Russian Invasion of UkraineUkraine News: Russia Calls E.U. Move to Advance Ukraine’s Joining ‘Hostile’

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sounded uncharacteristically subdued last week when asked about the prospect of Ukraine achieving candidate status for the European Union: “We have no objections.”

But since then, Russian officials and analysts have said that Mr. Putin didn’t really mean it.

“We consider the E.U. enlargement process to be negative — hostile, in fact — in relation to Russian national interests,” Russia’s ambassador to the bloc, Vladimir A. Chizhov, told a state-run newspaper this week.

It was another example of mixed messaging by the Kremlin, which started before the war with inscrutable positions on whether diplomacy could avert a conflict and continued after the invasion with ambiguous stances on a potential peace deal.

But one thing seems clear: The attainment of candidate status by Ukraine marks a milestone in Mr. Putin’s charged and vexing relationship with the E.U. — and the desire of growing numbers of Ukrainians to join it.

For Russians and Ukrainians alike, the question of whether Ukraine will someday in fact join the European Union is secondary to the question of how the country survives the current Russian invasion. That may be one reason the country’s E.U. application has not been a top story on the news in Russia.

“There’s a point of view that Ukraine either won’t exist, or won’t exist in its current geographic boundaries,” said Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, describing the mood in Moscow. “This sense even further reduces the significance of the decision on candidate status. Because everything can change.”

But it is also clear that Ukraine’s desire to align itself with neighbors to its West represents the latest reminder of Mr. Putin’s failure to keep Ukrainians’ hearts and minds in his orbit.

In the Kremlin’s narrative, it is the anti-Russian axis of Washington and London that is pushing Brussels to accept Ukraine as a member, against the European Union’s best interests.

“What will Europe get? Ukraine or its remnants?” an essay published by RIA Novosti, the Russian state news agency, asked on Thursday. “No, Russia will not allow this, because it understands perfectly well that the E.U. is becoming a screen for the Anglo-Saxon games against Moscow.”

The explosiveness of Ukraine’s relationship with the European Union became apparent in 2013, when the country’s Russia-friendly president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was in the last stages of negotiating a trade agreement with the bloc. Mr. Putin wanted Ukraine to be part of a Russia-led customs union instead that already included Belarus and Kazakhstan.

When Ukraine backed out of the European deal under pressure from Mr. Putin, protests erupted in Kyiv, leading to the country’s pro-Western revolution and Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster, and prompting Russia to annex Crimea and foment the Russian-backed separatist war in the east.

So when Mr. Putin said at an economic conference in St. Petersburg last week that he did not mind Ukraine joining the European Union, his words rang hollow to many analysts. He claimed that it would be costly for the European Union’s members to accept Ukraine as one of their own, and that European companies would want to stunt the development of the Ukrainian economy to avoid new competition.

“If Ukraine fails to protect its domestic market it will completely turn into a semi-colony, in my opinion,” Mr. Putin said. “But again, that is none of our business.”

In fact, Russian officials have argued that the expansion of the European Union is part of a twin threat alongside the expansion of the NATO alliance. Mr. Chizhov, the Russian ambassador, told the Izvestiya newspaper that the union “lately has degraded to the level of an auxiliary military bloc, auxiliary to NATO.”

Ukraine’s E.U. candidate status is a “symbolic gesture of support,” said Kadri Liik, an analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, given that it would take years for the country to join the bloc. And despite Russia’s comparison of the E.U. with NATO, European Union membership would not automatically provide Ukraine with security guarantees in the face of future threats from Moscow.

BRUSSELS — The European Union officially made Ukraine a candidate for membership on Thursday, signaling in the face of a devastating Russian military onslaught that it sees Ukraine’s future as lying in an embrace of the democratic West.

While Ukraine’s accession into the bloc could take a decade or more, the decision sends a powerful message of solidarity to Kyiv and a rebuke to Moscow, which has worked for more than a decade to keep Ukraine from building Western ties.

The step was seen as almost impossible mere weeks ago, not least because Ukraine was seen as too far behind in terms of eliminating corruption and instituting economic reforms.

But the decision to nonetheless give it candidate status was another leap for European nations that have been rapidly shedding preconceptions and reservations to back Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion.

“Agreement,” Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said on Twitter. “A historic moment. Today marks a crucial step on your path towards the EU.”

Candidacy in the European Union, which the 27 E.U. leaders also granted to Moldova, is a milestone but little else. It signals that a nation is in position, if certain conditions are met, to begin a very detailed, painstaking and yearslong process of changes and negotiations with the bloc, with a view to eventually joining.

When that might happen depends on the readiness of the country in question, which must align itself institutionally, democratically, economically and legally to E.U. laws and norms. On average, the process has taken other countries about 10 years; Turkey has been a candidate for 21 years, but is unlikely to join.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called the E.U. move “one of the most important decisions for Ukraine” in its 30 years as an independent state.

“This is the greatest step toward strengthening Europe that could be taken right now, in our time, and precisely in the context of the Russian war, which is testing our ability to preserve freedom and unity,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

The European Union began in 1952 as a free-trade bloc among a core six nations. It has grown through the years to not only include huge swaths of the European continent, but also to encompass policies far beyond trade and economics, although those remain its strongest and best-aligned types of joint work.

The war in Ukraine has forced the European Union into foreign policy, defense and military alignment, areas that it is both politically uncomfortable with and legally underqualified to address. Although no substitute for NATO, the bloc could in future years — by the time Ukraine actually joins — develop into more of a military union.

The leaders of Germany, France and Italy, the largest E.U. nations, gave a preview of the decision to grant candidate status to Ukraine in a visit last week to its capital, Kyiv. Still, a handful of member countries needed to be convinced that despite Ukraine’s unreadiness to join the union, it was vital to give it the prospect.

Important as the moment is for Ukraine, it is deeply significant for the European Union, too. Most members had been eager to keep the bloc from growing, partly because its 27 members already find it at times exceedingly hard to agree on key issues like democratic freedoms, economic overhauls and the role of the courts.

The bloc nearly doubled in size in the decade from 2004 to 2014, adding 13 members, many of them poorer former Soviet nations that swiftly gained access to wealthier labor markets and ample funding by the bloc.

That integration is still not complete, with several nations struggling with corruption, rule-of-law issues and economic backsliding. This calls into question the bloc’s capacity to absorb a country of Ukraine’s size and population.

Some European nations would have also liked to see Albania and North Macedonia, Balkan nations that have been candidates for more than a decade, admitted before Ukraine. Western Balkan leaders met with their E.U. counterparts earlier Thursday, but the meeting yielded no progress.

The move to grant Ukraine’s candidacy is bound to irritate Russia, which has described Ukraine’s aspirations to align itself with Western institutions like NATO and the European Union as a provocation and interference in its sphere of influence.

BAKHMUT, Ukraine — As Russian forces pounded a key supply line to soldiers defending the last pocket of land under Ukraine’s control in the eastern Luhansk Province, there was no sign of a broad Ukrainian retreat on Thursday. A Ukrainian fighter jet screamed through the sky and Ukrainian troops were digging into their defensive positions.

While the Ukrainian military faces perhaps its greatest moment of peril since the fall of Mariupol a month ago, Ukraine’s defense chief hailed the arrival of one of the United States’ more advanced artillery rocket launcher systems into the country.

The arrival of the U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket artillery is notable, but it remains unclear if the relatively small number of them sent by the Pentagon will change conditions on the broader battlefield.

Ukrainian forces in the east remain outgunned and at grave risk of being encircled. One Ukrainian tank crew heading away from the front lines for repairs on Thursday said that for every five rounds they fire at Russian forces, the Russians fire 150 in return — an exaggeration, but one that is often repeated among Ukrainian forces.

The Ukrainian military high command said that Moscow was continuing to add men and armor in the fight to capture the city of Lysychansk and finish off the stubborn Ukrainian resistance in nearby Sievierodonetsk. The cities lie on either side of the Siversky Donets River.

On Thursday, shelling near the supply lines that run toward Lysychansk was incessant. Ukrainian Grad multiple rocket launchers, their tubes completely loaded, waited to move into position or sped toward the front. What appeared to be two cruise missiles hit Bakhmut, a supply hub for Ukrainians. The strikes sent smoke into the air in small mushroom clouds and stray dogs near the blasts cowered.

In the afternoon, four soldiers wounded in an artillery strike on the Bakhmut frontline were dropped off at an aid station, where awaiting medics quickly went about stabilizing them. Two soldiers had suffered concussions, one had been lightly wounded by shrapnel and the other was bleeding heavily from leg and arm wounds.

The severely wounded soldier, in shock, pale and breathing rapidly, was given water by one of the medics who lightly slapped his face, struggling to keep the man awake.

The Russians claim they have already encircled “thousands” of Ukrainian soldiers, according to the spokesman for the Russian proxy forces in the region, Andrei Marochko.

Such statements by Russian-allied forces in the past have proved false and the Ukrainians said on Thursday afternoon that its forces were still able to maneuver. Still, some Ukrainian soldiers said a portion of their forces had pulled out of Lysychansk to avoid being trapped in an encirclement.

Military analysts said that the Ukrainians staunch defense despite being both outnumbered and outgunned has severely depleted Russia’s fighting force. But Ukrainian troops are also struggling to hold their lines and have turned to relying on undertrained fighters to bolster their depleted forces.

Still, the city of Lysychansk, which sits on high ground on the western banks of the Siversky Donets River, is slowly being flanked by Russian forces attacking from multiple directions. Having failed to make progress in a head-on assault, Russia’s forces have been pressing for weeks to break through Ukrainian defensive positions to the southeast of Lysychansk.

This weekend, they were able to break through that part of the line, leaning on heavy artillery barrages and tank advances. Ukrainian soldiers in the city described fierce fighting near its outskirts and medics there were hard at work on the steady steam of casualties coming in.

Comparing the two armies to exhausted boxers who had already fought 18 rounds, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said the battle was now reaching its “fearsome climax.”

“The threat of a tactical Russian victory is there, but they haven’t done it yet,” the adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said in an appearance on national television.

While Ukrainian fighters are struggling to keep a foothold in Luhansk, they still control about 45 percent of the neighboring Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials said. The Russian push on several towns and cities in Donetsk appears to be stalled. Still, the Ukrainian military high command said on Friday that Russia was sending reinforcements, including two tank units, and was expected to resume an offensive near the city of Izium.

WASHINGTON — The White House authorized on Thursday an additional $450 million in military aid for Ukraine, which is set to receive four more rocket artillery launchers that the government in Kyiv has said are needed to repulse Russian troops in Donbas.

The National Security Council spokesman, John F. Kirby, announced the new “drawdown” of goods from the Pentagon’s stockpiles Thursday afternoon.

The latest announcement brings the total amount of military aid from the United States to Ukraine to $6.8 billion since the beginning of the Biden administration — the vast majority of which has been committed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to a Pentagon statement emailed to reporters shortly after the White House briefing.

The truck-mounted launchers, called the M142 HIMARS — for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — carry six guided rockets in a disposable “pod” that can be quickly discarded after the munitions are launched, allowing the vehicle’s three-person crew to quickly winch a new fully-loaded pod into place.

The rockets typically carry a 200-pound high-explosive warhead to targets as far as 43 miles away, and can strike within about 30 feet of their programmed aim point.

The combination of HIMARS launchers and the guided rockets they fire is a qualitative leap ahead for Ukrainian artillery capabilities, which previously operated only Soviet-designed artillery rocket systems that are unguided and far slower to reload. Hours earlier Thursday, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, announced on Twitter that the first group of HIMARS trucks, from a Pentagon shipment announced in late May, had arrived in his country.

The Pentagon’s inventory of the latest aid includes 36,000 rounds of 105-mm artillery ammunition, suggesting Ukraine has acquired yet another NATO-standard artillery system that would use it. It was not immediately clear which country had supplied Ukraine with the howitzers to fire them.

It is unclear whether the newly introduced rocket launchers will make a substantial difference in the fierce fighting in the eastern Luhansk region, where Russian troops have been making gains in the cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. In addition to the rocket launchers, the Pentagon said it would provide artillery ammunition, 1,200 grenade launchers, 2,000 machine guns and 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats.

SPLIT, Croatia — It was in their moment of triumph, when they had beaten their opponents and come together to collect their medals, when some of the boys were overcome with sadness, when the tears welled in their eyes.

The teenagers, a mix of 13- and 14-year-olds representing one of the youth squads of the top Ukrainian soccer team Shakhtar Donetsk, had just won a tournament in Split, the Croatian city that has provided them with a refuge from war. Each boy was presented with a medal, and the team received a trophy to mark the victory.

The lucky ones got to celebrate and pose for pictures with their mothers. For most, though, there was no one.

“As a mother I feel it,” said Natalia Plaminskaya, who was able to accompany her twin boys to Croatia but said she felt for families who could not do the same. “I want to hug them, play with them, make them feel better.”

In the first frantic days after Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, Shakhtar Donetsk, one of Eastern Europe’s powerhouse clubs, moved quickly to evacuate its teams and staff members out of harm’s way.

But scores of players and staff members from Shakhtar’s youth academy needed sanctuary, too.

Phone calls were placed. Buses were arranged. But decisions had to be made quickly, and only about a dozen mothers were able to accompany the boys on the journey. (Wartime rules required that their fathers — all men of fighting age, in fact, ages 18 to 60 — had to remain in Ukraine.) Other families made different choices: to stay with husbands and relatives, to send their boys off alone. All of the options were imperfect. None of the decisions were easy.

Three months later, the weight of separation, of loneliness — of everything — has taken its toll.

“It’s a nightmare, it’s a nightmare,” said Edgar Cardoso, who leads Shakhtar’s youth teams. He repeats his words to underline how fragile the atmosphere has become within the walls of the seaside hotel in Croatia that has become the Shakhtar group’s temporary home. “You see that emotions are now on the peak.”

It was a rare moment of euphoria amid war: In May a Ukrainian hip-hop band won the Eurovision Song Contest, the cultural phenomenon that helped launch Abba and Celine Dion and was watched this year by about 160 million people.

But joy quickly turned to disappointment when the contest’s organizers announced that Ukraine was not secure enough to host the 2023 competition, an honor that usually goes to the previous year’s winner.

On Thursday, the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest, tried to tame the backlash, saying in a statement their primary concern was “safety and security” of the participants, which include performers from across Europe, 10,000 staff and crew members, and a huge legion of devoted fans expected to travel to the event, many of them young people.

But outrage at the refusal to allow Ukraine to host next year’s event has been palpable and shows little sign of abating. Oleh Psiuk, the lead singer of Kalush Orchestra, which won this year’s contest, signed an open letter demanding that the decision be changed. And Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, expressed anger, saying that Ukraine had rightfully won the contest, had offered safety assurances and was being denied an honor that would burnish support for the country on the global stage.

“Hosting Eurovision 2023 in Ukraine is a strong signal to the whole world that it supports Ukraine now,” he said.

The organizers, however, have refused to back down from their decision, stressing that they are abiding by their own rules, which state that the location of the contest can be moved in the event of a catastrophe like a war. Allowing Ukraine to host the event, they added, would breach the requirement that the security and welfare of those in attendance be guaranteed.

The projection of Ukrainian culture on the international stage has taken on added resonance at a time when the country is under siege and President Vladimir V. Putin has claimed that Ukraine and Russia “are one people.” Ukrainian politicians, artists and musicians say it is more imperative than ever to expose the country’s cultural uniqueness in international events like the wildly popular song competition.

This week, a Ukrainian pianist was among the winners of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas, one of classical music’s most prestigious contests. And Ukraine recently selected Victoria Apanasenko, a professional model who has been volunteering to help children and older people during the war, as the country’s entrant in the 2022 Miss Universe pageant in Costa Rica.

NEW DELHI — An Indian government official on Thursday defended his country’s surging imports of Russian oil despite mounting criticism from the West that the purchases were dulling the pain of economic sanctions against Russia and helping it pay for its war in Ukraine.

An increase in demand from Asia for Russian oil is helping to make up for the lower number of barrels being sold to Europe and undermining efforts by the United States and its European allies to penalize Russia for the invasion. Russia has offered oil to India and China at a significant discount.

India’s petroleum minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, said that while the West “wanted to punish Russia,” the Indian government’s primary motivation was keeping gas stations well supplied.

“We have a very well defined understanding of what India’s interests are,” Mr. Singh Puri said at a news briefing in New Delhi.

India and China have become important customers for Russia’s discounted oil. China’s imports of Russian oil rose 28 percent in May from the previous month, while India went from taking in almost no Russian oil to buying more than 760,000 barrels a day. That surge in Asian demand, along with soaring energy prices, has helped Russia to offset the loss of revenue from Europe.

India has long been reliant on Russia for military hardware, an important factor in the ties between the two countries. As much of the world has condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to remain neutral. Stressing the bond between the two countries, Mr. Singh Puri said India and Russia had “very old relations.”

India is projected to have the fastest growth of any major economy this year, and Mr. Singh Puri said that demand for fuel will likely rise along with it.

India imports 85 percent of its oil. Before the invasion of Ukraine, expensive freight costs meant that very little of India’s supply came from Russia. As a result of discounts of $30 per barrel, however, Russia is now poised to overtake Iraq as India’s biggest supplier this month, according to Kpler, a data commodity company.

Ukraine’s entire oil refining sector is at a standstill because of targeted Russian strikes on refineries, according to the head of the state’s national energy company Naftogaz.

Russia has already devastated Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, all but halting exports of grain, fertilizer, and cooking oil. And now, with its refineries crippled, Ukraine is set to be entirely dependent on the outside world for finished fuel.

Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s oil supply since the war’s early days, which has led to nationwide fuel shortages for civilians. In April, Russian missiles struck the Kremenchuk oil refinery, Ukraine’s main producer of fuel products, and several other large refineries. At the time, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces were “deliberately destroying the infrastructure for the production, supply and storage of fuel.”

This week, Yuriy Vitrenko, the head of Naftogaz, said at a news conference in Kyiv that Russian “massive and repeated” attacks have completely destroyed Ukraine’s oil refining industry, bringing it to “a standstill” and creating shortages.

It remains unclear how the loss of refineries would affect Ukraine’s war effort, since the government regards its oil and fuel reserves as a state secret. It is also hard to ascertain precisely how much refined oil Ukraine will have to import to offset the loss of its refineries.

Even before the Russian invasion Ukraine met most of its refined oil demands through imports from Russia and Belarus, according to the International Energy Agency. Since the invasion in February, more refined oil products are being imported into Ukraine through Poland and other neighbors to the west.

With little or no domestic capacity to refine oil, Ukraine will have to increase those imports, and shipments on tankers and trains arriving from the European Union remain vulnerable to attacks from Russia.

Russia, meanwhile, is raking in substantial oil revenue, despite sanctions targeting sales of its oil in the United States and the European Union. Moscow has discounted its oil and sought more sales to India and China to offset the loss of trade with the West. Last month, Russia earned $1.7 billion more from oil exports than it did in April, according to the IEA.

Even if the eastern Ukrainian cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk fall to Russian forces, the long, drawn-out battle for their control that wore down the Russians would signal a measure of success for Ukraine’s army, a former defense minister in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government said on Thursday.

“That they held out for a month and a half is remarkable,” the former minister, Andriy Zahorodnyuk, said of Ukraine’s forces. “When somebody looks at this and says, ‘Oh, Ukraine is losing now,’ that is not a deep opinion.”

Russian forces are already “on the brink of their capabilities,” he said. “The fact that we are holding them so long is an achievement. We are wearing them out.”

Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine have also come at a cost elsewhere along the front. In recent weeks, Mr. Zahorodnyuk said, Ukraine has recaptured more land in a slow-moving counteroffensive toward the city of Kherson than Russia has captured in eastern Ukraine.

“Their weakness is they can only win in one operational direction at a time,” he said. “Our guys are using this weakness.”

Mariana Bezugla, a member of Parliament who has visited Lysychansk, said the city was still defended by Ukrainian soldiers, and she did not characterize the rising tempo of Russian shelling as an immediate threat.

“It’s not an escalation, it’s war,” she said. “Every day, the war becomes more intense.”

The foreign ministers of Britain and Turkey on Thursday outlined a United Nations proposal to get desperately needed grain out of Ukrainian ports that have been blockaded for months by Russian forces.

According to the proposal, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said, “There would be a control center in Istanbul, and a safe zone would be established outside Ukrainian territorial waters.”

The safe zone would help ensure that ships heading into the ports to pick up the grain were “not carrying weapons or anything else,” he said, adding that checking the ships was “Russia’s demand.” The ships would also be examined on their way out to make sure they were carrying only grain, Mr. Cavusoglu added.

It is unclear whether Ukraine would agree to such a plan. Ukrainian officials have offered another solution. They say they are willing to remove sea mines around ports and allow grain shipments out, but only if other countries deploy a naval force into the area to guarantee that Russia will not attack once the mines are cleared.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, after meeting on Thursday with Mr. Cavusoglu in Ankara, the Turkish capital, said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was “weaponizing hunger” and that it was “urgent that action is taken within the next month, ahead of the new harvest.”

Mr. Putin “is using food security as a callous tool of war,” Ms. Truss said.

More than 20 million tons of grain in silos in southern Ukraine cannot be shipped from the ports because of the blockade, Ukrainian and United Nations officials have said, spurring a global food crisis. On Friday, European Union leaders who are meeting this week in Brussels are expected to discuss the economic implications of the war, including the food shortages.

For its part, Turkey says it has been working with Russia — as well as with the United Nations and Ukraine — to try to broker a deal to unlock the blockade. This week, Turkey’s defense ministry said, Turkish and Russian military delegations met in Moscow. And Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey said on Thursday that representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations and Turkey would meet next week in Turkey to discuss the blockade.

“We have focused on Russia,” Mr. Cavusoglu said on Thursday, “because a technical-level meeting is planned in Istanbul; the date has not been set yet — we are waiting a positive answer from Russia.”

Ms. Truss said that Britain supported the United Nations’ plan and would offer its “expertise” on safety measures, but that it was “going to require an international effort.”

“It’s very clear that Ukrainian ports must be protected,” she said. “There needs to be safe passage for commercial vessels.”

The Turkish foreign minister on Thursday also addressed his government’s threats to block Finland and Sweden from joining NATO, of which Turkey is a member. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who had earlier vowed not to put up obstacles to Finland’s and Sweden’s accession, has since made numerous demands.

The military alliance is set to meet next week in Madrid, and the Nordic countries’ applications are expected to be discussed.

But the “NATO summit is not a deadline,” Mr. Cavusoglu said, again throwing cold water on the countries’ hopes that their applications could be fast-tracked. “No such date is determined to complete that process.”

Germany triggered the second stage of its three-step emergency gas plan on Thursday, warning Germans that the country is in a crisis that could worsen in coming months.

“The situation is serious and winter will come,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, told reporters at a news conference in Berlin. The plan’s third step would permit the government to begin gas rationing.

“Even if you don’t feel it yet: We are in a gas crisis,” he said. “Gas is a scarce commodity from now on. Prices are already high and we have to be prepared for further increases. This will affect industrial production and become a big burden for many consumers.”

The announcement comes a week after Russian’s state energy giant, Gazprom, reduced the amount of natural gas it was delivering to Germany by 60 percent, in what appeared to be the latest move to punish Europe for sanctions and military support for Ukraine.

Mr. Habeck called Gazprom’s cutbacks a deliberate economic attack by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.

“It is obviously Putin’s strategy to create insecurity, drive up prices and divide us as a society,” he said.

Since late March, when Germany entered the first phase of its plan, the government has focused on increasing its gas storage, which is at more than 58 percent capacity. But activating the second stage of the emergency plan means the government sees a high risk of long-term supply shortages.

Aleksandr Y. Lebedev looks like a prime target for sanctions meant to prompt Russia’s elites to turn against the Kremlin. He is a onetime billionaire and a former K.G.B. agent with deep connections both in Russia’s ruling class and in the West; his son owns British newspapers and is a member of the House of Lords.

But Mr. Lebedev has a message for anyone expecting him to now try to bring down President Vladimir V. Putin: “It’s not going to work.”

In that matter, he insists, he is powerless. “What, am I supposed to now go to the Kremlin with a banner?” Mr. Lebedev said by video call from Moscow. “It’s more likely to be the opposite.”

Leading Russian business owners and intellectuals fled their country after the invasion on Feb. 24, settling in places like Dubai, Istanbul and Berlin. But many others who were well-connected at home and had close ties to the West stayed behind, struggling to redefine their lives.

As they did, their paths diverged — illuminating the watershed of choices that the war represents for wealthy and influential Russians, and the long odds that any broad coalition of Russians will emerge to challenge Mr. Putin. A handful are speaking out against the war while remaining in the country, despite great personal risk. Many, like Mr. Lebedev, are keeping their heads down. And some have chosen to throw in their lot with the Kremlin.

The mood of the so-called Russian elite — a kaleidoscope of senior officials, business executives, journalists and intellectuals — has been closely watched for any domestic backlash to Mr. Putin’s decision to go to war. If their dismay at the country’s sudden economic and cultural isolation were to cross a threshold, some Western officials believe, Mr. Putin might be forced to change course.

Yet what is happening in reality, interviews show, is that the mood spans a spectrum from desperation to exhilaration, but with one common denominator: the sense that the country’s future is out of their hands.

“They are drinking,” said Yevgenia M. Albats, a journalist still in Moscow, attempting to characterize those elites who were dismayed by the decision to go to war. “They are drinking very heavily.”

Two lifeless bodies found on the ground in a forest about 12 miles north of Kyiv, one with a bullet wound in the chest and two in the head.

A charred Ford Maverick belonging to one of the men.

The discarded food packaging and plastic cutlery of Russian soldiers discovered nearby in an area that had been occupied by Russian forces.

These are just a few of the clues pieced together by the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders in an investigation of the killings of Maks Levin, a Ukrainian photojournalist, and his friend Oleksiy Chernyshov, a soldier. While the circumstances remain murky, the organization reported on Wednesday that the evidence suggested the journalist had been executed “in cold blood.”

The men’s bodies were discovered on April 1 in a forest near the village of Moshchun, near Kyiv, which came under heavy bombardment in early March when Russian forces tried to take the Ukrainian capital. The men, according to the organization, were killed on March 13.

“Analysis of the photos of the crime scene, the observations made on the spot and the material evidence recovered clearly point to an execution that may have been preceded by interrogation or even acts of torture,” said Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, which published a 16-page report on the killings.

“We owe them the truth,” he added.

Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, sent two investigators to Ukraine to look into the deaths. The group said the evidence suggested that the men had been killed after Mr. Levin went to retrieve a drone he had lost on March 10 in the forest near Moshchun, while trying to get footage of Russia’s military.

The group said Mr. Levin had abandoned his first attempt to find his drone after coming under Russian fire. But, it said, he returned three days later to continue his search in a hostile area. It said he had been accompanied by Mr. Chernyshov, who was carrying an AK-74 rifle and wearing a military uniform.

“The terrain was hostile but Levin was determined to recover his drone at all costs because he was convinced that the last images it had taken were very important,” the report said, adding that the last image Mr. Levin had shared with a friend showed Russian armored vehicles near houses in a village.

Mr. Levin, who had covered the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region, was the father of four sons. Reporters Without Borders said Mr. Levin, 40, was an experienced freelance journalist who had worked often with LB.ua, a Ukrainian news site, and Reuters.

The group stressed that Mr. Levin was not a member of the military. But it said photos of his body showed a blue armband similar to those worn by Ukrainian soldiers, a marker that it said frontline journalists sometimes wore to identify themselves to the Ukrainian military as “friendlies.”

It added that Mr. Levin might have provided images taken by his drone, including images showing Russian positions, to Ukrainian forces.

Investigators found Mr. Chernyshov’s identity papers at the scene of the killings, and also “located a bullet that had probably struck Levin,” the group said.

According to a statement by Ukrainian prosecutors, Mr. Levin was killed by two shots fired by Russian soldiers using small arms.

Reporters Without Borders said it had handed over its evidence to the Ukrainian judicial authorities. By its count, eight journalists, including Mr. Levin, have been killed since the invasion began.