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Sanctions are hitting imports of microchips needed for Moscow’s advanced weapons.
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Hello. This is your Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, a weeknight guide to the latest news and analysis about the conflict.
OPEC Plus agreed to increase oil production as energy prices soar and Russia’s output drops.
Ukrainian troops pushed Russian soldiers back several blocks in street battles in Sievierodonetsk, a regional official said.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on a yacht company that caters to Russian oligarchs.
Ukraine’s soccer team defeated Scotland and is now a game away from qualifying for the World Cup.
Follow our live updates.
In its grinding campaign to seize territory in eastern Ukraine, the Russian military has an Achilles’ heel: Many of its weapons are built around imported microchips.
Since the U.S. and its Western allies announced restrictions on technology exports in February, Russia has had difficulty obtaining microchips to replenish its supply of precision guided munitions, according to one senior U.S. official.
This has given the U.S. and its allies leverage against Russia, my colleagues Ana Swanson, John Ismay and Edward Wong write.
When asked this week if a chip shortage was crippling the Russian military, Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, who oversees export controls, said that the answer was “an unqualified yes.”
U.S. exports of advanced technology to Russia are down by more than 90 percent since the start of the war, Raimondo said.
The restrictions go beyond traditional wartime sanctions issued by the U.S. government, by placing limitations on certain high-tech goods that are manufactured anywhere using American machinery, software or blueprints.
That means even countries that are not in the sanctions coalition with the U.S. and Europe must follow the rules, or risk being sanctioned themselves.
While Russia is one of the world’s largest arms exporters, especially to India, its industry relies heavily on imported inputs.
In 2018, only about half of the military-related equipment and services Russia needed were from domestic sources, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development compiled by Matthew Klein, an economics researcher who tracks the effect of the export controls.
The rest were imported, with about a third coming from the U.S., Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and other governments that have imposed sanctions on Russia.
Chinese trade data also suggest that most companies there are following the restrictions. Although China has continued to buy Russian energy, Chinese exports to the country have fallen sharply since the invasion.
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As the war neared its 100th day, President Volodymyr Zelensky offered some startling figures about the state of the conflict during a video address today to the Parliament of Luxembourg.
Occupied territory
Russia controls one-fifth of Ukraine, an area the size of the Netherlands.
Russian troops have occupied 3,620 cities, towns and villages. Ukraine has taken back 1,017 of them.
A long front line
The entire front line is more than 1,000 kilometers (about 620 miles) long and stretches in a crescent shape from near Kharkiv, in the northeast, to the outskirts of Mykolaiv near the Black Sea in the south.
“Just imagine,” Zelensky said. “Constant fighting, which stretched along the front line for more than a thousand kilometers.”
The human toll
About 14,000 Ukrainian civilians and service members have been killed since the start of the war.
Some 1.5 million people are displaced within the country and five million have fled Ukraine and are now living as refugees.
Zelensky said that Ukrainian officials believed at least 30,000 Russian troops had been killed. (Russia has not released casualty figures since late March, when it said 1,351 soldiers had died.)
In Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of forcibly deporting more than 200,000 Ukrainian children onto its territory.
Ukraine has retaken 20 towns and villages in the southern Kherson region, the head of a local military group said.
The “Crucified Ukraine” museum exhibit in Kyiv chronicles the war in real time.
Several thousand dolphins have died in the Black Sea and may be casualties of war, scientists said.
Around the world
At Hungary’s insistence, the E.U. struck off its sanctions list Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ceding territory to Russia won’t stop the war, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, told ABC News.
The E.U. moved to unblock frozen funds for Poland to reward it for its support of Ukraine.
From Opinion: Russia retains the capacity to seriously challenge the West, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Michael Kofman write.
We also recommend
Natalia Yermak wrote about how she went from working in Kyiv for a children’s show to covering the war as a part of a team for The New York Times.
The artillery rocket launchers the U.S. will send Ukraine can offer firepower that is similar to an airstrike — all from a mobile platform.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow — Yana
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