LVIV, Ukraine — As President Joe Biden visited Poland on Friday in a show of support for NATO’s eastern flank, Russian military chiefs signaled a streamlining of war aims in Ukraine — a potentially face-saving path for Vladimir Putin to exit what has become a lengthy, grinding and increasingly deadlocked conflict.
Even as Ukraine continued to tout an emerging ability to launch counterattacks against a far stronger invading force, the start of the war’s second month brought fresh evidence of the horrifying toll in civilian lives. Ukrainian officials said Friday that at least 300 people had died in a Russian airstrike this month on a theater in the encircled port city of Mariupol — apparently the war’s worst single episode of civilian fatalities.
At the same time, after weeks of silence on the subject, Russia acknowledged Friday that more than 1,300 of its troops have died in the invasion. That number, while still more than double Moscow’s previously announced tally, is a fraction of most Western estimates of Russian combat losses. NATO has estimated Russian losses to be between 7,000 and 15,000.
