Russia-Ukraine WarRussia Says It’s Suspending Participation in Grain Deal With Ukraine

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Steel tank barricades known as hedgehogs in Kyiv on Friday.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Follow live news updates on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Russia’s decision upends a deal designed to ease the global food crisis.

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Trucks filled with grain on the road to the port of Voronivka, outside Odesa, last month.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Russia on Saturday said that it was suspending its participation in an agreement to export grain and other agricultural products from Ukrainian ports, upending a deal that was intended to alleviate a global food crisis.

The announcement from Russia’s Defense Ministry came hours after it accused Ukraine of launching an attack on ships from the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea that it said were participating in the grain initiative, which was organized around specific shipping lanes in the Black Sea.

Russia at first said that it had repulsed the attack by Ukrainian drones, but later backtracked and said at least one minesweeper had sustained damage.

Given the attack, the statement from the Defense Ministry said, “Russia suspends its participation in the implementation of the agreements on the export of agricultural products from Ukraine.”

The suspension will be “for an indefinite period,” according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry. It said in a statement that Russia stood ready to sell its own grain to world markets as a replacement for Ukrainian grain.

The agreement, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, was signed in July and ended a five-month Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports. Brokered with Russia and Ukraine by the United Nations and Turkey, the deal was set to expire on Nov. 19. In recent weeks, its future had appeared uncertain.

The United Nations said Saturday that it was in touch with the Russian authorities regarding the reports that Russia was suspending participation.

“It is vital that all parties refrain from any action that would imperil the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is a critical humanitarian effort that is clearly having a positive impact on access to food for millions of people,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said his government had warned that Russia would try to upend the deal.

“Now Moscow uses a false pretext to block the grain corridor which ensures food security for millions of people,” he wrote on Twitter. “I call on all states to demand Russia to stop its hunger games and recommit to its obligations.”

Although the grain deal’s primary goal was to end Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian exports, which had been contributing to a global food crisis, it also allowed for more shipments of Russian grain and fertilizer. As part of the deal, the United States and the European Union gave assurances that banks and companies involved in trading Russian grain and fertilizer would be exempt from sanctions.

In recent weeks Russia had suggested it might refuse to extend the agreement if Moscow’s demands over its food and fertilizer exports were not met.

Under the pact, Ukrainian pilots guide ships through Ukrainian minefields around the ports, and are then given safe passage by the Russian Navy to Turkey, where teams with representatives from all the parties inspect them before they head to delivery ports. Returning ships are also inspected for arms.

Cassandra Vinograd contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 
Oct. 29, 2022

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the amount of grain and other foodstuffs that had been exported from Ukraine. It was more than 9.2 million tons, not more than 9.2 tons.

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A drone attack damaged a Black Sea Fleet minesweeping vessel, Russia says.

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The southern bay of Sevastopol in Crimea in 2017.Credit...Denis Sinyakov for The New York Times

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday accused Ukraine of launching a drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, the Russian-occupied peninsula that has been a key staging ground for President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ministry blamed “the Kyiv regime,” saying in a statement that the ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet were the target and that minor damage had been sustained by at least one Russian vessel, a minesweeper. It added that 16 drones were involved and that “all air targets” had been destroyed. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who have maintained a policy of official ambiguity about attacks far behind the front lines. The Russian claims could not be independently confirmed.

But a senior Ukrainian official said early indications were that the minesweeping vessel had been severely damaged, possibly beyond repair. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive military issues.

Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported that a powerful explosion was heard in the pre-dawn hours over the bay of Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city and where the Black Sea Fleet is based.

The Russian-appointed governor of the region, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said in a Telegram post that ships with the Black Sea Fleet had “repelled” the attack and urged residents not to share photos of the area on social media.

The Black Sea Fleet has released devastating volleys of ship-fired missiles across the breadth of Ukraine, carrying out some of the deadliest strikes of the war.

Crimea, which has been under Kremlin control since Moscow illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014, holds immense symbolic importance for Mr. Putin. An explosion earlier this month on the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia prompted Mr. Putin to retaliate with mass strikes across Ukraine that killed dozens of people and targeted critical infrastructure.

While Ukraine’s military did not publicly claim responsibility for the bridge blast, the incident was reminiscent of other attacks carried out by Kyiv’s forces against targets that were highly symbolic and showcased its military ingenuity in the face of a stronger, more heavily armed Russian military.

In April, two Ukrainian-made Neptune cruise missiles slammed into the hull of the Moskva, the pride of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. The strike set off a series of explosions that eventually caused the cruiser to sink, killing an unknown number of sailors.

While the attack on the Moskva stunned Russia’s military establishment, it was a series of strikes on military targets on the Black Sea peninsula over the summer that disrupted Crimea’s sense of security and distance from the war — further demonstrating Ukraine’s ability to inflict pain on Russia’s pride as well as its army.

In one particularly bold attack, explosions destroyed at least eight Russian war planes at an airfield in Crimea. Later, in August, a drone slammed into the headquarters building of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

The statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday said that British navy specialists were involved in preparation and training for the Sevastopol strike. It did not provide any evidence for those claims. Without directly referencing the allegation, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said later Saturday that Russia’s Defense Ministry was “resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale.”

“This invented story, says more about arguments going on inside the Russian Government than it does about the west,” it said on Twitter.

The unsubstantiated accusation prompted criticism from at least one popular, Russian pro-war Telegram channel called Rybar. If the ministry knew so much about the attack, it asked, why was it not prevented?

“This knowledge did not come out of the blue, right?” the channel wrote.

Other channels also commented on the fact that the attack demonstrated the vulnerability of Sevastopol, the storied home port of the Black Sea fleet. While the attack was happening, they said, some military bloggers tried to portray it as a naval exercise.

Neil MacFarquhar, Cassandra Vinograd and Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.

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Here’s how the grain deal between Ukraine and Russia worked.

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Grain bins storing corn, wheat, sunflower and soybeans in Boryspil, Ukraine, in May.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

There were many moving parts to the deal allowing for the export of grain from Ukrainian ports that Russia said on Saturday it was suspending indefinitely.

Here’s what to know about the grain problem, and how the deal addressed it.

Why was Ukrainian grain stuck inside the country?

After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, it deployed warships along Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. Ukraine mined those waters to deter a Russian naval attack. That meant that the ports used to export Ukrainian grain were blocked for commercial shipping. Russia also pilfered grain stocks, mined grain fields so that they couldn’t be harvested and destroyed grain storage facilities.

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Ukrainian soldiers at a beachfront position in Odesa, along the coast of the Black Sea, in March.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

How did the operation work?

Ukrainian captains steered vessels packed with grain out of the ports of Odesa, Yuzhne and Chornomorsk.

A joint command center with officials from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations was set up in Istanbul to monitor every movement of the flotillas.

RUSSIA

BELARUS

POLAND

Kyiv

Russian

advance

UKRAINE

Yuzhne

Odesa

ROMANIA

Chornomorsk

CRIMEA

BLACK SEA

BULGARIA

Grain cargo route

Istanbul

GREECE

TURKEY

200 miles

Note: The arrow highlights the general direction of travel; it does not represent an

exact route. Source: European and other government officials

RUSSIA

BELARUS

POLAND

Kyiv

Russian

advance

UKRAINE

Yuzhne

Odesa

ROMANIA

Chornomorsk

CRIMEA

BLACK SEA

BULGARIA

Grain cargo route

Istanbul

TURKEY

200 miles

Note: The arrow highlights the general direction of travel; it does not represent an

exact route. Source: European and other government officials

By The New York Times

The ships headed into Turkish waters, to be inspected by a joint team of Turkish, U.N., Ukrainian and Russian officials, then delivered their cargo to destinations around the world, returning for another inspection by the joint team before heading back to Ukraine.

The agreement specified that the inspection team’s primary responsibility was to check for “unauthorized cargoes and personnel on board vessels inbound to or outbound from the Ukrainian ports.” A key Russian demand was that the returning ships were not carrying weapons to Ukraine.

The parties agreed that the vessels and the port facilities used for their operations would be safeguarded from hostilities.

The agreement was meant to be valid for 120 days — expiring on Nov. 19. The United Nations said that, as of this week, it had allowed for the export of more than 9 million tons of grain and other foodstuffs. More than 790 cargo voyages — 395 inbound and 399 outbound — have been cleared, according to U.N. data.

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Wheat harvesting in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine this past week.Credit...Sergey Bobok/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

What was in it for Russia?

Russia is also a major exporter of grains and fertilizer, and the agreement made it easier to sell those goods on the world market.

The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that its stocks cannot be exported because of sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.

The measures did not in fact affect those goods, but private shipping companies, insurers, banks and other businesses have been reluctant to help Russia export grains and fertilizers, fearing that they might run afoul of sanctions or that doing business with Russia might harm their reputations.

Offering reassurance, the European Union on July 21 issued a legal clarification to its sanctions, saying that various banks and other companies involved in the grain trade were not in fact banned.

But in recent weeks, Russia suggested it might refuse to extend the agreement if Moscow’s demands over its food and fertilizer exports were not met.

What happens now?

Russia said it was suspending participation in the grain deal for an indefinite period. The United Nations said it was in touch with Moscow and urged exports to continue.

“It is vital that all parties refrain from any action that would imperil the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is a critical humanitarian effort that is clearly having a positive impact,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for the United Nations secretary general, said.

Ukraine and Russia exchange more than 100 prisoners of war, officials say.

Ukrainian and Russian officials said they exchanged more prisoners on Saturday, freeing more than 100 people in the latest indication that the countries were still able to negotiate the release of their citizens despite intense fighting on the battlefield.

Andriy Yermak, the leader of the Ukrainian president’s office, said that 52 Ukrainians had been released. In a video Mr. Yermak posted on Twitter, the released Ukrainians were seen walking down an unidentified road, many waving and some smiling at the camera. At the back of the convoy, two men held up a third as they walked.

The release was heralded by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said in his nightly address on Saturday that more than 1,000 people had been released from Russian captivity since March.

“We remember all those held captive in Russia and in the occupied territory, and will do everything to return each and every one,” he said.

The prisoners released Saturday included 18 navy personnel, 12 national guard soldiers, eight policemen and two civilians, Mr. Yermak said.

Among the soldiers, Mr. Yermak said, were two members of the Azov Battalion, whose weekslong defense of the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance mounted by Ukraine.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Saturday that 50 Russian servicemen had been released by Ukraine as part of the exchange. It said the prisoners were being taken to Moscow for “treatment and rehabilitation.”

The treatment of prisoners of war has been a concern since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. Earlier this month, United Nations investigators in Ukraine said they were receiving accounts of Russian forces torturing civilian and military prisoners — sometimes to the point of death.

In September, Ukrainian officials said Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia were detained under abusive and extreme conditions, subjected to beatings and denied food.

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Some four million Ukrainians face restrictions on power use.

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Damage to buildings after aerial assaults this month in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Credit...Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — With rolling blackouts across Ukraine and four million people forced to restrict power usage, the head of the utility grid warned that Russia’s aerial assault on the nation’s energy infrastructure is limiting its ability to make repairs.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive of Ukrenergo, said that the Russian targeting has been so precise that the Russian military is most likely being guided by energy experts.

“I cannot imagine that military experts would know what combination of things needs to be hit to cause the most damage,” he said in an interview on Friday.

The Russians have hit ultra-high-voltage lines that are the backbone of the grid; the substations for certain regions; the substations that move power from the power plants; and the power plants themselves.

And they have hit many critical sites more than once, Mr. Kudrytskyi said, making the job of the 5,500 electrical maintenance workers racing to repair the grid before the winter freeze wildly dangerous.

“Imagine, you are an employee maintaining a substation,” Mr. Kudrytskyi said. “You know it is a target.”

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The darkened bell tower of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv last week.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

An alarm sounds and workers seek shelter in a bunker. But even below ground, he said, workers can hear the roar of the explosion as the power of the missile or drone is compounded by the release of energy from the electrical equipment. A strange odor, which he compared to the smell of burned plastic, fills the air when the all clear is finally given.

Across the power plant, which he said can feel like its own small town, fires fueled by oil used in the machinery burn for hours. Alarms blare two or three times a day. And just as workers gather what is needed for repairs: boom, another explosion. Mr. Kudrytskyi said that at one plant, the building where the repair equipment was kept was hit.

“Everything is gone,” he said. “It is really hard to imagine if you are not inside this horrible movie.”

Five utility workers have been killed in strikes and dozens more wounded. Mr. Kudrytskyi said he remained amazed at the dedication of crews working to keep the lights on.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday commended the crews for their efforts, which he said had led to fewer blackouts, and called on residents to continue conserving energy.

“Now we all have to contribute to maintaining the stability of the entire power system,” he said in his nightly address.

Mr. Kudrytskyi saw the power of the Russian attack drones for himself. He was on the street outside the utility’s headquarters in central Kyiv when the building was struck by a drone two weeks ago.

“I was thinking they were very noisy and slow,” he said. “Unfortunately, they hit hard.”

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Technicians repairing damaged power lines and buildings in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, this month.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

Debris from the blast still litters the complex. Windows hundreds of yards from blast site are blown out.

That was one of dozens of aerial attacks on Oct. 10 that destroyed 30 percent of the nation’s power stations in one of the most sweeping assaults on civilian infrastructure of the war.

The strikes were the start of a sustained campaign that Russian officials have said is meant to cause civilian suffering and force Ukraine to submit to the Kremlin’s will.

Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former Russian president and prime minister and current deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said in statement on Friday that Ukraine would regain energy stability only when it recognizes Russia’s demands as legitimate.

“And then the light will come on,” he wrote on Telegram.

Mr. Zelensky, speaking to the nation from the darkened streets of Kyiv late Thursday, was defiant in the face of Russian threats.

“We are not afraid of the dark,” he said. “The darkest times for us are not without light, but without freedom.”

A correction was made on 
Oct. 29, 2022

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the date on which technicians were carrying out repairs in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. It was two weeks ago, not last week.

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Zelensky says that Russia is turning Kherson into a ‘zone without civilization.’

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Civilians evacuated from the city of Kherson, Ukraine, this week.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KYIV, Ukraine —President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Russia is transforming the once thriving southern port city of Kherson into a wasteland, describing the Russians as stealing ambulances, closing health care facilities and threatening doctors.

“Russia is turning the Kherson region into a zone without civilization,” he said in his nightly address to the nation on Friday. “They are dismantling the entire health care system there.”

His stark portrayal of the descent of the city into chaos comes as Russian proxies responsible for its administration flee to set up headquarters further east, in land more firmly under Russian control. The Russian-installed officials have said they have “evacuated” tens of thousands of civilians but have offered no evidence to support those claims.

Ukrainians say the Russians are engaged in the kind of Soviet-style forced deportations that have been documented in places like Mariupol and other areas that fell under Russian control. Savaging the health care system is one more way to pressure Ukrainians to leave their homes, they say.

It is increasingly difficult to reach people in Kherson, with phone and internet services unreliable and some residents saying Russian forces stop people to search their cellphones for contacts. Oleksandr, 50, was able to get a message to The New York Times on Saturday morning.

He said his wife was at the Kherson regional hospital on Friday for routine care when she saw men turning off the heat and packing up “all worthy medical equipment” before ordering patients to leave.

“They are closing the regional hospital in Kherson,” Oleksandr said. “Patients, irrespective of their condition, are sent home. Even if they had surgery yesterday.”

Mr. Zelensky said the Russians are also targeting health care workers.

“They put pressure on the doctors who still remained in the occupied areas for them to move to the territory of Russia,” he said.

“I want to appeal now to all our people in these occupied cities and districts: Please do everything to help each other,” Mr. Zelensky said.

“But you need to endure this time.”

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Civilians evacuating from Kherson gathered at a railway station this week.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Despite the precarious position Russian forces find themselves in, U.S. officials say President Vladimir V. Putin has resisted calls from local commanders to withdraw.

Kherson, a fortress city founded in 1778, was the first and only provincial capital to fall to Russian forces after their invasion of the country in late February.

A Russian retreat from Kherson would be a military and symbolic disaster for the Kremlin, which sought to make the city a showpiece of its occupation and a launching pad for assaults farther west on two other important port cities, Mykolaiv and Odesa.

Ukrainian forces are advancing in Kherson from multiple directions, but the military has imposed restrictions on reporting as it battles for control of the last remaining land west of the Dnipro River controlled by the Russians.

Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s intelligence directorate, said in an interview published late Friday that the Russians had around 40,000 soldiers west of the river and that it could take another month for Ukraine to retake the city.

It is not clear if the Russians will stay and fight or try to flee if the Ukrainians advance farther to the north and cut off the only major route across the Dnipro left to them, over the dam in the city of Nova Kakhovka.

The Ukrainian military high command said on Saturday that Russian soldiers in the town of Beryslav — less than 50 miles to the north of Kherson city and around 10 miles north of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the banks of the river — were “changing into civilian clothes and moving into private homes en masse.”

Anna Lukinova contributed reporting.

A correction was made on 
Oct. 29, 2022

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated when an interview with Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov was published. It was late Friday, not late Thursday.

How we handle corrections

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Putin wants to divide Ukrainians. The battered city of Mykolaiv is an unwilling test case.

In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, where the fresh water supply has been cut off by the Russians, residents now haul water from wells and tanks set up in parks or churchyards.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — In the battered southern city of Mykolaiv, where saltwater runs from the taps and electricity is sporadic, residents curse Russia, but also express frustration with their own leaders.

The city’s woes have made it an unwilling test case in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Ukraine strategy. Struggling to gain victories on the battlefield, he has adopted an approach of degrading Ukrainian life — making people miserable ahead of winter while also hoping to foment division. That makes governing complicated for local officials.

The shelling of Mykolaiv, a Black Sea port, is part of a larger campaign across the country of targeting electrical, heating and water infrastructure with missiles and drones.

In April, the Russian army blew up all freshwater pipes supplying the city, most likely hoping to force out the civilian population and make it easier to capture. The city government responded by connecting pipes to an estuary of the Black Sea, as a last resort, and started pumping saltwater into homes.

The lack of potable water has plunged residents of what had been a relatively well-off city into a medieval routine of hauling water from wells and tanks set up in parks or churchyards and filled by charity organizations.

In a dozen interviews, residents expressed some dissatisfaction with city leaders, but also a defiance of the Russian aggression.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.

The U.S. announces more military aid for Ukraine, including guided rockets and artillery ammunition.

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A U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer firing on Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine in June.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States will send another $275 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more artillery ammunition, anti-tank weapons and trucks, the Pentagon and State Department announced on Friday.

The aid, which will come from U.S. government inventories, is the 24th such package authorized since August 2021, according to a State Department email to reporters. It will bring the value of all U.S. government assistance to Ukraine to about $17.9 billion since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, the email said.

The package is expected to include more guided rockets for mobile HIMARS launchers that Ukrainian forces have been using to destroy high-value Russian targets like command posts and supply depots, along with 2,000 shells containing anti-vehicle land mines and 500 guided shells for 155-millimeter howitzers.

More than 1,300 unguided shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets, 125 Humvee trucks and four satellite communications antennas will be sent to Ukraine as well.

“Some of the equipment and systems that are mentioned are having everyday impacts that we’re seeing on the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters at a briefing on Friday, “and that’s why we are providing, for example, more ammunition when it comes to the HIMARS systems.”

The satellite communications antennas, Ms. Singh said, are unrelated to Starlink satellites that have been providing Ukrainians with internet service since the invasion.

“We’re seeing critical infrastructure in Ukraine being hit,” she said, “and while the Ukrainians do have access to the Starlink capabilities, having additional satcom capabilities on the ground is certainly helpful for them.”

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As Europe faces an energy crisis, some of its leaders are turning to Africa for help.

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Drilling equipment belonging to the European-owned Perenco oil company in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Credit...Alexis Huguet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

European leaders, eager to find alternatives to Russian natural gas, have been converging on Africa’s capital cities, prompting hope among their counterparts in Africa that the war in Ukraine may tilt the scales in the continent’s unequal relationship with Europe.

In September, Poland’s president arrived in Senegal in pursuit of gas deals. In May, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, came seeking the same thing. And Italian government ministers have accompanied executives from Eni, one of the largest energy companies in the world, to Algeria, Angola and the Republic of Congo as well as to Mozambique, where a terminal operated by Eni is expected to begin supplying gas to Europe in a matter of days.

“With the war, it’s a U-turn,” said Mamadou Fall Kane, an energy adviser to Senegal’s president. “The narrative has changed.”

The flurry of European overtures has led to new or fast-tracked energy projects, with talk of more to come.

In interviews, African leaders lamented that it had taken a war to give them bargaining power on energy deals, and they described what they saw as a double standard. Europe, after all, used not just natural gas, but far dirtier fuels like coal, for hundreds of years to drive an age of empire-building and industrialization.

The hope in African capitals is that Europe’s appetite will mean the financing of gas facilities not just for export but for use at home. The stakes are enormous.

A tribute to Stalin’s victims carries on in Moscow, on a smaller scale, after being banned.

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Visiting “Common Grave Number 1” at Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow on Friday.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

MOSCOW — Three weeks after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and nearly a year after the Kremlin moved to liquidate it, the Russian human rights organization Memorial was carrying on with its annual tribute to those murdered during Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror — a ceremony known as “Returning the Names.”

It is normally a marathon reading of the names, ages, professions and dates of death of the people killed under Stalin’s reign, conducted for most of the past 15 years in Lubyanka Square, by the headquarters of what used to be the K.G.B., the notorious Soviet security services. But this year, Memorial was forced to jury-rig the tribute and break it into small gatherings, after the authorities banned the daylong reading planned for Saturday at Lubyanka, which typically attracts thousands of attendees.

In Moscow’s Donskoye cemetery, several dozen Russians came forward to read names of the victims. Their remains are believed to be scattered among three mass graves, though most of them were burned and no one can say for sure which ones they lie in.

“Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov is a poet, writer and playwright,” read a red-haired woman named Olga, 72, with a soft voice, as crows rustled in the barren trees overhead. “Special correspondent for Pravda newspaper. He lived in Moscow. Shot dead on Sept. 10, 1937. He was rehabilitated in 1956,” she continued, using a term meaning his name was cleared. “Buried at Donskoye Cemetery.”

The government cited public safety rules related to the pandemic as the reason for canceling the tribute, as it did in 2020 and 2021. Though Moscow has long moved past such virus-related restrictions, the rules are frequently invoked to prohibit protests or to jail those who express dissent in public.

“The point in returning the names is that we’re naming the victims,” said Yan Rachinsky, the chairman of Memorial’s board. “But the question inevitably arises: If there are victims of crime, then there are criminals, and there are reasons for the crime. These are no longer things that our authorities are ready to discuss.”

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