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As their standoff over Ukraine continues, Moscow and Washington are playing an increasingly high-stakes, increasingly complex game of signaling to try to secure their aims without firing a shot.

Traditional diplomacy is just one component of this dance. Troop movements, sanctions warnings and legislation, embassy closures, leader summits, and intelligence leaks are all aimed, in part, at proving each countrys willingness to carry out certain threats or accept certain risks.

It is a form of high-stakes negotiation, conducted in actions as much as words, meant to settle the future of Europe just as conclusively as if decided by war, by telegraphing how a conflict would play out rather than waging it directly.

Russia, by shifting thousands of troops from its far east to Ukraines border, hopes to convince Washington and Kyiv that it is willing to endure a major war to secure its demands by force, so those countries are better off meeting Russian demands peacefully.

The Biden administration, by stating that a Russian invasion may be imminent, even closing its embassy in Kyiv, and vowing economic retaliation, signals that Moscow cannot expect desperate American concessions, making further escalation less worthwhile.

There have been a flurry of such gestures. Russia held Black Sea naval exercises, implying it could close off trade waters. President Biden issued joint statements with European leaders, conveying that they are not balking at American sanctions threats that would harm Europe, too.

But the more both sides try to make their threats credible, for example by relocating troops, the more they heighten the risk of a miscalculation that could careen out of control.

Each side also cultivates ambiguity about what it will or will not accept, and will or will not do, in hopes of forcing its adversary to prepare for all eventualities, spreading its energies thin.

The White House has said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could decide this week whether to invade, deflating Moscows careful murkiness, while also demonstrating, especially to cautious Europeans, that any invasion would be driven by Russia, rather than in response to some outside provocation.

On Tuesday, Moscow moved to recreate confusion, withdrawing a handful of forces even as it continued nearby war games and as Mr. Putin accused Ukraine of genocide against its native Russophone minority. By feinting simultaneously toward de-escalation and invasion on Tuesday, Moscow builds pressure on the West to prepare for both.

This dynamic is very volatile, said Keren Yarhi-Milo, a Columbia University political scientist who studies how countries signal and maneuver amid crises.

A range of factors particular to this crisis, she added differing political cultures, multiple audiences, rising uncertainty makes the signaling in this case very, very difficult.

The result is a diplomatic cacophony nearly as difficult to navigate as war itself, with stakes just as high.

With their positioning, Moscow and Washington are struggling to resolve two outstanding questions about a possible conflict, each to their benefit.

Would a Russian invasion bring Moscow more reward than downside?

And, would the West have less tolerance than Russia for the pain of Mr. Bidens proposed sanctions, and abandon them?

If Moscow can convince Washington that the answer to both is yes, then Mr. Biden and his allies would, in theory, be forced to conclude that they are better off delivering whatever concessions will keep Russia from launching a war.

But if Washington can persuade Moscow that both answers are no, then Mr. Putin will have every incentive to cut his losses and step back from the brink.

Mr. Putin has been ambiguous about what he would consider a successful invasion of Ukraine. And moves like his recent visit to China or his ambassadors bluster, shrugging off sanctions, signal that he is ready and able to bear the foreseeable costs.

Of course, if war were really so advantageous, it could have already begun, one of many hints that Mr. Putin may be partly bluffing, although by how much is impossible to say.

Feb. 15, 2022, 5:59 p.m. ET

Mr. Biden, for his part, has sent weapons to Ukraine, a message that he would make any conflict more painful for Russia, and has laid out retaliatory sanctions in detail. He has implied Western unity over sanctions that may be just as much a bluff as Mr. Putins war talk.

His administration has also publicized what it says are Russian plans to fake a justification for war, implying that any such ploy would be quickly unmasked, making it less attractive.

But threats and bluffs work best when they are backed up by action, increasing the risk of a war that neither side may truly want.

And these efforts are complicated by each sides need to persuade multiple audiences of contradictory things.

Mr. Biden must persuade Mr. Putin that Western sanctions would be automatic and severe, while also convincing Europeans, who would bear much of the cost, that sanctions would not hit them too hard or be carried out without their consent.

Similarly, Mr. Putin is seeking to position himself to Western leaders as ready for war, while convincing war-averse Russian citizens that he is being dragged into one, for example with false claims of American and Ukrainian aggression.

But Western leaders often struggle to differentiate which statements Mr. Putin intends them to take seriously and which he expects them to ignore as bluster for domestic consumption, Christopher Bort, a former U.S. intelligence official, warned in an essay for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Kremlins torrent of falsehoods over Ukraine, Mr. Bort added, risks persuading Western leaders that Moscows diplomatic entrees can be ignored as cover for an invasion it has already decided to launch potentially foreclosing an offramp from war.

Your system is much more open than ours, said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. That produces a lot of misunderstanding.

Because Kremlin decision-making is dominated by a handful of intelligence and military officials, Mr. Gabuev said, there is a tendency to assume that Washington operates the same way.

Offhand comments by American military officers are given special weight in Moscow, while lawmakers who drive much of Washingtons politics are ignored.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows growing military presence on the Ukrainian border was a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

Such cultural misunderstandings, Mr. Gabuev added, have become considerably worse in recent years, as Washington and Moscow have expelled one anothers diplomats and ended many unofficial exchanges, hampering their visibility into one anothers politics.

This is not always dangerous. Many in Moscow, assuming that Mr. Biden operates like Mr. Putin, believe that Washington has ginned up the appearance of conflict with the intention of declaring a false American victory when the more reasonable Mr. Putin rolls back the deployments he has insisted are defensive, Mr. Gabuev said.

That misunderstanding significantly eases Mr. Putins option to withdraw. And many in Russia view the West as the aggressor, and so would take an averted conflict as Mr. Putin triumphing, not surrendering.

Still, the less Washington and Moscow understand one another, the harder it will be for them to decipher each others signals and anticipate each others reactions.

The Russian presidents circle of trust has consolidated over time, insulating him from information that does not fit with his prior beliefs, the scholars Adam E. Casey and Seva Gunitsky wrote in Foreign Affairs.

As Mr. Putins inner circle has shrunk, they wrote, it has grown dominated by yes-men who tell him what they think he wants to hear and by security service leaders who tend to be hawkish and distrustful toward the West.

He would hardly be alone in this: research finds that strongmen leaders like him are, for just this reason, likelier to start wars and likelier to lose them.

So what Washington takes as Russian brinksmanship or bluffing, for example shrugging off sanctions threats or implying that some Ukrainians would welcome Russian liberators, may reflect sincere belief due to political dysfunction.

Information flows to Putin are choppy at best, and sanctions are a highly technical topic that arent even well understood in Washington, said Eddie Fishman, a top sanctions policy official in the Obama administration.

So far, both sides have avoided any obvious misreadings of each other. This may stem in part from the length of the crisis, which has allowed each capital to repeatedly telegraph its intentions and capabilities.

But that same factor time also creates more opportunities for a mistake as each side escalates.

Every day that were not resolving it, we are increasing the percentage chance that something will go wrong, said Dr. Yarhi-Milo, the international relations scholar.

Were testing the nerves of a lot of people at the same time, she added. It can take a really bad turn very quickly.

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On Ukraine, U.S. and Russia Wage Signaling War to Avert Actual War - The New York Times

The future of NATO, the transatlantic security alliance, is at the centre of the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine.

Moscow wants guarantees that its neighbour, a former Soviet state, will be permanently barred from joining the United States-led alliance. It has also called for NATO to cease all military activity in Eastern Europe, blaming it for undermining security in the region.

But Western leaders have rejected those demands. They have argued the Kremlin cannot be allowed an effective veto on Kyivs foreign policy decisions and defended NATOs open door policy, which grants any European nation the right to ask to join.

Amid the deadlock, here are five things you need to know about NATO:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949, in the aftermath of World War II.

The alliance was initially part of an effort by the US and its European allies to deter any expansion of the then-Soviet Union (USSR) and reduce the possibility of conflict on the continent by encouraging greater political integration between its powers.

In the decades since, it has steadily expanded its orbit, bringing a swathe of central and eastern European states into its ranks after the USSR collapsed.

This enlargement has troubled Moscow, which is wary of the alliance edging ever closer to its borders and hemming it in from the West.

NATO is comprised of 30 member states.

Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the US were its founding members.

The newest member state is North Macedonia, which joined in 2020.

Three so-called partner countries Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia have declared their aspirations to become part of the alliance, which says its purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

Ukraine has repeatedly stated its intention to become a NATO member state an objective that is written into the countrys constitution.

Joining the alliance would boost Ukraines defensive strength, because of NATOs principle of collective defence. That principle set out by Article 5 in NATOs founding treaty means an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies, committing them to protect one another.

In 2008, NATO leaders promised Ukraine it would one day be given the opportunity to join the alliance. But despite deepening cooperation in the years since, there is thought to be little chance of that happening any time soon.

Western powers are yet to be convinced Kyiv has done enough work to eradicate corruption and meet the other political, economic and military criteria required to enter the alliance, as set out in its 1995 Study on Enlargement.

NATOs members may also be wary of Ukraine joining their ranks while tensions with Moscow remain high, as such a move could draw the alliance into a direct conflict with Russia in the event it launches an attack, because of the collective defence principle.

On Monday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the issue was not on the agenda following talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, despite Ukraines president restating his countrys membership ambition.

All 30 NATO allies must unanimously approve a new country becoming part of the alliance.

Putin has said it is now time for NATOs waves of expansion to be reversed and for the alliance to guarantee that Ukraine never be allowed to become a member.

He argues that the West has betrayed Moscow by breaking alleged verbal commitments made at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not expand eastwards. The alliance denies that any such promises were made.

In a show of force, Russia has massed more than 100,000 troops around Ukraines borders and sent sweeping security demands to Washington and the Brussels-headquartered alliance.

In response, NATO, the US and its European allies have been scrambling to negotiate with Moscow and de-escalate the situation.

But the high-stakes diplomatic efforts have borne little success. Washington and NATO have rejected the Kremlins central demands that the alliance cease all military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine be barred from membership while Russia has refused to budge on its requests.

As tensions continue to simmer, Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have made clear they will not send troops to defend Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion.

But several of Kyivs allies in NATO, with the exception of Germany, have supplied Kyiv with weapons as it ramps up preparations to repel a potential incursion. Meanwhile, NATO has moved to reinforce its eastern flank with additional troops and military hardware.

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NATO and the Ukraine-Russia crisis: Five key things to know - Al Jazeera English

The outage hit the website for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, shown here during a ceremony last October. Ukrainian Defense Ministry/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images hide caption

The outage hit the website for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, shown here during a ceremony last October.

WASHINGTON Amid heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine, multiple Ukrainian government websites and banking systems were temporarily inaccessible to users Tuesday afternoon. But so far it remains unclear who was behind the disruption, and the overall intent.

The outage, which impacted the website of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Armed Services as well as two large Ukrainian banks, Privatbank and Oschadbank, was the result of a digital denial of service attack, according to multiple Ukrainian government agencies.

The reports quickly generated concern, especially given ongoing U.S. government warnings that Russia might launch a massive cyberattack impacting critical infrastructure in Ukraine, such as communications or banking, prior to an invasion.

Digital attackers targeted the organizations' online services to prevent them from functioning properly, but the intrusion fell well short of any kind of massive cyberattack which would typically involve visible manipulation of content on the websites, penetration of servers, or apparent theft or destruction of data or devices.

The Defense Ministry shared in a tweet that it received an unusually high volume of requests to load the website, suggesting attackers were flooding the servers with illegitimate requests in an attempt to overload them and prevent citizens from accessing the site.

The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine, which was leading a recent investigation into a website defacement and data destruction campaign linked to Russian hackers last month, published a statement claiming "there is a powerful DDoS attack on a number of information resources of Ukraine," though it also noted that as of Tuesday evening, banking services have already been restored.

There were also reports from the Ukrainian Cyber Police on Tuesday morning debunking a wave of fake SMS messages sent to Ukrainian citizens claiming ATM services were down.

Given that only a few organizations experienced disruptions and the outages were not long-lasting, the impact on Ukrainians' access to their banks and government websites seemed extremely limited. People in Ukraine posted tweets about still being able to access their bank accounts through ATMs, or by using their digital bank cards, and the government agencies were able to communicate with the world through social media during the outage.

But given the heightened tensions in the region and the looming threat of a Russian invasion, these kinds of attacks could have a bigger psychological impact.

Olena Prokopenko, a visiting fellow for the public policy think tank the German Marshall Fund and the co-founder of the Transatlantic Task Force on Ukraine, told NPR these kinds of digital attacks "have been our major concern" over the past few hours. "Hybrid warfare in action," she continued.

For the people of Ukraine, she said, there's some uncertainty because the government has not been communicating clearly about what to do in an emergency.

"People don't understand what to do in case of escalation, so they just choose to carry on, hoping that the military and the government will take care of things," Prokopenko said.

This attack, while rather unsophisticated and short-lived, could be one of the early salvos in a Russian invasion, though it hasn't yet been linked directly to Russia.

"Though we've anticipated disruptive Russian attacks against Ukraine, we've seen no evidence of responsibility at this time, and denial of service attacks are notoriously difficult to attribute," said John Hultquist, the vice president of intelligence analysis for the cybersecurity firm Mandiant.

Ukrainian citizens, however, have become used to regular digital attacks from Russia since at least 2014, often much more serious ones, including shutting off the power grid.

John Graham-Cumming, the Chief Technology Officer of Cloudflare, a company that specializes in defending against denial of service attacks, told NPR that his company has actually not seen a huge uptick in malicious traffic on Tuesday that has impacted its customers in Ukraine. The websites and banks impacted, however, are not Cloudflare customers, he said, and Graham-Cumming said it's possible attackers chose to avoid organizations protected by Cloudflare purposely.

Graham-Cumming noted a small uptick in broader attack traffic around lunchtime, but nothing "particularly noteworthy," as well as an increase in digital congestion across the Internet in Ukraine around midday, potentially suggesting an increase in internet searches.

Cybersecurity company Akamai also specializes in defending against denial of service attacks, though it had limited visibility into the attacks in Ukraine on Tuesday. Still, according to Akamai's Chief Security Officer, Boaz Gelbord, "In times of international conflict, DDoS is often the attack tool of choice of threat actors."

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Ukraine says government websites and banks were hit with denial of service attack - NPR

Russia is sending thousands more troops to its border with Ukraine in a sign that Vladimir Putin could extend the crisis for weeks, as Boris Johnson warned the situation had become very, very dangerous.

British officials estimate that a further 14 Russian battalions are heading towards Ukraine, each numbering about 800 troops, on top of the 100 battalions massed on the borders a force already believed capable of launching an invasion.

Ministers are of the view that the Russian president has not yet decided to attack Ukraine and may never do so. But the continued buildup of forces in excess of 150,000 prompted Johnson to cut short a trip to Cumbria to chair a Cobra emergency meeting on Tuesday.

On Monday night, the prime minister spoke with Joe Biden and concluded, according to Downing Street, that there remained a crucial window for diplomacy and for Russia to step back from its threats towards Ukraine. Britain said the two emphasised the importance of unity and, while neither the UK nor the US will send troops to defend Ukraine, they insisted that any further Russian incursion would result in a protracted crisis for Russia.

Earlier, Johnson said: This is a very, very dangerous, difficult situation. We are on the edge of a precipice, but there is still time for President Putin to step back.

He said it was important for western allies to remain united in the face of Russian pressure. Ukraines future membership of Nato could not be bargained away as part of western leaders efforts, he added.

Britain believes Russia has committed about 60% of its ground forces to the buildup and doubled its available air power in the region, but thinks Putin could extend the crisis for weeks or even longer.

Although Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has said there could be a Russian invasion almost immediately, on Monday she told MPs in a private conference call that Putin could keep up the military pressure on Ukraine for months, according to some of those who listened in.

Parliament could be recalled if Russia invades Ukraine this week, No 10 indicated. Asked whether this was a possibility, Johnsons official spokesperson said: In that situation, you would expect that the prime minister would want parliament to be updated and for it to have its say.

Russia has always denied that it intends to invade. Its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told Putin in a carefully staged public meeting on Monday that while negotiations between Russia and the west could not go on indefinitely I would suggest to continue and expand them at this stage.

Olaf Scholz, Germanys chancellor, is due to visit Moscow on Tuesday, although no breakthrough is expected given Russias demands: that Ukraine never be allowed to join Nato and that the west withdraw troops from eastern Europe.

Last week the US told allies that an invasion could come as soon as Wednesday, but the continued Russian buildup suggests the Kremlin did not believe it had assembled all the forces it could to threaten its smaller neighbour.

Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said his country would not be intimidated by Russia and that Wednesday should be a day of unity. We want peace and we want to resolve all issues exclusively through negotiations, he said, but added that the Ukrainian army was many times stronger than eight years ago and that Ukraine wanted freedom and was ready to fight for it should Russia invade.

Nevertheless, the warnings prompted the UK to advise all British citizens in Ukraine to leave now, while commercial means were still available. It is estimated there are about 1,300 Britons in Ukraine, although 200 have said they do not want to leave.

On Monday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the last few US diplomats in the Kyiv embassy would move west to Lviv due to the dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces.

On Saturday, a senior state department official had told reporters that a handful of US diplomats would stay in the capital to be able to continue working closely with the Ukrainian government, and to be able to ensure weve got the best possible information for our senior leaders and the president about whats happening broadly in society. The change of mind two days later suggests US security assessments have darkened still further.

The UK ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, had said she would remain in Kyiv with a core team of diplomats. Downing Street said British nationals should not expect a military airlift from Ukraine, and that they should leave via commercial means and there were still flights available.

Defence sources said the plan for any Russian invasion would involve a sudden thrust aimed at encircling Kyiv, but that it would be accompanied by multiple axes of attack aimed at cutting off Ukrainian forces in the east of the country. Russia would seek to install a puppet government, they added.

But Britain believes Putin is at risk of underestimating the level of Ukrainian popular resistance to any invasion and attempt at regime change. The UK view is that there is likely to be a reasonably well-organised insurgency and that Russia could become bogged down in a conflict that could claim tens of thousands of lives.

The US, UK and EU have been working jointly on a package of economic sanctions that would target Russia in the event of an attack, and Truss indicated to MPs in the briefing that they would probably be implemented in waves.

Oligarchs close to Putin would be the first to be targeted, she said, telling MPs the UK was ready to press send with list of names if an invasion began. But an economic crime bill planned for the next session of parliament, called for by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, would not be brought forward in an emergency.

Layla Moran, the Lib Dems foreign affairs spokesperson, said: The concern with the policy on sanctions is that it is too little, too late. We have known about Russian hostile activities and interference in our democracy for some time.

Originally posted here:
Russia sending thousands more troops to Ukraine border - The Guardian

ALONG THE DNIEPER RIVER, Ukraine Fishing on a marbled expanse of frozen river, dressed head to toe in camouflage, Viktor Berkut looked very much the Soviet-born Everyman, and has the biography to match. He joined the Red Army in 1970 and spent three decades building air defense and rocket systems directed against Moscows ideological enemies in the West.

But the enemy has changed, and for that Mr. Berkut blames President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. With roughly 130,000 Russian troops now threatening his native Ukraine, the 71-year-old pensioner says any connection he once felt to Russia is gone: Ukraine should join NATO, he said, and put up bloody resistance should Mr. Putin order an attack.

I never thought like this, Mr. Berkut said mournfully, as he plunked a Day-Glo lure through a hole in the ice of the Dnieper River near the city of Cherkasy. I lived all right in the Soviet Union. But now Ive begun to understand.

We need to oppose Russia, he added. We have chosen, not a Russian path, but a European one.

His sentiments underscore a profound shift that Ukrainians have undergone in the eight years since Russia first invaded and snatched away parts of their country. A people long divided by profound disputes over what language to speak, what church to follow and what historical heroes to revere has begun to stitch together a sense of common purpose in the face of a menacing foe.

Mr. Putin has made clear that he views Ukrainians and Russians as one people, divided by malign Western forces a historical injustice he says he is determined to fix. This has driven many Ukrainians to sometimes dramatic declarations of separation. People who grew up in Russian-speaking homes now choose to speak Ukrainian exclusively, and in some cases have refused to teach the language of their parents to their children.

Across the country, Lenin statues and hammer-and-sickle emblems of the Soviet past have been toppled, replaced by monuments to Ukrainians killed in a 2014 uprising that drove a Moscow-backed government from Kyiv. After four centuries of subservience to Moscow patriarchs, Ukraines Orthodox Church formally split with the Russian church in 2019.

Russia remains a dominating political and cultural force in Ukraine: its rappers and Tik-Tokers are popular even among young people who increasingly take their cultural cues from the West. In the Eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Ukraine is fighting Russian-backed separatists, many Ukrainians still feel a strong kinship with the Russians living just over the border. And across Ukraine, a raucous public reckoning over Russias place in the countrys past, and its future, is unresolved.

Amid warnings from the West that Russia could attack any day, the photographer Brendan Hoffman and I set off on a journey to explore what it means to be a Ukrainian at this moment of national peril. For 560 miles, we followed the Dnieper, a sickle-shaped river that stretches the length of Ukraine, physically separating the countrys western regions from the lands to the east, long considered to be more susceptible to Moscows gravitational pull.

Traveling along the river today, those divisions, while not gone completely, are less visible, outshone in many ways by a sense of common struggle.

We began our journey in Ukraines capital, Kyiv, where the Dnieper River flows past the golden domes of an 11th-century monastery and a 200-foot steel statue of a woman holding a sword and shield built to memorialize the Soviet victory in World War II.

But Kyivs most revered monument is of a much newer vintage. At the top of a hill, a short distance from Independence Square, or Maidan, sits a small memorial of black steel and granite plaques engraved with the spectral faces of protesters, known as the Heavenly Hundred, who were gunned down over several days in 2014 in an uprising Ukrainians call the Revolution of Dignity.

The revolt prompted Mr. Putin concerned that Ukraine was moving irrevocably toward the West to order the annexation of Crimea and instigate a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.

It also changed the way many Ukrainians see themselves. In a poll taken in 2001, only about half the country supported Ukraines declaration of independence from the Soviet Union a decade earlier. A 2021 poll found that number had risen to 80 percent, with nearly half the country in support of NATO membership.

Ukraine as a nation was born on Maidan in 2014, said Yevhen Hlibovytsky, a professor and public opinion pollster in Kyiv. Thats the point when the conflict became unbearable for Putin.

For many Ukrainians, the memorial to the Heavenly Hundred has become a site of pilgrimage. Parents of the dead visit it on their childrens birthdays and politicians come for photo ops.

Similar memorials can be found in almost every city and town. But Kyiv is where they died, many within sight of the memorial that now bears their likenesses.

About three hours downriver from Kyiv is the city of Cherkasy, scattered with memorials to veterans of a century of war. At the regional museum, in an exhibition on the 2014 uprising, is a photograph of a local photographer named Garry Efimov, his hair wet with blood after an encounter with riot police.

The experience was so traumatic, Mr. Efimov said, that he stopped speaking his native Russian and instead now speaks only in Ukrainian.

It is difficult actually, when you always read Russian books and literature, Bulgakov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, he said in an interview at his art nouveau studio. But I succeeded, and now it is harder to speak in Russian than Ukrainian.

Though most Ukrainians speak or at least understand both Russian and Ukrainian, debates over the primacy of one language are among the most contentious within Ukraine and also between Ukraine and Russia. Last year, a new law took effect requiring anyone working in customer service, whether waiters or bank tellers, to start any interaction with Ukrainian.

There are also strict quotas on the amount of Russian-language programming permitted on Ukrainian TV and radio.

Mr. Putin has described efforts to limit Russian in Ukraine as genocide, and has justified Russias annexation of Crimea in part by asserting the need to protect Russian speakers there.

While there are hard-liners in Ukraine on both sides of the debate, many more are like Natalia Polishchuk and Aleksandr Yaryomenko, who own a store in Cherkasy selling traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts called vyshyvanky.

Feb. 15, 2022, 5:59 p.m. ET

In the store we speak Ukrainian, but between us we speak Russian, said Ms. Polishchuk, who is 51. We lived in the Soviet Union, were of an age, you understand.

But that does not mean they are any less patriotic, said Mr. Yaryomenko, who is 60.

If someone took over your kitchen and started frying cutlets there they took Crimea and a piece of Donbas what would you do, pat them on the head? he said. We need to support our homeland, our Ukraine.

Even far from the front lines, it is difficult to avoid reminders of war. In Dnipro, a city of one million people five hours farther downriver, an entire square has been turned into a life-size diorama. It features armored personnel carriers, a tank turret and other artifacts from a fierce battle in the east in which a handful of Ukrainian soldiers, known as the Cyborgs, held off a siege by Russian-backed separatists that ended in early 2015 after 242 days.

Nearby, at a hospital for veterans, Aleksandr Segeda, a retired sergeant, who was born in Russia, but fought against the separatists in the east, needs no reminders of the war.

You greet someone in the morning, and by lunch you hear that hes no longer alive and hes 22 years old and has pregnant wife and a small child, Mr. Segeda said, drifting through a memory. Forgetting that is impossible. And so is forgiving.

Others are trying to look toward the future, even as the threat of a new war looms.

Economic ties between Ukraine and Russia were once so strong that when a state-of-the-art steel plant opened across the river in 2012, Valery Gergiev, the conductor of St. Petersburgs Mariinsky Theater and close friend of Mr. Putin, gave a concert to mark the occasion.

In the two years before war broke out, Russia accounted for nearly half the factorys sales of wheels for railroad cars and nearly a quarter of its sales of steel piping. Now the factory, Interpipe Steel, sells nothing to Russia.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows growing military presence on the Ukrainian border was a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

Interpipe was forced to make huge investments to increase the quality of its products to meet the higher standards for export to Europe and North America, even while some of its employees left to join the fight in the east, said its spokeswoman, Svetlana Manko. Sales have not yet reached prewar levels, but theyre climbing steadily, she said.

I think this trauma has nudged all Ukrainian businesses to find ways to develop, she said.

A short drive further south through fallow gray-brown sunflower fields took us to Zaporizhzhya, the heartland of what was once an independent settlement of Cossacks.

At a drafty gym on the citys industrial outskirts, a group of young boys and girls dressed in baggy red Cossack pants were practicing fending off saber blows and body slamming one another, while one boy honed his technique with a whip. They were learning a Ukrainian form of martial arts called spas, a tradition that had largely fallen out of favor during the Soviet era, their teacher, Yaroslav Pavlenko, explained. In the years since the war began, he said, there has been a concerted effort to revive it.

Now that there is open aggression being committed against Ukraine, peoples minds are changing, Mr. Yaroslav said, adding that patriotism is now welcomed.

Even while learning to fight, Mr. Pavlenkos wife, Oksana, said, the children are shielded from news about the buildup of Russian troops. She avoids the news, herself, when she can.

The last time I watched the news I had two desires, she said. The first was to run out to the store and buy supplies of buckwheat and sugar. And the second was to grab all my documents and leave the country.

Of course, logically Im not prepared to do that, she added.

It was dark by the time we reached Kherson, the last large city along the Dnieper before it flows into the Black Sea. But the yellow facade of the Dormition Cathedral was brilliantly lit, and the sounds of a choir echoed from within.

Inside, a troika of priests in marigold-colored mantles intoned prayers in a deep baritone.

In 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox church was granted independence after 400 years of subordination to the patriarch of Moscow.

For many Ukrainians it was another victory in the drive to separate fully from Moscows influence. Parishes across Ukraine rushed to change their allegiances, though not all.

The Dormition Cathedral in Kherson remains loyal to Moscow, and some of its parishioners view Russia as a more benign force than many of their compatriots.

For all of our existence dark forces have been trying to divide us, said Lyudmila Ivanovna, who would only give her name and patronymic.

She was sympathetic to Russias intervention in eastern Ukraine, which she said had historically been one of the richest regions in the Russian Empire. Why should she have to speak a new language or go to a new church, she asked, if we were all sent here by the same God.

As we parted after the evening service, she assured me that she had nothing against Ukrainians from the west, who might hold different views.

My husband is from western Ukraine, she said. Its true, we divorced, but never mind.

The rest is here:
Ukrainians Find Common Purpose in Opposing Russia - The New York Times