KHARKIV, Ukraine — Moscow on Wednesday turned off the natural-gas spigot to the front-line Eastern European states of Poland and Bulgaria, signaling its willingness to take sharp economic aim at those who aid Ukraine, where Russian forces rained shells in the east as they pressed ahead with their devastating 2-month-old invasion.
Along a 300-mile battlefront in Ukraine’s Donbas region, Russian forces managed to capture a small town, Zarichne, the Ukrainian military said in an early morning operational report. The giant Azovstal steelworks in the battered southern port city of Mariupol, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, also came under new bombardment, the military said.
Russia has been trying since the start of the war to capture Mariupol, and the city’s last-ditch defenders and some civilians are holed up inside the sprawling Soviet-era steel complex laced with tunnels and bunkers. Even though fighting continues, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already claimed victory in the siege of the city, which Ukraine refuses to acknowledge.
