By MATTHEW DALY and CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — One year ago, Joe Biden marked his first Earth Day as president by convening world leaders for a virtual summit on global warming that even Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping attended. Biden used the moment to nearly double the United States’ goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, vaulting the country to the front lines in the fight against climate change.

But the months since then have been marred by setbacks. Biden’s most sweeping proposals remain stalled on Capitol Hill despite renewed warnings from scientists that the world is hurtling toward a dangerous future marked by extreme heat, drought and weather.

In addition, Russia’s war in Ukraine has reshuffled the politics of climate change, leading Biden to release oil from the nation’s strategic reserve and encourage more drilling in hopes of lowering sky-high gas prices that are emptying American wallets.

It’s a far cry from the sprint toward clean energy that Biden — and his supporters — envisioned when he took office. Although Biden is raising fuel economy standards for vehicles and included green policies in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation, the lack of greater progress casts a shadow over his second Earth Day as president.

Biden will mark the moment on Friday in Seattle, where he’ll be joined by Gov. Jay Inslee, a fellow Democrat with a national reputation for climate action. Biden also is scheduled to visit Portland, Oregon, on Thursday as part of a swing through the Pacific Northwest, a region that has often been on the forefront of environmental efforts.

Administration officials defend Biden’s record on global warming while saying that more work is needed.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” said Ali Zaidi, the president’s deputy national climate adviser. “We can have accomplished a lot, and have a long way to go.”

Zaidi acknowledged that “we have headwinds, we have challenges,” but also said the president has “a mandate to drive action forward on this.”

Kyle Tisdel, climate and energy program director with the Western Environmental Law Center, said Biden has not lived up to the promise of last year’s Earth Day summit.

“Climate action was a pillar of President Biden’s campaign, and his promises on this existential issue were a major reason the public elected him,″ Tisdel said. ”Achieving results on climate is not a matter of domestic politics, it’s life and death.”

Biden had hoped to pass a $1.75 trillion plan for expanding education programs, social services and environmental policies. But Republicans opposed the legislation, known as Build Back Better, and it failed to get the unanimous support necessary from Democrats holding a slim majority in the Senate.

The final blow came from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who owes his personal fortune to coal and represents a state that defines itself in large part through mining that fossil fuel. Democrats hope to revive the bill in some form, but it’s unclear exactly what Manchin would support, putting any possible deal in jeopardy.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week that negotiations were ongoing even though Biden wasn’t publicizing them. “Just because he’s not talking about it doesn’t mean those conversations are not happening behind the scenes,” she said.

Administration officials are expected to speak Saturday at a rally outside the White House as climate, labor and social justice groups urge Congress to pass climate legislation before Memorial Day. Similar events are planned in dozens of cities as activists stress the need for major investments to boost clean energy and create jobs.

The White House wants to win approval for more than $300 billion in tax credits for clean energy that advocates describe as crucial for meeting Biden’s goal of reducing emissions by up to 52% from 2005 levels by 2030.

Without the tax credits, “I don’t see a pathway,” said Nat Keohane, a former Obama energy adviser who is now president of the independent Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. Reaching the midterm elections in November without them “would amount to a failure on the promise of the first year,″ he said.

Asked if Biden’s goal of reducing emissions is still achievable, Psaki said, “We are continuing to pursue it, and we are going to continue to do everything we can to reach it.”

Psaki noted that the $1 trillion infrastructure law includes an array of climate policies, including funding for the construction of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. However, an analysis by the consultancy McKinsey estimates that nearly 30 million chargers are needed by 2030.

The Ukraine war has worsened the political challenges at home by sending shockwaves through global energy markets and increasing gas prices.

It’s also caused Biden to change his tune on oil drilling. Last week, Biden moved forward with the first onshore sales of oil and gas drilling leases on public land, a move that environmental groups blasted even though the administration said it was only doing so under a court order.

Although the legal battle is ongoing, in the meantime Biden is encouraging new domestic production.

“The bottom line is if we want lower gas prices we need to have more oil supply right now,” Biden said in March.

The leasing plan “is an ugly betrayal of Joe Biden’s campaign promises and his administration’s rhetoric on environmental justice and climate action,″ said Collin Rees, U.S. political director at Oil Change International.

“Biden is choosing to stand with polluters over people at the expense of frontline communities and the future of the planet,” he added.

The war in Ukraine has also frustrated diplomatic efforts to address climate change.

John Kerry, Biden’s international climate envoy, has focused much of his efforts on prodding China, the world’s top consumer of coal, to transition to clean energy more quickly. But that work “is harder now” amid China’s defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kerry said Wednesday.

“Some of the differences in opinion between our countries have sharpened and hardened, and that makes diplomacy more difficult,” he said during an online discussion on climate finance with the Center for Global Development.

Kerry’s aides have downplayed talk he might leave the administration now that he’s served more than a year, and he remains a loyal defender of Biden’s climate efforts. But his tone has become more pessimistic recently, especially as Biden’s climate proposals remain stalled in Congress.

The administration was also rattled by recent reports that Biden’s domestic climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, plans to step down. McCarthy called the reports “simply inaccurate” and said she is “excited about the opportunities ahead.”

Another one of Biden’s climate-related efforts could divide the environmental community. His administration plans to offer $6 billion in funding to prevent financially distressed nuclear power plants from closing. Although the facilities produce carbon-free electricity, they’re viewed warily by some activists because of concerns about how to dispose of nuclear waste and the potential for devastating accidents.

“We’re using every tool available to get this country powered by clean energy by 2035,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental group Earthjustice, said that “spirits have dimmed” after the failures of the past year. Although she praised some of the policies that Biden has achieved so far, she said that “it’s not at the scale of climate action we need — full-stop.”

Now Republicans are poised to retake control of at least one chamber in Congress in November’s midterm elections, meaning there’s a limited window for making progress. Dillen and some other activists have suggested that Biden declare a climate emergency and use the Defense Production Act to boost renewable energy.

“It’s time to pull out all the stops,″ she said.

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.

By CARA ANNA and INNA VARENYTSIA

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) — Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves.

Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chernobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

For more than a month, some Russian soldiers bunked in the earth within sight of the massive structure built to contain radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A close inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the dirt is discouraged.

As the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches and Russia’s invasion continues, it’s clear that Chernobyl — a relic of the Cold War — was never prepared for this.

With scientists and others watching in disbelief from afar, Russian forces flew over the long-closed plant, ignoring the restricted airspace around it. They held personnel still working at the plant at gunpoint during a marathon shift of more than a month, with employees sleeping on tabletops and eating just twice a day.

Even now, weeks after the Russians left, “I need to calm down,” the plant’s main security engineer, Valerii Semenov, told The Associated Press. He worked 35 days straight, sleeping only three hours a night, rationing cigarettes and staying on even after the Russians allowed a shift change.

“I was afraid they would install something and damage the system,” he said in an interview.

Workers kept the Russians from the most dangerous areas, but in what Semenov called the worst situation he has seen in his 30 years at Chernobyl, the plant was without electricity, relying on diesel generators to support the critical work of circulating water for cooling the spent fuel rods.

“It was very dangerous to act in this way,” said Maksym Shevchuck, the deputy head of the state agency managing the exclusion zone. He was scared by it all.

Russia’s invasion marks the first time that occupying a nuclear plant was part of a nation’s war strategy, said Rebecca Harms, former president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, who has visited Chernobyl several times. She called it a “nightmare” scenario in which “every nuclear plant can be used like a pre-installed nuclear bomb.”

A visit to the exclusion zone, more desolate than usual, found that the invasion risked a catastrophe worse than the original explosion and fire at Chernobyl that sent radioactive material into the atmosphere and became a symbol of the Soviet Union’s stumbling final years. Billions of dollars were spent by the international community, including Russia, to stabilize and secure the area.

Now authorities are working with Ukraine’s defense ministry on ways to protect Chernobyl’s most critical places. At the top of the list are anti-drone systems and anti-tank barriers, along with a system to protect against warplanes and helicopters.

None of it will matter much if Russian President Vladimir Putin resorts to nuclear weapons, which Shevchuck says he can’t rule out anymore.

“I understand they can use any kind of weapon and they can do any awful thing,” he said.

Chernobyl needs special international protection with a robust U.N. mandate, Harms said. As with the original disaster, the risks are not only to Ukraine but to nearby Belarus and beyond.

“It depends from where the wind blows,” she said.

After watching thousands of Soviet soldiers work to contain the effects of the 1986 accident, sometimes with no protection, Harms and others were shocked at the Russian soldiers’ disregard for safety, or their ignorance, in the recent invasion.

Some soldiers even stole highly radioactive materials as souvenirs or possibly to sell.

“I think from movies they have the imagination that all dangerous small things are very valuable,” Shevchuck said.

He believes hundreds or thousands of soldiers damaged their health, likely with little idea of the consequences, despite plant workers’ warnings to their commanders.

“Most of the soldiers were around 20 years old,” he said. “All these actions proves that their management, and in Russia in general, human life equals like zero.”

The full extent of Russia’s activities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is still unknown, especially because the troops scattered mines that the Ukrainian military is still searching for. Some have detonated, further disturbing the radioactive ground. The Russians also set several forest fires, which have been put out.

Ukrainian authorities can’t monitor radiation levels across the zone because Russian soldiers stole the main server for the system, severing the connection on March 2. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday it still wasn’t receiving remote data from its monitoring systems. The Russians even took Chernobyl staffers’ personal radiation monitors.

In the communications center, one of the buildings in the zone not overgrown by nature, the Russians looted and left a carpet of shattered glass. The building felt deeply of the 1980s, with a map on a wall still showing the Soviet Union. Someone at some point had taken a pink marker and traced Ukraine’s border.

In normal times, about 6,000 people work in the zone, about half of them at the nuclear plant. When the Russians invaded, most workers were told to evacuate immediately. Now about 100 are left at the nuclear plant and 100 are elsewhere.

Semenov, the security engineer, recalled the Russians checking the remaining workers for what they called radicals.

“We said, ‘Look at our documents, 90% of us are originally from Russia,’” he said. “But we’re patriots of our country,” meaning Ukraine.

When the Russians hurriedly departed March 31 as part of a withdrawal from the region that left behind scorched tanks and traumatized communities, they took more than 150 Ukrainian national guard members into Belarus. Shevchuck fears they’re now in Russia.

In their rush, the Russians gave nuclear plant managers a choice: Sign a document saying the soldiers had protected the site and there were no complaints, or be taken into Belarus. The managers signed.

One protective measure the Russians did appear to take was leaving open a line routing communications from the nuclear plant through the workers’ town of Slavutych and on to authorities in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It was used several times, Shevchuck said.

“I think they understood it should be for their safety,” he said. The IAEA said Tuesday the plant is now able to contact Ukraine’s nuclear regulator directly.

Another Ukrainian nuclear plant, at Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, remains under Russian control. It is the largest in Europe.

Shevchuck, like other Ukrainians, has had it with Putin.

“We’re inviting him inside the new safe confinement shelter,” he said. “Then we will close it.”

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By ADAM SCHRECK

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia ratcheted up its battle for control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, intensifying assaults on cities and towns along a front hundreds of miles long in what officials on both sides described as a new phase of the war.

After a Russian push to the capital failed to overrun the city, the Kremlin declared that its main goal was the capture of the eastern Donbas region. If successful, that offensive would give President Vladimir Putin a vital piece of Ukraine and a badly needed victory that he could present to the Russian people amid the war’s mounting casualties and the economic hardship caused by the West’s sanctions.

In recent weeks, Russian forces that withdrew from Kyiv have regrouped in preparation for an all-out offensive in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for the past eight years and have declared two independent republics that have been recognized by Russia.

While Ukraine’s president and other officials said the offensive had started, observers noted that it was just the beginning of a new massive onslaught.

Ukraine’s military said early Tuesday that a “new phase of war” began a day earlier when “the occupiers made an attempt to break through our defenses along nearly the entire frontline.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview that “another phase of this operation is starting now.”

In what appeared to be an intensification of attacks, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that air-launched missiles destroyed 13 Ukrainian troop and weapons locations while the air force struck 60 other Ukrainian military facilities, including missile warhead storage depots. Russian artillery hit 1,260 Ukrainian military facilities and 1,214 troops concentrations over the last 24 hours. The claims could not be independently verified.

The Pentagon cast the stepped-up campaign as “shaping operations” setting the stage for a broader offensive in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region.

The United States believes that Russian forces are “continuing to set the conditions for what they believe will be eventual success on the ground by putting in more forces, putting in more enablers, putting in more command and control capability for operations yet to come,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Monday.

The assaults began that day along a boomerang-shaped front that stretches more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from northeastern Ukraine to the country’s southeast.

Russia said it struck several areas with missiles, including the northeastern city of Kharkiv as well as as areas around Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro west of the Donbas. Five civilians were killed in a barrage on Kharkiv, Gov. Oleh Synyehubov said Tuesday.

Moscow’s troops seized control of one town in the Donbas on Monday, according to Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai. The breakthrough in Kreminna takes the Russians one small step closer to their apparent goal of encircling Ukrainian troops in the region by advancing on them from the north and south and squeezing them against territory held by Moscow’s troops to the east.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said that the defensive line had held elsewhere.

The capture of Kreminna also takes the Russians closer to the city of Slovyansk, whose loss by the Russia-backed separatists represented a humiliating setback for Moscow in the early stages of the separatist conflict in 2014.

Key to the campaign to take the east is the capture of Mariupol, a port city in the region that the Russians have besieged since the early days of the war.

Shelling continued there and Russia issued a fresh ultimatum Tuesday to the Ukrainian troops holed up there to surrender, saying those who come out will “keep their lives.” The Ukrainians have ignored previous such offers.

Securing Mariupol would free Russian troops up to move elsewhere in the Donbas, deprive Ukraine of a vital port, and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, seized from Ukraine from 2014.

Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard that is guarding the last known Ukrainian pocket of resistance in Mariupol, said in a video message that Russia had begun dropping bunker-buster bombs on the Azovstal steel plant where the regiment was holding out.

Civilians are also believed to be sheltering at the plant, which covers the territory of about 11 square kilometers (over 4 square miles).

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that a “significant part of the entire Russian army” is now concentrated on the battle for the Donbas.

“No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We will defend ourselves.”

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Associated Press journalists Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine; Nico Maounis and Philip Crowther in Lviv, Ukraine; and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report, as did other AP staff members around the world.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine