The facade of the apartment building was blown off, the remains sagging to one side. Working together, the military police, the emergency services, the fire department and the explosives team cordoned off the scene, swept for other explosives, disarmed one, and searched for those still alive in the rubble with sniffer dogs, while removing the […]
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When government leaders in Saxony learned that Rheinmetall, Germany’s most prominent arms manufacturer, was considering building a new munitions factory in the former East German state, they saw visions of economic boom. It was a chance, they thought, to capitalize on the city’s storied airfield — home to the Red Baron in World War I, […]
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So the federal government wasn’t shut down over the weekend, although we may have to go through this whole drama again in six weeks. Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, ended up doing the obvious: bringing a funding bill to the floor that could pass only with Democratic votes, because the hard-liners in his […]
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Nearly all of the European Union’s highest diplomats met in Ukraine’s battered wartime capital on Monday, convening a surprise summit to reassert the bloc’s commitment to Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and to rebut concerns that some countries’ support might be waning. The foreign ministers came from 23 of the European Union’s 27 members, and were […]
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The victory of Robert Fico, a former prime minister who took a pro-Russian campaign stance, in Slovakia’s parliamentary elections is a further sign of eroding support for Ukraine in the West as the war drags on and the front line remains largely static. Slovakia is a small country with historical Russian sympathies, and the nature […]
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Only an extremely shallow man would repeatedly wait until the last possible moment to do the right thing, no matter how obvious that thing might be. But in today’s Washington, the Republican Party usually doesn’t do the right thing at all, so the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, deserves some credit for putting his job on […]
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Huge crowds marched through Poland’s capital, Warsaw, on Sunday, converging around a giant flag commemorating a 1945 uprising against Nazi Germany, as opponents of the governing party sought to rally voters for a critical general election that they see as the last chance to save the country’s hard-won democratic freedoms. The Warsaw city government, which […]
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The Russian position was marked with the blue flag of Moscow’s elite airborne units but the fabric looked almost translucent through the Ukrainian sniper’s scope. The flag, atop a Russian-occupied building in southern Ukraine, was just over a mile away. If a Russian soldier appeared, it would take roughly four seconds for the sniper’s large-caliber […]
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Supplying the army quickly, often with imported items, could not easily be done otherwise: The military’s lingering post-Soviet bureaucracy makes reacting to its own soldiers’ needs difficult. Soldiers get kitted out with gear when they sign up, but lost or damaged items, from socks to helmets, are not automatically replaced. The Defense Ministry is busy […]
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Ukraine’s government said Sunday it was confident in the strength of U.S. support for its war against Russia, downplaying any uncertainty after the House passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown that did not include money for Ukraine. The White House and leaders of both parties in the Senate had pushed for […]
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Two exit polls released early Sunday after Slovakia’s parliamentary election showed a tight finish between a liberal party that wants to maintain robust support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and a Russia-friendly populist party, in a vote that many in Europe saw as a bellwether of support for the war. But neither of […]
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Russian forces launched 40 exploding drones at Ukraine overnight, the authorities said on Saturday, sparking a big fire at a plant in central Ukraine, the latest attack on a region far from the front line. Ukraine’s air defenses shot down 30 of the slow-moving drones fired from the Russian-occupied region of Crimea, according to the […]
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Surrounded by rooms filled with stacks of cluster munitions and half-made thermobaric bombs, a soldier from Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade recently worked on the final part of a deadly supply chain that stretches from China’s factories to a basement five miles from the front lines of the war with Russia. This is where Ukrainian soldiers […]
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Voters in Slovakia headed to the polls on Saturday for an election that represents more than just a vote in a small Central European nation with less than six million people. It could also alter the contours of what has been a mostly united front in Europe against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Slovakia, which shares […]
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European soccer’s governing body is facing angry criticism and open defiance from some of its member nations after a vote by its executive committee earlier this week partially lifted a blanket ban on Russian teams that was imposed after last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The proposal to allow Russia’s teams to participate in qualifying […]
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On the day Azerbaijan’s military sliced through the defenses of an ethnic Armenian redoubt last week, American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division had just finished a training mission in nearby Armenia, a longtime ally of Russia that has been trying to reduce its near-total dependence on Moscow for its security. The Americans unfurled a […]
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More than a year after her mother died, Alla Kotliarova buried her for the third — and she hopes final — time. There was no priest, no tearful neighbors, no ceremonial procession to the cemetery sitting among thin pine trees at the end of town. But there was at least some measure of closure for […]
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The chief of NATO and the defense ministers of Britain and France have paid surprise visits to Kyiv, announced on Thursday, in a show of continued solidarity, even as they emphasize the goal of pumping up weapons production within Ukraine. Conscious of softening Western support for the expensive business of arming Ukraine, officials are billing […]
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At the same time, a competent Republican Party could make a strong case that the Biden approach itself has hamstrung Ukraine — by providing stepped-up aid slowly, often after weeks and months of Ukrainian pleading. Ukraine would likely be in a substantially better position if it had received F-16s, Abrams tanks and ATACMS missiles sooner, […]
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There was some question about how much stock should be placed in the videos released by Russia. Moscow has a well-established history of trying to sweep miliary embarrassments under the rug, most notably during this war when the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet was sunk. Even when its plans appear to work out, the […]
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For more than a week, world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly to debate the world’s most pressing problems: war in Ukraine, poverty, a warming planet and pandemics. They also acknowledged that the U.N.’s premier body, the Security Council is broken. The Council has been paralyzed by the inability of its permanent members […]
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“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he says. The remarks cause a furor: Ukrainians worry that the Biden administration is preparing to abandon them, and White House officials scramble to reassure them that U.S. support remains solid. Feb. 11, 2023 The text from a reporter comes to General […]
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The killing of an enemy admiral in a missile strike would be a coup for any military, but the celebration in Ukraine over the death of Russia’s Black Sea fleet commander may turn out to be short-lived. A day after announcing that the admiral was among 34 officers killed in a strike deep behind enemy […]
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The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons resigned on Tuesday after again apologizing for introducing a 98-year-old Ukrainian who had served with a Nazi SS unit as a “hero” just after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed a joint session of Parliament. The speaker, Anthony Rota, introduced Yaroslav Hunka, a constituent from his electoral district, […]
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From the first hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the famous port city of Odesa has largely been without a working port. Once bustling with cargo vessels, cruise ships, sailboats, yachts and fishing trawlers, the harbor is now a vast expanse of open water. Sophia Dobrovolska, a 16-year-old aspiring merchant marine at the Odesa Sea […]
Read More From the first hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the famous port city of Odesa has largely been without a working port. Once bustling with cargo vessels, cruise ships, sailboats, yachts and fishing trawlers, the harbor is now a vast expanse of open water. Sophia Dobrovolska, a 16-year-old aspiring merchant marine at the Odesa Sea […]
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Ukraine’s military claimed on Monday that it had killed the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in a strike on Crimea — a blow that, if confirmed, would be among the most damaging suffered by the Russian Navy since the sinking of the fleet’s flagship last year. Citing “new information about the losses of the […]
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The Ukrainian man sitting in the gallery of Canada’s House of Commons was a “hero,” the speaker of the House said on Friday, drawing applause from lawmakers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who had just addressed the chamber during his first visit to Ottawa since Russia invaded his country. But […]
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The first American-made Abrams tanks have been delivered to Ukraine, two U.S. defense officials said, arriving months ahead of initial estimates and in time to be used in Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Russian forces. More M1 Abrams tanks will be sent in the coming months, the officials said, noting that those that were shipped into Ukraine […]
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Barely a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland cast aside decades of military nonalignment and self-reliance and joined the NATO alliance. That happened with breathtaking speed, as these matters go, but gaining membership may have been the easy part. Now comes the complicated process of integrating itself into the alliance and its requirement of […]
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This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. I’m Tom Friedman, and I’m the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times. I just returned from Kyiv, […]
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