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Every day Russian forces stay in control of Ukrainian territory is another day innocent civilians are murdered.

Bodies of men lie face down in the mud, hands tied behind their backs. Women and girls have been raped. Local political leaders have been tortured and killed. Corpses not left on the street have been thrown into mass graves. In Irpin and Trostyanets, Bucha and Chernihiv, the Russian army has unleashed hell on the inhabitants. It is doing the same on a much larger scale in Mariupol, where the Russians have apparently deployed mobile crematoriums, which (in the innocent days of late February) the world thought were deployed to avoid having to send dead Russian soldiers back to their mothers. Now they are apparently being used to destroy evidence of war crimes.

There can now be no illusions about Russian plans for Ukraine. They are repeating what they did in Chechnya and Syria: systematically destroying the civilian population. It is treatment unseen in Ukraine since the genocidal Soviet famine known as the Holodomor or the Nazi invasion of 1941.

Every day Russian forces stay in control of Ukrainian territory is another day innocent civilians are murdered.

Bodies of men lie face down in the mud, hands tied behind their backs. Women and girls have been raped. Local political leaders have been tortured and killed. Corpses not left on the street have been thrown into mass graves. In Irpin and Trostyanets, Bucha and Chernihiv, the Russian army has unleashed hell on the inhabitants. It is doing the same on a much larger scale in Mariupol, where the Russians have apparently deployed mobile crematoriums, which (in the innocent days of late February) the world thought were deployed to avoid having to send dead Russian soldiers back to their mothers. Now they are apparently being used to destroy evidence of war crimes.

There can now be no illusions about Russian plans for Ukraine. They are repeating what they did in Chechnya and Syria: systematically destroying the civilian population. It is treatment unseen in Ukraine since the genocidal Soviet famine known as the Holodomor or the Nazi invasion of 1941.

Current intelligence suggests the Russians are planning a new, concentrated advance from the Donbas region. Civilians have been encouraged to evacuate Kharkiv and other major eastern Ukrainian cities. If the Russians succeed, they could perpetrate crimes against humanity that would make genocidal former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevics crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo fade into insignificance.

The moral imperative is self-evident: Ukraine must be given all the help it needs to expel Russian forces from its territoryand the sooner, the better. But even if Western leaders set aside worries about nuclear escalation and energy supplies to Europe, arming Ukraine effectively requires more thought and planning than it has been given.

Ukraines most immediate need is more anti-tank weapons (such as Javelin surface-to-air missiles, next-generation light anti-tank weapons, and panzerfausts) and drones (including the Switchblade kamikaze drones from the United States and the highly effective Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 models).

These destroy Russian armored vehicles, leaving its artillery, where Russia keeps most of its firepower, vulnerable to capture. Ukraine could also benefit from anti-ship missiles (the United Kingdom has announced it is supplying some Harpoon anti-ship missiles) and far more longer-range anti-aircraft capabilities to protect its cities and civilian infrastructure from Russian airstrikes.

In the long term, over a period of several years, Ukraine, whatever decision it chooses to make about formal NATO membership, should be integrated into the NATO military supply chain and build up a NATO-style force. Ukraine has imposed heavy casualties on Russia using old weapons. The latest modern tanks, aircraft, missile systems, and drones will give Ukraine the qualitative edge needed to make future Russian aggression unthinkable. This will be the strategic defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin deserves, given that he wanted the war to prevent Ukraine from ever being able to defend itself by integrating into the Western alliance.

NATOs more technologically advanced militaries keep their firepower in the air, allowing them to attack the enemy at greater distances and at less risk to their soldiers and equipment. In this war, Ukraine has shown itself able to operate with the mission commandmajor authority delegated to local commandersnecessary to bring modern weapons firepower to bear in modern combat, where things move too fast to allow top commanders to micromanage effectively.

Mission command enables high-end forces that pack far more power per soldier than Russias and are more suited for a population, like Ukraines, where there are fewer people of fighting age. However, such high-end equipment requires time to train on and needs to be supported by logistics and maintenance services considerably different from the ones Ukraine currently has.

The most difficult problem is what to do in the medium term, when Ukraine will need to fight to drive the Russians back. Such offensive operations require heavy firepowermeaning tanks, planes, and artillery. Ukraine mostly uses ex-Soviet equipment, which is these days mainly manufactured in Russia, so its obviously not possible to just buy more; it must be obtained from other ex-Eastern Bloc states like Slovakia and Poland. NATO equipment can only be used once operators have been trained to use them and maintenance crews learn how to fix them up. Personnel being retrained on new equipment cant be used to operate what Ukraine already has, and right now, it needs everyone it can muster.

There is, however, at least a partial solution, especially on the ground. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies Military Balance, former Warsaw Pact countries have around 750 battle tanks, mostly in Poland, in their inventories. These can be used by Ukraine with minimal adaptation, almost doubling Ukraines prewar tank force. Considerable quantities of artillery can also be supplied.

The air situation is more difficult. Former Warsaw Pact countries retain relatively few Soviet-era aircraft (though the United States was wrong to block Polish MiG-29 fighter jets from being sent to Ukraine), and military aviation has advanced hugely since the 1990s. Although the Ukrainian defense minister insists his pilots could learn to fly F-16s in a few weeks, it would probably take longer to fly them well. Supplying fuel, missiles, and ammunition to Ukraine is also a significant challenge.

However, sending tanks and planes to Ukraine (the Czech government has already announced it has sent tanks, and Poland has begun some transfers this week) leaves holes in these NATO members defenses. Those holes need to be plugged in the medium term with modern equipment and in the short term with permanent West European or North American forces and equipment.

Its clear then that a phased strategy is needed to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to beat Russia.

First, NATO countries should supply all available Warsaw Pact-style equipment that Ukraine can use: This should include tanks, planes, missiles, and ammunition. Eastern European NATO members that supply this equipment must immediately be reinforced with high-end NATO troops and equipment from Western Europe and North America. This is particularly crucial for Poland, which, because of its size, is where most of this equipment would come from.

Second, Ukraine needs Lend-Lease-style programs so it can buy all the equipmentincluding artillery, drones, targeting systems, and loitering munitionsit needs on the market and be able to pay it back over the long term after it regains its territorial integrity and integrates further into Europe. Lithuania has announced it will train Ukraine in the use of Western weapons while the European Union is running its accession process on turbo speed for Ukraine, which has also shown during the war that it has built impressive civil as well as military capacities. (Electric power, internet, and rail services are still operating, for example.)

Third, militaries in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine and Moldova need to be upgraded. The amount of money required will be orders of magnitude greater than the $1 billion or so already being supplied by the United States and the European Peace Facility. This military assistance needs to be part of a coherent long-term program and should be financed by a European financial instrument similar to the post-COVID-19 recovery and resilience fund as well as restricted to countries committed to supporting Ukraine; Prime Minister Viktor Orbans Hungary, for example, should not benefit from the fund.

Fourth, there must be a long-lasting commitment to upgrading Ukraines military to NATO standards and equipment. Even if Ukraine does not formally become a NATO member, it shouldlike Sweden and Finlandnow develop interoperable forces that are strong enough to deter Russia on their own.

Enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia is practical and feasible. The massacres uncovered last week in Bucha, Ukraine, are just a foretaste of what awaits Ukrainians if the world doesnt act.

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How the West Should Arm Ukraine - Foreign Policy

Austrias chancellor visited President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday the first Western leader to see him in person since the Ukraine invasion and said he came away feeling not only pessimistic about peace prospects but fearing that Mr. Putin intended to drastically intensify the brutality of the war.

Describing Mr. Putin as dismissive of atrocities in Ukraine, the visiting chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said it was clear that Russian forces were mobilizing for a large-scale assault in eastern Ukraines Donbas region, the next phase of a war now in its seventh week.

The battle being threatened cannot be underestimated in its violence, Mr. Nehammer said in a news conference after the 75-minute meeting at Mr. Putins residence outside Moscow that the visitor described as blunt and direct.

The Austrian chancellor said he had told the Russian president that as long as people were dying in Ukraine, the sanctions against Russia will stay in place and will be toughened further.

The Kremlin, playing down the meetings significance in a terse statement, said only that it was not long by the standards of recent times.

Even as Mr. Nehammer was visiting, Russian forces were bombarding Ukrainian cities and towns, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said tens of thousands are dead in Mariupol, the besieged southern city that has been the scene of the most intense destruction of the war.

And Mr. Putin, despite Russias military blunders in the war, and for all the Western efforts to ostracize him, still appeared in control of the crisis. He has severely repressed any dissent and benefited from widespread domestic support, continuing revenues from oil and gas sales to Europe, the implicit backing of China and the refusal of much of the world to join sanctions against Russia.

Many commentators in the West had criticized the Austrian chancellor his country is a member of the European Union but not of NATO for having visited Moscow at all, seemingly playing into Mr. Putins narrative that American-led efforts to isolate Russia would necessarily end in failure.

Mr. Nehammer told reporters afterward that he had tried to confront Mr. Putin with the horrors of war and of the war crimes that Russian troops are accused of having committed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and elsewhere. He said he also had told Mr. Putin about the destroyed Russian tanks he saw on a recent visit to Ukraine, to make clear the enormous loss of life that Russia was suffering.

Mr. Nehammer said that Mr. Putin had brushed aside the accusations of war crimes as having been staged by Ukraine.

At the end, Mr. Putin told him: It would be better if it the war ended soon, Mr. Nehammer said, but the meaning of those words was unclear, since they could either signal that Mr. Putin was prepared for further peace talks or that he could be readying a quick and brutal assault in the Donbas, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraines military since 2014.

We can have no illusions: President Putin has totally adopted the logic of war, and is acting accordingly, Mr. Nehammer said. This is why I believe it is so important to permanently confront him with the facts of the war.

How much more brutal the war could become was signaled in an interview with Eduard Basurin, a separatist commander, aired on Russian state television. Mr. Basurin said that with Ukrainian forces ensconced in underground fortifications at a steel plant in Mariupol, storming the redoubt did not make sense. Instead, he said, Russian forces needed to first block the exits and then turn to the chemical troops who will find a way to smoke the moles out of their holes.

Mr. Putin was silent on Monday but was expected to speak publicly on Tuesday, when he will travel to the Vostochny spaceport in Russias far east with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, his ally, to mark the annual Cosmonauts Day.

The Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has increasingly been framed by Mr. Putin as not against that country, but against the West specifically, the United States, as the supposed patron of Mr. Zelenskys government and its aspirations to escape Russias sphere of influence as a former Soviet republic.

Sergey V. Lavrov, Russias foreign minister, said in a Russian television interview that aired on Monday that what the Kremlin calls its special operation in Ukraine is aimed at rolling back American influence which the Russian government characterizes as the root of the worlds ills.

Our special military operation is designed to put an end to the reckless expansion, and the reckless course toward complete dominance, of the United States, Mr. Lavrov said.

The United States and European Union have imposed increasingly severe economic sanctions on Russia over the invasion and are sending weapons to Ukraines military. But they do not want to get drawn into a war with Russia. And the European Union remains reluctant to ban Russian oil and natural gas, which remain critical to the blocs own economic health.

E.U. foreign ministers met on Monday in Luxembourg and the blocs foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said that nothing is off the table, including sanctions on oil and gas.

While ministers discussed a possible phaseout of Russian oil, more easily replaceable from other suppliers than gas, the meeting also laid bare the blocs divisions. Austria, Hungary and Germany opposed any effort, for now, to restrict Russian gas imports.

Still, European Union leaders were expected to approve another 500 million euros in funds to repay member states for sending weapons to Ukraine, which would mean a total of 1.5 billion euros so far nearly equivalent to the $1.7 billion in weapons that the United States has authorized.

Russian troops, having retreated from northern Ukraine after a failed effort last month to reach the capital, Kyiv, have been resupplying and regrouping in Russia and Belarus so they can join the battle in eastern Ukraine. But Western officials said on Monday that effort may still take some time.

Ukrainian officials have been warning since last week that civilians in east Ukraine should flee while they can. Mr. Zelensky warned that tens of thousands of Russian troops were preparing a renewed assault there.

If and when the southern port city of Mariupol finally falls, Russian troops can move north to meet up with Russian troops attempting to move south from Izyum and try to encircle the bulk of Ukraines army, which is concentrated further east, said Mathieu Boulgue, an expert on the Russian military at Chatham House, the London research institution.

That is easier said than done, Mr. Boulgue said, as the battered Russian troops await reinforcements. The Ukrainians, he said, were trying to block the Russians and organize a counterattack that would be more complicated than the fighting around Kyiv, which had forced the Russians to retreat.

Given the reports of Russian atrocities at Bucha, Kramatorsk, Mariupol and other cities, negotiations between the Ukrainian and Russian governments are on hold.

But few believe that the antagonists are ready for real talks, because Mr. Putin needs to show more military gains and because the Ukrainians believe that they can still repel the Russians, said Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO.

The Ukrainians think they have an opportunity not just to prevent Russia from gaining more ground in the east but expelling them from there, while Putin needs to find something he can sell as a victory, Mr. Daalder said. So diplomacy is not going anywhere.

If and when talks on a settlement finally occur, Mr. Putin will inevitably be part of them, said Franois Heisbourg, a French defense expert. Diplomats deal with leaders of governments, no matter how distasteful, he said.

The West also hopes that increasing economic pain will encourage Mr. Putin to scale down the war and end it. Russia is already is deep recession and its economy is expected to shrink by 11 percent this year, the World Bank reported.

But the impact is severe on Ukraine, too. The bank forecast that Ukraines economy would shrink by about 45 percent this year because of the Russian invasion and the impact of a deep humanitarian crisis.

Mr. Putin originally named one goal of the war as the denazification of Ukraine, falsely labeling as Nazis those who resist Russian domination. An article on Monday in a Russian state newspaper, Parlamentskaya Gazeta, written by an adviser to the chairman of Russias lower house of Parliament, expanded on that concept to define the enemy as Ukrainian-American neo-Nazism.

The fight also included a cold war against enemies of the state inside Russia, the article said, adding: The denazification of Ukraine is impossible without a parallel denazification of Russia.

It was the latest sign that, even as the war in Ukraine rages, Mr. Putin is priming his security apparatus for an ever-widening intolerance for dissent. The crackdown has accelerated in recent weeks, with pro-war Russians turning in teachers and neighbors who speak out against the war.

Last Friday, Russia closed some of the last remaining independent institutions of civil society, including the Carnegie Moscow Center and the Moscow offices of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It expanded the practice of naming government critics as foreign agents, for the first time adding a popular musician to the list: the rapper Ivan Dryomin, 25, who goes by the name Face.

Steven Erlanger reported from Brussels and Anton Troianovski from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Monika Pronczuk in Brussels.

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What Happened on Day 47 of the War in Ukraine - The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Exum: The Russian military has descended into inhumanity

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

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

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

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

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

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Why Ukraine Is Winning - The Atlantic

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

Violence is not my weapon, he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He took another sip and stared into his glass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You cant even imagine the hatred, he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its a very ambiguous, complicated feeling, she said.

And she knows she will be judged.

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

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

April 10, 2022

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

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