Russia-Ukraine War Live Updates: NATO News, Putin and the Latest

After days in which the West has sought to present a muscular and united front in the face of Russia’s challenge to the international order, leaders on Thursday were facing a longer-term dilemma: how to maintain public support for a grinding war whose economic costs are stoking exhaustion.

In a sign of the challenges of maintaining pressure on Russia despite fuel price shocks and wider economic pain, President Biden said at the close of the NATO summit in Madrid on Thursday that Americans should be prepared to pay higher gasoline prices for “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.”

As NATO concluded its annual meeting — in the same week that the Group of 7 industrialized nations held their own gathering in Germany — Western leaders expressed concern about weariness back home. At the same time, President Vladimir V. Putin was showing intensified resolve while Ukraine’s demand for financing and weapons appeared increasingly inexhaustible.

Ann Linde, Sweden’s foreign minister, who doggedly persuaded Turkey to lift its block on the NATO membership applications of her country and of Finland, warned about the perils of diminishing popular support and fading public interest as rising inflation, energy and food prices took their toll.

“You can already see in the media that interest is going down, and that is also affecting the public, and the public is affecting the politicians,” she said. “So it is our responsibility to keep Ukraine and what Russia is doing high up on our agenda.”

With Mr. Biden and his allies unable to match their pledges of support for Ukraine with a viable endgame for the conflict, Mr. Putin signaled that he believed he could outlast Ukraine and the West, and that he still aimed to topple the pro-Western government in Kyiv.

In overnight comments to journalists after a regional summit in Turkmenistan late Wednesday, Mr. Putin insisted that he was in no hurry to end the war, again claiming that the West had created an “anti-Russian bridgehead” in Ukraine that represented a “sword of Damocles” hanging over Russia.

“The work is going smoothly, rhythmically,” Mr. Putin said of the fighting by Russian forces. “There is no need to talk about the timing.”

The remarks underscored a change in Mr. Putin, whose irritability and propensity for anger early in the war has given way to a more relaxed and self-confident posture, in line with his prewar image. The shift suggests he believes that he has stabilized his war effort, and his economic and political system, after Russia’s initial military stumbles and a flurry of punishing Western sanctions.

Looming over the battle of resolve is the fact that Ukraine is burning through cash and weapons.

Samantha Power, the head of the United States Agency for International Development, told the World Bank last week that current international support was not enough to cover Ukraine’s monthly military spending. Ukraine’s government is spending $5 billion to $6 billion dollars on the war a month at the last estimate, she said, adding, “and that is a staggering burn rate.”

Addressing the G7 and NATO summits, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine repeated his calls for more and faster arms to try to beat back the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine. Although more longer-range Western weapons are arriving — as are artillery shells, encrypted radios and better drones — it is still not enough, Mr. Zelensky says.

As Western leaders depart Madrid in clouds of rhetoric about defending freedom from tyranny, Britain said it would give Ukraine an additional $1.2 billion in military support, nearly doubling its financial commitment to Kyiv. The United States has pledged $54 billion in support to Ukraine since the start of the war.

While the Russian invasion has emboldened NATO and prompted members to buttress their own defenses, Ukraine still must hang on through the summer fighting season and hope that the progress of Russian forces is stymied by their own exhaustion.

Overnight missile strikes on a residential tower and a recreational center in a coastal town southwest of the Black Sea port city of Odesa early Friday killed at least 17 and injured dozens of others, Ukrainian officials said.

One of the missiles hit a nine-story residential tower in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, about 50 miles southwest of Odesa, killing 14 and injuring 30, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service and the regional military administration. The other hit a recreational center, where three died and one was injured, the officials said.

Rescuers were still going through the rubble of the partially collapsed buildings Friday morning after the strikes, which occurred around 1 a.m.

The details of the missile attacks could not immediately be verified.

The attacks came as Russian troops withdrew from Snake Island in the Black Sea, about 20 miles off Ukraine’s southern coast, after repeated assaults by Ukrainian forces. The withdrawal was expected to undermine Russia’s control of vital grain shipping lanes from Odesa.

Odesa has long been coveted by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose forces have continued to display willingness to target civilians during the war. Previous Russian targets have included a theater, a maternity hospital and people waiting in line for bread.

On Monday, Russians unleashed a missile attack at a shopping mall in the industrial city of Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine, killing at least 18 people. Group of 7 leaders meeting in Germany called the mall attack a “war crime” in a statement.

In the war’s early weeks, Odesa had been largely spared the high-casualty attacks on civilians suffered by other Ukrainian cities. Efforts by Russian forces to march westward along the coastline and capture the city were hindered by fierce Ukrainian resistance and logistical issues.

But in April, at least eight people were killed when two cruise missiles struck a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, Ukrainian officials said. Later that month, another missile strike damaged the runway at Odesa’s airport and rendered it unusable, according to a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command.

Russian troops have withdrawn from Snake Island in the Black Sea after repeated assaults by Ukrainian forces, a move that is a setback for Moscow’s forces and possibly undermines their control over vital shipping lanes for grain in the Black Sea.

The retreat came after sustained Ukrainian attacks — including with powerful, newly arrived Western weapons — made it impossible for Russian forces to hold the island, a small speck of land 20 miles off the coast of Odesa that has played an outsize role throughout the war.

Control of the shipping lanes has implications that go beyond the battle for Ukraine’s sovereignty. The Russian Navy has effectively cut off shipping from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, stopping the flow of grain and oilseeds to the rest of the world, raising the cost of food and creating the likelihood of shortages and even famines in some countries, especially in Africa.

While the United Nations and many Western democracies have accused Moscow of using food as a weapon to weaken support for Ukraine, the Kremlin has tried to shift blame for the situation to Kyiv, accusing Ukraine of refusing to clear mines from its ports.

The fortress island has little value except as a base for Black Sea operations and has been a target for the Russians since the first day of the invasion. The Russian withdrawal, coming only a week after the Kremlin bragged about repelling a Ukrainian attempt to retake the island, appeared to be another instance of Moscow’s scaling down its military ambitions in the face of Ukrainian resistance.

Both sides confirmed the retreat on Thursday. The Ukrainians said it had come after a weeklong campaign targeting the island and Russian efforts to resupply the garrison there with missile and artillery fire.

The last Russian soldiers on the island, which is called Zmiinyi in Ukrainian, were reported fleeing overnight on two speedboats, according to the Ukrainian military’s southern command. “There are no more Russians on Zmiinyi,” said Andrii Yermak, the head of the presidential office of Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry, in a statement, sought to cast the retreat as “a gesture of goodwill” that would “not allow Kyiv to speculate on the impending food crisis,” since control of the island is vital to securing the shipping lanes. The Russian de facto blockade, enforced by its warships and submarines, has prevented Ukraine from exporting its prewar average of about six million metric tons of grain each month.

Still, there was no indication that the Kremlin was prepared to allow safe passage of Ukrainian vessels leaving the port of Odesa. The Crimean branch of Radio Free Europe reported that five out of the seven Russian submarines in the Black Sea fleet were launched from port in Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.

Russia had moved to bring powerful surface-to-air missile systems to the island to support its ground forces.

But the Russian Navy started operating further from the Ukrainian coast, out of range of land-based anti-ship missiles provided by the United States and other NATO countries that began arriving in late May. Around June 20, Ukrainian forces renewed their assault on the island, striking a Russian tugboat delivering weapons and personnel to the island.

The Ukrainians “almost certainly” used newly delivered Harpoon missiles in the attack, according to the British military, which said it was their first demonstrated use.

Satellite images released over the past week showed the results of the battle as seen from space — new large scars dotting the 46 acres of rock and grass rising from the sea.

On Thursday morning, the Ukrainian military said it had used missiles and artillery to knock out yet another Russian antimissile system. “Snake Island is covered in fire, explosions are heard,” the Ukrainian command said. After the Russians pulled out, it was unclear whether the Ukrainians would try to restore their own garrison, given the island’s vulnerability to attack.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is signaling that he believes he can outlast Ukraine and the West, and that he still aims to topple the pro-Western government in Kyiv.

In overnight comments to journalists after a regional summit in Turkmenistan late Wednesday, Mr. Putin insisted that he was in no hurry to end the war, again claiming that the West had created an “anti-Russian bridgehead” in Ukraine that represented a “sword of Damocles” hanging over Russia.

“The work is going smoothly, rhythmically,” Mr. Putin said of the fighting by Russian forces. “There is no need to talk about the timing.”

On Thursday, Mr. Putin indicated once more that he was not backing down. In a video address to a St. Petersburg legal conference, he again falsely claimed that the “Kyiv regime” was carrying out a “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

His comments came as the top American intelligence official said on Wednesday that while Mr. Putin still aims to take most of Ukraine, a breakthrough in the country’s east to other major cities beyond the Donbas remains unlikely in the short term even as Moscow’s forces consolidate their gains.

The Russian leader’s remarks also underscored a change in Mr. Putin. Early in the war, he appeared tense, angry and even disoriented. Now, a new Putin has emerged, one very much resembling his prewar image: relaxed, patient and self-confident. The shift suggests that he thinks he has stabilized his war effort, and his economic and political system, after Russia’s initial military failures and an avalanche of Western sanctions.

But the change also illustrates that he is reverting to his old instincts in trying to paper over the risks that still loom: a Ukraine that shows no sign of giving up the fight; an extraordinarily united and expanding NATO; and a fragile tranquillity on the home front, where the consequences of sanctions and the ripple effects of the war’s death and destruction are still playing out.

The consensus in American intelligence agencies is that the war in Ukraine is likely to go on for an extended period of time, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said in her first public update on intelligence assessments of the war in more than a month.

Ukrainian forces have been able to hold many of their fighting positions in the Donbas, which includes the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. American intelligence agencies believe it will be difficult for the Russian military to capture the portion of Donetsk they do not already control.

Ms. Haines said the most likely scenario in the weeks and months ahead was that “the conflict remains a grinding struggle in which the Russians make incremental gains, but no breakthrough.”

In that circumstance, Russia will have secured Luhansk, much of which it currently controls, as well as much of Donetsk and will have consolidated its control in southern Ukraine.

A less likely scenario is a breakthrough by Russia that would allow a refocus on attacks on Kharkiv in the northeast or Odesa in the southwest. Ukraine could also begin to stabilize its front lines in the Donbas and make some small gains.

“In short, the picture remains pretty grim,” Ms. Haines said.

MADRID — NATO and the United States will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes to in fact make sure that they are not defeated,” President Biden said on Thursday, and he vowed that “we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Speaking at a news conference at the end of a NATO summit he called “historic,” the president said the world was changing and so was the Atlantic alliance. He praised the transformation of NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, pointing to increased spending on the military and a decision to welcome Finland and Sweden as members.

Americans and the rest of the world would have to pay more for gasoline and energy as a consequence of containing Russian aggression, Mr. Biden said, as he explained his efforts to drive down the price of oil through a cap on energy prices. Drivers would have to pay the price, he said, “as long as it takes so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.”

Mr. Biden added that he did not know how long the war would last. The Ukrainians “continue to resist the Russian aggression, and so I don’t know how it’s going to end,” he said, but vowed: “It will not end with a Russian defeat of Ukraine in Ukraine.”

Even though Western leaders were coping with rising prices and economic costs of supporting Ukraine, Mr. Biden said that it was Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, who had miscalculated, not the West.

“Before the war started, I told Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, NATO would not only get stronger, but would get more united, and we would see the democracies in the world stand up and oppose his aggression and defend the rules-based order,” Mr. Biden said.

“That’s exactly what we’re seeing today,” he said. “This summit was about strengthening our alliances, meeting the challenges of our world as it is today and the threats we’re going to face in the future.”

Mr. Putin, he said, tried and failed to divide the alliance. “He wanted the Finlandization of NATO, but he got the NATO-ization of Finland,” Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Biden said he had given no promises to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to encourage him to lift his objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO. A day after an agreement was reached on the impasse, the United States signaled a new willingness to sell upgraded F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

But Mr. Biden said he has supported Turkey’s request to buy 40 F-16 fighter jets and modernization kits for 80 more since December. He noted that Congress still must approve a sale. “I think we can get that,” he said.

MADRID — In many ways, this week’s NATO meeting was a transformative summit, befitting a moment when a war in Europe has presented the alliance with one of its biggest challenges since the end of the Cold War.

The list of accomplishments was notable. The 30 member states agreed to admit Finland and Sweden, ending those countries’ decades of neutrality and significantly buttressing NATO’s geopolitical heft, especially its ability to defend the Baltic nations, while extending the alliance’s border with Russia.

The alliance showed unity against Russia and approved plans to markedly increase NATO’s forces, equipment and air defenses in the countries on its eastern flank. It also produced a new strategic vision for the first time in more than a decade, noting Russia’s role as the main antagonist to the Western international order, as well as the challenge of an increasingly powerful China.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also prompted a major review of what a future conflict in Europe would be like, and the stark realization that NATO was largely unprepared for full-scale conventional war.

But amid the flurry of rhetorical support for Ukraine, the summit also underscored the big challenge facing Western leaders: how to keep their publics committed to a grinding war that is coming with increasingly higher economic costs, including higher energy and food prices.

Underlining those costs, President Biden on Thursday stressed that NATO and the United States would support Ukraine “for as long as it takes to in fact make sure that they are not defeated.” He added that Americans and the rest of the world would have to pay more for gasoline and energy as a consequence of resisting Russian aggression.

Referring to the changing geostrategic reality wrought by February’s invasion, Anna Wieslander, the Swedish director for Northern Europe for the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank, said the shift toward collective defense was much bigger than previously seen. “It really is a before Feb. 24 and after,” she said, referring to the date of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But amid calls by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for more and faster arms supplies to try to beat back the grinding Russian advance in eastern Ukraine, there are signs of Western fatigue.

Ann Linde, Sweden’s foreign minister, said on Thursday that she worried about popular exhaustion with the war.

Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy had to leave the NATO summit early to help shore up his political coalition in Italy, which is in part deeply unhappy over his firm support for Ukraine and the costs that it entails.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain, which hosted this week’s summit and spends barely 1 percent of its GDP on defense, urged other Spanish political parties, including those that have previously opposed Spain’s NATO membership, to support the government’s plan to increase defense investment. But he promised to meet NATO nations’ target of spending 2 percent of their G.D.P. on defense only in 2029.

NATO countries have pledged smaller deployments to beef up NATO troops along the alliance’s eastern flank, to provide better deterrence than the small “tripwire” forces there now. But the separate announcement of some 300,000 or more troops to be part of a vastly expanded reaction force — on a higher level of alert — illustrated just how much needs to be done to make the rhetoric real.

The figure is a target, but allies must consult on which of their own troops should be part of this expanded force and spend money to ensure that they are better prepared. The large majority of these troops will continue to be stationed in their home countries. The whole process is likely to take at least a year or more.

Ms. Wieslander observed that Eastern and Central European countries, which experienced decades of Soviet subjugation, understood the geopolitical necessity to fight Russia in Ukraine. But, she added, that is less clear in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece and even France and Germany.

Russian-backed forces who captured two American military veterans this month want to negotiate for their release, according to the family of one of the men.

Alex Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, both of whom volunteered to fight in Ukraine, were captured near the city of Kharkiv on June 9 while fighting alongside a group of foreign soldiers.

Lois Drueke, Mr. Drueke’s mother, said that the State Department told her that Mr. Drueke had called the State Department twice to relay that his captors were anxious to begin negotiations for his and Mr. Huynh’s release.

Both calls, on June 25 and June 28, were made from a Russian phone number, Ms. Drueke said the State Department told her, and Mr. Drueke said he was being held by the Donetsk Peoples Republic, or D.P.R.

The captors did not directly speak to anyone in the State Department, according to Ms. Drueke.

“Both times, he was clearly reading from a script or being prompted to say that his captors, who are the D.P.R., want to engage in negotiations for his and Andy’s release,” said Dianna Shaw, Ms. Drueke’s sister.

Mr. Drueke said he was spending most of his time in solitary confinement and that he had not seen Mr. Huynh in a few days, Ms. Drueke said the State Department had relayed.

The two men went missing when the unit they were with came under heavy fire in a village about 25 miles from the Russian border. On June 17, short videos purporting to show the two were posted on YouTube, in which they said in Russian, “I am against war.”

Over the next few days, longer videos appeared through which it became evident that the men were being held captive.

The Kremlin’s chief spokesman described them as “soldiers of fortune,” and claimed that they were not protected by the Geneva Conventions as prisoners of war. The spokesman said the men were being held while their case was investigated.

The U.S. State Department released a statement urging Moscow and the authorities in Russian-occupied Ukraine to abide by international law.

Ms. Drueke said the State Department did not share details about what negotiations for the men’s release could entail. “The State Department said that the U.S. does not recognize the Donetsk Peoples Republic and that this could be a long, delicate, and sensitive process,” said Ms. Drueke.

The family, however, is happy that Mr. Drueke was prompted by his captors to say that they want to enter into some kind of discussion.

On June 28, several hours after the State Department received the second call, Mr. Drueke’s mother received a call from the same phone number, she said. It was her son. They spoke for under 10 minutes, and he asked about his dog, his truck and how his mother was holding up.

“He sounded tired and stressed, and he was clearly reciting some things he had been made to practice or read, but it was wonderful to hear his voice and know he’s alive and all right,” said Ms. Drueke.

Ms. Shaw said that the two calls to the State Department and the third call to Ms. Drueke had buoyed the family’s spirits. “We’re looking for bright spots anywhere we can get them,” she said.

In a statement to The New York Times, the State Department would not confirm Drueke family’s account, but noted that it had seen the videos of the two U.S. citizens reportedly captured by Russian military forces.

“We are seeking to learn as much as we can and are in touch with the families,” the statement said. “Out of respect for the families’ privacy during this time, we have nothing further to add.”

Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

Britain will give Ukraine an additional $1.2 billion in military support for its war against Russia, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday, nearly doubling the British commitment as Ukraine struggles to finance the mounting costs of the fighting.

Britain is the second-largest donor to Ukraine after the United States, having pledged a total of 2.3 billion pounds, or about $2.8 billion, to the military effort and an additional £1.5 billion in humanitarian aid. The United States has pledged $54 billion in support since the start of the war.

But Samantha Power, the head of the United States Agency for International Development, told the World Bank last week that current international support was not enough to cover Ukraine’s monthly military spending.

The burn rate for Ukraine’s government in managing the war is $5 billion to $6 billion dollars a month at the last estimate, she said, adding, “And that is a staggering burn rate.”

Although Washington is providing $7.5 billion for Ukraine’s budget expenditures, those funds will not be enough in the long term, she said. “We know that more direct budget support is going to be needed down the line,” she said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told the leaders at the NATO summit in Madrid this week that economic aid was as important as military aid as Moscow strangles his nation’s economy through a Black Sea blockade, seizure of valuable land and daily bombardments on critical infrastructure across the country.

“Financial support for Ukraine is no less important than aid with weapons,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Russia still receives billions every day — and spends them on the war. We have a multibillion-dollar deficit. We do not have oil and gas, which could cover it. We need about $5 billion a month.”

The new funding from Britain will go toward shoring up Ukraine’s military capabilities, including air defense systems, drones, new electronic warfare equipment and thousands of pieces of equipment for Ukrainian soldiers.

“U.K. weapons, equipment and training are transforming Ukraine’s defenses against this onslaught,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement, adding to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: “We will continue to stand squarely behind the Ukrainian people to ensure Putin fails in Ukraine.”

KYIV, Ukraine — The Russian military most likely targeted a theater in Mariupol in mid-March where “hundreds” of people were sheltering despite knowing that there were civilians there, in what would be a war crime, Amnesty International said in a report released on Thursday.

The report found that the strike killed at least a dozen people “and likely many more,” with many others seriously injured. In a sign of the difficulty of getting information from areas under Russian control, the group acknowledged that its assessment was lower than others, including one by The Associated Press, which found in its own investigation that about 600 people had died. The Ukrainian authorities estimated in March that around 300 people had died.

The Amnesty analysis included 53 firsthand testimonies, 28 of whom were inside the theater or very close to it at the time of the attack. The authors concluded that many people had left the theater in the days before the attack, and that most who remained were relatively protected in the basement.

The attack on the theater became a symbol of Russia’s brutal onslaught in Mariupol, where residents struggled to find food and lived without heat. Outside the theater in the days before the bombing, people had spelled out the word “children” in Russian in a size that would have been large enough for pilots to see, the report noted.

In an interview, Oksana Pokalchuk, the director of Amnesty Ukraine, said the lower estimate of casualties did not diminish the scale of the incident.

“It doesn’t matter how many people were there at the moment, it was clearly a civilian object, and the people who were killed there were civilians,” Ms. Pokalchuk said. “The Russian army intentionally targeted a civilian object. It’s clearly a war crime.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied bombing civilian targets in Mariupol, including a maternity hospital that was hit on March 14. Russia’s Defense Ministry has said that the theater was blown up by Ukrainian forces from the Azov battalion.

The theater was among the places where people who wanted to be evacuated gathered, Ms. Pokalchuk said, stressing that on March 14 and 15, the two days before the strike, many civilians had been able to flee. As people began to leave, almost all of those who remained were able to take shelter under the stage.

During that time, bombing and rocket attacks were unrelenting, Ms. Pokalchuk said. “So people had been constantly staying inside the building.”

The organization said interviewees were able to provide the names of four of the people who were killed and the first names of three others. “It is likely that many fatalities remain unreported,” the report’s authors wrote.

The organization asked a physicist to build a mathematical model of the detonation. Based on the weapons Russia has in its arsenal, the organization determined that the theater was most likely hit with two 500-kilogram aerial bombs.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden issued a warning to Americans: Standing up to President Vladimir V. Putin could hurt the U.S. economy. “I will not pretend this will be painless,” he said.

But few in Mr. Biden’s administration imagined just how much domestic political and economic pain could result.

In meetings of the Group of 7 nations and NATO this week in Europe, Mr. Biden and his allies hammered home the idea that they must stand united against Russia while drawing new and firmer lines against what they see as predatory economic practices by China.

But the gatherings also underscored the war’s deep strains on Western leaders and consumers from energy costs that have soared as a result of severe sanctions imposed on Russia.

For all of the steps that Mr. Biden and his allies took to counter Russian aggression — including a fast path to NATO admission for Finland and Sweden and a plan to cap the price of Russian oil exports — the leaders failed to describe the endgame in the long war of attrition.

An extended conflict would among other things require the United States and its allies to find additional money for military and other aid to Ukraine. For now, it is just a small group of opponents questioning the spending, but that discontent could spread.

Those currents make the next several months crucial for Mr. Biden and his emboldened international coalition.

China has accused NATO of “maliciously attacking and smearing the country” and “provoking confrontation” after the alliance’s leaders announced an assertive new vision that, for the first time, declared China to be a strategic “challenge” alongside NATO’s primary adversary, Russia.

In a statement published on Wednesday on the website of China’s mission to the European Union, an unnamed spokesperson rebuked the alliance’s “Cold War thinking and ideological bias” and vowed to take “firm and strong” measures in response to the new designation.

Born during the Cold War, NATO has traditionally been focused on protecting North America and Europe. But in recent years the military alliance has signaled increasing concerns about China as well, citing its growing military ambitions and rapidly developing offensive cyber capabilities.

Those views hardened this year after China’s leader, Xi Jinping, declared in early February that his country’s friendship with Russia had “no limits,” even as Washington and European governments were warning that Moscow appeared to be preparing to attack Ukraine. Since then, Chinese leaders have declined to condemn Russia for the invasion, instead blaming Washington and NATO for goading Moscow with the military alliance’s expansion in Central and Eastern Europe.

“The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests,” NATO leaders said in a new mission statement issued during their summit in Madrid.

Days before NATO’s declaration, the Group of 7 countries said they intended to raise $600 billion to expand global infrastructure investment in developing countries, a plan meant to counter the $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative that Beijing started in 2013.

The recent moves are part of the Biden administration’s push to strengthen alliances to counter China’s growing political, economic and military influence. Together, the developments have reinforced a sense within Beijing that China is being encircled by hostile powers bent on hobbling the country’s ascent. Adding to Beijing’s concern was that NATO invited the leaders of four countries from the Asia Pacific region to the summit: Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

“Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, it has not yet abandoned its thinking and practice of creating ‘enemies’ and engaging in bloc confrontation,” the Chinese mission’s statement said, referring to NATO.

NATO’s new vision “claims that other countries pose challenges,” the statement went on to say, “but it is NATO that is creating problems around the world.”

The United Nations is coordinating talks among Ukraine, Russia and Turkey in the hopes of hammering out security guarantees that would allow Ukraine to export its grain and help ease a global food crisis that is being exacerbated by the war.

But the Ukrainian government’s negotiator expressed skepticism in a recent interview with The New York Times that Russia would abide by any guarantee unless Kyiv had the military power to enforce it.

The Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, told the Times that the country was preparing for talks in Istanbul to discuss a way to end Russia’s de facto blockade of the Black Sea port of Odesa to allow the shipment of the 20 million metric tons of grain Ukraine has in storage silos.

But he said that only the delivery of powerful naval weapons committed by Western allies would be an effective security guarantee, and he accused Russia of seeking to use the issue to shore up its own position in the Black Sea.

“If we will open up the ports, it means that the northwestern Black Sea will open up to them,” he said. No international backer, he added, “whoever guarantees us,” could be relied on to strike back if Russia then attacked Ukrainian shipping.

“And they understand it,” he said. “That’s why they are pressurizing the world to squeeze Ukraine to open up the ports.”

Before the war began, Ukraine exported about six million metric tons of grain a month, Kate Newton, an emergency coordinator for the U.N. World Food Program in Ukraine, said at a news conference in Kyiv on Thursday. Now, the country is only able to to export about one million metric tons per month, she said.

“We are doing everything we can,” she said, “exporting grain by truck, rail and river.” But, she said, without use of the Black Sea ports, it would not be possible to raise export levels much.

Russian forces have also bombed grain storage centers and fields across Ukraine. When Ukraine started shipping grain from a port on the Danube River, the Russians bombed the primary bridge trucks could use to get there.

In previous negotiations, Moscow has insisted on the right to “inspect” all vessels carrying Ukrainian grain — a condition that Kyiv would not accept.

Ukraine’s military on Thursday said it had driven Russian forces from Snake Island, a strategically important outcrop whose loss could undermine Moscow’s control over Black Sea shipping lanes. But Russia’s de facto blockade showed no sign of easing.

Mr. Umerov and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba have accused Russia of sowing disinformation about who is to blame for the blockade. The grain issue, and even the prospect of famine, have become part an information war waged by Moscow, Mr. Umerov said.

“They are weaponizing the famine,” Mr. Umerov said. “They are addressing the African states, saying, ‘We are always ready to support you, it’s Ukrainians who are not opening the ports.’” African countries are heavily dependent on grain from Russia and Ukraine.

The Russian defense ministry cast its withdrawal from Snake Island as a humanitarian gesture and repeated that it was not to blame for the food crisis. But at a recent appearance, Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the Kremlin mouthpiece RT, appeared to suggest that the crisis could be to Moscow’s political benefit.

“I’ve heard it several times in Moscow from many people: ‘All our hope is in the famine,’” she told the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on June 20, adding that those people’s expectation was that famine would drive countries to lift sanctions on Russia.

Kyiv has been working to counter that narrative. Last week, Mr. Kuleba spent an hour speaking to journalists from Africa, emphasizing Ukraine’s urgency to resume exporting.

“The only country that is not really under time pressure here is Russia,” he said in an interview. “Everyone else is running out of time, be it us as suppliers, African and Asian countries as recipients, or the United Nations, whose reputation is at stake.”

When Russia first invaded Ukraine, the United States warned India against buying more Russian oil, saying that New Delhi could face “consequences.” Now, the West is softening its stance, emphasizing that India doesn’t need to choose sides.

The changing tone reflects the middle path that India is carving out for itself in this crisis as the nation tries to maximize its geopolitical leverage without limiting its economic opportunities. At the summit this week for the Group of 7 leaders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who was invited to attend, made pacts on climate action and development with the West while ignoring its entreaties to help isolate Russia.

India is also trying to position itself as the voice of poorer nations, arguing that sanctions hurt developing countries the most. It has defended its increasing purchases of Russian crude as a necessity at a time of rising inflation.

“All of you will also agree with this, that energy access should not be the privilege of the rich only — a poor family also has the same rights on energy,” said Mr. Modi at a G7 session. “And today, when energy costs are sky-high due to geopolitical tensions, it is more important to remember this thing.”

NATO was applauding on Wednesday after Turkey dropped its objections to allowing Sweden and Finland to join the military alliance. But some people were upset about the agreement, among them members of Sweden’s large Kurdish diaspora and critics of the Turkish government.

Amineh Kakabaveh, a member of Sweden’s Parliament who is of Kurdish descent, accused the Swedish government of betraying the Kurds, thousands of whom, she said, had fought to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group.

She criticized Sweden for caving in to demands from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who agreed to lift his block on Sweden’s and Finland’s membership in return for promises that they would act against terrorist organizations, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which seeks an independent Kurdish state on territory partly within Turkey’s borders.

“It’s unfathomable that Sweden can go along with such demands from Erdogan and Turkey without making any counter demands against Turkey,” Ms. Kakabaveh said, noting that members of Turkey’s Kurdish minority had fled for their lives from Turkey and that dozens of people living in Sweden and Finland could now face extradition.

The P.K.K. is outlawed in Turkey, where it has attacked nonmilitary targets and killed civilians, and the United States and the European Union have designated it as a terrorist organization. Nevertheless, some in Sweden, where there is a relatively large Kurdish diaspora, view it more sympathetically, as a Kurdish nationalist movement.

Mr. Erdogan also remains angry over support from Washington and Stockholm for a P.K.K.-affiliated militia in Syria, where the group was fighting the Islamic State. His government rebuked the United States and Sweden over the matter last year.

Hamza Yalcin, a Turkish writer and journalist who is on the list of those Mr. Erdogan is seeking to extradite, said he worried that the NATO agreement could result in his being sent back to Turkey, where he said he had been tortured and thrown into prison twice, accused of having played a role in trying to overthrow the Turkish government in the 1980s.

“I’m afraid of being extradited,” Mr. Yalcin, 64, said by telephone from his home in southern Sweden, noting that the Turkish military had hanged four of his friends and that his younger brother had died in a Turkish prison. Mr. Yalcin fled to Sweden, where he was granted asylum in 1987, he said.

“I chose Sweden because Sweden was a neutral country,” he said.

Mr. Yalcin became a Swedish citizen in 2007, but that didn’t prevent Interpol, the international law enforcement organization, from arresting him while he was on vacation in Spain in August 2017, on an extradition order issued by Turkey. He spent nearly two months in jail while a court in Madrid investigated charges that he led a terrorist organization. The court eventually released him for lack of evidence.

Jan Hallenberg, research leader at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, said Sweden’s agreement with Turkey did not make any concrete concessions, but rather signaled a paradigm shift in the country’s foreign policy, from idealism to realism.

“I understand the views of Amineh Kakabaveh, the P.K.K. and other Kurds,” Mr. Hallenberg said, noting that he had a Kurdish colleague who had spent 20 months in a Turkish jail.

Still, Mr. Hallenberg said, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, other considerations had become paramount for policymakers “because the security of Sweden and Finland are both threatened.”

Uniper, a German energy provider, is talking to the government about a possible bailout, the economy ministry said Thursday, making it the first major utility to seek help since the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom slashed deliveries to Germany two weeks ago.

Uniper’s share price tumbled 20 percent after it revised a financial forecast, saying that it expected earnings to be “significantly below” those of previous years. The company, based in Düsseldorf, is Germany’s largest importer of Russian gas. Since mid-June, the company said, it has been receiving only 40 percent of the gas it ordered from Gazprom, forcing it to purchase gas on the spot market “at significantly higher prices.”

This month, Gazprom reduced the amount of gas it was sending to Europe through Nord Stream 1, an undersea pipeline that links Russian gas fields to Germany’s northeastern coast. The reduced supplies have forced utilities across Europe to buy gas at high prices as governments scramble to fill storage tanks before winter.

“The German government and Uniper are in talks about stabilization measures,” the economy ministry said on Thursday.

Uniper’s chief executive, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, said his company was discussing several options with the government, including credit facilities and even a government stake in the company. Uniper plays an important role in providing gas to municipally owned utilities across Germany, and is helping the state store gas needed to get the country through the winter.

Last week the German government triggered the second stage of its three-step energy gas plan. The next and final step would allow the state to begin ordering gas rationing that would give priority to essential public services, including hospitals, and to heating private homes over industry.

Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, has warned that if Russian gas deliveries remain as low as they are now, the country could face a shortage by winter.

He said the financial squeeze on German energy companies could be severe, comparing the contagion effect to the way the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the global financial crisis.