When the shelling starts, the people who remain in the devastation of Avdiivka hardly flinch. In truth, the shelling barely stops. In this ravaged town in eastern Ukraine, the thud of Russian artillery reverberates every minute or two. “Do you hear? It’s flying,” one resident said as a rocket passed overhead. “Then there is a […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — By the time Russian soldiers threw a potato sack over his head and forced him to record a false video statement about conditions at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, Ihor Murashov had already witnessed enough chaos at the plant to be deeply worried. Mr. Murashov, the former director general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear […]
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WASHINGTON — A few days after an American civilian contractor in Iraq died in a rocket attack by Iran-backed militias in December 2019, President Donald J. Trump retaliated by ordering a drone strike that killed a top Iranian general. After a U.S. civilian contractor was killed and six other Americans were injured on Thursday in […]
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Israel is in the throes of a grave political crisis that has ballooned in recent days to envelop crucial components of society: the military, universities and trade unions. For weeks, protesters have taken to the streets to oppose the government’s plan to overhaul judicial rules. The discontent intensified on Sunday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]
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JERUSALEM — The Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, called on Saturday night for his government to suspend its contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, arguing that the turmoil it has unleashed within Israeli society and the military has become a threat to Israel’s national security. “The rift within our society is widening and penetrating […]
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The tiny island of Tinian was the launch point for American planes carrying atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now a new runway is being carved from the jungle, just south of World War II ruins inked with mildew. And on a blustery February morning a few hundred yards away at Tinian’s civilian airport, American airmen refueled Japanese […]
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They rushed to Ukraine by the thousands, many of them Americans who promised to bring military experience, money or supplies to the battleground of a righteous war. Hometown newspapers hailed their commitment, and donors backed them with millions of dollars. Now, after a year of combat, many of these homespun groups of volunteers are fighting […]
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OTTAWA — President Biden used his first official trip to Canada since taking the Oval Office to underscore what he called an “inseparable” relationship between the United States and its northern neighbor, which had become badly frayed during the presidency of Donald J. Trump. In place of Mr. Trump’s belittling comments about Prime Minister Justin […]
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Despite the high cost in lives, Ukrainian and Russian leaders said that the battle for Bakhmut would rage on, even as they brace for a war that they expect to widen and intensify as the weather warms. Officials in both Kyiv and Moscow predicted that Ukraine, taking delivery of Western tanks, missiles and other arms, […]
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The soldiers, still outfitted in camo, arrived not by cargo plane or armored carrier but by wheelchair, and formed up before a crowd bearing flags, flowers and the traditional loaves of bread. There were handshakes, hugs and song — the Ukrainian national anthem, of course — and a few photos, but no long-winded speeches or […]
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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine traveled to the southern region of Kherson on Thursday in his second trip near the front line in two straight days, visiting areas ravaged by Russia’s campaign to destroy energy infrastructure. Mr. Zelensky’s visit, which he chronicled on the Telegram messaging app, came a day after his trip to the contested eastern city […]
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SOGAKOPE, Ghana — Troops clad in black jumped out of motorboats near a riverside resort and made their way along a wood-slat fence to their objective: a building where terrorists had seized a high-level government official. Shots rang out and the troops returned fire. They soon emerged from the one-story structure with the freed hostage, […]
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OUTSKIRTS OF BAKHMUT, Ukraine — Large snowflakes drifted silently through the trees as two Soviet-era tanks roared to life and churned through the mud up the hill. It was daybreak on one of the last days of winter, and the tank commander and his deputy tramped through the snow checking on the men as they […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made a rare and defiant trip near the front line on Wednesday, personally thanking soldiers who have been fighting in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance. The trip to the Bakhmut area came on a day when air- and […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — As swarms of Russian soldiers stormed Ukrainian lines in furious assaults around two cities in the east on Tuesday, Ukraine set the stage for its own advance by making strikes deep behind Russian lines, including what appeared to be a drone attack on a vital logistical hub in the occupied Crimean Peninsula. […]
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The Biden administration vowed last month to crack down on companies that sell critical technologies to Russia as part of its efforts to curtail the country’s war against Ukraine. But the continued flow of Chinese drones to the country explains why that will be hard. While drone sales have slowed, American policies put in place […]
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“I think Bush is an extraordinarily complex person,” said Melvyn P. Leffler, a University of Virginia historian who just published “Confronting Saddam Hussein,” a book examining the war. “On the one hand, he appears to believe that his decision to invade Iraq was correct. On the other hand, looking at his book of paintings, you […]
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Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow this week in the most high-profile visit by any world leader to Russia since before the pandemic. Coming more than a year after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the meeting will be watched closely by Western officials […]
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Hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops are mobilizing to help plant and harvest crops. The country’s military is rejiggering some of its munitions factories to produce tractors and threshing machines, while also converting some airfields into greenhouses. Soldiers are reportedly being asked to extend their service by three years and spend them on farms. […]
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When Mr. Putin visited Mr. Xi in Beijing right before the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, their governments proclaimed a “no-limits” partnership in a 5,000-word statement. The two men saw each other again last September at a security conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Mr. Xi has not talked to Volodymyr Zelensky, the president […]
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Former Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan appeared at court on corruption charges on Saturday in Islamabad, the capital, in the latest turn of a standoff between his supporters and the authorities that had led to chaotic scenes of tear gas and clashing security lines outside his home earlier in the week. That showdown continued […]
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The explosions on the first night, lighting up the sky as they burned through buildings below, were only the earliest blasts of the yearslong war to come. For the thousands of days and nights that followed, eruptions across Iraq came from warplanes and cannons, grenade launchers and mines, machine guns, pistols and handmade bombs. What […]
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There is a question about the American-led invasion of Iraq that, 20 years later, remains a matter of deep uncertainty and debate among historians, political scientists and even officials who helped set the war in motion. It’s not the war’s toll in American military deaths (about 4,600) or Iraqi lives (estimates generally fall around 300,000 or […]
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China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has cast himself as a global statesman, helping Saudi Arabia and Iran broker a deal to restore diplomatic ties while extolling the virtues of “Chinese solutions and wisdom” in solving the world’s biggest security challenges. Now, Mr. Xi is putting himself at the center of Russia’s war with Ukraine, potentially […]
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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s European Command on Thursday released the first declassified video images of the events leading up to a Russian fighter jet colliding with an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance drone on Tuesday, forcing the American aircraft down into the Black Sea. The dramatic 42-second color video clip shows two high-speed passes by two Su-27 […]
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The Ukrainian military is firing thousands of artillery shells a day as it tries to hold the eastern city of Bakhmut, a pace that American and European officials say is unsustainable and could jeopardize a planned springtime campaign that they hope will prove decisive. The bombardment has been so intense that the Pentagon raised concerns […]
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KYIV, Ukraine — The United States on Wednesday promised to “fully and quickly” give Ukraine the weapons required for a spring counteroffensive against Russia, addressing one of the most critical needs amid a global shortage of ammunition caused in part by the yearlong conflict. The intensity of the battles in Ukraine has strained the production […]
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Israeli security forces said on Wednesday that they had shot dead a man they accused of planting a bomb in northern Israel after he had probably infiltrated the country from southern Lebanon, in one of the most unusual security incidents along the border in years. The military did not reveal details about the man killed […]
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For months, Yevgeny Prigozhin has been Russia’s most public and provocative military leader in Ukraine. When he is not lauding the heroics of his private fighting force from the front lines, he is castigating the Russian generals for starving him of the supplies he needs to finish the work they could not. Yet now, as […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden plans to announce on Monday a landmark agreement with the leaders of Britain and Australia to develop fleets of nuclear-powered attack submarines that the three nations would use to strengthen their naval forces across the Asia-Pacific region as China bolsters its own navy. The purchase and training agreements on submarines amount […]
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In Eastern Europe, Ukrainians are in the trenches. Farther west, European capitals are grappling with a new order in which war is no longer theoretical. Yet, tucked away in the heart of the continent, the Swiss are fretting over loftier ideals. In Switzerland’s capital, nestled beneath snow-capped mountains, inside parliamentary chambers of stained glass and […]
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