm, the United Nations warned Wednesday.

The crisis has caused a "perfect storm" of disruptions to global food, energy and financial markets that "threatens to negatively affect the lives of billions of people around the world," the UN said in a new report.

Those systems were already under immense strain due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as well as climate change and other historic challenges, the report said.

But they have been greatly exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine due to the region's importance as a major commodities exporter, and the impact of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow that have thrown global markets off balance.

For instance, Russia and Ukraine produce about 30% of the Earth's wheat and barley and provide the majority of the wheat bought by 36 countries a list that includes some of the poorest nations on Earth, the report said.

Russia was also the world's top exporter of natural gas and its second-largest oil exporter before it invaded Ukraine. Russia and Belarus also export roughly one-fifth of the world's fertilizers.

As a result of the war, food prices are at the highest levels ever recorded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, up 34% from this time last year, according to the report.

Crude oil prices, meanwhile, rose 60% year-over-year, and fertilizer prices have more than doubled.

"The impact of the war is global and systemic," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a briefing on the report.

As many as 1.7 billion people are "highly exposed" to the cascading effects of Russia's war on global food, energy and finance systems, Guterres said. The U.N. report notes that "of these 1.7 billion people, 553 million are already poor, and 215 million are already undernourished."

The multilayered crisis has put the world "on the brink of a global debt crisis," the report said. It cited recent U.N. research estimating that the war will lower the world economy by one full percentage point of GDP growth.

"Inflation is rising, purchasing power is eroding, gross prospects are shrinking and development is being stalled and in some cases gains are receding. Many developing economies are drowning in debt with bond deals already on the rise since last September, leading now to increased premiums and exchange-rate pressures," Guterres said.

"And this is setting in motion a potential vicious circle of inflation and stagnation, the so-called stagflation," he added.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed many of the same concerns earlier Wednesday morning, when she said that her department will be turning its attention to the risk of an increase in global starvation rates.

"The fact that energy supplies are being reduced and energy prices have risen, that Ukraine and Russia provide more than 20% of global food exports, we're seeing skyrocketing wheat, corn prices," Yellen said during a conference with the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank focused on international affairs.

Yellen blamed the combination of the pandemic, disrupted supply chains, fierce demand for commodities and Russia's invasion of Ukraine for the ongoing increase to food prices.

One of the main culprits behind the spike in food prices is a global shortage of fertilizer. Russia and Belarus provide about 40% of the world's exports of potash, a potassium-rich salt critical to much of the globe's fertilizer and agricultural production.

But potash is currently being targeted by the U.S. and its allies with economic sanctions as the Biden administration looks to isolate Moscow from global markets.

Russia also exported 11% of the world's urea, and 48% of the ammonium nitrate, two other key fertilizer components, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley.

"Particularly in Europe, which is most vulnerable, I worry about recession prospects," Yellen added. "This will be an urgent concern for us next week to try to think about how we can stave off starvation around the world. It's really a grave concern."

Yellen plans to discuss the worsening food security crisis next week when she meets with representatives of the G-7, G-20, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

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Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to hurt billions, UN warns, as food and energy prices soar - CNBC

Battles reveal more than they decide. Battles in which the outcome is truly up for grabs are rare, and battles that prove decisive in achieving a political goal are rarer still. Instead, battles demonstrate how effectively combatants planned, prepared, and executed before the fighting began. The result of a battle exposes not only how well matched the sides are but also how the war might unfold in the future. In that sense, the outcome of the Battle of Kyiv was never in doubt. Russias and Ukraines preparations for the fight essentially preordained the result. But the Battle of Kyiv has revealed a great deal about why Ukraine has done so much better in the war than many analysts predicted.

How and why Ukrainian forces outperformed expectations is perhaps the most important story of this war. A close look at Ukraines successes illuminates a strategy that has allowed a smaller state toso faroutlast a larger and much more powerful one. Call it the Ukrainian way of war.

The Ukrainian way of war is a coherent, intelligent, and well-conceived strategy to fight the Russians, one well calibrated to take advantage of specific Russian weaknesses. It has allowed the Ukrainians to maintain mobility, helped force the Russians into static positions for long periods by fouling up their logistics, opened up the Russians to high losses from attrition, and, in the Battle of Kyiv, led to a victory that has completely recast the political endgame of the Russian invasion. The original maximalist Russian attempt to seize all of Ukraine has been drastically scaled back to a far more limited effort aimed at seizing territory in the east and south of the country.

The Ukrainian way of war has a few foundational elements that we have seen in operation around Kyiv and across the country. They are:

Denying the Russians air superiority is the foundation of Ukrainian success. Contesting control of the skies allows Ukrainian forces to maneuver while making Russian forces nervous that they could be subject to Ukrainian air assault. The Ukrainians were never going to take air supremacy for themselvesthe Russian air force is too large and Russian forces are well provided with antiair systemsbut the Ukrainian plan has made it difficult for Russian airpower to patrol over areas of battle. Ukrainian forces prevented Russia from winning control of Ukraines airspace by combining a range of systems, including a small number of highly effective MiG fixed-wing aircraft, advanced antiair systems, and a plethora of handheld antiair weapons, such as Stinger missiles. Russian aircraft can and do bomb Ukrainian positions, but these missions seem very much to be of the in-and-out variety, and dont involve the continual exercise of airpower.

As the Ukrainians have thus maintained mobility for their forces, they have turned their cities into fortresses and roadblocks, complicating Russian logistics and communications. In a detailed announcement about the Ukrainian victory in the Battle of Kyiv, the countrys ministry of defense noted that the capital was largely saved by the heroic fighters in Chernihiv and Sumy Regions. These two cities sit astride the main road systems running from the northeast into Kyiv, and both cities withstood Russian attempts to take them early in the campaign. By holding these cities, and almost all others close to the borders of Russia and Belarus, the Ukrainians have not only forced Russian troops to contemplate street-by-street fighting but also made it impossible for Russia to move troops by rail into the Ukrainian heartland. Russia can still move troops by road, but having to avoid Ukrainian-controlled cities forces its troops to take longer and trickier routes. The cities that Russian forces bypassed on their way to Kyiv can also be used to launch attacks behind Russian lines.

Andrew Exum: The Russian military has descended into inhumanity

Having complicated Russian logistics efforts, the Ukrainians then allowed the Russian forces that had maneuvered around their cities to get strung out along roads as they advanced. The Russians made their situation worse by invading during the muddy season, confining them to narrow paved roadways and further limiting their ability to move. With their enemies in such a vulnerable position, the Ukrainians then launched attacks on the long Russian columns. The attacks took a number of different forms, including airpower (most famously the Turkish-made Bayraktar drones), special forces, long-range artillery, and even large conventional formations. The Ukrainians stretched Russian personnel so thinly that they sometimes failed to defend the columns themselves.

The casualties caused by Ukraines harassing attacks hampered Russian attempts to build up enough forces to assault Kyiv. Though the Russians tried to advance on three different road systems, from Sumy, Chernihiv, and the northwest, Ukrainian resistance ensured that they never built up enough force to surround, let alone assault, Kyiv. All three lines of attack have now been shut down, and Russian forces are in retreat.

Instead of assaulting heavy Russian formations of large tanks and artillery directly, the Ukrainians used light, maneuverable forces to take advantage of Russian vulnerabilities and achieve victory. Using handheld weapons operated by small groups, the Ukrainians have regularly disabled Russian tanks and trucks. This has not only weakened the Russian forces in the field but also kept their logistics lines stretched, limiting Russian access to the fuel and ammunition required to keep up a constant attack. (The number of Russian vehicles that have been abandoned intact but without fuel is particularly striking.)

In using light forces this way, the Ukrainians have shown that even in a conventional war between statesas opposed to an insurgencya smaller force can engage the conventional forces of a larger and more technologically advanced enemy and fight them to a standstill. The Ukrainians have also reminded everyone that the American military, with its lavish logistical support and ability to dominate the air war and the electronic battlefield, is unusual. The Russian military is not some smaller, less-efficient version of the U.S. military. It is a significantly less advanced and less capable force that struggles to undertake many of the operations that the U.S. handles with relative ease. The Ukrainians did not make the mistake of overestimating the Russians, and were able to deal a huge blow to Russian power.

Ukraine, however, has not yet won the war. With their defeat in the Battle of Kyiv, the Russians have started to concentrate in the east and south of Ukraine, hoping to set up a defensive perimeter that the Ukrainians will have to attack if they hope to regain lost territory. The Ukrainian way of war will have to adapt. The Ukrainians, having witnessed the Russian failures in heavy assault, may decide to avoid making the same mistakes and instead continue their light, attritional warfare. This will probably not result in a swift end to the war, but it offers the possibility of draining Russian military and political will, allowing Ukraine to achieve many of its aims in negotiations. The Ukrainian way of war could yet achieve what once seemed all but impossible: victory.

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Why Ukraine Is Winning - The Atlantic

CHISINAU, Moldova Vova Klever, a young, successful fashion photographer from Ukraines capital, Kyiv, did not see himself in this war.

Violence is not my weapon, he said.

So shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February and Ukraine prohibited men of military age from leaving the country, Mr. Klever sneaked out to London.

His mistake, which would bring devastating consequences, was writing to a friend about it.

The friend and his wife then shared the contents of that conversation on social media. It sparked an online fight that went viral, and Ukrainians all over the internet exploded with anger and resentment.

You are a walking dead person, one Twitter message said. Im going to find you in any corner in the world.

The notion of people especially men leaving war-torn Ukraine for safe and comfortable lives abroad has provoked a moral dilemma among Ukrainians that turns on one of the most elemental decisions humans can make: fight or flee.

Thousands of Ukrainian men of military age have left the country to avoid participating in the war, according to records from regional law enforcement officials and interviews with people inside and outside Ukraine. Smuggling rings in Moldova, and possibly other European countries, have been doing a brisk business. Some people have paid up to $15,000 for a secret night-time ride out of Ukraine, Moldovan officials said.

The draft dodgers are the vast exception. That makes it all the more complicated for them morally, socially and practically. Ukrainian society has been mobilized for war against a much bigger enemy, and countless Ukrainians without military experience have volunteered for the fight. To maximize its forces, the Ukrainian government has taken the extreme step of prohibiting men 18 to 60 from leaving, with few exceptions.

All this has forced many Ukrainian men who dont want to serve into taking illegal routes into Hungary, Moldova and Poland and other neighboring countries. Even among those convinced they fled for the right reasons, some said they felt guilty and ashamed.

I dont think I can be a good soldier right now in this war, said a Ukrainian computer programmer named Volodymyr, who left shortly after the war began and did not want to disclose his last name, fearing repercussions for avoiding military service.

Look at me, Volodymyr said, as he sat in a pub in Warsaw drinking a beer. I wear glasses. I am 46. I dont look like a classic fighter, some Rambo who can fight Russian troops.

He took another sip and stared into his glass.

Yes, I am ashamed, he said. I ran away from this war, and it is probably my crime.

Ukrainian politicians have threatened to put draft dodgers in prison and confiscate their homes. But within Ukrainian society, even as cities continue to be pummeled by Russian bombs, the sentiments are more divided.

A meme recently popped up with the refrain, Do what you can, where you are. Its clearly meant to counter negative feelings toward those who left and assure them they can still contribute to the war effort. And Ukrainian women and children, the vast majority of the refugees, face little backlash.

But thats not the case for young men, and this is what blew up on the young photographer.

In mid-March, Olga Lepina, a modeling agent, said Mr. Klever disclosed in a text message to her husband that he had paid $5,000 to be smuggled out of Ukraine, and from earlier conversations she knew he had wanted to go to London.

Ms. Lepina said she and Mr. Klever had been friends for years. She even went to his wedding. But as the war drew near, she said, Mr. Klever became intensely patriotic and anti-Russian, and said rude things to her husband, who is Russian. When she found out he had avoided service, she was so outraged that she posted on Instagram the comments Mr. Klever made insulting her husband, and said he had spent $5,000 to be smuggled out of Ukraine.

For me, it was a hypocrisy to leave the country and pay money for this, she explained, adding, He needs to be responsible for his words.

Mr. Klever, who is in his 20s, fell deeper into an online spat with Ms. Lepina. She and others said he had made insensitive comments about the town of Bucha, the site of major violence and the town she was from. (The comments were made before the atrocities in Bucha were revealed). Mr. Klever was then bombarded with death threats. Some Ukrainians also resented that he used his wealth to get out and called it cheating.

Responding to emailed questions, Mr. Klever did not deny skipping out on his service and said that he had poor eyesight and had been through a lot lately."

You cant even imagine the hatred, he said.

Mr. Klever gave conflicting accounts of how exactly he exited the country and declined to provide details. But for many other Ukrainian men, Moldova has become the favorite trap door.

Moldova shares a nearly 800-mile border with western Ukraine. And unlike Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, Moldova is not part of the European Union, which means it has significantly fewer resources to control its frontiers. It is one of Europes poorest countries and has been a hub of human trafficking and organized crime.

Within days of the war erupting, Moldovan officials said, Moldovan gangs posted advertisements on Telegram, a popular messaging service in Eastern Europe, offering to arrange cars, even minibuses, to spirit out draft dodgers.

Law enforcement officials said the typical method was for the smugglers and the Ukrainians to select a rendezvous point along Moldovas green border, the term used for the unfenced border areas, and meet late at night.

On a recent night, a squad of Moldovan border guards trudged across a flat, endless wheat field, their boots sinking in the mud, looking for draft dodgers. There was no border post on the horizon, just the faint lights of a Ukrainian village and the sounds of dogs barking in the darkness.

Out here, one can just walk into and out of Ukraine.

Moldovan officials said that since late February they had broken up more than 20 smuggling rings, including a few well-known criminal enterprises. In turn, they have apprehended 1,091 people crossing the border illegally. Officials said all were Ukrainian men.

Once caught, these men have a choice. If they dont want to be sent back, they can apply for asylum in Moldova, and cannot be deported.

But if they do not apply for asylum, they can be turned over to the Ukrainian authorities, who, Moldovan officials said, have been pressuring them to send the men back. The vast majority of those who entered illegally, around 1,000, have sought asylum, and fewer than 100 have been returned, Moldovan officials said. Two thousand other Ukrainian men who have entered Moldova legally have also applied for asylum.

Volodymyr Danuliv is one of them. He refuses to fight in the war, though its not the prospect of dying that worries him, he said. It is the killing.

I cant shoot Russian people, said Mr. Danuliv, 50.

He explained that his siblings had married Russians and that two of his nephews were serving in the Russian Army in Ukraine.

How can I fight in this war? he asked. I might kill my own family.

Myroslav Hai, an official with Ukraines military reserve, conceded, There are people who evade mobilization, but their share in comparison with volunteers is not so large. Other Ukrainian officials said men ideologically or religiously opposed to war could serve in another way, for example as cooks or drivers.

But none of the more than a dozen men interviewed for this article seemed interested. Mr. Danuliv, a businessman from western Ukraine, said he wanted no part in the war. When asked if he feared being ostracized or shamed, he shook his head.

I didnt kill anyone. Thats whats important to me, he said. I dont care what people say.

What happens when the war ends? How much resentment will surface toward those who left? These are questions Ukrainians, men and women, are beginning to ask.

When Ms. Lepina shamed Mr. Klever, she was no longer in Ukraine herself. She had left, too, for France, with her husband. Every day, she said, she wrestles with guilt.

People are suffering in Ukraine, and I want to be there to help them, to support them, she said. But at the same time Im safe and I want to be here.

Its a very ambiguous, complicated feeling, she said.

And she knows she will be judged.

Of course there will be some people who divide Ukrainian nationals between those who left and those who stayed, she said. I am ready for that.

Siergiej Greczuszkin contributed reporting from Warsaw, and Daria Mychkovska from Przemysl, Poland.

April 10, 2022

An earlier version of this article referred incompletely to the online dispute between Vova Klever and Olga Lupina. In addition to writing a social media post describing Mr. Klevers avoidance of military service in Ukraine, Ms. Lupina also posted comments she considered insensitive that he made about her husbands Russian heritage and about Bucha, her hometown.

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What Happened on Day 46 of the War in Ukraine - The New York Times

CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) Russian troops retreating from this northern Ukrainian city left behind crushed buildings, streets littered with destroyed cars and residents in dire need of food and other aid images that added fuel to Kyivs calls Thursday for more Western help to halt Moscows next offensive.

Dozens of people lined up to receive bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point in Chernihiv, which Russian forces besieged for weeks as part of their attempt to sweep south towards the capital before retreating.

The citys streets are lined with shelled homes and apartment buildings with missing roofs or walls. A chalk message on the blackboard in one classroom still reads: Wednesday the 23rd of February class work.

Russia invaded the next day, launching a war that has forced more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee the country, displaced millions more within it and sent shock waves through Europe and beyond.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, and he pleaded for weapons from NATO to face down the coming offensive in the east. Nations from the alliance agreed to increase their supply of arms, spurred on by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital.

Western allies also ramped up financial penalties aimed at Moscow, including a ban by the European Union on Russian coal imports and a U.S. move to suspend normal trade relations with Russia.

Kuleba encouraged Western countries to continue bearing down on Russia, suggesting that any letup will result in more suffering for Ukrainians.

How many Buchas have to take place for you to impose sanctions? Kuleba asked reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where Associated Press journalists counted dozens of bodies, some burned, others apparently shot at close range or with their hands bound. How many children, women, men, have to die innocent lives have to be lost for you to understand that you cannot allow sanctions fatigue, as we cannot allow fighting fatigue?

Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital city. Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up Thursday in Bucha.

Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said investigators have found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and corpses with their hands tied were dumped like firewood into recently discovered mass graves, including one at a childrens camp.

The mayor said the count of dead civilians stood at 320 as of Wednesday, but he expected the number to rise as more bodies are found in his city, which once had a population of 50,000. Only 3,700 now remain, he said.

In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the horrors of Bucha could just be the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers northwest of Bucha, Zelenskyy warned of even more casualties, saying there it is much scarier.

The world should brace itself, he said, for what might soon be found in the seaport city of Mariupol, saying that on on every street is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the departure of the Russian troops. The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes.

He pledged that an international war crimes investigation already underway will identify each of the executioners and all those who committed rape or looting.

Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscows troops, and the weekly Der Spiegel reported Thursday that Germanys foreign intelligence agency had intercepted radio messages between Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

Kuleba became emotional while referring to the horrors in the town, telling reporters that they couldnt understand how it feels after seeing pictures from Bucha, talking to people who escaped, knowing that the person you know was raped four days in a row.

His comments came in response to a reporters question about a video allegedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting a captured and wounded Russian soldier. He said he had not seen the video and that it would be investigated. He acknowledged that there could be isolated incidents of violations.

The footage has not been independently verified by the AP.

In the 6-week-old war, Russian forces failed to take Ukraines capital quickly, denying what Western countries said was Russian leader Vladimir Putins initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. In the wake of that setback and heavy losses, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

The United Nations humanitarian chief told the AP on Thursday that hes not optimistic about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, underlining the lack of trust the two sides have for one another. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraines military status.

Its not clear how long it will take withdrawing Russian forces to redeploy, and Ukrainian officials have urged people in the countrys east to leave before the fighting intensifies there.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish civilian evacuation routes Thursday from several areas in the Donbas.

Even as Ukraine braced for a new phase of the war, Russias withdrawal brought some relief to Chernihiv, which lies near Ukraines northern border with Belarus and was cut off for weeks.

Vladimir Tarasovets described nights during the siege when he watched the city on fire and listened to the sound of shelling.

It was very hard, very hard. Every evening there were fires, it was scary to look at the city. In the evening, when it was dark, there was no light, no water, no gas, no amenities at all, he said. How did we go through it? I have no words to describe how we managed.

In addition to spurring NATO countries to send more arms, the revelations about possible war crimes led Western nations to step up sanctions, and the Group of Seven major world powers warned that they will continue strengthening the measures until Russian troops leave Ukraine.

The U.S. Congress voted Thursday to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban the importation of its oil, while the European Union approved punishing new steps, including the embargo on coal imports. The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, voted to suspend Russia from the world organizations leading human rights body.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.N. vote demonstrated how Putins war has made Russia an international pariah. He called the images coming from Bucha horrifying.

The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed in some cases having their bodies desecrated are an outrage to our common humanity, Biden said.

The U.S. State Department said it was blacklisting the United Shipbuilding Corp., Russias largest military shipbuilder, as well as its subsidiaries and board members. The move blocks their access to American financial systems. The department also said it would levy sanctions against the worlds largest diamond mining company, Russia-backed Alrosa.

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Schreck reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Russian retreat reveals destruction as Ukraine asks for help - The Associated Press

The attackers may have broken into the electrical companys systems as early as February, Ukrainian officials said, but they emphasized that some details of the attack, including how the intruders made their way into the companys systems, were not yet known.

Officials declined to name the company that suffered the breach and the region its substations are in, citing fears of continuing cyberattacks.

It is self-evident that the aggressors team, the malefactors, had enough time to get prepared very thoroughly and they planned the execution on a sophisticated, high-quality level, said Victor Zhora, the deputy head of Ukraines cybersecurity agency, the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection. It looks that we have been very lucky that we were able to respond in a timely manner to this cyberattack.

Ukrainian companies in finance, media and energy have been subject to regular cyberattacks since the war began, according to Mr. Zhora. His agency said that since Russias invasion began, it had recorded three times as many attacks as it had tracked in the previous year.

The use of wiper malware has become a persistent problem in Ukraine since the war began, with attacks hitting Ukrainian critical infrastructure, including government agencies responsible for food safety, finance and law enforcement, cybersecurity researchers said.

Hackers have also broken into communications systems, including satellite communication services and telecom companies. Investigations into those breaches are continuing, although cybersecurity analysts and U.S. officials believe Russia is responsible. Other hacking groups, including one affiliated with Belarus, have broken into media companies systems and social media accounts of high-profile military officials, trying to spread disinformation that claimed Ukraine planned to surrender.

They are targeting critical infrastructure; however, these attempts were not so sophisticated as compared to todays recent attack, Mr. Zhora said of the recent hacking campaigns against Ukrainian companies.

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Ukraine Says It Thwarted a Sophisticated Russian Cyberattack on Its Power Grid - The New York Times