Moscow Signals a Shift to a More Aggressive Phase of Ukraine War
The major strike came on Thursday, when a Russian submarine fired cruise missiles into the heart of Vinnytsia, a city of 370,000 people about 125 miles southwest of Kyiv, the capital.

Ukrainian officials said that strike killed at least 23 people, including a 4-year-old girl with Down syndrome, causing outrage in Ukraine and the West.

The Russian defense ministry said the strike on Vinnytsia was directed at a building where top officials from Ukraine’s armed forces were meeting foreign arms suppliers. Ukrainian officials have denied that the building contained military targets.

The war is causing significant economic stress in the rest of the world, reducing global growth both this year and next, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told a hybrid meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and heads of central banks.

“The war in Ukraine has intensified, exerting added pressures on commodity and food prices,” she said in a statement on Saturday. “Global financial conditions are tightening more than previously anticipated. And continuing pandemic-related disruptions and renewed bottlenecks in global supply chains are weighing on economic activity.”

Adding to the stress in Germany, which has been dependent on Russian energy, was a new statement by the Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, urging the German company Siemens to return a turbine it has repaired in Canada to ensure the Nord Stream 1 pipeline delivering gas to Europe can resume working after a 10-day maintenance period that began on Monday.