Nato chief says war not going to Moscow’s plan

Almost three months after Russia shocked the world by invading Ukraine, its military faces a bogged-down war, the prospect of a bigger Nato, and an opponent buoyed by wins on and off the battlefield.

Top diplomats from Nato met in Berlin with the alliance’s chief, who declared that the war ‘‘is not going as Moscow had planned’’.

‘‘Ukraine can win this war,’’ Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, adding that the alliance must continue to offer military support to Kyiv. He spoke by video link to the meeting as he recovers from a Covid-19 infection.

On the diplomatic front, both Finland and Sweden took steps bringing them closer to Nato membership despite Russian objections. Finland announced Sunday that it was seeking to join Nato, saying the invasion had changed Europe’s security landscape. Several hours later, Sweden’s governing party endorsed the country’s own bid for membership, which could lead to an application in days.

If the two non-aligned Nordic nations become part of the alliance, it would represent an affront to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has called Nato’s post-Cold War expansion in Eastern Europe as a threat to Russia. Nato says it is a purely defensive alliance.

While Moscow lost ground on the diplomatic front, Russian forces also failed to make territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine said it held off Russian offensives in the east, and Western military officials said the campaign Moscow launched there after its forces failed to seize the capital, Kyiv, has slowed to a snail’s pace.

Ukraine, meanwhile, celebrated a morale-boosting victory in the Eurovision Song Contest. The folk-rap ensemble Kalush Orchestra won the glitzy pan-European competition with its song Stefania, which has become a anthem among Ukrainians during the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that his nation would claim the customarywinner’s honour of hosting the next annual competition.

Russian and Ukrainian fighters are engaged in a grinding battle for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas. Ukraine’s most experienced and best-equipped soldiers have fought Moscow-backed separatists there for eight years.

Even with its setbacks, Russia continues to inflict death and destruction across Ukraine. Over the weekend, its forces hit a chemical plant and 11 high-rise buildings in Siverodonetsk, in the Donbas, the regional governor said. Governor Serhii Haidaii said two peoplewere killed in the shelling and warned residents still in the city to stay in underground shelters.

Russian missiles destroyed ‘‘military infrastructure facilities’’ in the Yavoriv district ofwestern Ukraine, near the border with Poland, the governor of the Lviv region said. Lviv is amajor gateway for the Westernsupplied weapons Ukraine has acquired during thewar.

The Ukrainian military said it held off a renewed Russian offensive in the Donetsk area of the Donbas. Russian troops also tried to advance near the eastern city of Izyum, but Ukrainian forces stopped them, the governor of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Oleh Sinegubov, reported.

And Ukraine blew up two railway bridges that had been seized by Russian forces in the eastern region of Luhansk, Ukraine’s Special Operations Command said Sunday. It posted a video of exploding bridges on Facebook. The command also said it destroyed Russian communication lines in the area to prevent Russia from bringing in more troops to attack the towns of Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, it said.

The Ukrainian claims could not be independently verified, but Western officials also painted a somber picture for Russia.

Britain’s Defence Ministry said in its daily intelligence update that the Russian army had lost up to one-third of the combat strength it committed to Ukraine in late February and was failing to gain any substantial territory.

‘‘Under the current conditions, Russia is unlikely to dramatically accelerate its rate of advance over the next 30 days,’’ theministry said on Twitter.

The assessments of Russia’s war performance came as Russian troops retreated from around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which was a key military objective earlier in the war and was bombarded forweeks. The regional governor said there had been no shelling in the city for several days, though Russia continued to strike the wider Kharkiv region. –

GETTY IMAGES Kharkiv residents spend the day underground in a metro station on Sunday in Kharkiv. Although Russian shelling has largely ceased in the city, residential areas are devastated, including massive Soviet-era apartment buildings, which often house seniors on fixed incomes and families with limited resources. Metro stations have essentially become homeless shelters for people without options.