Ukraine’s President Zelensky responds to Russian threats

Russian men who have been drafted to say goodbye to relatives at a recruiting office in Moscow on Tuesday.

KYIV, Ukraine - President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government are responding with defiance and a touch of bravado to a stream of threats from Russia as it prepares to take the provocative step of declaring parts of Ukraine to be Russian territory. Amid ominous signals from Moscow about the use of nuclear weapons, Ukrainian forces are pressing ahead with their attack on Russian troops in the east and south, areas Russia intends to claim as its own, amid ominous signals from Moscow about the war. Government officials are pursuing a propaganda advantage by posting instructions on social media, in Russian, about how Russian soldiers can surrender safely. Zelensky has taken pains to point out that he is not dismissive of the Russian threat. He said he did not believe that Mr. Putin was bluffing about threats of military escalation or the use of nuclear weapons. He also gave a public reminder of Ukraine's recent successes, awarding medals on Wednesday to 320 soldiers and other security service members for the counter-strike this month in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.

Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine's defense minister, told a conference of security experts that many Western nations had predicted that Ukraine's government would collapse in the initial Russian invasion, but were proved wrong. The Ukrainians will never surrender, he said.