website
stringclasses 44
values | title
stringlengths 1
383
| url
stringlengths 19
230
| domain
stringclasses 7
values | slop
stringclasses 2
values | content
stringlengths 1.01k
142k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
NY Times
|
Submit a Crossword
|
https://www.nytimes.com/article/submit-crossword-puzzles-the-new-york-times.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
The New York Times looks for intelligent, literate, entertaining and well-crafted crosswords that appeal to the broad range of Times solvers.
Submissions are open.
A New York Times crossword will be a collaboration between you and our staff of editors, who will seek to preserve your voice while making the puzzle as enjoyable as possible for solvers. This page of guidelines is a living document and reflects our current best practices on crossword construction.
Lively fill, with words, phrases and names that solvers know or can infer from the crossings.
Original, on-target clues, pitched at the puzzle’s intended difficulty level, including a variety of cultural reference points.
No more than three puzzles pending at a time.
What we could use more of: Thursday and Sunday puzzles that don’t involve a rebus.
Themes should be fresh, interesting, narrowly defined and consistently applied throughout the puzzle. For example, if the theme includes a particular kind of pun, then all the puns should be of that kind. Themes and theme entries should be accessible to everyone. We generally prefer puzzles with playful themes rather than straightforward subjects.
Constructors should emphasize lively words, well-known names and fresh phrases. Common words that lend themselves to interesting and imaginative cluing angles are encouraged.
Advertisement
Diversity in cultural references — for age, gender, ethnicity, etc. — is desired.
Avoid offensive language. Be mindful of words that might impact solvers negatively. Non-English words are allowed, so long as they are familiar or inferable to people who don’t speak the language.
Avoid uncommon abbreviations and partial phrases longer than five letters (“So ___” for BE IT would be permissible, while “So ___” for IT GOES would not.)
Keep crosswordese to a minimum — that is, answers that appear far more in crosswords than in real life (ERNE, ASTA, ARETE, YSER, etc.). Difficult words are fine — especially for the harder daily puzzles that run late in the week — if the words are interesting bits of knowledge or useful additions to the vocabulary. However, never let two obscure words or names cross.
Clues should reflect the difficulty of the puzzle. Our difficulty scale increases through the week, with the easiest puzzles on Monday and hardest on Saturday. Sunday puzzles should reflect midweek difficulty levels.
Clues should be fresh, colorful and precise. Try to be original, and inject humor where possible. Themeless clues should be more difficult and require imaginative thinking. Show us your wit and wordplay!
Advertisement
For example, for the answer STRAP:
Monday clue:“Subway rider’s handhold”
Wednesday clue:“Part of a bike helmet”
Saturday clue:“What might keep a watch on you”
There are many options for making a crossword puzzle, including the good, old-fashioned graph-paper-and-pencil method, though several software programs exist as well. For a full list of these programs, as well as tips from New York Times constructors and editors on the puzzle making process, see our series onHow to Make a Crossword Puzzle.
While we encourage new and creative crossword themes, there are a few hard rules (broken with extreme rarity) when it comes to constructing New York Times crosswords. These include:
Crosswords must have black square symmetry, which typically comes in the form of 180-degree rotational symmetry;
Crosswords must have all-over interlock;
Crosswords must not have unchecked squares (i.e., all letters must be found in both Across and Down answers);
All answers must be at least 3 letters long;
Black squares should be used in moderation.
78 words for a 15×15 (72 for a themeless); 140 for a 21×21. Maximums may be exceeded slightly at the editor’s discretion, if the theme warrants.
Times puzzles must never have been published anywhere before, either in print or electronically. The Times buys all rights, including first rights.
Due to the volume of submissions:
Please limit yourself to no more than three puzzles in the queue at once.
We count collaborations as half for each byline.
If your collaborator has never been published by the Times, the puzzle will not count toward your total.
All crossword constructing programs have settings to create PDFs in the proper submission format, as follows:
Clues should be double-spaced on the left, answer words in a corresponding column on the far right.
Down clues need not begin on a new page.
Include a filled-in answer grid with numbers.
Include your name, address and email address on the grid page.
Please label your filesLastName_PuzzleTitlefor ease of editor review. Puzzle titles can be the theme revealers for daily themed puzzles or marquee entries for themeless puzzles.
Advertisement
An example is shown below, which you candownload as a pdf.
If you need more help, take a look at ourresource guide.
Payment varies based on the day of the week and number of puzzles you’ve had published with The New York Times.
Puzzles
Size
Published 1 – 2
Published 3+
Monday – Saturday
15 x 15
$500
$750
Sunday
21 x 21
$1,500
$2,250
Advertisement
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Part 3The Best-Laid Plans
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html#part-three
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.
By Adam Entous
Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Turkey.
On a spring morningtwo months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.
Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.
The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.
One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.
Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.
Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.
How the promise of Texas barbecue led to a meeting with a key Ukrainian general.
Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.
Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today’s precarious place.
With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine — including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.
But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war — enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence — that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.
Ukrainian, American and British military leaders during a meeting in Ukraine in August 2023.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.
Farther south, the partners set their sights on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet loaded missiles destined for Ukrainian targets onto warships and submarines. At the height of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, a predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.
But ultimately the partnership strained — and the arc of the war shifted — amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.
Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.
As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.
On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war — in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year’s successes — the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.
A Ukrainian soldier fired at Russian positions near Bakhmut.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear — that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats. The story of the partnership shows how close the Americans and their allies sometimes came to that red line, how increasingly dire events forced them — some said too slowly — to advance it to more perilous ground and how they carefully devised protocols to remain on the safe side of it.
Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.
In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.
It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.
During the wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, American forces conducted their own ground operations and supported those of their local partners. In Ukraine, by contrast, the U.S. military wasn’t allowed to deploy any of its own soldiers on the battlefield and would have to help remotely.
Would the precision targeting honed against terrorist groups be effective in a conflict with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? Would Ukrainian artillery men fire their howitzers without hesitation at coordinates sent by American officers in a headquarters 1,300 miles away? Would Ukrainian commanders, based on intelligence relayed by a disembodied American voice pleading, “There’s nobody there — go,” order infantrymen to enter a village behind enemy lines?
The answers to those questions — in truth, the partnership’s entire trajectory — would hinge on how well American and Ukrainian officers would trust one another.
“I will never lie to you. If you lie to me, we’re done,” General Zabrodskyi recalled General Donahue telling him at their first meeting. “I feel the exact same way,” the Ukrainian replied.
A Ukrainian soldier keeps watch in Kharkiv on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
February–May 2022
Kyiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Kherson
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia since 2014
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksiiReznikovDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
In mid-April 2022, about two weeks before the Wiesbaden meeting, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on a routine intelligence-sharing call when something unexpected popped up on their radar screens. According to a former senior U.S. military officer, “The Americans go: ‘Oh, that’s the Moskva!’ The Ukrainians go: ‘Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.’”
The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainians sank it.
Over more than a year of reporting, Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries. While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.
The sinking was a signal triumph — a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude. But the episode also reflected the disjointed state of the Ukrainian-American relationship in the first weeks of the war.
For the Americans, there was anger, because the Ukrainians hadn’t given so much as a heads-up; surprise, that Ukraine possessed missiles capable of reaching the ship; and panic, because the Biden administration hadn’t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.
The Ukrainians, for their part, were coming from their own place of deep-rooted skepticism.
Their war, as they saw it, had started in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and fomented separatist rebellions in eastern Ukraine. President Barack Obama had condemned the seizure and imposed sanctions on Russia. But fearful that American involvement could provoke a full-scale invasion, he had authorized only strictly limited intelligence sharing and rejected calls for defensive weapons. “Blankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets,” Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, complained. Eventually Mr. Obama somewhat relaxed those intelligence strictures, and Mr. Trump, in his first term, relaxed them further and supplied the Ukrainians with their first antitank Javelins.
Then, in the portentous days before Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration had closed the Kyiv embassy and pulled all military personnel from the country. (A small team of C.I.A. officers was allowed to stay.) As the Ukrainians saw it, a senior U.S. military officer said, “We told them, ‘The Russians are coming — see ya.’”
When American generals offered assistance after the invasion, they ran into a wall of mistrust. “We’re fighting the Russians. You’re not. Why should we listen to you?” Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.
General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.
In those early days, this meant that General Donahue and a few aides, with little more than their phones, passed information about Russian troop movements to General Syrsky and his staff. Yet even that ad hoc arrangement touched a raw nerve of rivalry within Ukraine’s military, between General Syrsky and his boss, the armed forces commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. To Zaluzhny loyalists, General Syrsky was already using the relationship to build advantage.
Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny’s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians’ equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American’s calls.
To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine’s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, “I know you’re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.”
Ragtag alliance coalesced into partnership in the quick cascade of events.
In March, their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south — a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.
Unless the coalition reoriented its own ambitions, General Donahue and the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, concluded, the hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians would lose the war. The coalition, in other words, would have to start providing heavy offensive weapons — M777 artillery batteries and shells.
The Biden administration had previously arranged emergency shipments of antiaircraft and antitank weapons. The M777s were something else entirely — the first big leap into supporting a major ground war.
The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne in charge of delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed on to the M777s, the Tony Bass Auditorium became a full-fledged headquarters.
A Polish general became General Donahue’s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub on the former basketball court. A Canadian would oversee training.
The auditorium basement became what is known as a fusion center, producing intelligence about Russian battlefield positions, movements and intentions. There, according to intelligence officials, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers.
The 18th Airborne is known as Dragon Corps; the new operation would be Task Force Dragon. All that was needed to bring the pieces together was the reluctant Ukrainian top command.
At an international conference on April 26 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, General Milley introduced Mr. Reznikov and a Zaluzhny deputy to Generals Cavoli and Donahue. “These are your guys right here,” General Milley told them, adding: “You’ve got to work with them. They’re going to help you.”
Bonds of trust were being forged. Mr. Reznikov agreed to talk to General Zaluzhny. Back in Kyiv, “we organized the composition of a delegation” to Wiesbaden, Mr. Reznikov said. “And so it began.”
At the heart of the partnershipwere two generals — the Ukrainian, Zabrodskyi, and the American, Donahue.
General Zabrodskyi would be Wiesbaden’s chief Ukrainian contact, although in an unofficial capacity, as he was serving in parliament. In every other way, he was a natural.
Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, a key Ukrainian figure in the Wiesbaden partnership.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Like many of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian military, General Zabrodskyi knew the enemy well. In the 1990s, he had attended military academy in St. Petersburg and served for five years in the Russian Army.
He also knew the Americans: From 2005 to 2006, he had studied at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Eight years later, General Zabrodskyi led a perilous mission behind lines of Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, modeled in part on one he had studied at Fort Leavenworth — the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart’s famous reconnaissance mission around Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. This brought him to the attention of influential people at the Pentagon; the general, they sensed, was the kind of leader they could work with.
General Zabrodskyi remembers that first day in Wiesbaden: “My mission was to find out: Who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?”
General Donahue was a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria. General Cavoli once compared him to “a comic book action hero.”
Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, center, no helmet, in Afghanistan circa 2020.
Now he showed General Zabrodskyi and his travel companion, Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Kyrylenko, a map of the besieged east and south of their country, Russian forces dwarfing theirs. Invoking their “Glory to Ukraine” battle cry, he laid down the challenge: “You can ‘Slava Ukraini’ all you want with other people. I don’t care how brave you are. Look at the numbers.” He then walked them through a plan to win a battlefield advantage by fall, General Zabrodskyi recalled.
The first stage was underway — training Ukrainian artillery men on their new M777s. Task Force Dragon would then help them use the weapons to halt the Russian advance. Then the Ukrainians would need to mount a counteroffensive.
That evening, General Zabrodskyi wrote to his superiors in Kyiv.
“You know, a lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine,” he recalled. But “somebody needed to be the coordinator, to organize everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. I said to the commander in chief, ‘We have found our partner.’”
Soon the Ukrainians, nearly 20 in all — intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists — began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets’ locations.
Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”?
Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.
The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”
“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” one U.S. official explained.
Each point of interest would have to adhere to intelligence-sharing rules crafted to blunt the risk of Russian retaliation against N.A.T.O. partners.
There would be no points of interest on Russian soil. If Ukrainian commanders wanted to strike within Russia, General Zabrodskyi explained, they would have to use their own intelligence and domestically produced weapons. “Our message to the Russians was, ‘This war should be fought inside Ukraine,’” a senior U.S. official said.
Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire an M777 howitzer at Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The White House also prohibited sharing intelligence on the locations of “strategic” Russian leaders, like the armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,” another senior U.S. official said. “Like, we’d go to war.” Similarly, Task Force Dragon couldn’t share intelligence that identified the locations of individual Russians.
The way the system worked, Task Force Dragon would tell the UkrainianswhereRussians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not sayhowit knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets — Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on. As General Zabrodskyi remembers it, when the Ukrainians asked why they should trust the intelligence, General Donahue would say: “Don’t worry about how we found out. Just trust that when you shoot, it will hit it, and you’ll like the results, and if you don’t like the results, tell us, we’ll make it better.”
The systemwent livein May. The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians’ M777s. The fusion center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark’s coordinates in preparation for the strike.
On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the battalion commander with a pep talk: “You feel good?” he asked. “I feel real good,” the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. “Everybody went, ‘We can do this!’” a U.S. official recalled.
But a critical question remained: Having done this against a single, stationary target, could the partners deploy this system against multiple targets in a major kinetic battle?
That would be the battle underway north of Donetsk, in Sievierodonetsk, where the Russians were hoping to mount a pontoon-bridge river crossing and then encircle and capture the city. General Zabrodskyi called it “a hell of a target.”
The engagement that followed was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. The pontoon bridges became death traps; at least 400 Russians were killed, by Ukrainian estimates. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.
In these first months, the fighting was largely concentrated in Ukraine’s east. But U.S. intelligence was also tracking Russian movements in the south, especially a large troop buildup near the major city of Kherson. Soon several M777 crews were redeployed, and Task Force Dragon started feeding points of interest to strike Russian positions there.
With practice, Task Force Dragon produced points of interest faster, and the Ukrainians shot at them faster. The more they demonstrated their effectiveness using M777s and similar systems, the more the coalition sent new ones — which Wiesbaden supplied with ever more points of interest.
“You know when we started to believe?” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “When Donahue said, ‘This is a list of positions.’ We checked the list and we said, ‘These 100 positions are good, but we need the other 50.’ And they sent the other 50.”
The M777s became workhorsesof the Ukrainian army.But because theygenerally couldn’t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians’ vast superiority in manpower and equipment.
To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap — providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.
The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking.
Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over.
Celeste Wallander, then the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, recalled, “Milley would always say, ‘You’ve got a little Russian army fighting a big Russian army, and they’re fighting the same way, and the Ukrainians will never win.’” General Cavoli’s argument, she said, was that “with HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that’s how they will start to beat the Russians.”
At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?” And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon was becoming “the entire back office of the war.”
Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.
HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. Russian forces were left dazed and confused. Their morale plummeted, and with it their will to fight. And as the HIMARS arsenal grew from eight to 38 and the Ukrainian strikers became more proficient, an American official said, the toll rose as much as fivefold.
“We became a small part, maybe not the best part, but a small part, of your system,” General Zabrodskyi explained, adding: “Most states did this over a period of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But we were forced to do it in a matter of weeks.”
Together the partners were honing a killing machine.
Russian forces collapsed in the Oskil river valley, abandoning their equipment as they fled.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
June–November 2022
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Izium
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia
Mykolaiv
Melitopol
Kherson
Odesa
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
BenWallaceDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
At their first meeting, General Donahue had shown General Zabrodskyi a color-coded map of the region, with American and NATO forces in blue, Russian forces in red and Ukrainian forces in green. “Why are we green?” General Zabrodskyi asked. “We should be blue.”
In early June, as they met to war-game Ukraine’s counteroffensive, sitting side by side in front of tabletop battlefield maps, General Zabrodskyi saw that the small blocks marking Ukrainian positions had become blue — a symbolic stroke to strengthen the bond of common purpose. “When you defeat Russia,” General Donahue told the Ukrainians, “we will make you blue for good.”
It was three months since the invasion, and the maps told this story of the war:
In the south, the Ukrainians had blocked the Russian advance at the Black Sea shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv. But the Russians controlled Kherson, and a corps roughly 25,000 soldiers strong occupied land on the west bank of the Dnipro River. In the east, the Russians had been stopped at Izium. But they held land between there and the border, including the strategically important Oskil river valley.
The Russians’ strategy had morphed from decapitation — the futile assault on Kyiv — to slow strangulation. The Ukrainians needed to go on the offensive.
Their top commander, General Zaluzhny, along with the British, favored the most ambitious option — from near Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast, down toward occupied Melitopol. This maneuver, they believed, would sever the cross-border land routes sustaining Russian forces in Crimea.
In theory, General Donahue agreed. But according to colleagues, he thought Melitopol was not feasible, given the state of the Ukrainian military and the coalition’s limited ability to provide M777s without crippling American readiness. To prove his point in the war games, he took over the part of the Russian commander. Whenever the Ukrainians tried to advance, General Donahue destroyed them with overwhelming combat power.
What they ultimately agreed on was a two-part attack to confuse Russian commanders who, according to American intelligence, believed the Ukrainians had only enough soldiers and equipment for a single offensive.
The main effort would be to recapture Kherson and secure the Dnipro’s west bank, lest the corps advance on the port of Odesa and be positioned for another attack on Kyiv.
General Donahue had advocated a coequal second front in the east, from the Kharkiv region, to reach the Oskil river valley. But the Ukrainians instead argued for a smaller supporting feint to draw Russian forces east and smooth the way for Kherson.
That would come first, around Sept. 4. The Ukrainians would then begin two weeks of artillery strikes to weaken Russian forces in the south. Only then, around Sept. 18, would they march toward Kherson.
And if they still had enough ammunition, they would cross the Dnipro. General Zabrodskyi remembers General Donahue saying, “If you guys want to get across the river and get to the neck of Crimea, then follow the plan.”
That was the planuntil it wasn’t.
Mr. Zelensky sometimes spoke directly with regional commanders, and after one such conversation, the Americans were informed that the order of battle had changed.
Kherson would come faster — and first, on Aug. 29.
General Donahue told General Zaluzhny that more time was needed to lay the groundwork for Kherson; the switch, he said, put the counteroffensive, and the entire country, in jeopardy. The Americans later learned the back story:
Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute — a preview of a fundamental disconnect that would increasingly shape the arc of the war.
The upshot wasn’t what anyone had planned.
The Russians responded by moving reinforcements from the east toward Kherson. Now General Zaluzhny realized that the weakened Russian forces in the east might well let the Ukrainians do what General Donahue had advocated — reach the Oskil river valley. “Go, go, go — you have them on the ropes,” General Donahue told the Ukrainian commander there, General Syrsky, a European official recalled.
The Russian forces collapsed even faster than predicted, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The Ukrainian leadership had never expected their forces to reach the Oskil’s west bank, and when they did, General Syrsky’s standing with the president soared.
In the south, U.S. intelligence now reported that the corps on the Dnipro’s west bank was running short on food and ammunition.
The Ukrainians wavered. General Donahue pleaded with the field commander, Maj. Gen. Andrii Kovalchuk, to advance. Soon the American’s superiors, Generals Cavoli and Milley, escalated the matter to General Zaluzhny.
That didn’t work either.
The British defense minister, Ben Wallace, asked General Donahue what he would do if General Kovalchuk were his subordinate.
“He would have already been fired,” General Donahue responded.
“I got this,” Mr. Wallace said. The British military had considerable clout in Kyiv; unlike the Americans, they had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion. Now the defense minister exercised that clout and demanded that the Ukrainians oust the commander.
Perhaps no pieceof Ukrainian soil was more precious to Mr. Putin than Crimea. As the Ukrainians haltingly advanced on the Dnipro, hoping to cross and advance toward the peninsula, this gave rise to what one Pentagon official called the “core tension”:
To give the Russian president an incentive to negotiate a deal, the official explained, the Ukrainians would have to put pressure on Crimea. To do so, though, could push him to contemplate doing “something desperate.”
The Ukrainians were already exerting pressure on the ground. And the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.
That same month, U.S. intelligence overheard Russia’s Ukraine commander, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, talking about indeed doing something desperate: using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Ukrainians from crossing the Dnipro and making a beeline to Crimea.
Until that moment, U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.
That core tension seemed to be coming to a head.
In Europe, Generals Cavoli and Donahue were begging General Kovalchuk’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, to move his brigades forward, rout the corps from the Dnipro’s west bank and seize its equipment.
In Washington, Mr. Biden’s top advisers nervously wondered the opposite — if they might need to press the Ukrainians to slow their advance.
The moment might have been the Ukrainians’ best chance to deal a game-changing blow to the Russians. It might also have been the best chance to ignite a wider war.
In the end, in a sort of grand ambiguity, the moment never came.
To protect their fleeing forces, Russian commanders left behind small detachments of troops. General Donahue advised General Tarnavskyi to destroy or bypass them and focus on the primary objective — the corps. But whenever the Ukrainians encountered a detachment, they stopped in their tracks, assuming a larger force lay in wait.
General Donahue told him that satellite imagery showed Ukrainian forces blocked by just one or two Russian tanks, according to Pentagon officials. But unable to see the same satellite images, the Ukrainian commander hesitated, wary of sending his forces forward.
To get the Ukrainians moving, Task Force Dragon sent points of interest, and M777 operators destroyed the tanks with Excalibur missiles — time-consuming steps repeated whenever the Ukrainians encountered a Russian detachment.
Ukrainians celebrated the recapture of Kherson.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Ukrainians would still recapture Kherson and clear the Dnipro’s west bank. But the offensive halted there. The Ukrainians, short on ammunition, would not cross the Dnipro. They would not, as the Ukrainians had hoped and the Russians feared, advance toward Crimea.
And as the Russians escaped across the river, farther into occupied ground, huge machines rent the earth, cleaving long, deep trench lines in their wake.
Still the Ukrainians were in a celebratory mood, and on his next Wiesbaden trip, General Zabrodskyi presented General Donahue with a “combat souvenir”: a tactical vest that had belonged to a Russian soldier whose comrades were already marching east to what would become the crucible of 2023 — a place called Bakhmut.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, a site of prolonged combat that President Volodymyr Zelensky called the “fortress of our morale.”
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
November 2022–November 2023
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Luhansk
Bakhmut
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Makiivka
Robotyne
Tokmak
Melitopol
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
The planningfor 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.
Ukraine controlled the west banks of the Oskil and Dnipro rivers. Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war’s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.
“We’re going to win this whole thing,” Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.
To accomplish this, General Zabrodskyi explained as the partners gathered in Wiesbaden in late autumn, General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol, to strangle Russian forces in Crimea — what he believed had been the great, denied opportunity to deal the reeling enemy a knockout blow in 2022.
And once again, some American generals were preaching caution.
At the Pentagon, officials worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive; perhaps the Ukrainians, in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal. When the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Milley, floated that idea in a speech, many of Ukraine’s supporters (including congressional Republicans, then overwhelmingly supportive of the war) cried appeasement.
In Wiesbaden, in private conversations with General Zabrodskyi and the British, General Donahue pointed to those Russian trenches being dug to defend the south. He pointed, too, to the Ukrainians’ halting advance to the Dnipro just weeks before. “They’re digging in, guys,” he told them. “How are you going to get across this?”
What he advocated instead, General Zabrodskyi and a European official recalled, was a pause: If the Ukrainians spent the next year, if not longer, building and training new brigades, they would be far better positioned to fight through to Melitopol.
The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn’t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians.
There would be no pause. General Zabrodskyi would tell General Zaluzhny, “Donahue is right.” But he would also admit that “nobody liked Donahue’s recommendations, except me.”
And besides, General Donahue was a man on the way out.
The 18th Airborne’s deployment had always been temporary. There would now be a more permanent organization in Wiesbaden, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, call sign Erebus — the Greek mythological personification of darkness.
That autumn day, the planning session and their time together done, General Donahue escorted General Zabrodskyi to the Clay Kaserne airfield. There he presented him with an ornamental shield — the 18th Airborne dragon insignia, encircled by five stars.
The westernmost represented Wiesbaden; slightly to the east was the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. The other stars represented Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv — for General Zaluzhny and the commanders in the south and east.
And beneath the stars, “Thanks.”
“I asked him, ‘Why are you thanking me?’” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “‘I should say thank you.’”
General Donahue explained that the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying, testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned. “Thanks to you,” he said, “we built all these things that we never could have.”
Shouting through the airfield wind and noise, they went back and forth about who deserved the most thanks. Then they shook hands, and General Zabrodskyi disappeared into the idling C-130.
The“new guyin the room” was Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. He was a different kind of commander, with a different kind of mission.
General Donahue was a risk taker. General Aguto had built a reputation as a man of deliberation and master of training and large-scale operations. After the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration had expanded its training of the Ukrainians, including at a base in the far west of the country; General Aguto had overseen the program. In Wiesbaden, his No. 1 priority would be preparing new brigades. “You’ve got to get them ready for the fight,” Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, told him.
That translated to greater autonomy for the Ukrainians, a rebalancing of the relationship: At first, Wiesbaden had labored to win the Ukrainians’ trust. Now the Ukrainians were asking for Wiesbaden’s trust.
An opportunity soon presented itself.
Ukrainian intelligence had detected a makeshift Russian barracks at a school in occupied Makiivka. “Trust us on this,” General Zabrodskyi told General Aguto. The American did, and the Ukrainian recalled, “We did the full targeting process absolutely independently.” Wiesbaden’s role would be limited to providing coordinates.
A satellite image of a school in occupied Makiivka where Russians had established a barracks.
Maxar Technologies
The site after a strike that was aided by U.S. intelligence.
Maxar Technologies
In this new phase of the partnership, U.S. and Ukrainian officers would still meet daily to set priorities, which the fusion center turned into points of interest. But Ukrainian commanders now had a freer hand to use HIMARS to strike additional targets, fruit of their own intelligence — if they furthered agreed-upon priorities.
“We will step back and watch, and keep an eye on you to make sure that you don’t do anything crazy,” General Aguto told the Ukrainians. “The whole goal,” he added, “is to have you operate on your own at some point in time.”
Echoing 2022, the war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan.
The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky’s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut — where combat had been smoldering for months — with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south — the attack on Melitopol, where Russian fortifications were already rotting and collapsing in the winter wet and cold.
But problems of a different sort were already gnawing at the new-made plan.
General Zaluzhny may have been Ukraine’s supreme commander, but his supremacy was increasingly compromised by his competition with General Syrsky. According to Ukrainian officials, the rivalry dated to Mr. Zelensky’s decision, in 2021, to elevate General Zaluzhny over his former boss, General Syrsky. The rivalry had intensified after the invasion, as the commanders vied for limited HIMARS batteries. General Syrsky had been born in Russia and served in its army; until he started working on his Ukrainian, he had generally spoken Russian at meetings. General Zaluzhny sometimes derisively called him “that Russian general.”
The Americans knew General Syrsky was unhappy about being dealt a supporting hand in the counteroffensive. When General Aguto called to make sure he understood the plan, he responded, “I don’t agree, but I have my orders.”
The counteroffensive was to begin on May 1. The intervening months would be spent training for it. General Syrsky would contribute four battle-hardened brigades — each between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers — for training in Europe; they would be joined by four brigades of new recruits.
The general had other plans.
In Bakhmut, the Russians were deploying, and losing, vast numbers of soldiers. General Syrsky saw an opportunity to engulf them and ignite discord in their ranks. “Take all new guys” for Melitopol, he told General Aguto, according to U.S. officials. And when Mr. Zelensky sided with him, over the objections of both his own supreme commander and the Americans, a key underpinning of the counteroffensive was effectively scuttled.
Now the Ukrainians would send just four untested brigades abroad for training. (They would prepare eight more inside Ukraine.) Plus, the new recruits were old — mostly in their 40s and 50s. When they arrived in Europe, a senior U.S. official recalled, “All we kept thinking was, This is not great.”
The Ukrainian draft age was 27. General Cavoli, who had been promoted to supreme allied commander for Europe, implored General Zaluzhny to “get your 18-year-olds in the game.” But the Americans concluded that neither the president nor the general would own such a politically fraught decision.
A parallel dynamic was at play on the American side.
The previous year, the Russians had unwisely placed command posts, ammunition depots and logistics centers within 50 miles of the front lines. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS’ reach. So Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.
ATACMS were a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration. Russia’s military chief, General Gerasimov, had indirectly referred to them the previous May when he warned General Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line. There was also a question of supply: The Pentagon was already warning that it would not have enough ATACMS if America had to fight its own war.
The message was blunt: Stop asking for ATACMS.
Underlying assumptionshad been upended. Still, the Americans saw a path to victory, albeit a narrowing one. Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1, before the Russians repaired their fortifications and moved more troops to reinforce Melitopol.
But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto’s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn’t commit until they had it all.
At one point, frustration rising, General Cavoli turned to General Zabrodskyi and said: “Misha, I love your country. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose the war.”
“My answer was: ‘I understand what you are saying, Christopher. But please understand me. I’m not the supreme commander. And I’m not the president of Ukraine,’” General Zabrodskyi recalled, adding, “Probably I needed to cry as much as he did.”
At the Pentagon, officials were beginning to sense some graver fissure opening. General Zabrodskyi recalled General Milley asking: “Tell me the truth. Did you change the plan?”
“No, no, no,” he responded. “We did not change the plan, and we are not going to.”
When he uttered these words, he genuinely believed he was telling the truth.
In late May, intelligence showed the Russians rapidly building new brigades. The Ukrainians didn’t have everything they wanted, but they had what they thought they needed. They would have to go.
General Zaluzhny outlined the final plan at a meeting of the Stavka, a governmental body overseeing military matters. General Tarnavskyi would have 12 brigades and the bulk of ammunition for the main assault, on Melitopol. The marine commandant, Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol, would feint toward Mariupol, the ruined port city taken by the Russians after a withering siege the year before. General Syrsky would lead the supporting effort in the east around Bakhmut, recently lost after months of trench warfare.
Then General Syrsky spoke. According to Ukrainian officials, the general said he wanted to break from the plan and execute a full-scale attack to drive the Russians from Bakhmut. He would then advance eastward toward the Luhansk region. He would, of course, need additional men and ammunition.
The Americans were not told the meeting’s outcome. But then U.S. intelligence observed Ukrainian troops and ammunition moving in directions inconsistent with the agreed-upon plan.
Soon after, at a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.
“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried.
What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition’s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.
“It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,” one Ukrainian official remarked.
Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.
“We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.
But they would not.
“These decisions involving life and death, and what territory you value more and what territory you value less, are fundamentally sovereign decisions,” a senior Biden administration official explained. “All we could do was give them advice.”
The leader of the Mariupol assault,General Sodol, was an eager consumer of General Aguto’s advice. That collaboration produced one of the counteroffensive’s biggest successes: After American intelligence identified a weak point in Russian lines, General Sodol’s forces, using Wiesbaden’s points of interest, recaptured the village of Staromaiorske and nearly eight square miles of territory.
For the Ukrainians, that victory posed a question: Might the Mariupol fight be more promising than the one toward Melitopol? But the attack stalled for lack of manpower.
The problem was laid out right there on the battlefield map in General Aguto’s office: General Syrsky’s assault on Bakhmut was starving the Ukrainian army.
General Aguto urged him to send brigades and ammunition south for the Melitopol attack. But General Syrsky wouldn’t budge, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Nor would he budge when Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner paramilitaries had helped the Russians capture Bakhmut, rebelled against Mr. Putin’s military leadership and sent forces racing toward Moscow.
U.S. intelligence assessed that the rebellion could erode Russian morale and cohesion; intercepts detected Russian commanders surprised that the Ukrainians weren’t pushing harder toward tenuously defended Melitopol, a U.S. intelligence official said.
But as General Syrsky saw it, the rebellion validated his strategy of sowing division by impaling the Russians in Bakhmut. To send some of his forces south would only undercut it. “I was right, Aguto. You were wrong,” an American official recalls General Syrsky saying and adding, “We’re going to get to Luhansk.”
Mr. Zelensky had framed Bakhmut as the “fortress of our morale.” In the end, it was a blood-drenched demonstration of the outmanned Ukrainians’ predicament.
Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians’ casualties — in the tens of thousands — far outstripped the Ukrainians’. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)
Which left Melitopol.
A primary virtue of the Wiesbaden machine was speed — shrinking the time from point of interest to Ukrainian strike. But that virtue, and with it the Melitopol offensive, was undermined by a fundamental shift in how the Ukrainian commander there used those points of interest. He had substantially less ammunition than he had planned for; instead of simply firing, he would now first use drones to confirm the intelligence.
This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.
American officials recounted the ensuing battle. The Ukrainians had been pummeling the Russians with artillery; American intelligence indicated they were pulling back.
“Take the ground now,” General Aguto told General Tarnavskyi.
But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.
In Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers — to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march.
General Tarnavskyi, though, wouldn’t move until the threat was eliminated. So Wiesbaden sent the Russians’ coordinates and advised him to simultaneously open fire and advance.
Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.
Which took time. Only then did he order his men to fire.
And after the strike, he once again dispatched his drones, to confirm the hilltop was indeed clear. Then he ordered his forces into Robotyne, which they seized on Aug. 28.
The back-and-forth had cost between 24 and 48 hours, officers estimated. And in that time, south of Robotyne, the Russians had begun building new barriers, laying mines and sending reinforcements to halt Ukrainian progress. “The situation was changed completely,” General Zabrodskyi said.
An abandoned Ukrainian military vehicle near the front line of Robotyne.
Reuters
General Aguto yelled at General Tarnavskyi: Press on. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren’t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going.
The Ukrainian advance, in fact, was slowed by a mix of factors. But in Wiesbaden, the frustrated Americans kept talking about the platoon on the hill. “A damned platoon stopped the counteroffensive,” one officer remarked.
The Ukrainianswould not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.
Now their objective would be the small occupied city of Tokmak, about halfway to Melitopol, close to critical rail lines and roadways.
General Aguto had given the Ukrainians greater autonomy. But now he crafted a detailed artillery plan, Operation Rolling Thunder, that prescribed what the Ukrainians should shoot, with what and in what order, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But General Tarnavskyi objected to some targets, insisted on using drones to verify points of interest and Rolling Thunder rumbled to a halt.
Desperate to salvage the counteroffensive, the White House had authorized a secret transport of a small number of cluster warheads with a range of about 100 miles, and General Aguto and General Zabrodskyi devised an operation against Russian attack helicopters threatening General Tarnavskyi’s forces. At least 10 helicopters were destroyed, and the Russians pulled all their aircraft back to Crimea or the mainland. Still, the Ukrainians couldn’t advance.
The Americans’ last-ditch recommendation was to have General Syrsky take over the Tokmak fight. That was rejected. They then proposed that General Sodol send his marines to Robotyne and have them break through the Russian line. But instead General Zaluzhny ordered the marines to Kherson to open a new front in an operation the Americans counseled was doomed to fail — trying to cross the Dnipro and advance toward Crimea. The marines made it across the river in early November but ran out of men and ammunition. The counteroffensive was supposed to deliver a knockout blow. Instead, it met an inglorious end.
General Syrsky declined to answer questions about his interactions with American generals, but a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces said, “We do hope that the time will come, and after the victory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian and American generals you mentioned will perhaps jointly tell us about their working and friendly negotiations during the fighting against Russian aggression.”
Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine and arguably the country’s second-most-powerful official, told The Times that the counteroffensive had been “primarily blunted” by the allies’ “political hesitation” and “constant” delays in weapons deliveries.
But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.”
Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli in Wiesbaden in December 2023.
Susanne Goebel/U.S. European Command
December 2023–January 2025
Kursk
offensive
Sumy
Russia
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Pokrovsk
Black
Sea
Kerch Strait
Bridge
Crimea
Sevastopol
Ukrainian advances
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Donald J.TrumpPresident
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
Shortly before Christmas, Mr. Zelensky rode through the Wiesbaden gates for his maiden visit to the secret center of the partnership.
Entering the Tony Bass Auditorium, he was escorted past trophies of shared battle — twisted fragments of Russian vehicles, missiles and aircraft. When he climbed to the walkway above the former basketball court — as General Zabrodskyi had done that first day in 2022 — the officers working below burst into applause.
Yet the president had not come to Wiesbaden for celebration. In the shadow of the failed counteroffensive, a third, hard wartime winter coming on, the portents had only darkened. To press their new advantage, the Russians were pouring forces into the east. In America, Mr. Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, was mid-political resurrection; some congressional Republicans were grumbling about cutting off funding.
A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory. As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.
But first, the immediate business in Wiesbaden: Generals Cavoli and Aguto explained that they saw no plausible path to reclaiming significant territory in 2024. The coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.
The Ukrainians would have to temper expectations, focusing on achievable objectives to stay in the fight while building the combat power to potentially mount a counteroffensive in 2025: They would need to erect defensive lines in the east to prevent the Russians from seizing more territory. And they would need to reconstitute existing brigades and fill new ones, which the coalition would help train and equip.
Mr. Zelensky voiced his support.
Yet the Americans knew he did so grudgingly. Time and again Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.
Just weeks before, the president had instructed General Zaluzhny to push the Russians back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders by fall of 2024. The general had then shocked the Americans by presenting a plan to do so that required five million shells and one million drones. To which General Cavoli had responded, in fluent Russian, “From where?”
Several weeks later, at a meeting in Kyiv, the Ukrainian commander had locked General Cavoli in a Defense Ministry kitchen and, vaping furiously, made one final, futile plea. “He was caught between two fires, the first being the president and the second being the partners,” said one of his aides.
As a compromise, the Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory — a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia. It would be code-named Operation Lunar Hail.
Until now, the Ukrainians, with help from the C.I.A. and the U.S. and British navies, had used maritime drones, together with long-range British Storm Shadow and French SCALP missiles, to strike the Black Sea Fleet. Wiesbaden’s contribution was intelligence.
But to prosecute the wider Crimea campaign, the Ukrainians would need far more missiles. They would need hundreds of ATACMS.
At the Pentagon, the old cautions hadn’t melted away. But after General Aguto briefed Mr. Austin on all that Lunar Hail could achieve, an aide recalled, he said: “OK, there’s a really compelling strategic objective here. It isn’t just about striking things.”
Mr. Zelensky would get his long-pined-for ATACMS. Even so, one U.S. official said, “We knew that, in his heart of hearts, he still wanted to do something else, something more.”
General Zabrodskyiwas in the Wiesbaden command center in late January when he received an urgent message and stepped outside.
When he returned, gone pale as a ghost, he led General Aguto to a balcony and, pulling on a Lucky Strike, told him that the Ukrainian leadership struggle had reached its denouement: General Zaluzhny was being fired. The betting was on his rival, General Syrsky, to ascend.
The Americans were hardly surprised; they had been hearing ample murmurings of presidential discontent. The Ukrainians would chalk it up to politics, to fear that the widely popular General Zaluzhny might challenge Mr. Zelensky for the presidency. There was also the Stavka meeting, where the president effectively kneecapped General Zaluzhny, and the general’s subsequent decision to publisha piece in The Economistdeclaring the war at a stalemate, the Ukrainians in need of a quantum technological breakthrough. This even as his president was calling for total victory.
General Zaluzhny, one American official said, was a “dead man walking.”
General Syrsky’s appointment brought hedged relief. The Americans believed they would now have a partner with the president’s ear and trust; decision-making, they hoped, would become more consistent.
General Syrsky was also a known commodity.
Part of that knowledge, of course, was the memory of 2023, the scar of Bakhmut — the way the general had sometimes spurned their recommendations, even sought to undermine them. Still, colleagues say, Generals Cavoli and Aguto felt they understood his idiosyncrasies; he would at least hear them out, and unlike some commanders, he appreciated and typically trusted the intelligence they provided.
For General Zabrodskyi, though, the shake-up was a personal blow and a strategic unknown. He considered General Zaluzhny a friend and had given up his parliamentary seat to become his deputy for plans and operations. (Soon he would be pushed out of that job, and his Wiesbaden role. When General Aguto found out, he called with a standing invitation to his North Carolina beach house; the generals could go sailing. “Maybe in my next life,” General Zabrodskyi replied.)
And the changing of the guard came at a particularly uncertain moment for the partnership: Goaded by Mr. Trump, congressional Republicans were holding up $61 billion in new military aid. During the battle for Melitopol, the commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. Wiesbaden was still churning out points of interest, but the Ukrainians were barely using them.
“We don’t need this right now,” General Zabrodskyi told the Americans.
The red lineskept moving.
There were the ATACMS, which arrived secretly in early spring, so the Russians wouldn’t realize Ukraine could now strike across Crimea.
And there were the SMEs. Some months earlier, General Aguto had been allowed to send a small team, about a dozen officers, to Kyiv, easing the prohibition on American boots on Ukrainian ground. So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as “subject matter experts.” Then, after the Ukrainian leadership shake-up, to build confidence and coordination, the administration more than tripled the number of officers in Kyiv, to about three dozen; they could now plainly be called advisers, though they would still be confined to the Kyiv area.
Perhaps the hardest red line, though, was the Russian border. Soon that line, too, would be redrawn.
In April, the financing logjam was finally cleared, and 180 more ATACMS, dozens of armored vehicles and 85,000 155-millimeter shells started flowing in from Poland.
Coalition intelligence, though, was detecting another sort of movement: Components of a new Russian formation, the 44th Army Corps, moving toward Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border. The Russians, seeing a limited window as the Ukrainians waited to have the American aid in hand, were preparing to open a new front in northern Ukraine.
The Ukrainians believed the Russians hoped to reach a major road ringing Kharkiv, which would allow them to bombard the city, the country’s second-largest, with artillery fire, and threaten the lives of more than a million people.
The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn’t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence.
Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.
The Ukrainians asked for permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons across the border. What’s more, Generals Cavoli and Aguto proposed that Wiesbaden help guide those strikes, as it did across Ukraine and in Crimea — providing points of interest and precision coordinates.
The White House was still debating these questions when, on May 10, the Russians attacked.
This became the moment the Biden administration changed the rules of the game. Generals Cavoli and Aguto were tasked with creating an “ops box” — a zone on Russian soil in which the Ukrainians could fire U.S.-supplied weapons and Wiesbaden could support their strikes.
At first they advocated an expansive box, to encompass a concomitant threat: the glide bombs — crude Soviet-era bombs transformed into precision weapons with wings and fins — that were raining terror on Kharkiv. A box extending about 190 miles would let the Ukrainians use their new ATACMS to hit glide-bomb fields and other targets deep inside Russia. But Mr. Austin saw this as mission creep: He did not want to divert ATACMS from Lunar Hail.
Instead, the generals were instructed to draw up two options — one extending about 50 miles into Russia, standard HIMARS range, and one nearly twice as deep. Ultimately, against the generals’ recommendation, Mr. Biden and his advisers chose the most limited option — but to protect the city of Sumy as well as Kharkiv, it followed most of the country’s northern border, encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey. The C.I.A. was also authorized to send officers to the Kharkiv region to assist their Ukrainian counterparts with operations inside the box.
The box went live at the end of May. The Russians were caught unawares: With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war.
The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.
Summer 2024: Ukraine’s armies in the north and east were stretched dangerously thin. Still, General Syrsky kept telling the Americans, “I need a win.”
A foreshadowing had come back in March, when the Americans discovered that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia. The C.I.A. station chief in Kyiv confronted the HUR commander, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov: If he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support. He did, only to be forced back.
At moments like these, Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.
To the Ukrainians, though, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was “better than ask and stop,” explained Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former Ukrainian military intelligence commander. He added: “We are allies, but we have different goals. We protect our country, and you protect your phantom fears from the Cold War.”
In August in Wiesbaden, General Aguto’s tour was coming to its scheduled end. He left on the 9th. The same day, the Ukrainians dropped a cryptic reference to something happening in the north.
On Aug. 10, the C.I.A. station chief left, too, for a job at headquarters. In the churn of command, General Syrsky made his move — sending troops across the southwest Russian border, into the region of Kursk.
For the Americans, the incursion’s unfolding was a significant breach of trust. It wasn’t just that the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark; they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line, taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russian territory encompassed by the ops box, in violation of rules laid down when it was created.
The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. “It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,” a senior Pentagon official said.
The Americans could have pulled the plug on the ops box. Yet they knew that to do so, an administration official explained, “could lead to a catastrophe”: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk would perish unprotected by HIMARS rockets and U.S. intelligence.
Kursk, the Americans concluded, was the win Mr. Zelensky had been hinting at all along. It was also evidence of his calculations: He still spoke of total victory. But one of the operation’s goals, he explained to the Americans, was leverage — to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.
Provocative operationsonce forbidden were now permitted.
Before General Zabrodskyi was sidelined, he and General Aguto had selected the targets for Operation Lunar Hail. The campaign required a degree of hand-holding not seen since General Donahue’s day. American and British officers would oversee virtually every aspect of each strike, from determining the coordinates to calculating the missiles’ flight paths.
Of roughly 100 targets across Crimea, the most coveted was the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Mr. Putin saw the bridge as powerful physical proof of Crimea’s connection to the motherland. Toppling the Russian president’s symbol had, in turn, become the Ukrainian president’s obsession.
It had also been an American red line. In 2022, the Biden administration prohibited helping the Ukrainians target it; even the approaches on the Crimean side were to be treated as sovereign Russian territory. (Ukrainian intelligence services tried attacking it themselves, causing some damage.)
But after the partners agreed on Lunar Hail, the White House authorized the military and C.I.A. to secretly work with the Ukrainians and the British on a blueprint of attack to bring the bridge down: ATACMS would weaken vulnerable points on the deck, while maritime drones would blow up next to its stanchions.
But while the drones were being readied, the Russians hardened their defenses around the stanchions.
The Ukrainians proposed attacking with ATACMS alone. Generals Cavoli and Aguto pushed back: ATACMS alone wouldn’t do the job; the Ukrainians should wait until the drones were ready or call off the strike.
In the end, the Americans stood down, and in mid-August, with Wiesbaden’s reluctant help, the Ukrainians fired a volley of ATACMS at the bridge. It did not come tumbling down; the strike left some “potholes,” which the Russians repaired, one American official grumbled, adding, “Sometimes they need to try and fail to see that we are right.”
The Kerch Bridge episode aside, the Lunar Hail collaboration was judged a significant success. Russian warships, aircraft, command posts, weapons depots and maintenance facilities were destroyed or moved to the mainland to escape the onslaught.
For the Biden administration, the failed Kerch attack, together with a scarcity of ATACMS, reinforced the importance of helping the Ukrainians use their fleet of long-distance attack drones. The main challenge was evading Russian air defenses and pinpointing targets.
Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. So the administration would let the C.I.A. request “variances,” carve-outs authorizing the spy agency to support strikes inside Russia to achieve specific objectives.
Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in the lakeside town of Toropets, some 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border, that was providing weapons to Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kursk. The administration approved the variance. Toropets would be a test of concept.
C.I.A. officers shared intelligence about the depot’s munitions and vulnerabilities, as well as Russian defense systems on the way to Toropets. They calculated how many drones the operation would require and charted their circuitous flight paths.
On Sept. 18, a large swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Videos showed immense balls of flame and plumes of smoke rising above the lake.
A munitions depot in Toropets, Russia.
Maxar Technologies
The depot after a drone strike assisted by the C.I.A.
Maxar Technologies
Yet as with the Kerch Bridge operation, the drone collaboration pointed to a strategic dissonance.
The Americans argued for concentrating drone strikes on strategically important military targets — the same sort of argument they had made, fruitlessly, about focusing on Melitopol during the 2023 counteroffensive. But the Ukrainians insisted on attacking a wider menu of targets, including oil and gas facilities and politically sensitive sites in and around Moscow (though they would do so without C.I.A. help).
“Russian public opinion is going to turn on Putin,” Mr. Zelensky told the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Kyiv in September. “You’re wrong. We know the Russians.”
Mr. Austin and General Cavolitraveled to Kyiv in October. Year by year, the Biden administration had provided the Ukrainians with an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal of weaponry, had crossed so many of its red lines. Still, the defense secretary and the general were worrying about the message written in the weakening situation on the ground.
The Russians had been making slow but steady progress against depleted Ukrainian forces in the east, toward the city of Pokrovsk — their “big target,” one American official called it. They were also clawing back some territory in Kursk. Yes, the Russians’ casualties had spiked, to between 1,000 and 1,500 a day. But still they kept coming.
Mr. Austin would later recount how he contemplated this manpower mismatch as he looked out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets. He was struck, he told aides, by the sight of so many men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform. In a nation at war, he explained, men this age are usually away, in the fight.
This was one of the difficult messages the Americans had come to Kyiv to deliver, as they laid out what they could and couldn’t do for Ukraine in 2025.
Mr. Zelensky had already taken a small step, lowering the draft age to 25. Still, the Ukrainians hadn’t been able to fill existing brigades, let alone build new ones.
Mr. Austin pressed Mr. Zelensky to take the bigger, bolder step and begin drafting 18-year-olds. To which Mr. Zelensky shot back, according to an official who was present, “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.”
“And your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned,” the official recalled Mr. Austin responding. “They don’t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.”
That was the perennial standoff:
In the Ukrainians’ view, the Americans weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help them prevail.
In the Americans’ view, the Ukrainians weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help themselves prevail.
Mr. Zelensky often said, in response to the draft question, that his country was fighting for its future, that 18- to 25-year-olds were the fathers of that future.
To one American official, though, it’s “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
General Baldwin, who early on had crucially helped connect the partners’ commanders, had visited Kyiv in September 2023. The counteroffensive was stalling, the U.S. elections were on the horizon and the Ukrainians kept asking about Afghanistan.
The Ukrainians, he recalled, were terrified that they, too, would be abandoned. They kept calling, wanting to know if America would stay the course, asking: “What will happen if the Republicans win the Congress? What is going to happen if President Trump wins?’”
He always told them to remain encouraged, he said. Still, he added, “I had my fingers crossed behind my back, because I really didn’t know anymore.”
Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in.
In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project.
He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk. One of the first U.S.-supported strikes targeted and wounded the North Korean commander, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok, as he met with his Russian counterparts in a command bunker.
The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.
In December, General Donahue got his fourth star and returned to Wiesbaden as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He had been the last American soldier to leave in the chaotic fall of Kabul. Now he would have to navigate the new, unsure future of Ukraine.
General Cavoli, center, passed the colors to General Donahue in a ceremonial change of command in Wiesbaden.
Volker Ramspott/U.S. Army
So much had changed since General Donahue left two years before. But when it came to the raw question of territory, not much had changed. In the war’s first year, with Wiesbaden’s help, the Ukrainians had seized the upper hand, winning back more than half of the land lost after the 2022 invasion. Now, they were fighting over tiny slivers of ground in the east (and in Kursk).
One of General Donahue’s main objectives in Wiesbaden, according to a Pentagon official, would be to fortify the brotherhood and breathe new life into the machine — to stem, perhaps even push back, the Russian advance. (In the weeks that followed, with Wiesbaden providing points of interest and coordinates, the Russian march toward Pokrovsk would slow, and in some areas in the east, the Ukrainians would make gains. But in southwest Russia, as the Trump administration scaled back support, the Ukrainians would lose most of their bargaining chip, Kursk.)
In early January, Generals Donahue and Cavoli visited Kyiv to meet with General Syrsky and ensure that he agreed on plans to replenish Ukrainian brigades and shore up their lines, the Pentagon official said. From there, they traveled to Ramstein Air Base, where they met Mr. Austin for what would be the final gathering of coalition defense chiefs before everything changed.
With the doors closed to the press and public, Mr. Austin’s counterparts hailed him as the “godfather” and “architect” of the partnership that, for all its broken trust and betrayals, had sustained the Ukrainians’ defiance and hope, begun in earnest on that spring day in 2022 when Generals Donahue and Zabrodskyi first met in Wiesbaden.
Mr. Austin is a solid and stoic block of a man, but as he returned the compliments, his voice caught.
“Instead of saying farewell, let me say thank you,” he said, blinking back tears. And then added: “I wish you all success, courage and resolve. Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.”
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Sources and methodology
For each war map, we used data from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project to calculate changes in territorial control. Russian forces in eastern Ukraine include Russian-backed separatists. The composite image in the introduction draws on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was compiled using Google Earth Engine. We combined images from January and February of each year since 2020 to generate a cloud-free satellite image.
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Part 4Breaches of Trust, and of Borders
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html#part-four
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.
By Adam Entous
Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Turkey.
On a spring morningtwo months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.
Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.
The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.
One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.
Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.
Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.
How the promise of Texas barbecue led to a meeting with a key Ukrainian general.
Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.
Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today’s precarious place.
With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine — including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.
But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war — enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence — that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.
Ukrainian, American and British military leaders during a meeting in Ukraine in August 2023.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.
Farther south, the partners set their sights on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet loaded missiles destined for Ukrainian targets onto warships and submarines. At the height of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, a predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.
But ultimately the partnership strained — and the arc of the war shifted — amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.
Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.
As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.
On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war — in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year’s successes — the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.
A Ukrainian soldier fired at Russian positions near Bakhmut.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear — that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats. The story of the partnership shows how close the Americans and their allies sometimes came to that red line, how increasingly dire events forced them — some said too slowly — to advance it to more perilous ground and how they carefully devised protocols to remain on the safe side of it.
Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.
In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.
It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.
During the wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, American forces conducted their own ground operations and supported those of their local partners. In Ukraine, by contrast, the U.S. military wasn’t allowed to deploy any of its own soldiers on the battlefield and would have to help remotely.
Would the precision targeting honed against terrorist groups be effective in a conflict with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? Would Ukrainian artillery men fire their howitzers without hesitation at coordinates sent by American officers in a headquarters 1,300 miles away? Would Ukrainian commanders, based on intelligence relayed by a disembodied American voice pleading, “There’s nobody there — go,” order infantrymen to enter a village behind enemy lines?
The answers to those questions — in truth, the partnership’s entire trajectory — would hinge on how well American and Ukrainian officers would trust one another.
“I will never lie to you. If you lie to me, we’re done,” General Zabrodskyi recalled General Donahue telling him at their first meeting. “I feel the exact same way,” the Ukrainian replied.
A Ukrainian soldier keeps watch in Kharkiv on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
February–May 2022
Kyiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Kherson
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia since 2014
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksiiReznikovDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
In mid-April 2022, about two weeks before the Wiesbaden meeting, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on a routine intelligence-sharing call when something unexpected popped up on their radar screens. According to a former senior U.S. military officer, “The Americans go: ‘Oh, that’s the Moskva!’ The Ukrainians go: ‘Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.’”
The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainians sank it.
Over more than a year of reporting, Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries. While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.
The sinking was a signal triumph — a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude. But the episode also reflected the disjointed state of the Ukrainian-American relationship in the first weeks of the war.
For the Americans, there was anger, because the Ukrainians hadn’t given so much as a heads-up; surprise, that Ukraine possessed missiles capable of reaching the ship; and panic, because the Biden administration hadn’t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.
The Ukrainians, for their part, were coming from their own place of deep-rooted skepticism.
Their war, as they saw it, had started in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and fomented separatist rebellions in eastern Ukraine. President Barack Obama had condemned the seizure and imposed sanctions on Russia. But fearful that American involvement could provoke a full-scale invasion, he had authorized only strictly limited intelligence sharing and rejected calls for defensive weapons. “Blankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets,” Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, complained. Eventually Mr. Obama somewhat relaxed those intelligence strictures, and Mr. Trump, in his first term, relaxed them further and supplied the Ukrainians with their first antitank Javelins.
Then, in the portentous days before Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration had closed the Kyiv embassy and pulled all military personnel from the country. (A small team of C.I.A. officers was allowed to stay.) As the Ukrainians saw it, a senior U.S. military officer said, “We told them, ‘The Russians are coming — see ya.’”
When American generals offered assistance after the invasion, they ran into a wall of mistrust. “We’re fighting the Russians. You’re not. Why should we listen to you?” Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.
General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.
In those early days, this meant that General Donahue and a few aides, with little more than their phones, passed information about Russian troop movements to General Syrsky and his staff. Yet even that ad hoc arrangement touched a raw nerve of rivalry within Ukraine’s military, between General Syrsky and his boss, the armed forces commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. To Zaluzhny loyalists, General Syrsky was already using the relationship to build advantage.
Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny’s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians’ equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American’s calls.
To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine’s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, “I know you’re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.”
Ragtag alliance coalesced into partnership in the quick cascade of events.
In March, their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south — a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.
Unless the coalition reoriented its own ambitions, General Donahue and the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, concluded, the hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians would lose the war. The coalition, in other words, would have to start providing heavy offensive weapons — M777 artillery batteries and shells.
The Biden administration had previously arranged emergency shipments of antiaircraft and antitank weapons. The M777s were something else entirely — the first big leap into supporting a major ground war.
The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne in charge of delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed on to the M777s, the Tony Bass Auditorium became a full-fledged headquarters.
A Polish general became General Donahue’s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub on the former basketball court. A Canadian would oversee training.
The auditorium basement became what is known as a fusion center, producing intelligence about Russian battlefield positions, movements and intentions. There, according to intelligence officials, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers.
The 18th Airborne is known as Dragon Corps; the new operation would be Task Force Dragon. All that was needed to bring the pieces together was the reluctant Ukrainian top command.
At an international conference on April 26 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, General Milley introduced Mr. Reznikov and a Zaluzhny deputy to Generals Cavoli and Donahue. “These are your guys right here,” General Milley told them, adding: “You’ve got to work with them. They’re going to help you.”
Bonds of trust were being forged. Mr. Reznikov agreed to talk to General Zaluzhny. Back in Kyiv, “we organized the composition of a delegation” to Wiesbaden, Mr. Reznikov said. “And so it began.”
At the heart of the partnershipwere two generals — the Ukrainian, Zabrodskyi, and the American, Donahue.
General Zabrodskyi would be Wiesbaden’s chief Ukrainian contact, although in an unofficial capacity, as he was serving in parliament. In every other way, he was a natural.
Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, a key Ukrainian figure in the Wiesbaden partnership.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Like many of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian military, General Zabrodskyi knew the enemy well. In the 1990s, he had attended military academy in St. Petersburg and served for five years in the Russian Army.
He also knew the Americans: From 2005 to 2006, he had studied at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Eight years later, General Zabrodskyi led a perilous mission behind lines of Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, modeled in part on one he had studied at Fort Leavenworth — the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart’s famous reconnaissance mission around Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. This brought him to the attention of influential people at the Pentagon; the general, they sensed, was the kind of leader they could work with.
General Zabrodskyi remembers that first day in Wiesbaden: “My mission was to find out: Who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?”
General Donahue was a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria. General Cavoli once compared him to “a comic book action hero.”
Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, center, no helmet, in Afghanistan circa 2020.
Now he showed General Zabrodskyi and his travel companion, Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Kyrylenko, a map of the besieged east and south of their country, Russian forces dwarfing theirs. Invoking their “Glory to Ukraine” battle cry, he laid down the challenge: “You can ‘Slava Ukraini’ all you want with other people. I don’t care how brave you are. Look at the numbers.” He then walked them through a plan to win a battlefield advantage by fall, General Zabrodskyi recalled.
The first stage was underway — training Ukrainian artillery men on their new M777s. Task Force Dragon would then help them use the weapons to halt the Russian advance. Then the Ukrainians would need to mount a counteroffensive.
That evening, General Zabrodskyi wrote to his superiors in Kyiv.
“You know, a lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine,” he recalled. But “somebody needed to be the coordinator, to organize everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. I said to the commander in chief, ‘We have found our partner.’”
Soon the Ukrainians, nearly 20 in all — intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists — began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets’ locations.
Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”?
Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.
The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”
“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” one U.S. official explained.
Each point of interest would have to adhere to intelligence-sharing rules crafted to blunt the risk of Russian retaliation against N.A.T.O. partners.
There would be no points of interest on Russian soil. If Ukrainian commanders wanted to strike within Russia, General Zabrodskyi explained, they would have to use their own intelligence and domestically produced weapons. “Our message to the Russians was, ‘This war should be fought inside Ukraine,’” a senior U.S. official said.
Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire an M777 howitzer at Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The White House also prohibited sharing intelligence on the locations of “strategic” Russian leaders, like the armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,” another senior U.S. official said. “Like, we’d go to war.” Similarly, Task Force Dragon couldn’t share intelligence that identified the locations of individual Russians.
The way the system worked, Task Force Dragon would tell the UkrainianswhereRussians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not sayhowit knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets — Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on. As General Zabrodskyi remembers it, when the Ukrainians asked why they should trust the intelligence, General Donahue would say: “Don’t worry about how we found out. Just trust that when you shoot, it will hit it, and you’ll like the results, and if you don’t like the results, tell us, we’ll make it better.”
The systemwent livein May. The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians’ M777s. The fusion center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark’s coordinates in preparation for the strike.
On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the battalion commander with a pep talk: “You feel good?” he asked. “I feel real good,” the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. “Everybody went, ‘We can do this!’” a U.S. official recalled.
But a critical question remained: Having done this against a single, stationary target, could the partners deploy this system against multiple targets in a major kinetic battle?
That would be the battle underway north of Donetsk, in Sievierodonetsk, where the Russians were hoping to mount a pontoon-bridge river crossing and then encircle and capture the city. General Zabrodskyi called it “a hell of a target.”
The engagement that followed was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. The pontoon bridges became death traps; at least 400 Russians were killed, by Ukrainian estimates. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.
In these first months, the fighting was largely concentrated in Ukraine’s east. But U.S. intelligence was also tracking Russian movements in the south, especially a large troop buildup near the major city of Kherson. Soon several M777 crews were redeployed, and Task Force Dragon started feeding points of interest to strike Russian positions there.
With practice, Task Force Dragon produced points of interest faster, and the Ukrainians shot at them faster. The more they demonstrated their effectiveness using M777s and similar systems, the more the coalition sent new ones — which Wiesbaden supplied with ever more points of interest.
“You know when we started to believe?” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “When Donahue said, ‘This is a list of positions.’ We checked the list and we said, ‘These 100 positions are good, but we need the other 50.’ And they sent the other 50.”
The M777s became workhorsesof the Ukrainian army.But because theygenerally couldn’t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians’ vast superiority in manpower and equipment.
To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap — providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.
The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking.
Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over.
Celeste Wallander, then the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, recalled, “Milley would always say, ‘You’ve got a little Russian army fighting a big Russian army, and they’re fighting the same way, and the Ukrainians will never win.’” General Cavoli’s argument, she said, was that “with HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that’s how they will start to beat the Russians.”
At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?” And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon was becoming “the entire back office of the war.”
Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.
HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. Russian forces were left dazed and confused. Their morale plummeted, and with it their will to fight. And as the HIMARS arsenal grew from eight to 38 and the Ukrainian strikers became more proficient, an American official said, the toll rose as much as fivefold.
“We became a small part, maybe not the best part, but a small part, of your system,” General Zabrodskyi explained, adding: “Most states did this over a period of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But we were forced to do it in a matter of weeks.”
Together the partners were honing a killing machine.
Russian forces collapsed in the Oskil river valley, abandoning their equipment as they fled.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
June–November 2022
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Izium
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia
Mykolaiv
Melitopol
Kherson
Odesa
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
BenWallaceDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
At their first meeting, General Donahue had shown General Zabrodskyi a color-coded map of the region, with American and NATO forces in blue, Russian forces in red and Ukrainian forces in green. “Why are we green?” General Zabrodskyi asked. “We should be blue.”
In early June, as they met to war-game Ukraine’s counteroffensive, sitting side by side in front of tabletop battlefield maps, General Zabrodskyi saw that the small blocks marking Ukrainian positions had become blue — a symbolic stroke to strengthen the bond of common purpose. “When you defeat Russia,” General Donahue told the Ukrainians, “we will make you blue for good.”
It was three months since the invasion, and the maps told this story of the war:
In the south, the Ukrainians had blocked the Russian advance at the Black Sea shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv. But the Russians controlled Kherson, and a corps roughly 25,000 soldiers strong occupied land on the west bank of the Dnipro River. In the east, the Russians had been stopped at Izium. But they held land between there and the border, including the strategically important Oskil river valley.
The Russians’ strategy had morphed from decapitation — the futile assault on Kyiv — to slow strangulation. The Ukrainians needed to go on the offensive.
Their top commander, General Zaluzhny, along with the British, favored the most ambitious option — from near Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast, down toward occupied Melitopol. This maneuver, they believed, would sever the cross-border land routes sustaining Russian forces in Crimea.
In theory, General Donahue agreed. But according to colleagues, he thought Melitopol was not feasible, given the state of the Ukrainian military and the coalition’s limited ability to provide M777s without crippling American readiness. To prove his point in the war games, he took over the part of the Russian commander. Whenever the Ukrainians tried to advance, General Donahue destroyed them with overwhelming combat power.
What they ultimately agreed on was a two-part attack to confuse Russian commanders who, according to American intelligence, believed the Ukrainians had only enough soldiers and equipment for a single offensive.
The main effort would be to recapture Kherson and secure the Dnipro’s west bank, lest the corps advance on the port of Odesa and be positioned for another attack on Kyiv.
General Donahue had advocated a coequal second front in the east, from the Kharkiv region, to reach the Oskil river valley. But the Ukrainians instead argued for a smaller supporting feint to draw Russian forces east and smooth the way for Kherson.
That would come first, around Sept. 4. The Ukrainians would then begin two weeks of artillery strikes to weaken Russian forces in the south. Only then, around Sept. 18, would they march toward Kherson.
And if they still had enough ammunition, they would cross the Dnipro. General Zabrodskyi remembers General Donahue saying, “If you guys want to get across the river and get to the neck of Crimea, then follow the plan.”
That was the planuntil it wasn’t.
Mr. Zelensky sometimes spoke directly with regional commanders, and after one such conversation, the Americans were informed that the order of battle had changed.
Kherson would come faster — and first, on Aug. 29.
General Donahue told General Zaluzhny that more time was needed to lay the groundwork for Kherson; the switch, he said, put the counteroffensive, and the entire country, in jeopardy. The Americans later learned the back story:
Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute — a preview of a fundamental disconnect that would increasingly shape the arc of the war.
The upshot wasn’t what anyone had planned.
The Russians responded by moving reinforcements from the east toward Kherson. Now General Zaluzhny realized that the weakened Russian forces in the east might well let the Ukrainians do what General Donahue had advocated — reach the Oskil river valley. “Go, go, go — you have them on the ropes,” General Donahue told the Ukrainian commander there, General Syrsky, a European official recalled.
The Russian forces collapsed even faster than predicted, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The Ukrainian leadership had never expected their forces to reach the Oskil’s west bank, and when they did, General Syrsky’s standing with the president soared.
In the south, U.S. intelligence now reported that the corps on the Dnipro’s west bank was running short on food and ammunition.
The Ukrainians wavered. General Donahue pleaded with the field commander, Maj. Gen. Andrii Kovalchuk, to advance. Soon the American’s superiors, Generals Cavoli and Milley, escalated the matter to General Zaluzhny.
That didn’t work either.
The British defense minister, Ben Wallace, asked General Donahue what he would do if General Kovalchuk were his subordinate.
“He would have already been fired,” General Donahue responded.
“I got this,” Mr. Wallace said. The British military had considerable clout in Kyiv; unlike the Americans, they had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion. Now the defense minister exercised that clout and demanded that the Ukrainians oust the commander.
Perhaps no pieceof Ukrainian soil was more precious to Mr. Putin than Crimea. As the Ukrainians haltingly advanced on the Dnipro, hoping to cross and advance toward the peninsula, this gave rise to what one Pentagon official called the “core tension”:
To give the Russian president an incentive to negotiate a deal, the official explained, the Ukrainians would have to put pressure on Crimea. To do so, though, could push him to contemplate doing “something desperate.”
The Ukrainians were already exerting pressure on the ground. And the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.
That same month, U.S. intelligence overheard Russia’s Ukraine commander, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, talking about indeed doing something desperate: using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Ukrainians from crossing the Dnipro and making a beeline to Crimea.
Until that moment, U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.
That core tension seemed to be coming to a head.
In Europe, Generals Cavoli and Donahue were begging General Kovalchuk’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, to move his brigades forward, rout the corps from the Dnipro’s west bank and seize its equipment.
In Washington, Mr. Biden’s top advisers nervously wondered the opposite — if they might need to press the Ukrainians to slow their advance.
The moment might have been the Ukrainians’ best chance to deal a game-changing blow to the Russians. It might also have been the best chance to ignite a wider war.
In the end, in a sort of grand ambiguity, the moment never came.
To protect their fleeing forces, Russian commanders left behind small detachments of troops. General Donahue advised General Tarnavskyi to destroy or bypass them and focus on the primary objective — the corps. But whenever the Ukrainians encountered a detachment, they stopped in their tracks, assuming a larger force lay in wait.
General Donahue told him that satellite imagery showed Ukrainian forces blocked by just one or two Russian tanks, according to Pentagon officials. But unable to see the same satellite images, the Ukrainian commander hesitated, wary of sending his forces forward.
To get the Ukrainians moving, Task Force Dragon sent points of interest, and M777 operators destroyed the tanks with Excalibur missiles — time-consuming steps repeated whenever the Ukrainians encountered a Russian detachment.
Ukrainians celebrated the recapture of Kherson.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Ukrainians would still recapture Kherson and clear the Dnipro’s west bank. But the offensive halted there. The Ukrainians, short on ammunition, would not cross the Dnipro. They would not, as the Ukrainians had hoped and the Russians feared, advance toward Crimea.
And as the Russians escaped across the river, farther into occupied ground, huge machines rent the earth, cleaving long, deep trench lines in their wake.
Still the Ukrainians were in a celebratory mood, and on his next Wiesbaden trip, General Zabrodskyi presented General Donahue with a “combat souvenir”: a tactical vest that had belonged to a Russian soldier whose comrades were already marching east to what would become the crucible of 2023 — a place called Bakhmut.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, a site of prolonged combat that President Volodymyr Zelensky called the “fortress of our morale.”
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
November 2022–November 2023
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Luhansk
Bakhmut
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Makiivka
Robotyne
Tokmak
Melitopol
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
The planningfor 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.
Ukraine controlled the west banks of the Oskil and Dnipro rivers. Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war’s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.
“We’re going to win this whole thing,” Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.
To accomplish this, General Zabrodskyi explained as the partners gathered in Wiesbaden in late autumn, General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol, to strangle Russian forces in Crimea — what he believed had been the great, denied opportunity to deal the reeling enemy a knockout blow in 2022.
And once again, some American generals were preaching caution.
At the Pentagon, officials worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive; perhaps the Ukrainians, in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal. When the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Milley, floated that idea in a speech, many of Ukraine’s supporters (including congressional Republicans, then overwhelmingly supportive of the war) cried appeasement.
In Wiesbaden, in private conversations with General Zabrodskyi and the British, General Donahue pointed to those Russian trenches being dug to defend the south. He pointed, too, to the Ukrainians’ halting advance to the Dnipro just weeks before. “They’re digging in, guys,” he told them. “How are you going to get across this?”
What he advocated instead, General Zabrodskyi and a European official recalled, was a pause: If the Ukrainians spent the next year, if not longer, building and training new brigades, they would be far better positioned to fight through to Melitopol.
The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn’t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians.
There would be no pause. General Zabrodskyi would tell General Zaluzhny, “Donahue is right.” But he would also admit that “nobody liked Donahue’s recommendations, except me.”
And besides, General Donahue was a man on the way out.
The 18th Airborne’s deployment had always been temporary. There would now be a more permanent organization in Wiesbaden, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, call sign Erebus — the Greek mythological personification of darkness.
That autumn day, the planning session and their time together done, General Donahue escorted General Zabrodskyi to the Clay Kaserne airfield. There he presented him with an ornamental shield — the 18th Airborne dragon insignia, encircled by five stars.
The westernmost represented Wiesbaden; slightly to the east was the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. The other stars represented Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv — for General Zaluzhny and the commanders in the south and east.
And beneath the stars, “Thanks.”
“I asked him, ‘Why are you thanking me?’” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “‘I should say thank you.’”
General Donahue explained that the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying, testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned. “Thanks to you,” he said, “we built all these things that we never could have.”
Shouting through the airfield wind and noise, they went back and forth about who deserved the most thanks. Then they shook hands, and General Zabrodskyi disappeared into the idling C-130.
The“new guyin the room” was Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. He was a different kind of commander, with a different kind of mission.
General Donahue was a risk taker. General Aguto had built a reputation as a man of deliberation and master of training and large-scale operations. After the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration had expanded its training of the Ukrainians, including at a base in the far west of the country; General Aguto had overseen the program. In Wiesbaden, his No. 1 priority would be preparing new brigades. “You’ve got to get them ready for the fight,” Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, told him.
That translated to greater autonomy for the Ukrainians, a rebalancing of the relationship: At first, Wiesbaden had labored to win the Ukrainians’ trust. Now the Ukrainians were asking for Wiesbaden’s trust.
An opportunity soon presented itself.
Ukrainian intelligence had detected a makeshift Russian barracks at a school in occupied Makiivka. “Trust us on this,” General Zabrodskyi told General Aguto. The American did, and the Ukrainian recalled, “We did the full targeting process absolutely independently.” Wiesbaden’s role would be limited to providing coordinates.
A satellite image of a school in occupied Makiivka where Russians had established a barracks.
Maxar Technologies
The site after a strike that was aided by U.S. intelligence.
Maxar Technologies
In this new phase of the partnership, U.S. and Ukrainian officers would still meet daily to set priorities, which the fusion center turned into points of interest. But Ukrainian commanders now had a freer hand to use HIMARS to strike additional targets, fruit of their own intelligence — if they furthered agreed-upon priorities.
“We will step back and watch, and keep an eye on you to make sure that you don’t do anything crazy,” General Aguto told the Ukrainians. “The whole goal,” he added, “is to have you operate on your own at some point in time.”
Echoing 2022, the war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan.
The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky’s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut — where combat had been smoldering for months — with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south — the attack on Melitopol, where Russian fortifications were already rotting and collapsing in the winter wet and cold.
But problems of a different sort were already gnawing at the new-made plan.
General Zaluzhny may have been Ukraine’s supreme commander, but his supremacy was increasingly compromised by his competition with General Syrsky. According to Ukrainian officials, the rivalry dated to Mr. Zelensky’s decision, in 2021, to elevate General Zaluzhny over his former boss, General Syrsky. The rivalry had intensified after the invasion, as the commanders vied for limited HIMARS batteries. General Syrsky had been born in Russia and served in its army; until he started working on his Ukrainian, he had generally spoken Russian at meetings. General Zaluzhny sometimes derisively called him “that Russian general.”
The Americans knew General Syrsky was unhappy about being dealt a supporting hand in the counteroffensive. When General Aguto called to make sure he understood the plan, he responded, “I don’t agree, but I have my orders.”
The counteroffensive was to begin on May 1. The intervening months would be spent training for it. General Syrsky would contribute four battle-hardened brigades — each between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers — for training in Europe; they would be joined by four brigades of new recruits.
The general had other plans.
In Bakhmut, the Russians were deploying, and losing, vast numbers of soldiers. General Syrsky saw an opportunity to engulf them and ignite discord in their ranks. “Take all new guys” for Melitopol, he told General Aguto, according to U.S. officials. And when Mr. Zelensky sided with him, over the objections of both his own supreme commander and the Americans, a key underpinning of the counteroffensive was effectively scuttled.
Now the Ukrainians would send just four untested brigades abroad for training. (They would prepare eight more inside Ukraine.) Plus, the new recruits were old — mostly in their 40s and 50s. When they arrived in Europe, a senior U.S. official recalled, “All we kept thinking was, This is not great.”
The Ukrainian draft age was 27. General Cavoli, who had been promoted to supreme allied commander for Europe, implored General Zaluzhny to “get your 18-year-olds in the game.” But the Americans concluded that neither the president nor the general would own such a politically fraught decision.
A parallel dynamic was at play on the American side.
The previous year, the Russians had unwisely placed command posts, ammunition depots and logistics centers within 50 miles of the front lines. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS’ reach. So Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.
ATACMS were a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration. Russia’s military chief, General Gerasimov, had indirectly referred to them the previous May when he warned General Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line. There was also a question of supply: The Pentagon was already warning that it would not have enough ATACMS if America had to fight its own war.
The message was blunt: Stop asking for ATACMS.
Underlying assumptionshad been upended. Still, the Americans saw a path to victory, albeit a narrowing one. Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1, before the Russians repaired their fortifications and moved more troops to reinforce Melitopol.
But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto’s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn’t commit until they had it all.
At one point, frustration rising, General Cavoli turned to General Zabrodskyi and said: “Misha, I love your country. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose the war.”
“My answer was: ‘I understand what you are saying, Christopher. But please understand me. I’m not the supreme commander. And I’m not the president of Ukraine,’” General Zabrodskyi recalled, adding, “Probably I needed to cry as much as he did.”
At the Pentagon, officials were beginning to sense some graver fissure opening. General Zabrodskyi recalled General Milley asking: “Tell me the truth. Did you change the plan?”
“No, no, no,” he responded. “We did not change the plan, and we are not going to.”
When he uttered these words, he genuinely believed he was telling the truth.
In late May, intelligence showed the Russians rapidly building new brigades. The Ukrainians didn’t have everything they wanted, but they had what they thought they needed. They would have to go.
General Zaluzhny outlined the final plan at a meeting of the Stavka, a governmental body overseeing military matters. General Tarnavskyi would have 12 brigades and the bulk of ammunition for the main assault, on Melitopol. The marine commandant, Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol, would feint toward Mariupol, the ruined port city taken by the Russians after a withering siege the year before. General Syrsky would lead the supporting effort in the east around Bakhmut, recently lost after months of trench warfare.
Then General Syrsky spoke. According to Ukrainian officials, the general said he wanted to break from the plan and execute a full-scale attack to drive the Russians from Bakhmut. He would then advance eastward toward the Luhansk region. He would, of course, need additional men and ammunition.
The Americans were not told the meeting’s outcome. But then U.S. intelligence observed Ukrainian troops and ammunition moving in directions inconsistent with the agreed-upon plan.
Soon after, at a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.
“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried.
What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition’s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.
“It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,” one Ukrainian official remarked.
Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.
“We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.
But they would not.
“These decisions involving life and death, and what territory you value more and what territory you value less, are fundamentally sovereign decisions,” a senior Biden administration official explained. “All we could do was give them advice.”
The leader of the Mariupol assault,General Sodol, was an eager consumer of General Aguto’s advice. That collaboration produced one of the counteroffensive’s biggest successes: After American intelligence identified a weak point in Russian lines, General Sodol’s forces, using Wiesbaden’s points of interest, recaptured the village of Staromaiorske and nearly eight square miles of territory.
For the Ukrainians, that victory posed a question: Might the Mariupol fight be more promising than the one toward Melitopol? But the attack stalled for lack of manpower.
The problem was laid out right there on the battlefield map in General Aguto’s office: General Syrsky’s assault on Bakhmut was starving the Ukrainian army.
General Aguto urged him to send brigades and ammunition south for the Melitopol attack. But General Syrsky wouldn’t budge, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Nor would he budge when Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner paramilitaries had helped the Russians capture Bakhmut, rebelled against Mr. Putin’s military leadership and sent forces racing toward Moscow.
U.S. intelligence assessed that the rebellion could erode Russian morale and cohesion; intercepts detected Russian commanders surprised that the Ukrainians weren’t pushing harder toward tenuously defended Melitopol, a U.S. intelligence official said.
But as General Syrsky saw it, the rebellion validated his strategy of sowing division by impaling the Russians in Bakhmut. To send some of his forces south would only undercut it. “I was right, Aguto. You were wrong,” an American official recalls General Syrsky saying and adding, “We’re going to get to Luhansk.”
Mr. Zelensky had framed Bakhmut as the “fortress of our morale.” In the end, it was a blood-drenched demonstration of the outmanned Ukrainians’ predicament.
Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians’ casualties — in the tens of thousands — far outstripped the Ukrainians’. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)
Which left Melitopol.
A primary virtue of the Wiesbaden machine was speed — shrinking the time from point of interest to Ukrainian strike. But that virtue, and with it the Melitopol offensive, was undermined by a fundamental shift in how the Ukrainian commander there used those points of interest. He had substantially less ammunition than he had planned for; instead of simply firing, he would now first use drones to confirm the intelligence.
This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.
American officials recounted the ensuing battle. The Ukrainians had been pummeling the Russians with artillery; American intelligence indicated they were pulling back.
“Take the ground now,” General Aguto told General Tarnavskyi.
But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.
In Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers — to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march.
General Tarnavskyi, though, wouldn’t move until the threat was eliminated. So Wiesbaden sent the Russians’ coordinates and advised him to simultaneously open fire and advance.
Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.
Which took time. Only then did he order his men to fire.
And after the strike, he once again dispatched his drones, to confirm the hilltop was indeed clear. Then he ordered his forces into Robotyne, which they seized on Aug. 28.
The back-and-forth had cost between 24 and 48 hours, officers estimated. And in that time, south of Robotyne, the Russians had begun building new barriers, laying mines and sending reinforcements to halt Ukrainian progress. “The situation was changed completely,” General Zabrodskyi said.
An abandoned Ukrainian military vehicle near the front line of Robotyne.
Reuters
General Aguto yelled at General Tarnavskyi: Press on. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren’t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going.
The Ukrainian advance, in fact, was slowed by a mix of factors. But in Wiesbaden, the frustrated Americans kept talking about the platoon on the hill. “A damned platoon stopped the counteroffensive,” one officer remarked.
The Ukrainianswould not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.
Now their objective would be the small occupied city of Tokmak, about halfway to Melitopol, close to critical rail lines and roadways.
General Aguto had given the Ukrainians greater autonomy. But now he crafted a detailed artillery plan, Operation Rolling Thunder, that prescribed what the Ukrainians should shoot, with what and in what order, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But General Tarnavskyi objected to some targets, insisted on using drones to verify points of interest and Rolling Thunder rumbled to a halt.
Desperate to salvage the counteroffensive, the White House had authorized a secret transport of a small number of cluster warheads with a range of about 100 miles, and General Aguto and General Zabrodskyi devised an operation against Russian attack helicopters threatening General Tarnavskyi’s forces. At least 10 helicopters were destroyed, and the Russians pulled all their aircraft back to Crimea or the mainland. Still, the Ukrainians couldn’t advance.
The Americans’ last-ditch recommendation was to have General Syrsky take over the Tokmak fight. That was rejected. They then proposed that General Sodol send his marines to Robotyne and have them break through the Russian line. But instead General Zaluzhny ordered the marines to Kherson to open a new front in an operation the Americans counseled was doomed to fail — trying to cross the Dnipro and advance toward Crimea. The marines made it across the river in early November but ran out of men and ammunition. The counteroffensive was supposed to deliver a knockout blow. Instead, it met an inglorious end.
General Syrsky declined to answer questions about his interactions with American generals, but a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces said, “We do hope that the time will come, and after the victory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian and American generals you mentioned will perhaps jointly tell us about their working and friendly negotiations during the fighting against Russian aggression.”
Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine and arguably the country’s second-most-powerful official, told The Times that the counteroffensive had been “primarily blunted” by the allies’ “political hesitation” and “constant” delays in weapons deliveries.
But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.”
Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli in Wiesbaden in December 2023.
Susanne Goebel/U.S. European Command
December 2023–January 2025
Kursk
offensive
Sumy
Russia
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Pokrovsk
Black
Sea
Kerch Strait
Bridge
Crimea
Sevastopol
Ukrainian advances
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Donald J.TrumpPresident
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
Shortly before Christmas, Mr. Zelensky rode through the Wiesbaden gates for his maiden visit to the secret center of the partnership.
Entering the Tony Bass Auditorium, he was escorted past trophies of shared battle — twisted fragments of Russian vehicles, missiles and aircraft. When he climbed to the walkway above the former basketball court — as General Zabrodskyi had done that first day in 2022 — the officers working below burst into applause.
Yet the president had not come to Wiesbaden for celebration. In the shadow of the failed counteroffensive, a third, hard wartime winter coming on, the portents had only darkened. To press their new advantage, the Russians were pouring forces into the east. In America, Mr. Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, was mid-political resurrection; some congressional Republicans were grumbling about cutting off funding.
A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory. As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.
But first, the immediate business in Wiesbaden: Generals Cavoli and Aguto explained that they saw no plausible path to reclaiming significant territory in 2024. The coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.
The Ukrainians would have to temper expectations, focusing on achievable objectives to stay in the fight while building the combat power to potentially mount a counteroffensive in 2025: They would need to erect defensive lines in the east to prevent the Russians from seizing more territory. And they would need to reconstitute existing brigades and fill new ones, which the coalition would help train and equip.
Mr. Zelensky voiced his support.
Yet the Americans knew he did so grudgingly. Time and again Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.
Just weeks before, the president had instructed General Zaluzhny to push the Russians back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders by fall of 2024. The general had then shocked the Americans by presenting a plan to do so that required five million shells and one million drones. To which General Cavoli had responded, in fluent Russian, “From where?”
Several weeks later, at a meeting in Kyiv, the Ukrainian commander had locked General Cavoli in a Defense Ministry kitchen and, vaping furiously, made one final, futile plea. “He was caught between two fires, the first being the president and the second being the partners,” said one of his aides.
As a compromise, the Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory — a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia. It would be code-named Operation Lunar Hail.
Until now, the Ukrainians, with help from the C.I.A. and the U.S. and British navies, had used maritime drones, together with long-range British Storm Shadow and French SCALP missiles, to strike the Black Sea Fleet. Wiesbaden’s contribution was intelligence.
But to prosecute the wider Crimea campaign, the Ukrainians would need far more missiles. They would need hundreds of ATACMS.
At the Pentagon, the old cautions hadn’t melted away. But after General Aguto briefed Mr. Austin on all that Lunar Hail could achieve, an aide recalled, he said: “OK, there’s a really compelling strategic objective here. It isn’t just about striking things.”
Mr. Zelensky would get his long-pined-for ATACMS. Even so, one U.S. official said, “We knew that, in his heart of hearts, he still wanted to do something else, something more.”
General Zabrodskyiwas in the Wiesbaden command center in late January when he received an urgent message and stepped outside.
When he returned, gone pale as a ghost, he led General Aguto to a balcony and, pulling on a Lucky Strike, told him that the Ukrainian leadership struggle had reached its denouement: General Zaluzhny was being fired. The betting was on his rival, General Syrsky, to ascend.
The Americans were hardly surprised; they had been hearing ample murmurings of presidential discontent. The Ukrainians would chalk it up to politics, to fear that the widely popular General Zaluzhny might challenge Mr. Zelensky for the presidency. There was also the Stavka meeting, where the president effectively kneecapped General Zaluzhny, and the general’s subsequent decision to publisha piece in The Economistdeclaring the war at a stalemate, the Ukrainians in need of a quantum technological breakthrough. This even as his president was calling for total victory.
General Zaluzhny, one American official said, was a “dead man walking.”
General Syrsky’s appointment brought hedged relief. The Americans believed they would now have a partner with the president’s ear and trust; decision-making, they hoped, would become more consistent.
General Syrsky was also a known commodity.
Part of that knowledge, of course, was the memory of 2023, the scar of Bakhmut — the way the general had sometimes spurned their recommendations, even sought to undermine them. Still, colleagues say, Generals Cavoli and Aguto felt they understood his idiosyncrasies; he would at least hear them out, and unlike some commanders, he appreciated and typically trusted the intelligence they provided.
For General Zabrodskyi, though, the shake-up was a personal blow and a strategic unknown. He considered General Zaluzhny a friend and had given up his parliamentary seat to become his deputy for plans and operations. (Soon he would be pushed out of that job, and his Wiesbaden role. When General Aguto found out, he called with a standing invitation to his North Carolina beach house; the generals could go sailing. “Maybe in my next life,” General Zabrodskyi replied.)
And the changing of the guard came at a particularly uncertain moment for the partnership: Goaded by Mr. Trump, congressional Republicans were holding up $61 billion in new military aid. During the battle for Melitopol, the commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. Wiesbaden was still churning out points of interest, but the Ukrainians were barely using them.
“We don’t need this right now,” General Zabrodskyi told the Americans.
The red lineskept moving.
There were the ATACMS, which arrived secretly in early spring, so the Russians wouldn’t realize Ukraine could now strike across Crimea.
And there were the SMEs. Some months earlier, General Aguto had been allowed to send a small team, about a dozen officers, to Kyiv, easing the prohibition on American boots on Ukrainian ground. So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as “subject matter experts.” Then, after the Ukrainian leadership shake-up, to build confidence and coordination, the administration more than tripled the number of officers in Kyiv, to about three dozen; they could now plainly be called advisers, though they would still be confined to the Kyiv area.
Perhaps the hardest red line, though, was the Russian border. Soon that line, too, would be redrawn.
In April, the financing logjam was finally cleared, and 180 more ATACMS, dozens of armored vehicles and 85,000 155-millimeter shells started flowing in from Poland.
Coalition intelligence, though, was detecting another sort of movement: Components of a new Russian formation, the 44th Army Corps, moving toward Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border. The Russians, seeing a limited window as the Ukrainians waited to have the American aid in hand, were preparing to open a new front in northern Ukraine.
The Ukrainians believed the Russians hoped to reach a major road ringing Kharkiv, which would allow them to bombard the city, the country’s second-largest, with artillery fire, and threaten the lives of more than a million people.
The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn’t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence.
Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.
The Ukrainians asked for permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons across the border. What’s more, Generals Cavoli and Aguto proposed that Wiesbaden help guide those strikes, as it did across Ukraine and in Crimea — providing points of interest and precision coordinates.
The White House was still debating these questions when, on May 10, the Russians attacked.
This became the moment the Biden administration changed the rules of the game. Generals Cavoli and Aguto were tasked with creating an “ops box” — a zone on Russian soil in which the Ukrainians could fire U.S.-supplied weapons and Wiesbaden could support their strikes.
At first they advocated an expansive box, to encompass a concomitant threat: the glide bombs — crude Soviet-era bombs transformed into precision weapons with wings and fins — that were raining terror on Kharkiv. A box extending about 190 miles would let the Ukrainians use their new ATACMS to hit glide-bomb fields and other targets deep inside Russia. But Mr. Austin saw this as mission creep: He did not want to divert ATACMS from Lunar Hail.
Instead, the generals were instructed to draw up two options — one extending about 50 miles into Russia, standard HIMARS range, and one nearly twice as deep. Ultimately, against the generals’ recommendation, Mr. Biden and his advisers chose the most limited option — but to protect the city of Sumy as well as Kharkiv, it followed most of the country’s northern border, encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey. The C.I.A. was also authorized to send officers to the Kharkiv region to assist their Ukrainian counterparts with operations inside the box.
The box went live at the end of May. The Russians were caught unawares: With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war.
The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.
Summer 2024: Ukraine’s armies in the north and east were stretched dangerously thin. Still, General Syrsky kept telling the Americans, “I need a win.”
A foreshadowing had come back in March, when the Americans discovered that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia. The C.I.A. station chief in Kyiv confronted the HUR commander, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov: If he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support. He did, only to be forced back.
At moments like these, Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.
To the Ukrainians, though, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was “better than ask and stop,” explained Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former Ukrainian military intelligence commander. He added: “We are allies, but we have different goals. We protect our country, and you protect your phantom fears from the Cold War.”
In August in Wiesbaden, General Aguto’s tour was coming to its scheduled end. He left on the 9th. The same day, the Ukrainians dropped a cryptic reference to something happening in the north.
On Aug. 10, the C.I.A. station chief left, too, for a job at headquarters. In the churn of command, General Syrsky made his move — sending troops across the southwest Russian border, into the region of Kursk.
For the Americans, the incursion’s unfolding was a significant breach of trust. It wasn’t just that the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark; they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line, taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russian territory encompassed by the ops box, in violation of rules laid down when it was created.
The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. “It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,” a senior Pentagon official said.
The Americans could have pulled the plug on the ops box. Yet they knew that to do so, an administration official explained, “could lead to a catastrophe”: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk would perish unprotected by HIMARS rockets and U.S. intelligence.
Kursk, the Americans concluded, was the win Mr. Zelensky had been hinting at all along. It was also evidence of his calculations: He still spoke of total victory. But one of the operation’s goals, he explained to the Americans, was leverage — to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.
Provocative operationsonce forbidden were now permitted.
Before General Zabrodskyi was sidelined, he and General Aguto had selected the targets for Operation Lunar Hail. The campaign required a degree of hand-holding not seen since General Donahue’s day. American and British officers would oversee virtually every aspect of each strike, from determining the coordinates to calculating the missiles’ flight paths.
Of roughly 100 targets across Crimea, the most coveted was the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Mr. Putin saw the bridge as powerful physical proof of Crimea’s connection to the motherland. Toppling the Russian president’s symbol had, in turn, become the Ukrainian president’s obsession.
It had also been an American red line. In 2022, the Biden administration prohibited helping the Ukrainians target it; even the approaches on the Crimean side were to be treated as sovereign Russian territory. (Ukrainian intelligence services tried attacking it themselves, causing some damage.)
But after the partners agreed on Lunar Hail, the White House authorized the military and C.I.A. to secretly work with the Ukrainians and the British on a blueprint of attack to bring the bridge down: ATACMS would weaken vulnerable points on the deck, while maritime drones would blow up next to its stanchions.
But while the drones were being readied, the Russians hardened their defenses around the stanchions.
The Ukrainians proposed attacking with ATACMS alone. Generals Cavoli and Aguto pushed back: ATACMS alone wouldn’t do the job; the Ukrainians should wait until the drones were ready or call off the strike.
In the end, the Americans stood down, and in mid-August, with Wiesbaden’s reluctant help, the Ukrainians fired a volley of ATACMS at the bridge. It did not come tumbling down; the strike left some “potholes,” which the Russians repaired, one American official grumbled, adding, “Sometimes they need to try and fail to see that we are right.”
The Kerch Bridge episode aside, the Lunar Hail collaboration was judged a significant success. Russian warships, aircraft, command posts, weapons depots and maintenance facilities were destroyed or moved to the mainland to escape the onslaught.
For the Biden administration, the failed Kerch attack, together with a scarcity of ATACMS, reinforced the importance of helping the Ukrainians use their fleet of long-distance attack drones. The main challenge was evading Russian air defenses and pinpointing targets.
Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. So the administration would let the C.I.A. request “variances,” carve-outs authorizing the spy agency to support strikes inside Russia to achieve specific objectives.
Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in the lakeside town of Toropets, some 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border, that was providing weapons to Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kursk. The administration approved the variance. Toropets would be a test of concept.
C.I.A. officers shared intelligence about the depot’s munitions and vulnerabilities, as well as Russian defense systems on the way to Toropets. They calculated how many drones the operation would require and charted their circuitous flight paths.
On Sept. 18, a large swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Videos showed immense balls of flame and plumes of smoke rising above the lake.
A munitions depot in Toropets, Russia.
Maxar Technologies
The depot after a drone strike assisted by the C.I.A.
Maxar Technologies
Yet as with the Kerch Bridge operation, the drone collaboration pointed to a strategic dissonance.
The Americans argued for concentrating drone strikes on strategically important military targets — the same sort of argument they had made, fruitlessly, about focusing on Melitopol during the 2023 counteroffensive. But the Ukrainians insisted on attacking a wider menu of targets, including oil and gas facilities and politically sensitive sites in and around Moscow (though they would do so without C.I.A. help).
“Russian public opinion is going to turn on Putin,” Mr. Zelensky told the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Kyiv in September. “You’re wrong. We know the Russians.”
Mr. Austin and General Cavolitraveled to Kyiv in October. Year by year, the Biden administration had provided the Ukrainians with an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal of weaponry, had crossed so many of its red lines. Still, the defense secretary and the general were worrying about the message written in the weakening situation on the ground.
The Russians had been making slow but steady progress against depleted Ukrainian forces in the east, toward the city of Pokrovsk — their “big target,” one American official called it. They were also clawing back some territory in Kursk. Yes, the Russians’ casualties had spiked, to between 1,000 and 1,500 a day. But still they kept coming.
Mr. Austin would later recount how he contemplated this manpower mismatch as he looked out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets. He was struck, he told aides, by the sight of so many men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform. In a nation at war, he explained, men this age are usually away, in the fight.
This was one of the difficult messages the Americans had come to Kyiv to deliver, as they laid out what they could and couldn’t do for Ukraine in 2025.
Mr. Zelensky had already taken a small step, lowering the draft age to 25. Still, the Ukrainians hadn’t been able to fill existing brigades, let alone build new ones.
Mr. Austin pressed Mr. Zelensky to take the bigger, bolder step and begin drafting 18-year-olds. To which Mr. Zelensky shot back, according to an official who was present, “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.”
“And your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned,” the official recalled Mr. Austin responding. “They don’t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.”
That was the perennial standoff:
In the Ukrainians’ view, the Americans weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help them prevail.
In the Americans’ view, the Ukrainians weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help themselves prevail.
Mr. Zelensky often said, in response to the draft question, that his country was fighting for its future, that 18- to 25-year-olds were the fathers of that future.
To one American official, though, it’s “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
General Baldwin, who early on had crucially helped connect the partners’ commanders, had visited Kyiv in September 2023. The counteroffensive was stalling, the U.S. elections were on the horizon and the Ukrainians kept asking about Afghanistan.
The Ukrainians, he recalled, were terrified that they, too, would be abandoned. They kept calling, wanting to know if America would stay the course, asking: “What will happen if the Republicans win the Congress? What is going to happen if President Trump wins?’”
He always told them to remain encouraged, he said. Still, he added, “I had my fingers crossed behind my back, because I really didn’t know anymore.”
Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in.
In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project.
He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk. One of the first U.S.-supported strikes targeted and wounded the North Korean commander, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok, as he met with his Russian counterparts in a command bunker.
The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.
In December, General Donahue got his fourth star and returned to Wiesbaden as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He had been the last American soldier to leave in the chaotic fall of Kabul. Now he would have to navigate the new, unsure future of Ukraine.
General Cavoli, center, passed the colors to General Donahue in a ceremonial change of command in Wiesbaden.
Volker Ramspott/U.S. Army
So much had changed since General Donahue left two years before. But when it came to the raw question of territory, not much had changed. In the war’s first year, with Wiesbaden’s help, the Ukrainians had seized the upper hand, winning back more than half of the land lost after the 2022 invasion. Now, they were fighting over tiny slivers of ground in the east (and in Kursk).
One of General Donahue’s main objectives in Wiesbaden, according to a Pentagon official, would be to fortify the brotherhood and breathe new life into the machine — to stem, perhaps even push back, the Russian advance. (In the weeks that followed, with Wiesbaden providing points of interest and coordinates, the Russian march toward Pokrovsk would slow, and in some areas in the east, the Ukrainians would make gains. But in southwest Russia, as the Trump administration scaled back support, the Ukrainians would lose most of their bargaining chip, Kursk.)
In early January, Generals Donahue and Cavoli visited Kyiv to meet with General Syrsky and ensure that he agreed on plans to replenish Ukrainian brigades and shore up their lines, the Pentagon official said. From there, they traveled to Ramstein Air Base, where they met Mr. Austin for what would be the final gathering of coalition defense chiefs before everything changed.
With the doors closed to the press and public, Mr. Austin’s counterparts hailed him as the “godfather” and “architect” of the partnership that, for all its broken trust and betrayals, had sustained the Ukrainians’ defiance and hope, begun in earnest on that spring day in 2022 when Generals Donahue and Zabrodskyi first met in Wiesbaden.
Mr. Austin is a solid and stoic block of a man, but as he returned the compliments, his voice caught.
“Instead of saying farewell, let me say thank you,” he said, blinking back tears. And then added: “I wish you all success, courage and resolve. Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.”
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Sources and methodology
For each war map, we used data from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project to calculate changes in territorial control. Russian forces in eastern Ukraine include Russian-backed separatists. The composite image in the introduction draws on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was compiled using Google Earth Engine. We combined images from January and February of each year since 2020 to generate a cloud-free satellite image.
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Jack Dura/Associated Press
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/climate/greenpeace-energy-transfer-dakota-access-defamation-verdict.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
A pipeline company’s lawsuit against the environmental group could chill free speech, experts said. First Amendment issues are likely to figure prominently in an appeal.
ByKaren Zraick
Karen Zraick covered the trial from the courtroom in Mandan, N.D.
When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner.
The costly verdicthas raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and damage awards could deter free speech far beyond the environmental movement.
The verdict “will send a chill down the spine of any nonprofit who wants to get involved in any political protest,” said David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you’re the Sierra Club, or the N.A.A.C.P., or the N.R.A., or an anti-abortion group, you’re going to be very worried.”
The lawsuit, filed by Energy Transfer in 2019, accused Greenpeace of masterminding an “unlawful and violent scheme” to harm the company’s finances, employees and infrastructure and to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace countered that it had promoted peaceful protest and had played only a minor role in the demonstrations, which were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe over concerns about its ancestral land and water supply.
A key part of Energy Transfer’s case relied on defamation claims. For example, the jury found that Greenpeace defamed the company by saying it had “damaged at least 380 sacred and cultural sites” during pipeline work, the first of nine statements found defamatory.
Greenpeace called Energy Transfer’s lawsuit an attempt to muzzle the company’s critics. “This case should alarm everyone, no matter their political inclinations,” said SushmaRaman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment.”
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber?Log in.
Want all of The Times?Subscribe.
Advertisement
|
NY Times
|
Part 2‘When You Defeat Russia, We Will Make You Blue for Good’
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html#part-two
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.
By Adam Entous
Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Turkey.
On a spring morningtwo months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.
Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.
The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.
One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.
Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.
Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.
How the promise of Texas barbecue led to a meeting with a key Ukrainian general.
Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.
Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today’s precarious place.
With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine — including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.
But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war — enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence — that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.
Ukrainian, American and British military leaders during a meeting in Ukraine in August 2023.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.
Farther south, the partners set their sights on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet loaded missiles destined for Ukrainian targets onto warships and submarines. At the height of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, a predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.
But ultimately the partnership strained — and the arc of the war shifted — amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.
Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.
As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.
On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war — in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year’s successes — the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.
A Ukrainian soldier fired at Russian positions near Bakhmut.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear — that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats. The story of the partnership shows how close the Americans and their allies sometimes came to that red line, how increasingly dire events forced them — some said too slowly — to advance it to more perilous ground and how they carefully devised protocols to remain on the safe side of it.
Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.
In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.
It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.
During the wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, American forces conducted their own ground operations and supported those of their local partners. In Ukraine, by contrast, the U.S. military wasn’t allowed to deploy any of its own soldiers on the battlefield and would have to help remotely.
Would the precision targeting honed against terrorist groups be effective in a conflict with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? Would Ukrainian artillery men fire their howitzers without hesitation at coordinates sent by American officers in a headquarters 1,300 miles away? Would Ukrainian commanders, based on intelligence relayed by a disembodied American voice pleading, “There’s nobody there — go,” order infantrymen to enter a village behind enemy lines?
The answers to those questions — in truth, the partnership’s entire trajectory — would hinge on how well American and Ukrainian officers would trust one another.
“I will never lie to you. If you lie to me, we’re done,” General Zabrodskyi recalled General Donahue telling him at their first meeting. “I feel the exact same way,” the Ukrainian replied.
A Ukrainian soldier keeps watch in Kharkiv on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
February–May 2022
Kyiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Kherson
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia since 2014
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksiiReznikovDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
In mid-April 2022, about two weeks before the Wiesbaden meeting, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on a routine intelligence-sharing call when something unexpected popped up on their radar screens. According to a former senior U.S. military officer, “The Americans go: ‘Oh, that’s the Moskva!’ The Ukrainians go: ‘Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.’”
The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainians sank it.
Over more than a year of reporting, Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries. While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.
The sinking was a signal triumph — a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude. But the episode also reflected the disjointed state of the Ukrainian-American relationship in the first weeks of the war.
For the Americans, there was anger, because the Ukrainians hadn’t given so much as a heads-up; surprise, that Ukraine possessed missiles capable of reaching the ship; and panic, because the Biden administration hadn’t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.
The Ukrainians, for their part, were coming from their own place of deep-rooted skepticism.
Their war, as they saw it, had started in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and fomented separatist rebellions in eastern Ukraine. President Barack Obama had condemned the seizure and imposed sanctions on Russia. But fearful that American involvement could provoke a full-scale invasion, he had authorized only strictly limited intelligence sharing and rejected calls for defensive weapons. “Blankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets,” Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, complained. Eventually Mr. Obama somewhat relaxed those intelligence strictures, and Mr. Trump, in his first term, relaxed them further and supplied the Ukrainians with their first antitank Javelins.
Then, in the portentous days before Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration had closed the Kyiv embassy and pulled all military personnel from the country. (A small team of C.I.A. officers was allowed to stay.) As the Ukrainians saw it, a senior U.S. military officer said, “We told them, ‘The Russians are coming — see ya.’”
When American generals offered assistance after the invasion, they ran into a wall of mistrust. “We’re fighting the Russians. You’re not. Why should we listen to you?” Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.
General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.
In those early days, this meant that General Donahue and a few aides, with little more than their phones, passed information about Russian troop movements to General Syrsky and his staff. Yet even that ad hoc arrangement touched a raw nerve of rivalry within Ukraine’s military, between General Syrsky and his boss, the armed forces commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. To Zaluzhny loyalists, General Syrsky was already using the relationship to build advantage.
Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny’s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians’ equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American’s calls.
To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine’s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, “I know you’re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.”
Ragtag alliance coalesced into partnership in the quick cascade of events.
In March, their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south — a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.
Unless the coalition reoriented its own ambitions, General Donahue and the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, concluded, the hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians would lose the war. The coalition, in other words, would have to start providing heavy offensive weapons — M777 artillery batteries and shells.
The Biden administration had previously arranged emergency shipments of antiaircraft and antitank weapons. The M777s were something else entirely — the first big leap into supporting a major ground war.
The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne in charge of delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed on to the M777s, the Tony Bass Auditorium became a full-fledged headquarters.
A Polish general became General Donahue’s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub on the former basketball court. A Canadian would oversee training.
The auditorium basement became what is known as a fusion center, producing intelligence about Russian battlefield positions, movements and intentions. There, according to intelligence officials, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers.
The 18th Airborne is known as Dragon Corps; the new operation would be Task Force Dragon. All that was needed to bring the pieces together was the reluctant Ukrainian top command.
At an international conference on April 26 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, General Milley introduced Mr. Reznikov and a Zaluzhny deputy to Generals Cavoli and Donahue. “These are your guys right here,” General Milley told them, adding: “You’ve got to work with them. They’re going to help you.”
Bonds of trust were being forged. Mr. Reznikov agreed to talk to General Zaluzhny. Back in Kyiv, “we organized the composition of a delegation” to Wiesbaden, Mr. Reznikov said. “And so it began.”
At the heart of the partnershipwere two generals — the Ukrainian, Zabrodskyi, and the American, Donahue.
General Zabrodskyi would be Wiesbaden’s chief Ukrainian contact, although in an unofficial capacity, as he was serving in parliament. In every other way, he was a natural.
Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, a key Ukrainian figure in the Wiesbaden partnership.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Like many of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian military, General Zabrodskyi knew the enemy well. In the 1990s, he had attended military academy in St. Petersburg and served for five years in the Russian Army.
He also knew the Americans: From 2005 to 2006, he had studied at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Eight years later, General Zabrodskyi led a perilous mission behind lines of Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, modeled in part on one he had studied at Fort Leavenworth — the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart’s famous reconnaissance mission around Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. This brought him to the attention of influential people at the Pentagon; the general, they sensed, was the kind of leader they could work with.
General Zabrodskyi remembers that first day in Wiesbaden: “My mission was to find out: Who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?”
General Donahue was a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria. General Cavoli once compared him to “a comic book action hero.”
Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, center, no helmet, in Afghanistan circa 2020.
Now he showed General Zabrodskyi and his travel companion, Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Kyrylenko, a map of the besieged east and south of their country, Russian forces dwarfing theirs. Invoking their “Glory to Ukraine” battle cry, he laid down the challenge: “You can ‘Slava Ukraini’ all you want with other people. I don’t care how brave you are. Look at the numbers.” He then walked them through a plan to win a battlefield advantage by fall, General Zabrodskyi recalled.
The first stage was underway — training Ukrainian artillery men on their new M777s. Task Force Dragon would then help them use the weapons to halt the Russian advance. Then the Ukrainians would need to mount a counteroffensive.
That evening, General Zabrodskyi wrote to his superiors in Kyiv.
“You know, a lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine,” he recalled. But “somebody needed to be the coordinator, to organize everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. I said to the commander in chief, ‘We have found our partner.’”
Soon the Ukrainians, nearly 20 in all — intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists — began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets’ locations.
Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”?
Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.
The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”
“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” one U.S. official explained.
Each point of interest would have to adhere to intelligence-sharing rules crafted to blunt the risk of Russian retaliation against N.A.T.O. partners.
There would be no points of interest on Russian soil. If Ukrainian commanders wanted to strike within Russia, General Zabrodskyi explained, they would have to use their own intelligence and domestically produced weapons. “Our message to the Russians was, ‘This war should be fought inside Ukraine,’” a senior U.S. official said.
Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire an M777 howitzer at Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The White House also prohibited sharing intelligence on the locations of “strategic” Russian leaders, like the armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,” another senior U.S. official said. “Like, we’d go to war.” Similarly, Task Force Dragon couldn’t share intelligence that identified the locations of individual Russians.
The way the system worked, Task Force Dragon would tell the UkrainianswhereRussians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not sayhowit knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets — Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on. As General Zabrodskyi remembers it, when the Ukrainians asked why they should trust the intelligence, General Donahue would say: “Don’t worry about how we found out. Just trust that when you shoot, it will hit it, and you’ll like the results, and if you don’t like the results, tell us, we’ll make it better.”
The systemwent livein May. The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians’ M777s. The fusion center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark’s coordinates in preparation for the strike.
On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the battalion commander with a pep talk: “You feel good?” he asked. “I feel real good,” the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. “Everybody went, ‘We can do this!’” a U.S. official recalled.
But a critical question remained: Having done this against a single, stationary target, could the partners deploy this system against multiple targets in a major kinetic battle?
That would be the battle underway north of Donetsk, in Sievierodonetsk, where the Russians were hoping to mount a pontoon-bridge river crossing and then encircle and capture the city. General Zabrodskyi called it “a hell of a target.”
The engagement that followed was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. The pontoon bridges became death traps; at least 400 Russians were killed, by Ukrainian estimates. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.
In these first months, the fighting was largely concentrated in Ukraine’s east. But U.S. intelligence was also tracking Russian movements in the south, especially a large troop buildup near the major city of Kherson. Soon several M777 crews were redeployed, and Task Force Dragon started feeding points of interest to strike Russian positions there.
With practice, Task Force Dragon produced points of interest faster, and the Ukrainians shot at them faster. The more they demonstrated their effectiveness using M777s and similar systems, the more the coalition sent new ones — which Wiesbaden supplied with ever more points of interest.
“You know when we started to believe?” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “When Donahue said, ‘This is a list of positions.’ We checked the list and we said, ‘These 100 positions are good, but we need the other 50.’ And they sent the other 50.”
The M777s became workhorsesof the Ukrainian army.But because theygenerally couldn’t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians’ vast superiority in manpower and equipment.
To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap — providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.
The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking.
Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over.
Celeste Wallander, then the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, recalled, “Milley would always say, ‘You’ve got a little Russian army fighting a big Russian army, and they’re fighting the same way, and the Ukrainians will never win.’” General Cavoli’s argument, she said, was that “with HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that’s how they will start to beat the Russians.”
At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?” And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon was becoming “the entire back office of the war.”
Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.
HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. Russian forces were left dazed and confused. Their morale plummeted, and with it their will to fight. And as the HIMARS arsenal grew from eight to 38 and the Ukrainian strikers became more proficient, an American official said, the toll rose as much as fivefold.
“We became a small part, maybe not the best part, but a small part, of your system,” General Zabrodskyi explained, adding: “Most states did this over a period of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But we were forced to do it in a matter of weeks.”
Together the partners were honing a killing machine.
Russian forces collapsed in the Oskil river valley, abandoning their equipment as they fled.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
June–November 2022
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Izium
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia
Mykolaiv
Melitopol
Kherson
Odesa
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
BenWallaceDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
At their first meeting, General Donahue had shown General Zabrodskyi a color-coded map of the region, with American and NATO forces in blue, Russian forces in red and Ukrainian forces in green. “Why are we green?” General Zabrodskyi asked. “We should be blue.”
In early June, as they met to war-game Ukraine’s counteroffensive, sitting side by side in front of tabletop battlefield maps, General Zabrodskyi saw that the small blocks marking Ukrainian positions had become blue — a symbolic stroke to strengthen the bond of common purpose. “When you defeat Russia,” General Donahue told the Ukrainians, “we will make you blue for good.”
It was three months since the invasion, and the maps told this story of the war:
In the south, the Ukrainians had blocked the Russian advance at the Black Sea shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv. But the Russians controlled Kherson, and a corps roughly 25,000 soldiers strong occupied land on the west bank of the Dnipro River. In the east, the Russians had been stopped at Izium. But they held land between there and the border, including the strategically important Oskil river valley.
The Russians’ strategy had morphed from decapitation — the futile assault on Kyiv — to slow strangulation. The Ukrainians needed to go on the offensive.
Their top commander, General Zaluzhny, along with the British, favored the most ambitious option — from near Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast, down toward occupied Melitopol. This maneuver, they believed, would sever the cross-border land routes sustaining Russian forces in Crimea.
In theory, General Donahue agreed. But according to colleagues, he thought Melitopol was not feasible, given the state of the Ukrainian military and the coalition’s limited ability to provide M777s without crippling American readiness. To prove his point in the war games, he took over the part of the Russian commander. Whenever the Ukrainians tried to advance, General Donahue destroyed them with overwhelming combat power.
What they ultimately agreed on was a two-part attack to confuse Russian commanders who, according to American intelligence, believed the Ukrainians had only enough soldiers and equipment for a single offensive.
The main effort would be to recapture Kherson and secure the Dnipro’s west bank, lest the corps advance on the port of Odesa and be positioned for another attack on Kyiv.
General Donahue had advocated a coequal second front in the east, from the Kharkiv region, to reach the Oskil river valley. But the Ukrainians instead argued for a smaller supporting feint to draw Russian forces east and smooth the way for Kherson.
That would come first, around Sept. 4. The Ukrainians would then begin two weeks of artillery strikes to weaken Russian forces in the south. Only then, around Sept. 18, would they march toward Kherson.
And if they still had enough ammunition, they would cross the Dnipro. General Zabrodskyi remembers General Donahue saying, “If you guys want to get across the river and get to the neck of Crimea, then follow the plan.”
That was the planuntil it wasn’t.
Mr. Zelensky sometimes spoke directly with regional commanders, and after one such conversation, the Americans were informed that the order of battle had changed.
Kherson would come faster — and first, on Aug. 29.
General Donahue told General Zaluzhny that more time was needed to lay the groundwork for Kherson; the switch, he said, put the counteroffensive, and the entire country, in jeopardy. The Americans later learned the back story:
Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute — a preview of a fundamental disconnect that would increasingly shape the arc of the war.
The upshot wasn’t what anyone had planned.
The Russians responded by moving reinforcements from the east toward Kherson. Now General Zaluzhny realized that the weakened Russian forces in the east might well let the Ukrainians do what General Donahue had advocated — reach the Oskil river valley. “Go, go, go — you have them on the ropes,” General Donahue told the Ukrainian commander there, General Syrsky, a European official recalled.
The Russian forces collapsed even faster than predicted, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The Ukrainian leadership had never expected their forces to reach the Oskil’s west bank, and when they did, General Syrsky’s standing with the president soared.
In the south, U.S. intelligence now reported that the corps on the Dnipro’s west bank was running short on food and ammunition.
The Ukrainians wavered. General Donahue pleaded with the field commander, Maj. Gen. Andrii Kovalchuk, to advance. Soon the American’s superiors, Generals Cavoli and Milley, escalated the matter to General Zaluzhny.
That didn’t work either.
The British defense minister, Ben Wallace, asked General Donahue what he would do if General Kovalchuk were his subordinate.
“He would have already been fired,” General Donahue responded.
“I got this,” Mr. Wallace said. The British military had considerable clout in Kyiv; unlike the Americans, they had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion. Now the defense minister exercised that clout and demanded that the Ukrainians oust the commander.
Perhaps no pieceof Ukrainian soil was more precious to Mr. Putin than Crimea. As the Ukrainians haltingly advanced on the Dnipro, hoping to cross and advance toward the peninsula, this gave rise to what one Pentagon official called the “core tension”:
To give the Russian president an incentive to negotiate a deal, the official explained, the Ukrainians would have to put pressure on Crimea. To do so, though, could push him to contemplate doing “something desperate.”
The Ukrainians were already exerting pressure on the ground. And the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.
That same month, U.S. intelligence overheard Russia’s Ukraine commander, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, talking about indeed doing something desperate: using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Ukrainians from crossing the Dnipro and making a beeline to Crimea.
Until that moment, U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.
That core tension seemed to be coming to a head.
In Europe, Generals Cavoli and Donahue were begging General Kovalchuk’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, to move his brigades forward, rout the corps from the Dnipro’s west bank and seize its equipment.
In Washington, Mr. Biden’s top advisers nervously wondered the opposite — if they might need to press the Ukrainians to slow their advance.
The moment might have been the Ukrainians’ best chance to deal a game-changing blow to the Russians. It might also have been the best chance to ignite a wider war.
In the end, in a sort of grand ambiguity, the moment never came.
To protect their fleeing forces, Russian commanders left behind small detachments of troops. General Donahue advised General Tarnavskyi to destroy or bypass them and focus on the primary objective — the corps. But whenever the Ukrainians encountered a detachment, they stopped in their tracks, assuming a larger force lay in wait.
General Donahue told him that satellite imagery showed Ukrainian forces blocked by just one or two Russian tanks, according to Pentagon officials. But unable to see the same satellite images, the Ukrainian commander hesitated, wary of sending his forces forward.
To get the Ukrainians moving, Task Force Dragon sent points of interest, and M777 operators destroyed the tanks with Excalibur missiles — time-consuming steps repeated whenever the Ukrainians encountered a Russian detachment.
Ukrainians celebrated the recapture of Kherson.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Ukrainians would still recapture Kherson and clear the Dnipro’s west bank. But the offensive halted there. The Ukrainians, short on ammunition, would not cross the Dnipro. They would not, as the Ukrainians had hoped and the Russians feared, advance toward Crimea.
And as the Russians escaped across the river, farther into occupied ground, huge machines rent the earth, cleaving long, deep trench lines in their wake.
Still the Ukrainians were in a celebratory mood, and on his next Wiesbaden trip, General Zabrodskyi presented General Donahue with a “combat souvenir”: a tactical vest that had belonged to a Russian soldier whose comrades were already marching east to what would become the crucible of 2023 — a place called Bakhmut.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, a site of prolonged combat that President Volodymyr Zelensky called the “fortress of our morale.”
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
November 2022–November 2023
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Luhansk
Bakhmut
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Makiivka
Robotyne
Tokmak
Melitopol
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
The planningfor 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.
Ukraine controlled the west banks of the Oskil and Dnipro rivers. Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war’s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.
“We’re going to win this whole thing,” Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.
To accomplish this, General Zabrodskyi explained as the partners gathered in Wiesbaden in late autumn, General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol, to strangle Russian forces in Crimea — what he believed had been the great, denied opportunity to deal the reeling enemy a knockout blow in 2022.
And once again, some American generals were preaching caution.
At the Pentagon, officials worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive; perhaps the Ukrainians, in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal. When the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Milley, floated that idea in a speech, many of Ukraine’s supporters (including congressional Republicans, then overwhelmingly supportive of the war) cried appeasement.
In Wiesbaden, in private conversations with General Zabrodskyi and the British, General Donahue pointed to those Russian trenches being dug to defend the south. He pointed, too, to the Ukrainians’ halting advance to the Dnipro just weeks before. “They’re digging in, guys,” he told them. “How are you going to get across this?”
What he advocated instead, General Zabrodskyi and a European official recalled, was a pause: If the Ukrainians spent the next year, if not longer, building and training new brigades, they would be far better positioned to fight through to Melitopol.
The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn’t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians.
There would be no pause. General Zabrodskyi would tell General Zaluzhny, “Donahue is right.” But he would also admit that “nobody liked Donahue’s recommendations, except me.”
And besides, General Donahue was a man on the way out.
The 18th Airborne’s deployment had always been temporary. There would now be a more permanent organization in Wiesbaden, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, call sign Erebus — the Greek mythological personification of darkness.
That autumn day, the planning session and their time together done, General Donahue escorted General Zabrodskyi to the Clay Kaserne airfield. There he presented him with an ornamental shield — the 18th Airborne dragon insignia, encircled by five stars.
The westernmost represented Wiesbaden; slightly to the east was the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. The other stars represented Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv — for General Zaluzhny and the commanders in the south and east.
And beneath the stars, “Thanks.”
“I asked him, ‘Why are you thanking me?’” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “‘I should say thank you.’”
General Donahue explained that the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying, testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned. “Thanks to you,” he said, “we built all these things that we never could have.”
Shouting through the airfield wind and noise, they went back and forth about who deserved the most thanks. Then they shook hands, and General Zabrodskyi disappeared into the idling C-130.
The“new guyin the room” was Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. He was a different kind of commander, with a different kind of mission.
General Donahue was a risk taker. General Aguto had built a reputation as a man of deliberation and master of training and large-scale operations. After the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration had expanded its training of the Ukrainians, including at a base in the far west of the country; General Aguto had overseen the program. In Wiesbaden, his No. 1 priority would be preparing new brigades. “You’ve got to get them ready for the fight,” Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, told him.
That translated to greater autonomy for the Ukrainians, a rebalancing of the relationship: At first, Wiesbaden had labored to win the Ukrainians’ trust. Now the Ukrainians were asking for Wiesbaden’s trust.
An opportunity soon presented itself.
Ukrainian intelligence had detected a makeshift Russian barracks at a school in occupied Makiivka. “Trust us on this,” General Zabrodskyi told General Aguto. The American did, and the Ukrainian recalled, “We did the full targeting process absolutely independently.” Wiesbaden’s role would be limited to providing coordinates.
A satellite image of a school in occupied Makiivka where Russians had established a barracks.
Maxar Technologies
The site after a strike that was aided by U.S. intelligence.
Maxar Technologies
In this new phase of the partnership, U.S. and Ukrainian officers would still meet daily to set priorities, which the fusion center turned into points of interest. But Ukrainian commanders now had a freer hand to use HIMARS to strike additional targets, fruit of their own intelligence — if they furthered agreed-upon priorities.
“We will step back and watch, and keep an eye on you to make sure that you don’t do anything crazy,” General Aguto told the Ukrainians. “The whole goal,” he added, “is to have you operate on your own at some point in time.”
Echoing 2022, the war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan.
The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky’s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut — where combat had been smoldering for months — with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south — the attack on Melitopol, where Russian fortifications were already rotting and collapsing in the winter wet and cold.
But problems of a different sort were already gnawing at the new-made plan.
General Zaluzhny may have been Ukraine’s supreme commander, but his supremacy was increasingly compromised by his competition with General Syrsky. According to Ukrainian officials, the rivalry dated to Mr. Zelensky’s decision, in 2021, to elevate General Zaluzhny over his former boss, General Syrsky. The rivalry had intensified after the invasion, as the commanders vied for limited HIMARS batteries. General Syrsky had been born in Russia and served in its army; until he started working on his Ukrainian, he had generally spoken Russian at meetings. General Zaluzhny sometimes derisively called him “that Russian general.”
The Americans knew General Syrsky was unhappy about being dealt a supporting hand in the counteroffensive. When General Aguto called to make sure he understood the plan, he responded, “I don’t agree, but I have my orders.”
The counteroffensive was to begin on May 1. The intervening months would be spent training for it. General Syrsky would contribute four battle-hardened brigades — each between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers — for training in Europe; they would be joined by four brigades of new recruits.
The general had other plans.
In Bakhmut, the Russians were deploying, and losing, vast numbers of soldiers. General Syrsky saw an opportunity to engulf them and ignite discord in their ranks. “Take all new guys” for Melitopol, he told General Aguto, according to U.S. officials. And when Mr. Zelensky sided with him, over the objections of both his own supreme commander and the Americans, a key underpinning of the counteroffensive was effectively scuttled.
Now the Ukrainians would send just four untested brigades abroad for training. (They would prepare eight more inside Ukraine.) Plus, the new recruits were old — mostly in their 40s and 50s. When they arrived in Europe, a senior U.S. official recalled, “All we kept thinking was, This is not great.”
The Ukrainian draft age was 27. General Cavoli, who had been promoted to supreme allied commander for Europe, implored General Zaluzhny to “get your 18-year-olds in the game.” But the Americans concluded that neither the president nor the general would own such a politically fraught decision.
A parallel dynamic was at play on the American side.
The previous year, the Russians had unwisely placed command posts, ammunition depots and logistics centers within 50 miles of the front lines. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS’ reach. So Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.
ATACMS were a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration. Russia’s military chief, General Gerasimov, had indirectly referred to them the previous May when he warned General Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line. There was also a question of supply: The Pentagon was already warning that it would not have enough ATACMS if America had to fight its own war.
The message was blunt: Stop asking for ATACMS.
Underlying assumptionshad been upended. Still, the Americans saw a path to victory, albeit a narrowing one. Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1, before the Russians repaired their fortifications and moved more troops to reinforce Melitopol.
But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto’s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn’t commit until they had it all.
At one point, frustration rising, General Cavoli turned to General Zabrodskyi and said: “Misha, I love your country. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose the war.”
“My answer was: ‘I understand what you are saying, Christopher. But please understand me. I’m not the supreme commander. And I’m not the president of Ukraine,’” General Zabrodskyi recalled, adding, “Probably I needed to cry as much as he did.”
At the Pentagon, officials were beginning to sense some graver fissure opening. General Zabrodskyi recalled General Milley asking: “Tell me the truth. Did you change the plan?”
“No, no, no,” he responded. “We did not change the plan, and we are not going to.”
When he uttered these words, he genuinely believed he was telling the truth.
In late May, intelligence showed the Russians rapidly building new brigades. The Ukrainians didn’t have everything they wanted, but they had what they thought they needed. They would have to go.
General Zaluzhny outlined the final plan at a meeting of the Stavka, a governmental body overseeing military matters. General Tarnavskyi would have 12 brigades and the bulk of ammunition for the main assault, on Melitopol. The marine commandant, Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol, would feint toward Mariupol, the ruined port city taken by the Russians after a withering siege the year before. General Syrsky would lead the supporting effort in the east around Bakhmut, recently lost after months of trench warfare.
Then General Syrsky spoke. According to Ukrainian officials, the general said he wanted to break from the plan and execute a full-scale attack to drive the Russians from Bakhmut. He would then advance eastward toward the Luhansk region. He would, of course, need additional men and ammunition.
The Americans were not told the meeting’s outcome. But then U.S. intelligence observed Ukrainian troops and ammunition moving in directions inconsistent with the agreed-upon plan.
Soon after, at a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.
“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried.
What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition’s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.
“It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,” one Ukrainian official remarked.
Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.
“We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.
But they would not.
“These decisions involving life and death, and what territory you value more and what territory you value less, are fundamentally sovereign decisions,” a senior Biden administration official explained. “All we could do was give them advice.”
The leader of the Mariupol assault,General Sodol, was an eager consumer of General Aguto’s advice. That collaboration produced one of the counteroffensive’s biggest successes: After American intelligence identified a weak point in Russian lines, General Sodol’s forces, using Wiesbaden’s points of interest, recaptured the village of Staromaiorske and nearly eight square miles of territory.
For the Ukrainians, that victory posed a question: Might the Mariupol fight be more promising than the one toward Melitopol? But the attack stalled for lack of manpower.
The problem was laid out right there on the battlefield map in General Aguto’s office: General Syrsky’s assault on Bakhmut was starving the Ukrainian army.
General Aguto urged him to send brigades and ammunition south for the Melitopol attack. But General Syrsky wouldn’t budge, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Nor would he budge when Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner paramilitaries had helped the Russians capture Bakhmut, rebelled against Mr. Putin’s military leadership and sent forces racing toward Moscow.
U.S. intelligence assessed that the rebellion could erode Russian morale and cohesion; intercepts detected Russian commanders surprised that the Ukrainians weren’t pushing harder toward tenuously defended Melitopol, a U.S. intelligence official said.
But as General Syrsky saw it, the rebellion validated his strategy of sowing division by impaling the Russians in Bakhmut. To send some of his forces south would only undercut it. “I was right, Aguto. You were wrong,” an American official recalls General Syrsky saying and adding, “We’re going to get to Luhansk.”
Mr. Zelensky had framed Bakhmut as the “fortress of our morale.” In the end, it was a blood-drenched demonstration of the outmanned Ukrainians’ predicament.
Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians’ casualties — in the tens of thousands — far outstripped the Ukrainians’. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)
Which left Melitopol.
A primary virtue of the Wiesbaden machine was speed — shrinking the time from point of interest to Ukrainian strike. But that virtue, and with it the Melitopol offensive, was undermined by a fundamental shift in how the Ukrainian commander there used those points of interest. He had substantially less ammunition than he had planned for; instead of simply firing, he would now first use drones to confirm the intelligence.
This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.
American officials recounted the ensuing battle. The Ukrainians had been pummeling the Russians with artillery; American intelligence indicated they were pulling back.
“Take the ground now,” General Aguto told General Tarnavskyi.
But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.
In Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers — to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march.
General Tarnavskyi, though, wouldn’t move until the threat was eliminated. So Wiesbaden sent the Russians’ coordinates and advised him to simultaneously open fire and advance.
Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.
Which took time. Only then did he order his men to fire.
And after the strike, he once again dispatched his drones, to confirm the hilltop was indeed clear. Then he ordered his forces into Robotyne, which they seized on Aug. 28.
The back-and-forth had cost between 24 and 48 hours, officers estimated. And in that time, south of Robotyne, the Russians had begun building new barriers, laying mines and sending reinforcements to halt Ukrainian progress. “The situation was changed completely,” General Zabrodskyi said.
An abandoned Ukrainian military vehicle near the front line of Robotyne.
Reuters
General Aguto yelled at General Tarnavskyi: Press on. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren’t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going.
The Ukrainian advance, in fact, was slowed by a mix of factors. But in Wiesbaden, the frustrated Americans kept talking about the platoon on the hill. “A damned platoon stopped the counteroffensive,” one officer remarked.
The Ukrainianswould not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.
Now their objective would be the small occupied city of Tokmak, about halfway to Melitopol, close to critical rail lines and roadways.
General Aguto had given the Ukrainians greater autonomy. But now he crafted a detailed artillery plan, Operation Rolling Thunder, that prescribed what the Ukrainians should shoot, with what and in what order, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But General Tarnavskyi objected to some targets, insisted on using drones to verify points of interest and Rolling Thunder rumbled to a halt.
Desperate to salvage the counteroffensive, the White House had authorized a secret transport of a small number of cluster warheads with a range of about 100 miles, and General Aguto and General Zabrodskyi devised an operation against Russian attack helicopters threatening General Tarnavskyi’s forces. At least 10 helicopters were destroyed, and the Russians pulled all their aircraft back to Crimea or the mainland. Still, the Ukrainians couldn’t advance.
The Americans’ last-ditch recommendation was to have General Syrsky take over the Tokmak fight. That was rejected. They then proposed that General Sodol send his marines to Robotyne and have them break through the Russian line. But instead General Zaluzhny ordered the marines to Kherson to open a new front in an operation the Americans counseled was doomed to fail — trying to cross the Dnipro and advance toward Crimea. The marines made it across the river in early November but ran out of men and ammunition. The counteroffensive was supposed to deliver a knockout blow. Instead, it met an inglorious end.
General Syrsky declined to answer questions about his interactions with American generals, but a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces said, “We do hope that the time will come, and after the victory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian and American generals you mentioned will perhaps jointly tell us about their working and friendly negotiations during the fighting against Russian aggression.”
Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine and arguably the country’s second-most-powerful official, told The Times that the counteroffensive had been “primarily blunted” by the allies’ “political hesitation” and “constant” delays in weapons deliveries.
But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.”
Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli in Wiesbaden in December 2023.
Susanne Goebel/U.S. European Command
December 2023–January 2025
Kursk
offensive
Sumy
Russia
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Pokrovsk
Black
Sea
Kerch Strait
Bridge
Crimea
Sevastopol
Ukrainian advances
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Donald J.TrumpPresident
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
Shortly before Christmas, Mr. Zelensky rode through the Wiesbaden gates for his maiden visit to the secret center of the partnership.
Entering the Tony Bass Auditorium, he was escorted past trophies of shared battle — twisted fragments of Russian vehicles, missiles and aircraft. When he climbed to the walkway above the former basketball court — as General Zabrodskyi had done that first day in 2022 — the officers working below burst into applause.
Yet the president had not come to Wiesbaden for celebration. In the shadow of the failed counteroffensive, a third, hard wartime winter coming on, the portents had only darkened. To press their new advantage, the Russians were pouring forces into the east. In America, Mr. Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, was mid-political resurrection; some congressional Republicans were grumbling about cutting off funding.
A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory. As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.
But first, the immediate business in Wiesbaden: Generals Cavoli and Aguto explained that they saw no plausible path to reclaiming significant territory in 2024. The coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.
The Ukrainians would have to temper expectations, focusing on achievable objectives to stay in the fight while building the combat power to potentially mount a counteroffensive in 2025: They would need to erect defensive lines in the east to prevent the Russians from seizing more territory. And they would need to reconstitute existing brigades and fill new ones, which the coalition would help train and equip.
Mr. Zelensky voiced his support.
Yet the Americans knew he did so grudgingly. Time and again Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.
Just weeks before, the president had instructed General Zaluzhny to push the Russians back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders by fall of 2024. The general had then shocked the Americans by presenting a plan to do so that required five million shells and one million drones. To which General Cavoli had responded, in fluent Russian, “From where?”
Several weeks later, at a meeting in Kyiv, the Ukrainian commander had locked General Cavoli in a Defense Ministry kitchen and, vaping furiously, made one final, futile plea. “He was caught between two fires, the first being the president and the second being the partners,” said one of his aides.
As a compromise, the Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory — a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia. It would be code-named Operation Lunar Hail.
Until now, the Ukrainians, with help from the C.I.A. and the U.S. and British navies, had used maritime drones, together with long-range British Storm Shadow and French SCALP missiles, to strike the Black Sea Fleet. Wiesbaden’s contribution was intelligence.
But to prosecute the wider Crimea campaign, the Ukrainians would need far more missiles. They would need hundreds of ATACMS.
At the Pentagon, the old cautions hadn’t melted away. But after General Aguto briefed Mr. Austin on all that Lunar Hail could achieve, an aide recalled, he said: “OK, there’s a really compelling strategic objective here. It isn’t just about striking things.”
Mr. Zelensky would get his long-pined-for ATACMS. Even so, one U.S. official said, “We knew that, in his heart of hearts, he still wanted to do something else, something more.”
General Zabrodskyiwas in the Wiesbaden command center in late January when he received an urgent message and stepped outside.
When he returned, gone pale as a ghost, he led General Aguto to a balcony and, pulling on a Lucky Strike, told him that the Ukrainian leadership struggle had reached its denouement: General Zaluzhny was being fired. The betting was on his rival, General Syrsky, to ascend.
The Americans were hardly surprised; they had been hearing ample murmurings of presidential discontent. The Ukrainians would chalk it up to politics, to fear that the widely popular General Zaluzhny might challenge Mr. Zelensky for the presidency. There was also the Stavka meeting, where the president effectively kneecapped General Zaluzhny, and the general’s subsequent decision to publisha piece in The Economistdeclaring the war at a stalemate, the Ukrainians in need of a quantum technological breakthrough. This even as his president was calling for total victory.
General Zaluzhny, one American official said, was a “dead man walking.”
General Syrsky’s appointment brought hedged relief. The Americans believed they would now have a partner with the president’s ear and trust; decision-making, they hoped, would become more consistent.
General Syrsky was also a known commodity.
Part of that knowledge, of course, was the memory of 2023, the scar of Bakhmut — the way the general had sometimes spurned their recommendations, even sought to undermine them. Still, colleagues say, Generals Cavoli and Aguto felt they understood his idiosyncrasies; he would at least hear them out, and unlike some commanders, he appreciated and typically trusted the intelligence they provided.
For General Zabrodskyi, though, the shake-up was a personal blow and a strategic unknown. He considered General Zaluzhny a friend and had given up his parliamentary seat to become his deputy for plans and operations. (Soon he would be pushed out of that job, and his Wiesbaden role. When General Aguto found out, he called with a standing invitation to his North Carolina beach house; the generals could go sailing. “Maybe in my next life,” General Zabrodskyi replied.)
And the changing of the guard came at a particularly uncertain moment for the partnership: Goaded by Mr. Trump, congressional Republicans were holding up $61 billion in new military aid. During the battle for Melitopol, the commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. Wiesbaden was still churning out points of interest, but the Ukrainians were barely using them.
“We don’t need this right now,” General Zabrodskyi told the Americans.
The red lineskept moving.
There were the ATACMS, which arrived secretly in early spring, so the Russians wouldn’t realize Ukraine could now strike across Crimea.
And there were the SMEs. Some months earlier, General Aguto had been allowed to send a small team, about a dozen officers, to Kyiv, easing the prohibition on American boots on Ukrainian ground. So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as “subject matter experts.” Then, after the Ukrainian leadership shake-up, to build confidence and coordination, the administration more than tripled the number of officers in Kyiv, to about three dozen; they could now plainly be called advisers, though they would still be confined to the Kyiv area.
Perhaps the hardest red line, though, was the Russian border. Soon that line, too, would be redrawn.
In April, the financing logjam was finally cleared, and 180 more ATACMS, dozens of armored vehicles and 85,000 155-millimeter shells started flowing in from Poland.
Coalition intelligence, though, was detecting another sort of movement: Components of a new Russian formation, the 44th Army Corps, moving toward Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border. The Russians, seeing a limited window as the Ukrainians waited to have the American aid in hand, were preparing to open a new front in northern Ukraine.
The Ukrainians believed the Russians hoped to reach a major road ringing Kharkiv, which would allow them to bombard the city, the country’s second-largest, with artillery fire, and threaten the lives of more than a million people.
The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn’t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence.
Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.
The Ukrainians asked for permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons across the border. What’s more, Generals Cavoli and Aguto proposed that Wiesbaden help guide those strikes, as it did across Ukraine and in Crimea — providing points of interest and precision coordinates.
The White House was still debating these questions when, on May 10, the Russians attacked.
This became the moment the Biden administration changed the rules of the game. Generals Cavoli and Aguto were tasked with creating an “ops box” — a zone on Russian soil in which the Ukrainians could fire U.S.-supplied weapons and Wiesbaden could support their strikes.
At first they advocated an expansive box, to encompass a concomitant threat: the glide bombs — crude Soviet-era bombs transformed into precision weapons with wings and fins — that were raining terror on Kharkiv. A box extending about 190 miles would let the Ukrainians use their new ATACMS to hit glide-bomb fields and other targets deep inside Russia. But Mr. Austin saw this as mission creep: He did not want to divert ATACMS from Lunar Hail.
Instead, the generals were instructed to draw up two options — one extending about 50 miles into Russia, standard HIMARS range, and one nearly twice as deep. Ultimately, against the generals’ recommendation, Mr. Biden and his advisers chose the most limited option — but to protect the city of Sumy as well as Kharkiv, it followed most of the country’s northern border, encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey. The C.I.A. was also authorized to send officers to the Kharkiv region to assist their Ukrainian counterparts with operations inside the box.
The box went live at the end of May. The Russians were caught unawares: With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war.
The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.
Summer 2024: Ukraine’s armies in the north and east were stretched dangerously thin. Still, General Syrsky kept telling the Americans, “I need a win.”
A foreshadowing had come back in March, when the Americans discovered that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia. The C.I.A. station chief in Kyiv confronted the HUR commander, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov: If he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support. He did, only to be forced back.
At moments like these, Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.
To the Ukrainians, though, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was “better than ask and stop,” explained Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former Ukrainian military intelligence commander. He added: “We are allies, but we have different goals. We protect our country, and you protect your phantom fears from the Cold War.”
In August in Wiesbaden, General Aguto’s tour was coming to its scheduled end. He left on the 9th. The same day, the Ukrainians dropped a cryptic reference to something happening in the north.
On Aug. 10, the C.I.A. station chief left, too, for a job at headquarters. In the churn of command, General Syrsky made his move — sending troops across the southwest Russian border, into the region of Kursk.
For the Americans, the incursion’s unfolding was a significant breach of trust. It wasn’t just that the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark; they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line, taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russian territory encompassed by the ops box, in violation of rules laid down when it was created.
The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. “It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,” a senior Pentagon official said.
The Americans could have pulled the plug on the ops box. Yet they knew that to do so, an administration official explained, “could lead to a catastrophe”: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk would perish unprotected by HIMARS rockets and U.S. intelligence.
Kursk, the Americans concluded, was the win Mr. Zelensky had been hinting at all along. It was also evidence of his calculations: He still spoke of total victory. But one of the operation’s goals, he explained to the Americans, was leverage — to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.
Provocative operationsonce forbidden were now permitted.
Before General Zabrodskyi was sidelined, he and General Aguto had selected the targets for Operation Lunar Hail. The campaign required a degree of hand-holding not seen since General Donahue’s day. American and British officers would oversee virtually every aspect of each strike, from determining the coordinates to calculating the missiles’ flight paths.
Of roughly 100 targets across Crimea, the most coveted was the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Mr. Putin saw the bridge as powerful physical proof of Crimea’s connection to the motherland. Toppling the Russian president’s symbol had, in turn, become the Ukrainian president’s obsession.
It had also been an American red line. In 2022, the Biden administration prohibited helping the Ukrainians target it; even the approaches on the Crimean side were to be treated as sovereign Russian territory. (Ukrainian intelligence services tried attacking it themselves, causing some damage.)
But after the partners agreed on Lunar Hail, the White House authorized the military and C.I.A. to secretly work with the Ukrainians and the British on a blueprint of attack to bring the bridge down: ATACMS would weaken vulnerable points on the deck, while maritime drones would blow up next to its stanchions.
But while the drones were being readied, the Russians hardened their defenses around the stanchions.
The Ukrainians proposed attacking with ATACMS alone. Generals Cavoli and Aguto pushed back: ATACMS alone wouldn’t do the job; the Ukrainians should wait until the drones were ready or call off the strike.
In the end, the Americans stood down, and in mid-August, with Wiesbaden’s reluctant help, the Ukrainians fired a volley of ATACMS at the bridge. It did not come tumbling down; the strike left some “potholes,” which the Russians repaired, one American official grumbled, adding, “Sometimes they need to try and fail to see that we are right.”
The Kerch Bridge episode aside, the Lunar Hail collaboration was judged a significant success. Russian warships, aircraft, command posts, weapons depots and maintenance facilities were destroyed or moved to the mainland to escape the onslaught.
For the Biden administration, the failed Kerch attack, together with a scarcity of ATACMS, reinforced the importance of helping the Ukrainians use their fleet of long-distance attack drones. The main challenge was evading Russian air defenses and pinpointing targets.
Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. So the administration would let the C.I.A. request “variances,” carve-outs authorizing the spy agency to support strikes inside Russia to achieve specific objectives.
Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in the lakeside town of Toropets, some 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border, that was providing weapons to Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kursk. The administration approved the variance. Toropets would be a test of concept.
C.I.A. officers shared intelligence about the depot’s munitions and vulnerabilities, as well as Russian defense systems on the way to Toropets. They calculated how many drones the operation would require and charted their circuitous flight paths.
On Sept. 18, a large swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Videos showed immense balls of flame and plumes of smoke rising above the lake.
A munitions depot in Toropets, Russia.
Maxar Technologies
The depot after a drone strike assisted by the C.I.A.
Maxar Technologies
Yet as with the Kerch Bridge operation, the drone collaboration pointed to a strategic dissonance.
The Americans argued for concentrating drone strikes on strategically important military targets — the same sort of argument they had made, fruitlessly, about focusing on Melitopol during the 2023 counteroffensive. But the Ukrainians insisted on attacking a wider menu of targets, including oil and gas facilities and politically sensitive sites in and around Moscow (though they would do so without C.I.A. help).
“Russian public opinion is going to turn on Putin,” Mr. Zelensky told the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Kyiv in September. “You’re wrong. We know the Russians.”
Mr. Austin and General Cavolitraveled to Kyiv in October. Year by year, the Biden administration had provided the Ukrainians with an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal of weaponry, had crossed so many of its red lines. Still, the defense secretary and the general were worrying about the message written in the weakening situation on the ground.
The Russians had been making slow but steady progress against depleted Ukrainian forces in the east, toward the city of Pokrovsk — their “big target,” one American official called it. They were also clawing back some territory in Kursk. Yes, the Russians’ casualties had spiked, to between 1,000 and 1,500 a day. But still they kept coming.
Mr. Austin would later recount how he contemplated this manpower mismatch as he looked out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets. He was struck, he told aides, by the sight of so many men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform. In a nation at war, he explained, men this age are usually away, in the fight.
This was one of the difficult messages the Americans had come to Kyiv to deliver, as they laid out what they could and couldn’t do for Ukraine in 2025.
Mr. Zelensky had already taken a small step, lowering the draft age to 25. Still, the Ukrainians hadn’t been able to fill existing brigades, let alone build new ones.
Mr. Austin pressed Mr. Zelensky to take the bigger, bolder step and begin drafting 18-year-olds. To which Mr. Zelensky shot back, according to an official who was present, “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.”
“And your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned,” the official recalled Mr. Austin responding. “They don’t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.”
That was the perennial standoff:
In the Ukrainians’ view, the Americans weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help them prevail.
In the Americans’ view, the Ukrainians weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help themselves prevail.
Mr. Zelensky often said, in response to the draft question, that his country was fighting for its future, that 18- to 25-year-olds were the fathers of that future.
To one American official, though, it’s “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
General Baldwin, who early on had crucially helped connect the partners’ commanders, had visited Kyiv in September 2023. The counteroffensive was stalling, the U.S. elections were on the horizon and the Ukrainians kept asking about Afghanistan.
The Ukrainians, he recalled, were terrified that they, too, would be abandoned. They kept calling, wanting to know if America would stay the course, asking: “What will happen if the Republicans win the Congress? What is going to happen if President Trump wins?’”
He always told them to remain encouraged, he said. Still, he added, “I had my fingers crossed behind my back, because I really didn’t know anymore.”
Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in.
In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project.
He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk. One of the first U.S.-supported strikes targeted and wounded the North Korean commander, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok, as he met with his Russian counterparts in a command bunker.
The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.
In December, General Donahue got his fourth star and returned to Wiesbaden as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He had been the last American soldier to leave in the chaotic fall of Kabul. Now he would have to navigate the new, unsure future of Ukraine.
General Cavoli, center, passed the colors to General Donahue in a ceremonial change of command in Wiesbaden.
Volker Ramspott/U.S. Army
So much had changed since General Donahue left two years before. But when it came to the raw question of territory, not much had changed. In the war’s first year, with Wiesbaden’s help, the Ukrainians had seized the upper hand, winning back more than half of the land lost after the 2022 invasion. Now, they were fighting over tiny slivers of ground in the east (and in Kursk).
One of General Donahue’s main objectives in Wiesbaden, according to a Pentagon official, would be to fortify the brotherhood and breathe new life into the machine — to stem, perhaps even push back, the Russian advance. (In the weeks that followed, with Wiesbaden providing points of interest and coordinates, the Russian march toward Pokrovsk would slow, and in some areas in the east, the Ukrainians would make gains. But in southwest Russia, as the Trump administration scaled back support, the Ukrainians would lose most of their bargaining chip, Kursk.)
In early January, Generals Donahue and Cavoli visited Kyiv to meet with General Syrsky and ensure that he agreed on plans to replenish Ukrainian brigades and shore up their lines, the Pentagon official said. From there, they traveled to Ramstein Air Base, where they met Mr. Austin for what would be the final gathering of coalition defense chiefs before everything changed.
With the doors closed to the press and public, Mr. Austin’s counterparts hailed him as the “godfather” and “architect” of the partnership that, for all its broken trust and betrayals, had sustained the Ukrainians’ defiance and hope, begun in earnest on that spring day in 2022 when Generals Donahue and Zabrodskyi first met in Wiesbaden.
Mr. Austin is a solid and stoic block of a man, but as he returned the compliments, his voice caught.
“Instead of saying farewell, let me say thank you,” he said, blinking back tears. And then added: “I wish you all success, courage and resolve. Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.”
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Sources and methodology
For each war map, we used data from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project to calculate changes in territorial control. Russian forces in eastern Ukraine include Russian-backed separatists. The composite image in the introduction draws on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was compiled using Google Earth Engine. We combined images from January and February of each year since 2020 to generate a cloud-free satellite image.
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Part 1Building Trust — and a Killing Machine
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html#part-one
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.
By Adam Entous
Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Turkey.
On a spring morningtwo months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.
Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.
The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.
One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.
Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.
Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.
How the promise of Texas barbecue led to a meeting with a key Ukrainian general.
Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.
Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today’s precarious place.
With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine — including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.
But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war — enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence — that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.
Ukrainian, American and British military leaders during a meeting in Ukraine in August 2023.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.
Farther south, the partners set their sights on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet loaded missiles destined for Ukrainian targets onto warships and submarines. At the height of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, a predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.
But ultimately the partnership strained — and the arc of the war shifted — amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.
Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.
As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.
On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war — in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year’s successes — the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.
A Ukrainian soldier fired at Russian positions near Bakhmut.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear — that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats. The story of the partnership shows how close the Americans and their allies sometimes came to that red line, how increasingly dire events forced them — some said too slowly — to advance it to more perilous ground and how they carefully devised protocols to remain on the safe side of it.
Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.
In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.
It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.
During the wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, American forces conducted their own ground operations and supported those of their local partners. In Ukraine, by contrast, the U.S. military wasn’t allowed to deploy any of its own soldiers on the battlefield and would have to help remotely.
Would the precision targeting honed against terrorist groups be effective in a conflict with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? Would Ukrainian artillery men fire their howitzers without hesitation at coordinates sent by American officers in a headquarters 1,300 miles away? Would Ukrainian commanders, based on intelligence relayed by a disembodied American voice pleading, “There’s nobody there — go,” order infantrymen to enter a village behind enemy lines?
The answers to those questions — in truth, the partnership’s entire trajectory — would hinge on how well American and Ukrainian officers would trust one another.
“I will never lie to you. If you lie to me, we’re done,” General Zabrodskyi recalled General Donahue telling him at their first meeting. “I feel the exact same way,” the Ukrainian replied.
A Ukrainian soldier keeps watch in Kharkiv on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
February–May 2022
Kyiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Kherson
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia since 2014
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksiiReznikovDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
In mid-April 2022, about two weeks before the Wiesbaden meeting, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on a routine intelligence-sharing call when something unexpected popped up on their radar screens. According to a former senior U.S. military officer, “The Americans go: ‘Oh, that’s the Moskva!’ The Ukrainians go: ‘Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.’”
The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainians sank it.
Over more than a year of reporting, Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries. While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.
The sinking was a signal triumph — a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude. But the episode also reflected the disjointed state of the Ukrainian-American relationship in the first weeks of the war.
For the Americans, there was anger, because the Ukrainians hadn’t given so much as a heads-up; surprise, that Ukraine possessed missiles capable of reaching the ship; and panic, because the Biden administration hadn’t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.
The Ukrainians, for their part, were coming from their own place of deep-rooted skepticism.
Their war, as they saw it, had started in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and fomented separatist rebellions in eastern Ukraine. President Barack Obama had condemned the seizure and imposed sanctions on Russia. But fearful that American involvement could provoke a full-scale invasion, he had authorized only strictly limited intelligence sharing and rejected calls for defensive weapons. “Blankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets,” Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, complained. Eventually Mr. Obama somewhat relaxed those intelligence strictures, and Mr. Trump, in his first term, relaxed them further and supplied the Ukrainians with their first antitank Javelins.
Then, in the portentous days before Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration had closed the Kyiv embassy and pulled all military personnel from the country. (A small team of C.I.A. officers was allowed to stay.) As the Ukrainians saw it, a senior U.S. military officer said, “We told them, ‘The Russians are coming — see ya.’”
When American generals offered assistance after the invasion, they ran into a wall of mistrust. “We’re fighting the Russians. You’re not. Why should we listen to you?” Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.
General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.
In those early days, this meant that General Donahue and a few aides, with little more than their phones, passed information about Russian troop movements to General Syrsky and his staff. Yet even that ad hoc arrangement touched a raw nerve of rivalry within Ukraine’s military, between General Syrsky and his boss, the armed forces commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. To Zaluzhny loyalists, General Syrsky was already using the relationship to build advantage.
Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny’s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians’ equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American’s calls.
To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine’s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, “I know you’re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.”
Ragtag alliance coalesced into partnership in the quick cascade of events.
In March, their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south — a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.
Unless the coalition reoriented its own ambitions, General Donahue and the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, concluded, the hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians would lose the war. The coalition, in other words, would have to start providing heavy offensive weapons — M777 artillery batteries and shells.
The Biden administration had previously arranged emergency shipments of antiaircraft and antitank weapons. The M777s were something else entirely — the first big leap into supporting a major ground war.
The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne in charge of delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed on to the M777s, the Tony Bass Auditorium became a full-fledged headquarters.
A Polish general became General Donahue’s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub on the former basketball court. A Canadian would oversee training.
The auditorium basement became what is known as a fusion center, producing intelligence about Russian battlefield positions, movements and intentions. There, according to intelligence officials, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers.
The 18th Airborne is known as Dragon Corps; the new operation would be Task Force Dragon. All that was needed to bring the pieces together was the reluctant Ukrainian top command.
At an international conference on April 26 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, General Milley introduced Mr. Reznikov and a Zaluzhny deputy to Generals Cavoli and Donahue. “These are your guys right here,” General Milley told them, adding: “You’ve got to work with them. They’re going to help you.”
Bonds of trust were being forged. Mr. Reznikov agreed to talk to General Zaluzhny. Back in Kyiv, “we organized the composition of a delegation” to Wiesbaden, Mr. Reznikov said. “And so it began.”
At the heart of the partnershipwere two generals — the Ukrainian, Zabrodskyi, and the American, Donahue.
General Zabrodskyi would be Wiesbaden’s chief Ukrainian contact, although in an unofficial capacity, as he was serving in parliament. In every other way, he was a natural.
Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, a key Ukrainian figure in the Wiesbaden partnership.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Like many of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian military, General Zabrodskyi knew the enemy well. In the 1990s, he had attended military academy in St. Petersburg and served for five years in the Russian Army.
He also knew the Americans: From 2005 to 2006, he had studied at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Eight years later, General Zabrodskyi led a perilous mission behind lines of Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, modeled in part on one he had studied at Fort Leavenworth — the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart’s famous reconnaissance mission around Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. This brought him to the attention of influential people at the Pentagon; the general, they sensed, was the kind of leader they could work with.
General Zabrodskyi remembers that first day in Wiesbaden: “My mission was to find out: Who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?”
General Donahue was a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria. General Cavoli once compared him to “a comic book action hero.”
Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, center, no helmet, in Afghanistan circa 2020.
Now he showed General Zabrodskyi and his travel companion, Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Kyrylenko, a map of the besieged east and south of their country, Russian forces dwarfing theirs. Invoking their “Glory to Ukraine” battle cry, he laid down the challenge: “You can ‘Slava Ukraini’ all you want with other people. I don’t care how brave you are. Look at the numbers.” He then walked them through a plan to win a battlefield advantage by fall, General Zabrodskyi recalled.
The first stage was underway — training Ukrainian artillery men on their new M777s. Task Force Dragon would then help them use the weapons to halt the Russian advance. Then the Ukrainians would need to mount a counteroffensive.
That evening, General Zabrodskyi wrote to his superiors in Kyiv.
“You know, a lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine,” he recalled. But “somebody needed to be the coordinator, to organize everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. I said to the commander in chief, ‘We have found our partner.’”
Soon the Ukrainians, nearly 20 in all — intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists — began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets’ locations.
Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”?
Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.
The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”
“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” one U.S. official explained.
Each point of interest would have to adhere to intelligence-sharing rules crafted to blunt the risk of Russian retaliation against N.A.T.O. partners.
There would be no points of interest on Russian soil. If Ukrainian commanders wanted to strike within Russia, General Zabrodskyi explained, they would have to use their own intelligence and domestically produced weapons. “Our message to the Russians was, ‘This war should be fought inside Ukraine,’” a senior U.S. official said.
Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire an M777 howitzer at Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The White House also prohibited sharing intelligence on the locations of “strategic” Russian leaders, like the armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,” another senior U.S. official said. “Like, we’d go to war.” Similarly, Task Force Dragon couldn’t share intelligence that identified the locations of individual Russians.
The way the system worked, Task Force Dragon would tell the UkrainianswhereRussians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not sayhowit knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets — Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on. As General Zabrodskyi remembers it, when the Ukrainians asked why they should trust the intelligence, General Donahue would say: “Don’t worry about how we found out. Just trust that when you shoot, it will hit it, and you’ll like the results, and if you don’t like the results, tell us, we’ll make it better.”
The systemwent livein May. The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians’ M777s. The fusion center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark’s coordinates in preparation for the strike.
On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the battalion commander with a pep talk: “You feel good?” he asked. “I feel real good,” the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. “Everybody went, ‘We can do this!’” a U.S. official recalled.
But a critical question remained: Having done this against a single, stationary target, could the partners deploy this system against multiple targets in a major kinetic battle?
That would be the battle underway north of Donetsk, in Sievierodonetsk, where the Russians were hoping to mount a pontoon-bridge river crossing and then encircle and capture the city. General Zabrodskyi called it “a hell of a target.”
The engagement that followed was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. The pontoon bridges became death traps; at least 400 Russians were killed, by Ukrainian estimates. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.
In these first months, the fighting was largely concentrated in Ukraine’s east. But U.S. intelligence was also tracking Russian movements in the south, especially a large troop buildup near the major city of Kherson. Soon several M777 crews were redeployed, and Task Force Dragon started feeding points of interest to strike Russian positions there.
With practice, Task Force Dragon produced points of interest faster, and the Ukrainians shot at them faster. The more they demonstrated their effectiveness using M777s and similar systems, the more the coalition sent new ones — which Wiesbaden supplied with ever more points of interest.
“You know when we started to believe?” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “When Donahue said, ‘This is a list of positions.’ We checked the list and we said, ‘These 100 positions are good, but we need the other 50.’ And they sent the other 50.”
The M777s became workhorsesof the Ukrainian army.But because theygenerally couldn’t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians’ vast superiority in manpower and equipment.
To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap — providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.
The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking.
Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over.
Celeste Wallander, then the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, recalled, “Milley would always say, ‘You’ve got a little Russian army fighting a big Russian army, and they’re fighting the same way, and the Ukrainians will never win.’” General Cavoli’s argument, she said, was that “with HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that’s how they will start to beat the Russians.”
At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?” And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon was becoming “the entire back office of the war.”
Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.
HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. Russian forces were left dazed and confused. Their morale plummeted, and with it their will to fight. And as the HIMARS arsenal grew from eight to 38 and the Ukrainian strikers became more proficient, an American official said, the toll rose as much as fivefold.
“We became a small part, maybe not the best part, but a small part, of your system,” General Zabrodskyi explained, adding: “Most states did this over a period of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But we were forced to do it in a matter of weeks.”
Together the partners were honing a killing machine.
Russian forces collapsed in the Oskil river valley, abandoning their equipment as they fled.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
June–November 2022
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Izium
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia
Mykolaiv
Melitopol
Kherson
Odesa
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
BenWallaceDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
At their first meeting, General Donahue had shown General Zabrodskyi a color-coded map of the region, with American and NATO forces in blue, Russian forces in red and Ukrainian forces in green. “Why are we green?” General Zabrodskyi asked. “We should be blue.”
In early June, as they met to war-game Ukraine’s counteroffensive, sitting side by side in front of tabletop battlefield maps, General Zabrodskyi saw that the small blocks marking Ukrainian positions had become blue — a symbolic stroke to strengthen the bond of common purpose. “When you defeat Russia,” General Donahue told the Ukrainians, “we will make you blue for good.”
It was three months since the invasion, and the maps told this story of the war:
In the south, the Ukrainians had blocked the Russian advance at the Black Sea shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv. But the Russians controlled Kherson, and a corps roughly 25,000 soldiers strong occupied land on the west bank of the Dnipro River. In the east, the Russians had been stopped at Izium. But they held land between there and the border, including the strategically important Oskil river valley.
The Russians’ strategy had morphed from decapitation — the futile assault on Kyiv — to slow strangulation. The Ukrainians needed to go on the offensive.
Their top commander, General Zaluzhny, along with the British, favored the most ambitious option — from near Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast, down toward occupied Melitopol. This maneuver, they believed, would sever the cross-border land routes sustaining Russian forces in Crimea.
In theory, General Donahue agreed. But according to colleagues, he thought Melitopol was not feasible, given the state of the Ukrainian military and the coalition’s limited ability to provide M777s without crippling American readiness. To prove his point in the war games, he took over the part of the Russian commander. Whenever the Ukrainians tried to advance, General Donahue destroyed them with overwhelming combat power.
What they ultimately agreed on was a two-part attack to confuse Russian commanders who, according to American intelligence, believed the Ukrainians had only enough soldiers and equipment for a single offensive.
The main effort would be to recapture Kherson and secure the Dnipro’s west bank, lest the corps advance on the port of Odesa and be positioned for another attack on Kyiv.
General Donahue had advocated a coequal second front in the east, from the Kharkiv region, to reach the Oskil river valley. But the Ukrainians instead argued for a smaller supporting feint to draw Russian forces east and smooth the way for Kherson.
That would come first, around Sept. 4. The Ukrainians would then begin two weeks of artillery strikes to weaken Russian forces in the south. Only then, around Sept. 18, would they march toward Kherson.
And if they still had enough ammunition, they would cross the Dnipro. General Zabrodskyi remembers General Donahue saying, “If you guys want to get across the river and get to the neck of Crimea, then follow the plan.”
That was the planuntil it wasn’t.
Mr. Zelensky sometimes spoke directly with regional commanders, and after one such conversation, the Americans were informed that the order of battle had changed.
Kherson would come faster — and first, on Aug. 29.
General Donahue told General Zaluzhny that more time was needed to lay the groundwork for Kherson; the switch, he said, put the counteroffensive, and the entire country, in jeopardy. The Americans later learned the back story:
Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute — a preview of a fundamental disconnect that would increasingly shape the arc of the war.
The upshot wasn’t what anyone had planned.
The Russians responded by moving reinforcements from the east toward Kherson. Now General Zaluzhny realized that the weakened Russian forces in the east might well let the Ukrainians do what General Donahue had advocated — reach the Oskil river valley. “Go, go, go — you have them on the ropes,” General Donahue told the Ukrainian commander there, General Syrsky, a European official recalled.
The Russian forces collapsed even faster than predicted, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The Ukrainian leadership had never expected their forces to reach the Oskil’s west bank, and when they did, General Syrsky’s standing with the president soared.
In the south, U.S. intelligence now reported that the corps on the Dnipro’s west bank was running short on food and ammunition.
The Ukrainians wavered. General Donahue pleaded with the field commander, Maj. Gen. Andrii Kovalchuk, to advance. Soon the American’s superiors, Generals Cavoli and Milley, escalated the matter to General Zaluzhny.
That didn’t work either.
The British defense minister, Ben Wallace, asked General Donahue what he would do if General Kovalchuk were his subordinate.
“He would have already been fired,” General Donahue responded.
“I got this,” Mr. Wallace said. The British military had considerable clout in Kyiv; unlike the Americans, they had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion. Now the defense minister exercised that clout and demanded that the Ukrainians oust the commander.
Perhaps no pieceof Ukrainian soil was more precious to Mr. Putin than Crimea. As the Ukrainians haltingly advanced on the Dnipro, hoping to cross and advance toward the peninsula, this gave rise to what one Pentagon official called the “core tension”:
To give the Russian president an incentive to negotiate a deal, the official explained, the Ukrainians would have to put pressure on Crimea. To do so, though, could push him to contemplate doing “something desperate.”
The Ukrainians were already exerting pressure on the ground. And the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.
That same month, U.S. intelligence overheard Russia’s Ukraine commander, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, talking about indeed doing something desperate: using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Ukrainians from crossing the Dnipro and making a beeline to Crimea.
Until that moment, U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.
That core tension seemed to be coming to a head.
In Europe, Generals Cavoli and Donahue were begging General Kovalchuk’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, to move his brigades forward, rout the corps from the Dnipro’s west bank and seize its equipment.
In Washington, Mr. Biden’s top advisers nervously wondered the opposite — if they might need to press the Ukrainians to slow their advance.
The moment might have been the Ukrainians’ best chance to deal a game-changing blow to the Russians. It might also have been the best chance to ignite a wider war.
In the end, in a sort of grand ambiguity, the moment never came.
To protect their fleeing forces, Russian commanders left behind small detachments of troops. General Donahue advised General Tarnavskyi to destroy or bypass them and focus on the primary objective — the corps. But whenever the Ukrainians encountered a detachment, they stopped in their tracks, assuming a larger force lay in wait.
General Donahue told him that satellite imagery showed Ukrainian forces blocked by just one or two Russian tanks, according to Pentagon officials. But unable to see the same satellite images, the Ukrainian commander hesitated, wary of sending his forces forward.
To get the Ukrainians moving, Task Force Dragon sent points of interest, and M777 operators destroyed the tanks with Excalibur missiles — time-consuming steps repeated whenever the Ukrainians encountered a Russian detachment.
Ukrainians celebrated the recapture of Kherson.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Ukrainians would still recapture Kherson and clear the Dnipro’s west bank. But the offensive halted there. The Ukrainians, short on ammunition, would not cross the Dnipro. They would not, as the Ukrainians had hoped and the Russians feared, advance toward Crimea.
And as the Russians escaped across the river, farther into occupied ground, huge machines rent the earth, cleaving long, deep trench lines in their wake.
Still the Ukrainians were in a celebratory mood, and on his next Wiesbaden trip, General Zabrodskyi presented General Donahue with a “combat souvenir”: a tactical vest that had belonged to a Russian soldier whose comrades were already marching east to what would become the crucible of 2023 — a place called Bakhmut.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, a site of prolonged combat that President Volodymyr Zelensky called the “fortress of our morale.”
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
November 2022–November 2023
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Luhansk
Bakhmut
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Makiivka
Robotyne
Tokmak
Melitopol
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
The planningfor 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.
Ukraine controlled the west banks of the Oskil and Dnipro rivers. Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war’s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.
“We’re going to win this whole thing,” Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.
To accomplish this, General Zabrodskyi explained as the partners gathered in Wiesbaden in late autumn, General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol, to strangle Russian forces in Crimea — what he believed had been the great, denied opportunity to deal the reeling enemy a knockout blow in 2022.
And once again, some American generals were preaching caution.
At the Pentagon, officials worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive; perhaps the Ukrainians, in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal. When the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Milley, floated that idea in a speech, many of Ukraine’s supporters (including congressional Republicans, then overwhelmingly supportive of the war) cried appeasement.
In Wiesbaden, in private conversations with General Zabrodskyi and the British, General Donahue pointed to those Russian trenches being dug to defend the south. He pointed, too, to the Ukrainians’ halting advance to the Dnipro just weeks before. “They’re digging in, guys,” he told them. “How are you going to get across this?”
What he advocated instead, General Zabrodskyi and a European official recalled, was a pause: If the Ukrainians spent the next year, if not longer, building and training new brigades, they would be far better positioned to fight through to Melitopol.
The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn’t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians.
There would be no pause. General Zabrodskyi would tell General Zaluzhny, “Donahue is right.” But he would also admit that “nobody liked Donahue’s recommendations, except me.”
And besides, General Donahue was a man on the way out.
The 18th Airborne’s deployment had always been temporary. There would now be a more permanent organization in Wiesbaden, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, call sign Erebus — the Greek mythological personification of darkness.
That autumn day, the planning session and their time together done, General Donahue escorted General Zabrodskyi to the Clay Kaserne airfield. There he presented him with an ornamental shield — the 18th Airborne dragon insignia, encircled by five stars.
The westernmost represented Wiesbaden; slightly to the east was the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. The other stars represented Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv — for General Zaluzhny and the commanders in the south and east.
And beneath the stars, “Thanks.”
“I asked him, ‘Why are you thanking me?’” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “‘I should say thank you.’”
General Donahue explained that the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying, testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned. “Thanks to you,” he said, “we built all these things that we never could have.”
Shouting through the airfield wind and noise, they went back and forth about who deserved the most thanks. Then they shook hands, and General Zabrodskyi disappeared into the idling C-130.
The“new guyin the room” was Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. He was a different kind of commander, with a different kind of mission.
General Donahue was a risk taker. General Aguto had built a reputation as a man of deliberation and master of training and large-scale operations. After the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration had expanded its training of the Ukrainians, including at a base in the far west of the country; General Aguto had overseen the program. In Wiesbaden, his No. 1 priority would be preparing new brigades. “You’ve got to get them ready for the fight,” Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, told him.
That translated to greater autonomy for the Ukrainians, a rebalancing of the relationship: At first, Wiesbaden had labored to win the Ukrainians’ trust. Now the Ukrainians were asking for Wiesbaden’s trust.
An opportunity soon presented itself.
Ukrainian intelligence had detected a makeshift Russian barracks at a school in occupied Makiivka. “Trust us on this,” General Zabrodskyi told General Aguto. The American did, and the Ukrainian recalled, “We did the full targeting process absolutely independently.” Wiesbaden’s role would be limited to providing coordinates.
A satellite image of a school in occupied Makiivka where Russians had established a barracks.
Maxar Technologies
The site after a strike that was aided by U.S. intelligence.
Maxar Technologies
In this new phase of the partnership, U.S. and Ukrainian officers would still meet daily to set priorities, which the fusion center turned into points of interest. But Ukrainian commanders now had a freer hand to use HIMARS to strike additional targets, fruit of their own intelligence — if they furthered agreed-upon priorities.
“We will step back and watch, and keep an eye on you to make sure that you don’t do anything crazy,” General Aguto told the Ukrainians. “The whole goal,” he added, “is to have you operate on your own at some point in time.”
Echoing 2022, the war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan.
The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky’s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut — where combat had been smoldering for months — with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south — the attack on Melitopol, where Russian fortifications were already rotting and collapsing in the winter wet and cold.
But problems of a different sort were already gnawing at the new-made plan.
General Zaluzhny may have been Ukraine’s supreme commander, but his supremacy was increasingly compromised by his competition with General Syrsky. According to Ukrainian officials, the rivalry dated to Mr. Zelensky’s decision, in 2021, to elevate General Zaluzhny over his former boss, General Syrsky. The rivalry had intensified after the invasion, as the commanders vied for limited HIMARS batteries. General Syrsky had been born in Russia and served in its army; until he started working on his Ukrainian, he had generally spoken Russian at meetings. General Zaluzhny sometimes derisively called him “that Russian general.”
The Americans knew General Syrsky was unhappy about being dealt a supporting hand in the counteroffensive. When General Aguto called to make sure he understood the plan, he responded, “I don’t agree, but I have my orders.”
The counteroffensive was to begin on May 1. The intervening months would be spent training for it. General Syrsky would contribute four battle-hardened brigades — each between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers — for training in Europe; they would be joined by four brigades of new recruits.
The general had other plans.
In Bakhmut, the Russians were deploying, and losing, vast numbers of soldiers. General Syrsky saw an opportunity to engulf them and ignite discord in their ranks. “Take all new guys” for Melitopol, he told General Aguto, according to U.S. officials. And when Mr. Zelensky sided with him, over the objections of both his own supreme commander and the Americans, a key underpinning of the counteroffensive was effectively scuttled.
Now the Ukrainians would send just four untested brigades abroad for training. (They would prepare eight more inside Ukraine.) Plus, the new recruits were old — mostly in their 40s and 50s. When they arrived in Europe, a senior U.S. official recalled, “All we kept thinking was, This is not great.”
The Ukrainian draft age was 27. General Cavoli, who had been promoted to supreme allied commander for Europe, implored General Zaluzhny to “get your 18-year-olds in the game.” But the Americans concluded that neither the president nor the general would own such a politically fraught decision.
A parallel dynamic was at play on the American side.
The previous year, the Russians had unwisely placed command posts, ammunition depots and logistics centers within 50 miles of the front lines. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS’ reach. So Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.
ATACMS were a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration. Russia’s military chief, General Gerasimov, had indirectly referred to them the previous May when he warned General Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line. There was also a question of supply: The Pentagon was already warning that it would not have enough ATACMS if America had to fight its own war.
The message was blunt: Stop asking for ATACMS.
Underlying assumptionshad been upended. Still, the Americans saw a path to victory, albeit a narrowing one. Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1, before the Russians repaired their fortifications and moved more troops to reinforce Melitopol.
But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto’s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn’t commit until they had it all.
At one point, frustration rising, General Cavoli turned to General Zabrodskyi and said: “Misha, I love your country. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose the war.”
“My answer was: ‘I understand what you are saying, Christopher. But please understand me. I’m not the supreme commander. And I’m not the president of Ukraine,’” General Zabrodskyi recalled, adding, “Probably I needed to cry as much as he did.”
At the Pentagon, officials were beginning to sense some graver fissure opening. General Zabrodskyi recalled General Milley asking: “Tell me the truth. Did you change the plan?”
“No, no, no,” he responded. “We did not change the plan, and we are not going to.”
When he uttered these words, he genuinely believed he was telling the truth.
In late May, intelligence showed the Russians rapidly building new brigades. The Ukrainians didn’t have everything they wanted, but they had what they thought they needed. They would have to go.
General Zaluzhny outlined the final plan at a meeting of the Stavka, a governmental body overseeing military matters. General Tarnavskyi would have 12 brigades and the bulk of ammunition for the main assault, on Melitopol. The marine commandant, Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol, would feint toward Mariupol, the ruined port city taken by the Russians after a withering siege the year before. General Syrsky would lead the supporting effort in the east around Bakhmut, recently lost after months of trench warfare.
Then General Syrsky spoke. According to Ukrainian officials, the general said he wanted to break from the plan and execute a full-scale attack to drive the Russians from Bakhmut. He would then advance eastward toward the Luhansk region. He would, of course, need additional men and ammunition.
The Americans were not told the meeting’s outcome. But then U.S. intelligence observed Ukrainian troops and ammunition moving in directions inconsistent with the agreed-upon plan.
Soon after, at a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.
“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried.
What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition’s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.
“It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,” one Ukrainian official remarked.
Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.
“We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.
But they would not.
“These decisions involving life and death, and what territory you value more and what territory you value less, are fundamentally sovereign decisions,” a senior Biden administration official explained. “All we could do was give them advice.”
The leader of the Mariupol assault,General Sodol, was an eager consumer of General Aguto’s advice. That collaboration produced one of the counteroffensive’s biggest successes: After American intelligence identified a weak point in Russian lines, General Sodol’s forces, using Wiesbaden’s points of interest, recaptured the village of Staromaiorske and nearly eight square miles of territory.
For the Ukrainians, that victory posed a question: Might the Mariupol fight be more promising than the one toward Melitopol? But the attack stalled for lack of manpower.
The problem was laid out right there on the battlefield map in General Aguto’s office: General Syrsky’s assault on Bakhmut was starving the Ukrainian army.
General Aguto urged him to send brigades and ammunition south for the Melitopol attack. But General Syrsky wouldn’t budge, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Nor would he budge when Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner paramilitaries had helped the Russians capture Bakhmut, rebelled against Mr. Putin’s military leadership and sent forces racing toward Moscow.
U.S. intelligence assessed that the rebellion could erode Russian morale and cohesion; intercepts detected Russian commanders surprised that the Ukrainians weren’t pushing harder toward tenuously defended Melitopol, a U.S. intelligence official said.
But as General Syrsky saw it, the rebellion validated his strategy of sowing division by impaling the Russians in Bakhmut. To send some of his forces south would only undercut it. “I was right, Aguto. You were wrong,” an American official recalls General Syrsky saying and adding, “We’re going to get to Luhansk.”
Mr. Zelensky had framed Bakhmut as the “fortress of our morale.” In the end, it was a blood-drenched demonstration of the outmanned Ukrainians’ predicament.
Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians’ casualties — in the tens of thousands — far outstripped the Ukrainians’. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)
Which left Melitopol.
A primary virtue of the Wiesbaden machine was speed — shrinking the time from point of interest to Ukrainian strike. But that virtue, and with it the Melitopol offensive, was undermined by a fundamental shift in how the Ukrainian commander there used those points of interest. He had substantially less ammunition than he had planned for; instead of simply firing, he would now first use drones to confirm the intelligence.
This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.
American officials recounted the ensuing battle. The Ukrainians had been pummeling the Russians with artillery; American intelligence indicated they were pulling back.
“Take the ground now,” General Aguto told General Tarnavskyi.
But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.
In Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers — to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march.
General Tarnavskyi, though, wouldn’t move until the threat was eliminated. So Wiesbaden sent the Russians’ coordinates and advised him to simultaneously open fire and advance.
Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.
Which took time. Only then did he order his men to fire.
And after the strike, he once again dispatched his drones, to confirm the hilltop was indeed clear. Then he ordered his forces into Robotyne, which they seized on Aug. 28.
The back-and-forth had cost between 24 and 48 hours, officers estimated. And in that time, south of Robotyne, the Russians had begun building new barriers, laying mines and sending reinforcements to halt Ukrainian progress. “The situation was changed completely,” General Zabrodskyi said.
An abandoned Ukrainian military vehicle near the front line of Robotyne.
Reuters
General Aguto yelled at General Tarnavskyi: Press on. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren’t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going.
The Ukrainian advance, in fact, was slowed by a mix of factors. But in Wiesbaden, the frustrated Americans kept talking about the platoon on the hill. “A damned platoon stopped the counteroffensive,” one officer remarked.
The Ukrainianswould not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.
Now their objective would be the small occupied city of Tokmak, about halfway to Melitopol, close to critical rail lines and roadways.
General Aguto had given the Ukrainians greater autonomy. But now he crafted a detailed artillery plan, Operation Rolling Thunder, that prescribed what the Ukrainians should shoot, with what and in what order, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But General Tarnavskyi objected to some targets, insisted on using drones to verify points of interest and Rolling Thunder rumbled to a halt.
Desperate to salvage the counteroffensive, the White House had authorized a secret transport of a small number of cluster warheads with a range of about 100 miles, and General Aguto and General Zabrodskyi devised an operation against Russian attack helicopters threatening General Tarnavskyi’s forces. At least 10 helicopters were destroyed, and the Russians pulled all their aircraft back to Crimea or the mainland. Still, the Ukrainians couldn’t advance.
The Americans’ last-ditch recommendation was to have General Syrsky take over the Tokmak fight. That was rejected. They then proposed that General Sodol send his marines to Robotyne and have them break through the Russian line. But instead General Zaluzhny ordered the marines to Kherson to open a new front in an operation the Americans counseled was doomed to fail — trying to cross the Dnipro and advance toward Crimea. The marines made it across the river in early November but ran out of men and ammunition. The counteroffensive was supposed to deliver a knockout blow. Instead, it met an inglorious end.
General Syrsky declined to answer questions about his interactions with American generals, but a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces said, “We do hope that the time will come, and after the victory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian and American generals you mentioned will perhaps jointly tell us about their working and friendly negotiations during the fighting against Russian aggression.”
Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine and arguably the country’s second-most-powerful official, told The Times that the counteroffensive had been “primarily blunted” by the allies’ “political hesitation” and “constant” delays in weapons deliveries.
But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.”
Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli in Wiesbaden in December 2023.
Susanne Goebel/U.S. European Command
December 2023–January 2025
Kursk
offensive
Sumy
Russia
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Pokrovsk
Black
Sea
Kerch Strait
Bridge
Crimea
Sevastopol
Ukrainian advances
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Donald J.TrumpPresident
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
Shortly before Christmas, Mr. Zelensky rode through the Wiesbaden gates for his maiden visit to the secret center of the partnership.
Entering the Tony Bass Auditorium, he was escorted past trophies of shared battle — twisted fragments of Russian vehicles, missiles and aircraft. When he climbed to the walkway above the former basketball court — as General Zabrodskyi had done that first day in 2022 — the officers working below burst into applause.
Yet the president had not come to Wiesbaden for celebration. In the shadow of the failed counteroffensive, a third, hard wartime winter coming on, the portents had only darkened. To press their new advantage, the Russians were pouring forces into the east. In America, Mr. Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, was mid-political resurrection; some congressional Republicans were grumbling about cutting off funding.
A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory. As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.
But first, the immediate business in Wiesbaden: Generals Cavoli and Aguto explained that they saw no plausible path to reclaiming significant territory in 2024. The coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.
The Ukrainians would have to temper expectations, focusing on achievable objectives to stay in the fight while building the combat power to potentially mount a counteroffensive in 2025: They would need to erect defensive lines in the east to prevent the Russians from seizing more territory. And they would need to reconstitute existing brigades and fill new ones, which the coalition would help train and equip.
Mr. Zelensky voiced his support.
Yet the Americans knew he did so grudgingly. Time and again Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.
Just weeks before, the president had instructed General Zaluzhny to push the Russians back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders by fall of 2024. The general had then shocked the Americans by presenting a plan to do so that required five million shells and one million drones. To which General Cavoli had responded, in fluent Russian, “From where?”
Several weeks later, at a meeting in Kyiv, the Ukrainian commander had locked General Cavoli in a Defense Ministry kitchen and, vaping furiously, made one final, futile plea. “He was caught between two fires, the first being the president and the second being the partners,” said one of his aides.
As a compromise, the Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory — a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia. It would be code-named Operation Lunar Hail.
Until now, the Ukrainians, with help from the C.I.A. and the U.S. and British navies, had used maritime drones, together with long-range British Storm Shadow and French SCALP missiles, to strike the Black Sea Fleet. Wiesbaden’s contribution was intelligence.
But to prosecute the wider Crimea campaign, the Ukrainians would need far more missiles. They would need hundreds of ATACMS.
At the Pentagon, the old cautions hadn’t melted away. But after General Aguto briefed Mr. Austin on all that Lunar Hail could achieve, an aide recalled, he said: “OK, there’s a really compelling strategic objective here. It isn’t just about striking things.”
Mr. Zelensky would get his long-pined-for ATACMS. Even so, one U.S. official said, “We knew that, in his heart of hearts, he still wanted to do something else, something more.”
General Zabrodskyiwas in the Wiesbaden command center in late January when he received an urgent message and stepped outside.
When he returned, gone pale as a ghost, he led General Aguto to a balcony and, pulling on a Lucky Strike, told him that the Ukrainian leadership struggle had reached its denouement: General Zaluzhny was being fired. The betting was on his rival, General Syrsky, to ascend.
The Americans were hardly surprised; they had been hearing ample murmurings of presidential discontent. The Ukrainians would chalk it up to politics, to fear that the widely popular General Zaluzhny might challenge Mr. Zelensky for the presidency. There was also the Stavka meeting, where the president effectively kneecapped General Zaluzhny, and the general’s subsequent decision to publisha piece in The Economistdeclaring the war at a stalemate, the Ukrainians in need of a quantum technological breakthrough. This even as his president was calling for total victory.
General Zaluzhny, one American official said, was a “dead man walking.”
General Syrsky’s appointment brought hedged relief. The Americans believed they would now have a partner with the president’s ear and trust; decision-making, they hoped, would become more consistent.
General Syrsky was also a known commodity.
Part of that knowledge, of course, was the memory of 2023, the scar of Bakhmut — the way the general had sometimes spurned their recommendations, even sought to undermine them. Still, colleagues say, Generals Cavoli and Aguto felt they understood his idiosyncrasies; he would at least hear them out, and unlike some commanders, he appreciated and typically trusted the intelligence they provided.
For General Zabrodskyi, though, the shake-up was a personal blow and a strategic unknown. He considered General Zaluzhny a friend and had given up his parliamentary seat to become his deputy for plans and operations. (Soon he would be pushed out of that job, and his Wiesbaden role. When General Aguto found out, he called with a standing invitation to his North Carolina beach house; the generals could go sailing. “Maybe in my next life,” General Zabrodskyi replied.)
And the changing of the guard came at a particularly uncertain moment for the partnership: Goaded by Mr. Trump, congressional Republicans were holding up $61 billion in new military aid. During the battle for Melitopol, the commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. Wiesbaden was still churning out points of interest, but the Ukrainians were barely using them.
“We don’t need this right now,” General Zabrodskyi told the Americans.
The red lineskept moving.
There were the ATACMS, which arrived secretly in early spring, so the Russians wouldn’t realize Ukraine could now strike across Crimea.
And there were the SMEs. Some months earlier, General Aguto had been allowed to send a small team, about a dozen officers, to Kyiv, easing the prohibition on American boots on Ukrainian ground. So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as “subject matter experts.” Then, after the Ukrainian leadership shake-up, to build confidence and coordination, the administration more than tripled the number of officers in Kyiv, to about three dozen; they could now plainly be called advisers, though they would still be confined to the Kyiv area.
Perhaps the hardest red line, though, was the Russian border. Soon that line, too, would be redrawn.
In April, the financing logjam was finally cleared, and 180 more ATACMS, dozens of armored vehicles and 85,000 155-millimeter shells started flowing in from Poland.
Coalition intelligence, though, was detecting another sort of movement: Components of a new Russian formation, the 44th Army Corps, moving toward Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border. The Russians, seeing a limited window as the Ukrainians waited to have the American aid in hand, were preparing to open a new front in northern Ukraine.
The Ukrainians believed the Russians hoped to reach a major road ringing Kharkiv, which would allow them to bombard the city, the country’s second-largest, with artillery fire, and threaten the lives of more than a million people.
The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn’t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence.
Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.
The Ukrainians asked for permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons across the border. What’s more, Generals Cavoli and Aguto proposed that Wiesbaden help guide those strikes, as it did across Ukraine and in Crimea — providing points of interest and precision coordinates.
The White House was still debating these questions when, on May 10, the Russians attacked.
This became the moment the Biden administration changed the rules of the game. Generals Cavoli and Aguto were tasked with creating an “ops box” — a zone on Russian soil in which the Ukrainians could fire U.S.-supplied weapons and Wiesbaden could support their strikes.
At first they advocated an expansive box, to encompass a concomitant threat: the glide bombs — crude Soviet-era bombs transformed into precision weapons with wings and fins — that were raining terror on Kharkiv. A box extending about 190 miles would let the Ukrainians use their new ATACMS to hit glide-bomb fields and other targets deep inside Russia. But Mr. Austin saw this as mission creep: He did not want to divert ATACMS from Lunar Hail.
Instead, the generals were instructed to draw up two options — one extending about 50 miles into Russia, standard HIMARS range, and one nearly twice as deep. Ultimately, against the generals’ recommendation, Mr. Biden and his advisers chose the most limited option — but to protect the city of Sumy as well as Kharkiv, it followed most of the country’s northern border, encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey. The C.I.A. was also authorized to send officers to the Kharkiv region to assist their Ukrainian counterparts with operations inside the box.
The box went live at the end of May. The Russians were caught unawares: With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war.
The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.
Summer 2024: Ukraine’s armies in the north and east were stretched dangerously thin. Still, General Syrsky kept telling the Americans, “I need a win.”
A foreshadowing had come back in March, when the Americans discovered that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia. The C.I.A. station chief in Kyiv confronted the HUR commander, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov: If he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support. He did, only to be forced back.
At moments like these, Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.
To the Ukrainians, though, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was “better than ask and stop,” explained Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former Ukrainian military intelligence commander. He added: “We are allies, but we have different goals. We protect our country, and you protect your phantom fears from the Cold War.”
In August in Wiesbaden, General Aguto’s tour was coming to its scheduled end. He left on the 9th. The same day, the Ukrainians dropped a cryptic reference to something happening in the north.
On Aug. 10, the C.I.A. station chief left, too, for a job at headquarters. In the churn of command, General Syrsky made his move — sending troops across the southwest Russian border, into the region of Kursk.
For the Americans, the incursion’s unfolding was a significant breach of trust. It wasn’t just that the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark; they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line, taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russian territory encompassed by the ops box, in violation of rules laid down when it was created.
The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. “It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,” a senior Pentagon official said.
The Americans could have pulled the plug on the ops box. Yet they knew that to do so, an administration official explained, “could lead to a catastrophe”: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk would perish unprotected by HIMARS rockets and U.S. intelligence.
Kursk, the Americans concluded, was the win Mr. Zelensky had been hinting at all along. It was also evidence of his calculations: He still spoke of total victory. But one of the operation’s goals, he explained to the Americans, was leverage — to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.
Provocative operationsonce forbidden were now permitted.
Before General Zabrodskyi was sidelined, he and General Aguto had selected the targets for Operation Lunar Hail. The campaign required a degree of hand-holding not seen since General Donahue’s day. American and British officers would oversee virtually every aspect of each strike, from determining the coordinates to calculating the missiles’ flight paths.
Of roughly 100 targets across Crimea, the most coveted was the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Mr. Putin saw the bridge as powerful physical proof of Crimea’s connection to the motherland. Toppling the Russian president’s symbol had, in turn, become the Ukrainian president’s obsession.
It had also been an American red line. In 2022, the Biden administration prohibited helping the Ukrainians target it; even the approaches on the Crimean side were to be treated as sovereign Russian territory. (Ukrainian intelligence services tried attacking it themselves, causing some damage.)
But after the partners agreed on Lunar Hail, the White House authorized the military and C.I.A. to secretly work with the Ukrainians and the British on a blueprint of attack to bring the bridge down: ATACMS would weaken vulnerable points on the deck, while maritime drones would blow up next to its stanchions.
But while the drones were being readied, the Russians hardened their defenses around the stanchions.
The Ukrainians proposed attacking with ATACMS alone. Generals Cavoli and Aguto pushed back: ATACMS alone wouldn’t do the job; the Ukrainians should wait until the drones were ready or call off the strike.
In the end, the Americans stood down, and in mid-August, with Wiesbaden’s reluctant help, the Ukrainians fired a volley of ATACMS at the bridge. It did not come tumbling down; the strike left some “potholes,” which the Russians repaired, one American official grumbled, adding, “Sometimes they need to try and fail to see that we are right.”
The Kerch Bridge episode aside, the Lunar Hail collaboration was judged a significant success. Russian warships, aircraft, command posts, weapons depots and maintenance facilities were destroyed or moved to the mainland to escape the onslaught.
For the Biden administration, the failed Kerch attack, together with a scarcity of ATACMS, reinforced the importance of helping the Ukrainians use their fleet of long-distance attack drones. The main challenge was evading Russian air defenses and pinpointing targets.
Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. So the administration would let the C.I.A. request “variances,” carve-outs authorizing the spy agency to support strikes inside Russia to achieve specific objectives.
Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in the lakeside town of Toropets, some 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border, that was providing weapons to Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kursk. The administration approved the variance. Toropets would be a test of concept.
C.I.A. officers shared intelligence about the depot’s munitions and vulnerabilities, as well as Russian defense systems on the way to Toropets. They calculated how many drones the operation would require and charted their circuitous flight paths.
On Sept. 18, a large swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Videos showed immense balls of flame and plumes of smoke rising above the lake.
A munitions depot in Toropets, Russia.
Maxar Technologies
The depot after a drone strike assisted by the C.I.A.
Maxar Technologies
Yet as with the Kerch Bridge operation, the drone collaboration pointed to a strategic dissonance.
The Americans argued for concentrating drone strikes on strategically important military targets — the same sort of argument they had made, fruitlessly, about focusing on Melitopol during the 2023 counteroffensive. But the Ukrainians insisted on attacking a wider menu of targets, including oil and gas facilities and politically sensitive sites in and around Moscow (though they would do so without C.I.A. help).
“Russian public opinion is going to turn on Putin,” Mr. Zelensky told the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Kyiv in September. “You’re wrong. We know the Russians.”
Mr. Austin and General Cavolitraveled to Kyiv in October. Year by year, the Biden administration had provided the Ukrainians with an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal of weaponry, had crossed so many of its red lines. Still, the defense secretary and the general were worrying about the message written in the weakening situation on the ground.
The Russians had been making slow but steady progress against depleted Ukrainian forces in the east, toward the city of Pokrovsk — their “big target,” one American official called it. They were also clawing back some territory in Kursk. Yes, the Russians’ casualties had spiked, to between 1,000 and 1,500 a day. But still they kept coming.
Mr. Austin would later recount how he contemplated this manpower mismatch as he looked out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets. He was struck, he told aides, by the sight of so many men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform. In a nation at war, he explained, men this age are usually away, in the fight.
This was one of the difficult messages the Americans had come to Kyiv to deliver, as they laid out what they could and couldn’t do for Ukraine in 2025.
Mr. Zelensky had already taken a small step, lowering the draft age to 25. Still, the Ukrainians hadn’t been able to fill existing brigades, let alone build new ones.
Mr. Austin pressed Mr. Zelensky to take the bigger, bolder step and begin drafting 18-year-olds. To which Mr. Zelensky shot back, according to an official who was present, “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.”
“And your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned,” the official recalled Mr. Austin responding. “They don’t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.”
That was the perennial standoff:
In the Ukrainians’ view, the Americans weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help them prevail.
In the Americans’ view, the Ukrainians weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help themselves prevail.
Mr. Zelensky often said, in response to the draft question, that his country was fighting for its future, that 18- to 25-year-olds were the fathers of that future.
To one American official, though, it’s “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
General Baldwin, who early on had crucially helped connect the partners’ commanders, had visited Kyiv in September 2023. The counteroffensive was stalling, the U.S. elections were on the horizon and the Ukrainians kept asking about Afghanistan.
The Ukrainians, he recalled, were terrified that they, too, would be abandoned. They kept calling, wanting to know if America would stay the course, asking: “What will happen if the Republicans win the Congress? What is going to happen if President Trump wins?’”
He always told them to remain encouraged, he said. Still, he added, “I had my fingers crossed behind my back, because I really didn’t know anymore.”
Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in.
In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project.
He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk. One of the first U.S.-supported strikes targeted and wounded the North Korean commander, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok, as he met with his Russian counterparts in a command bunker.
The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.
In December, General Donahue got his fourth star and returned to Wiesbaden as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He had been the last American soldier to leave in the chaotic fall of Kabul. Now he would have to navigate the new, unsure future of Ukraine.
General Cavoli, center, passed the colors to General Donahue in a ceremonial change of command in Wiesbaden.
Volker Ramspott/U.S. Army
So much had changed since General Donahue left two years before. But when it came to the raw question of territory, not much had changed. In the war’s first year, with Wiesbaden’s help, the Ukrainians had seized the upper hand, winning back more than half of the land lost after the 2022 invasion. Now, they were fighting over tiny slivers of ground in the east (and in Kursk).
One of General Donahue’s main objectives in Wiesbaden, according to a Pentagon official, would be to fortify the brotherhood and breathe new life into the machine — to stem, perhaps even push back, the Russian advance. (In the weeks that followed, with Wiesbaden providing points of interest and coordinates, the Russian march toward Pokrovsk would slow, and in some areas in the east, the Ukrainians would make gains. But in southwest Russia, as the Trump administration scaled back support, the Ukrainians would lose most of their bargaining chip, Kursk.)
In early January, Generals Donahue and Cavoli visited Kyiv to meet with General Syrsky and ensure that he agreed on plans to replenish Ukrainian brigades and shore up their lines, the Pentagon official said. From there, they traveled to Ramstein Air Base, where they met Mr. Austin for what would be the final gathering of coalition defense chiefs before everything changed.
With the doors closed to the press and public, Mr. Austin’s counterparts hailed him as the “godfather” and “architect” of the partnership that, for all its broken trust and betrayals, had sustained the Ukrainians’ defiance and hope, begun in earnest on that spring day in 2022 when Generals Donahue and Zabrodskyi first met in Wiesbaden.
Mr. Austin is a solid and stoic block of a man, but as he returned the compliments, his voice caught.
“Instead of saying farewell, let me say thank you,” he said, blinking back tears. And then added: “I wish you all success, courage and resolve. Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.”
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Sources and methodology
For each war map, we used data from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project to calculate changes in territorial control. Russian forces in eastern Ukraine include Russian-backed separatists. The composite image in the introduction draws on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was compiled using Google Earth Engine. We combined images from January and February of each year since 2020 to generate a cloud-free satellite image.
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
After Embezzlement Ruling, Le Pen Is Barred From French Presidential RunThe sentence made Marine Le Pen ineligible for five years, excluding her from the 2027 election unless she can win an appeal.4 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/france-marine-le-pen-embezzlement-2027-election-ban.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
The sentence made the far-right leader ineligible for five years, excluding her from the 2027 election unless she can secure a more favorable outcome on appeal.
ByRoger CohenandAurelien Breeden
Reporting from Paris
Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday and immediately barred from running for public office for five years, setting off a democratic crisis in France.
The verdict effectively barred the current front-runner in the 2027 presidential election from participating in it, an extraordinary step but one the presiding judge said was necessary because nobody is entitled to “immunity in violation of the rule of law.”
Jordan Bardella, Ms. Le Pen’s protégé and a likely presidential candidate in her absence,said on social media, “Not only has Marine Le Pen been unjustly convicted; French democracy has been executed.” Hard-right leaders across Europe, including Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, appeared to agree.
Advertisement
“Je suis Marine!”Mr. Orban declared.
However, Sacha Houlié, a centrist lawmaker,asked, “Is our society really so sick that we are going to take offense at what is no more and no less than the rule of law?”
The verdict infuriated Ms. Le Pen, an anti-immigrant, nationalist politician who has already mounted three failed presidential bids. Murmuring “incredible,” she briskly left the courtroom before the hearing was over.
Subscribe to The Timesto read as many articles as you like.
Roger Cohenis the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist.More about Roger Cohen
Aurelien Breedenis a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.More about Aurelien Breeden
Advertisement
Enjoy unlimited access to all of The Times.
See subscription options
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
The PartnershipThe Secret History of America’s Role in the Ukraine WarTyler Hicks/The New York Times
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known.
This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.
By Adam Entous
Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Turkey.
On a spring morningtwo months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.
Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.
The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.
One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.
Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.
Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.
How the promise of Texas barbecue led to a meeting with a key Ukrainian general.
Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.
Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today’s precarious place.
With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine — including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.
But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war — enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence — that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.
Ukrainian, American and British military leaders during a meeting in Ukraine in August 2023.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi
An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.
Farther south, the partners set their sights on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet loaded missiles destined for Ukrainian targets onto warships and submarines. At the height of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, a predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.
But ultimately the partnership strained — and the arc of the war shifted — amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.
Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.
As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.
On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war — in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year’s successes — the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.
A Ukrainian soldier fired at Russian positions near Bakhmut.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
The partnership operated in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear — that Mr. Putin might see it as breaching a red line of military engagement and make good on his often-brandished nuclear threats. The story of the partnership shows how close the Americans and their allies sometimes came to that red line, how increasingly dire events forced them — some said too slowly — to advance it to more perilous ground and how they carefully devised protocols to remain on the safe side of it.
Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.
In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.
It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.
During the wars against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, American forces conducted their own ground operations and supported those of their local partners. In Ukraine, by contrast, the U.S. military wasn’t allowed to deploy any of its own soldiers on the battlefield and would have to help remotely.
Would the precision targeting honed against terrorist groups be effective in a conflict with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? Would Ukrainian artillery men fire their howitzers without hesitation at coordinates sent by American officers in a headquarters 1,300 miles away? Would Ukrainian commanders, based on intelligence relayed by a disembodied American voice pleading, “There’s nobody there — go,” order infantrymen to enter a village behind enemy lines?
The answers to those questions — in truth, the partnership’s entire trajectory — would hinge on how well American and Ukrainian officers would trust one another.
“I will never lie to you. If you lie to me, we’re done,” General Zabrodskyi recalled General Donahue telling him at their first meeting. “I feel the exact same way,” the Ukrainian replied.
A Ukrainian soldier keeps watch in Kharkiv on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
February–May 2022
Kyiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Kherson
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia since 2014
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksiiReznikovDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
In mid-April 2022, about two weeks before the Wiesbaden meeting, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on a routine intelligence-sharing call when something unexpected popped up on their radar screens. According to a former senior U.S. military officer, “The Americans go: ‘Oh, that’s the Moskva!’ The Ukrainians go: ‘Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.’”
The Moskva was the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainians sank it.
Over more than a year of reporting, Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries. While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.
The sinking was a signal triumph — a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude. But the episode also reflected the disjointed state of the Ukrainian-American relationship in the first weeks of the war.
For the Americans, there was anger, because the Ukrainians hadn’t given so much as a heads-up; surprise, that Ukraine possessed missiles capable of reaching the ship; and panic, because the Biden administration hadn’t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.
The Ukrainians, for their part, were coming from their own place of deep-rooted skepticism.
Their war, as they saw it, had started in 2014, when Mr. Putin seized Crimea and fomented separatist rebellions in eastern Ukraine. President Barack Obama had condemned the seizure and imposed sanctions on Russia. But fearful that American involvement could provoke a full-scale invasion, he had authorized only strictly limited intelligence sharing and rejected calls for defensive weapons. “Blankets and night-vision goggles are important, but one cannot win a war with blankets,” Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, complained. Eventually Mr. Obama somewhat relaxed those intelligence strictures, and Mr. Trump, in his first term, relaxed them further and supplied the Ukrainians with their first antitank Javelins.
Then, in the portentous days before Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration had closed the Kyiv embassy and pulled all military personnel from the country. (A small team of C.I.A. officers was allowed to stay.) As the Ukrainians saw it, a senior U.S. military officer said, “We told them, ‘The Russians are coming — see ya.’”
When American generals offered assistance after the invasion, they ran into a wall of mistrust. “We’re fighting the Russians. You’re not. Why should we listen to you?” Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.
General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.
In those early days, this meant that General Donahue and a few aides, with little more than their phones, passed information about Russian troop movements to General Syrsky and his staff. Yet even that ad hoc arrangement touched a raw nerve of rivalry within Ukraine’s military, between General Syrsky and his boss, the armed forces commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. To Zaluzhny loyalists, General Syrsky was already using the relationship to build advantage.
Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny’s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians’ equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American’s calls.
To keep them talking, the Pentagon initiated an elaborate telephone tree: A Milley aide would call Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard, who would ring a wealthy Los Angeles blimp maker named Igor Pasternak, who had grown up in Lviv with Oleksii Reznikov, then Ukraine’s defense minister. Mr. Reznikov would track down General Zaluzhny and tell him, according to General Baldwin, “I know you’re mad at Milley, but you have to call him.”
Ragtag alliance coalesced into partnership in the quick cascade of events.
In March, their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south — a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.
Unless the coalition reoriented its own ambitions, General Donahue and the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, concluded, the hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Ukrainians would lose the war. The coalition, in other words, would have to start providing heavy offensive weapons — M777 artillery batteries and shells.
The Biden administration had previously arranged emergency shipments of antiaircraft and antitank weapons. The M777s were something else entirely — the first big leap into supporting a major ground war.
The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne in charge of delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed on to the M777s, the Tony Bass Auditorium became a full-fledged headquarters.
A Polish general became General Donahue’s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub on the former basketball court. A Canadian would oversee training.
The auditorium basement became what is known as a fusion center, producing intelligence about Russian battlefield positions, movements and intentions. There, according to intelligence officials, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers.
The 18th Airborne is known as Dragon Corps; the new operation would be Task Force Dragon. All that was needed to bring the pieces together was the reluctant Ukrainian top command.
At an international conference on April 26 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, General Milley introduced Mr. Reznikov and a Zaluzhny deputy to Generals Cavoli and Donahue. “These are your guys right here,” General Milley told them, adding: “You’ve got to work with them. They’re going to help you.”
Bonds of trust were being forged. Mr. Reznikov agreed to talk to General Zaluzhny. Back in Kyiv, “we organized the composition of a delegation” to Wiesbaden, Mr. Reznikov said. “And so it began.”
At the heart of the partnershipwere two generals — the Ukrainian, Zabrodskyi, and the American, Donahue.
General Zabrodskyi would be Wiesbaden’s chief Ukrainian contact, although in an unofficial capacity, as he was serving in parliament. In every other way, he was a natural.
Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, a key Ukrainian figure in the Wiesbaden partnership.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Like many of his contemporaries in the Ukrainian military, General Zabrodskyi knew the enemy well. In the 1990s, he had attended military academy in St. Petersburg and served for five years in the Russian Army.
He also knew the Americans: From 2005 to 2006, he had studied at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Eight years later, General Zabrodskyi led a perilous mission behind lines of Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, modeled in part on one he had studied at Fort Leavenworth — the Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart’s famous reconnaissance mission around Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. This brought him to the attention of influential people at the Pentagon; the general, they sensed, was the kind of leader they could work with.
General Zabrodskyi remembers that first day in Wiesbaden: “My mission was to find out: Who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?”
General Donahue was a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria. General Cavoli once compared him to “a comic book action hero.”
Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, center, no helmet, in Afghanistan circa 2020.
Now he showed General Zabrodskyi and his travel companion, Maj. Gen. Oleksandr Kyrylenko, a map of the besieged east and south of their country, Russian forces dwarfing theirs. Invoking their “Glory to Ukraine” battle cry, he laid down the challenge: “You can ‘Slava Ukraini’ all you want with other people. I don’t care how brave you are. Look at the numbers.” He then walked them through a plan to win a battlefield advantage by fall, General Zabrodskyi recalled.
The first stage was underway — training Ukrainian artillery men on their new M777s. Task Force Dragon would then help them use the weapons to halt the Russian advance. Then the Ukrainians would need to mount a counteroffensive.
That evening, General Zabrodskyi wrote to his superiors in Kyiv.
“You know, a lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine,” he recalled. But “somebody needed to be the coordinator, to organize everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. I said to the commander in chief, ‘We have found our partner.’”
Soon the Ukrainians, nearly 20 in all — intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists — began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets’ locations.
Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”?
Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.
The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”
“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” one U.S. official explained.
Each point of interest would have to adhere to intelligence-sharing rules crafted to blunt the risk of Russian retaliation against N.A.T.O. partners.
There would be no points of interest on Russian soil. If Ukrainian commanders wanted to strike within Russia, General Zabrodskyi explained, they would have to use their own intelligence and domestically produced weapons. “Our message to the Russians was, ‘This war should be fought inside Ukraine,’” a senior U.S. official said.
Ukrainian soldiers preparing to fire an M777 howitzer at Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The White House also prohibited sharing intelligence on the locations of “strategic” Russian leaders, like the armed forces chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,” another senior U.S. official said. “Like, we’d go to war.” Similarly, Task Force Dragon couldn’t share intelligence that identified the locations of individual Russians.
The way the system worked, Task Force Dragon would tell the UkrainianswhereRussians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not sayhowit knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets — Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on. As General Zabrodskyi remembers it, when the Ukrainians asked why they should trust the intelligence, General Donahue would say: “Don’t worry about how we found out. Just trust that when you shoot, it will hit it, and you’ll like the results, and if you don’t like the results, tell us, we’ll make it better.”
The systemwent livein May. The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians’ M777s. The fusion center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark’s coordinates in preparation for the strike.
On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the battalion commander with a pep talk: “You feel good?” he asked. “I feel real good,” the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. “Everybody went, ‘We can do this!’” a U.S. official recalled.
But a critical question remained: Having done this against a single, stationary target, could the partners deploy this system against multiple targets in a major kinetic battle?
That would be the battle underway north of Donetsk, in Sievierodonetsk, where the Russians were hoping to mount a pontoon-bridge river crossing and then encircle and capture the city. General Zabrodskyi called it “a hell of a target.”
The engagement that followed was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. The pontoon bridges became death traps; at least 400 Russians were killed, by Ukrainian estimates. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.
In these first months, the fighting was largely concentrated in Ukraine’s east. But U.S. intelligence was also tracking Russian movements in the south, especially a large troop buildup near the major city of Kherson. Soon several M777 crews were redeployed, and Task Force Dragon started feeding points of interest to strike Russian positions there.
With practice, Task Force Dragon produced points of interest faster, and the Ukrainians shot at them faster. The more they demonstrated their effectiveness using M777s and similar systems, the more the coalition sent new ones — which Wiesbaden supplied with ever more points of interest.
“You know when we started to believe?” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “When Donahue said, ‘This is a list of positions.’ We checked the list and we said, ‘These 100 positions are good, but we need the other 50.’ And they sent the other 50.”
The M777s became workhorsesof the Ukrainian army.But because theygenerally couldn’t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians’ vast superiority in manpower and equipment.
To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap — providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.
The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking.
Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over.
Celeste Wallander, then the assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, recalled, “Milley would always say, ‘You’ve got a little Russian army fighting a big Russian army, and they’re fighting the same way, and the Ukrainians will never win.’” General Cavoli’s argument, she said, was that “with HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that’s how they will start to beat the Russians.”
At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?” And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon was becoming “the entire back office of the war.”
Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.
HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. Russian forces were left dazed and confused. Their morale plummeted, and with it their will to fight. And as the HIMARS arsenal grew from eight to 38 and the Ukrainian strikers became more proficient, an American official said, the toll rose as much as fivefold.
“We became a small part, maybe not the best part, but a small part, of your system,” General Zabrodskyi explained, adding: “Most states did this over a period of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But we were forced to do it in a matter of weeks.”
Together the partners were honing a killing machine.
Russian forces collapsed in the Oskil river valley, abandoning their equipment as they fled.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
June–November 2022
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Izium
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia
Mykolaiv
Melitopol
Kherson
Odesa
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
BenWallaceDefense Min.
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
At their first meeting, General Donahue had shown General Zabrodskyi a color-coded map of the region, with American and NATO forces in blue, Russian forces in red and Ukrainian forces in green. “Why are we green?” General Zabrodskyi asked. “We should be blue.”
In early June, as they met to war-game Ukraine’s counteroffensive, sitting side by side in front of tabletop battlefield maps, General Zabrodskyi saw that the small blocks marking Ukrainian positions had become blue — a symbolic stroke to strengthen the bond of common purpose. “When you defeat Russia,” General Donahue told the Ukrainians, “we will make you blue for good.”
It was three months since the invasion, and the maps told this story of the war:
In the south, the Ukrainians had blocked the Russian advance at the Black Sea shipbuilding center of Mykolaiv. But the Russians controlled Kherson, and a corps roughly 25,000 soldiers strong occupied land on the west bank of the Dnipro River. In the east, the Russians had been stopped at Izium. But they held land between there and the border, including the strategically important Oskil river valley.
The Russians’ strategy had morphed from decapitation — the futile assault on Kyiv — to slow strangulation. The Ukrainians needed to go on the offensive.
Their top commander, General Zaluzhny, along with the British, favored the most ambitious option — from near Zaporizhzhia, in the southeast, down toward occupied Melitopol. This maneuver, they believed, would sever the cross-border land routes sustaining Russian forces in Crimea.
In theory, General Donahue agreed. But according to colleagues, he thought Melitopol was not feasible, given the state of the Ukrainian military and the coalition’s limited ability to provide M777s without crippling American readiness. To prove his point in the war games, he took over the part of the Russian commander. Whenever the Ukrainians tried to advance, General Donahue destroyed them with overwhelming combat power.
What they ultimately agreed on was a two-part attack to confuse Russian commanders who, according to American intelligence, believed the Ukrainians had only enough soldiers and equipment for a single offensive.
The main effort would be to recapture Kherson and secure the Dnipro’s west bank, lest the corps advance on the port of Odesa and be positioned for another attack on Kyiv.
General Donahue had advocated a coequal second front in the east, from the Kharkiv region, to reach the Oskil river valley. But the Ukrainians instead argued for a smaller supporting feint to draw Russian forces east and smooth the way for Kherson.
That would come first, around Sept. 4. The Ukrainians would then begin two weeks of artillery strikes to weaken Russian forces in the south. Only then, around Sept. 18, would they march toward Kherson.
And if they still had enough ammunition, they would cross the Dnipro. General Zabrodskyi remembers General Donahue saying, “If you guys want to get across the river and get to the neck of Crimea, then follow the plan.”
That was the planuntil it wasn’t.
Mr. Zelensky sometimes spoke directly with regional commanders, and after one such conversation, the Americans were informed that the order of battle had changed.
Kherson would come faster — and first, on Aug. 29.
General Donahue told General Zaluzhny that more time was needed to lay the groundwork for Kherson; the switch, he said, put the counteroffensive, and the entire country, in jeopardy. The Americans later learned the back story:
Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute — a preview of a fundamental disconnect that would increasingly shape the arc of the war.
The upshot wasn’t what anyone had planned.
The Russians responded by moving reinforcements from the east toward Kherson. Now General Zaluzhny realized that the weakened Russian forces in the east might well let the Ukrainians do what General Donahue had advocated — reach the Oskil river valley. “Go, go, go — you have them on the ropes,” General Donahue told the Ukrainian commander there, General Syrsky, a European official recalled.
The Russian forces collapsed even faster than predicted, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The Ukrainian leadership had never expected their forces to reach the Oskil’s west bank, and when they did, General Syrsky’s standing with the president soared.
In the south, U.S. intelligence now reported that the corps on the Dnipro’s west bank was running short on food and ammunition.
The Ukrainians wavered. General Donahue pleaded with the field commander, Maj. Gen. Andrii Kovalchuk, to advance. Soon the American’s superiors, Generals Cavoli and Milley, escalated the matter to General Zaluzhny.
That didn’t work either.
The British defense minister, Ben Wallace, asked General Donahue what he would do if General Kovalchuk were his subordinate.
“He would have already been fired,” General Donahue responded.
“I got this,” Mr. Wallace said. The British military had considerable clout in Kyiv; unlike the Americans, they had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion. Now the defense minister exercised that clout and demanded that the Ukrainians oust the commander.
Perhaps no pieceof Ukrainian soil was more precious to Mr. Putin than Crimea. As the Ukrainians haltingly advanced on the Dnipro, hoping to cross and advance toward the peninsula, this gave rise to what one Pentagon official called the “core tension”:
To give the Russian president an incentive to negotiate a deal, the official explained, the Ukrainians would have to put pressure on Crimea. To do so, though, could push him to contemplate doing “something desperate.”
The Ukrainians were already exerting pressure on the ground. And the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.
That same month, U.S. intelligence overheard Russia’s Ukraine commander, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, talking about indeed doing something desperate: using tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the Ukrainians from crossing the Dnipro and making a beeline to Crimea.
Until that moment, U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5 to 10 percent. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50 percent.
That core tension seemed to be coming to a head.
In Europe, Generals Cavoli and Donahue were begging General Kovalchuk’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, to move his brigades forward, rout the corps from the Dnipro’s west bank and seize its equipment.
In Washington, Mr. Biden’s top advisers nervously wondered the opposite — if they might need to press the Ukrainians to slow their advance.
The moment might have been the Ukrainians’ best chance to deal a game-changing blow to the Russians. It might also have been the best chance to ignite a wider war.
In the end, in a sort of grand ambiguity, the moment never came.
To protect their fleeing forces, Russian commanders left behind small detachments of troops. General Donahue advised General Tarnavskyi to destroy or bypass them and focus on the primary objective — the corps. But whenever the Ukrainians encountered a detachment, they stopped in their tracks, assuming a larger force lay in wait.
General Donahue told him that satellite imagery showed Ukrainian forces blocked by just one or two Russian tanks, according to Pentagon officials. But unable to see the same satellite images, the Ukrainian commander hesitated, wary of sending his forces forward.
To get the Ukrainians moving, Task Force Dragon sent points of interest, and M777 operators destroyed the tanks with Excalibur missiles — time-consuming steps repeated whenever the Ukrainians encountered a Russian detachment.
Ukrainians celebrated the recapture of Kherson.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Ukrainians would still recapture Kherson and clear the Dnipro’s west bank. But the offensive halted there. The Ukrainians, short on ammunition, would not cross the Dnipro. They would not, as the Ukrainians had hoped and the Russians feared, advance toward Crimea.
And as the Russians escaped across the river, farther into occupied ground, huge machines rent the earth, cleaving long, deep trench lines in their wake.
Still the Ukrainians were in a celebratory mood, and on his next Wiesbaden trip, General Zabrodskyi presented General Donahue with a “combat souvenir”: a tactical vest that had belonged to a Russian soldier whose comrades were already marching east to what would become the crucible of 2023 — a place called Bakhmut.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, a site of prolonged combat that President Volodymyr Zelensky called the “fortress of our morale.”
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
November 2022–November 2023
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Oskil R.
Luhansk
Bakhmut
Dnipro R.
Ukraine
Makiivka
Robotyne
Tokmak
Melitopol
Russia
Crimea
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Mark A.MilleyGeneral
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
OleksandrTarnavskyiGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
The planningfor 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.
Ukraine controlled the west banks of the Oskil and Dnipro rivers. Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war’s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.
“We’re going to win this whole thing,” Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.
To accomplish this, General Zabrodskyi explained as the partners gathered in Wiesbaden in late autumn, General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol, to strangle Russian forces in Crimea — what he believed had been the great, denied opportunity to deal the reeling enemy a knockout blow in 2022.
And once again, some American generals were preaching caution.
At the Pentagon, officials worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive; perhaps the Ukrainians, in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal. When the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Milley, floated that idea in a speech, many of Ukraine’s supporters (including congressional Republicans, then overwhelmingly supportive of the war) cried appeasement.
In Wiesbaden, in private conversations with General Zabrodskyi and the British, General Donahue pointed to those Russian trenches being dug to defend the south. He pointed, too, to the Ukrainians’ halting advance to the Dnipro just weeks before. “They’re digging in, guys,” he told them. “How are you going to get across this?”
What he advocated instead, General Zabrodskyi and a European official recalled, was a pause: If the Ukrainians spent the next year, if not longer, building and training new brigades, they would be far better positioned to fight through to Melitopol.
The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn’t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians.
There would be no pause. General Zabrodskyi would tell General Zaluzhny, “Donahue is right.” But he would also admit that “nobody liked Donahue’s recommendations, except me.”
And besides, General Donahue was a man on the way out.
The 18th Airborne’s deployment had always been temporary. There would now be a more permanent organization in Wiesbaden, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, call sign Erebus — the Greek mythological personification of darkness.
That autumn day, the planning session and their time together done, General Donahue escorted General Zabrodskyi to the Clay Kaserne airfield. There he presented him with an ornamental shield — the 18th Airborne dragon insignia, encircled by five stars.
The westernmost represented Wiesbaden; slightly to the east was the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. The other stars represented Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv — for General Zaluzhny and the commanders in the south and east.
And beneath the stars, “Thanks.”
“I asked him, ‘Why are you thanking me?’” General Zabrodskyi recalled. “‘I should say thank you.’”
General Donahue explained that the Ukrainians were the ones fighting and dying, testing American equipment and tactics and sharing lessons learned. “Thanks to you,” he said, “we built all these things that we never could have.”
Shouting through the airfield wind and noise, they went back and forth about who deserved the most thanks. Then they shook hands, and General Zabrodskyi disappeared into the idling C-130.
The“new guyin the room” was Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. He was a different kind of commander, with a different kind of mission.
General Donahue was a risk taker. General Aguto had built a reputation as a man of deliberation and master of training and large-scale operations. After the seizure of Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration had expanded its training of the Ukrainians, including at a base in the far west of the country; General Aguto had overseen the program. In Wiesbaden, his No. 1 priority would be preparing new brigades. “You’ve got to get them ready for the fight,” Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, told him.
That translated to greater autonomy for the Ukrainians, a rebalancing of the relationship: At first, Wiesbaden had labored to win the Ukrainians’ trust. Now the Ukrainians were asking for Wiesbaden’s trust.
An opportunity soon presented itself.
Ukrainian intelligence had detected a makeshift Russian barracks at a school in occupied Makiivka. “Trust us on this,” General Zabrodskyi told General Aguto. The American did, and the Ukrainian recalled, “We did the full targeting process absolutely independently.” Wiesbaden’s role would be limited to providing coordinates.
A satellite image of a school in occupied Makiivka where Russians had established a barracks.
Maxar Technologies
The site after a strike that was aided by U.S. intelligence.
Maxar Technologies
In this new phase of the partnership, U.S. and Ukrainian officers would still meet daily to set priorities, which the fusion center turned into points of interest. But Ukrainian commanders now had a freer hand to use HIMARS to strike additional targets, fruit of their own intelligence — if they furthered agreed-upon priorities.
“We will step back and watch, and keep an eye on you to make sure that you don’t do anything crazy,” General Aguto told the Ukrainians. “The whole goal,” he added, “is to have you operate on your own at some point in time.”
Echoing 2022, the war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan.
The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky’s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut — where combat had been smoldering for months — with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south — the attack on Melitopol, where Russian fortifications were already rotting and collapsing in the winter wet and cold.
But problems of a different sort were already gnawing at the new-made plan.
General Zaluzhny may have been Ukraine’s supreme commander, but his supremacy was increasingly compromised by his competition with General Syrsky. According to Ukrainian officials, the rivalry dated to Mr. Zelensky’s decision, in 2021, to elevate General Zaluzhny over his former boss, General Syrsky. The rivalry had intensified after the invasion, as the commanders vied for limited HIMARS batteries. General Syrsky had been born in Russia and served in its army; until he started working on his Ukrainian, he had generally spoken Russian at meetings. General Zaluzhny sometimes derisively called him “that Russian general.”
The Americans knew General Syrsky was unhappy about being dealt a supporting hand in the counteroffensive. When General Aguto called to make sure he understood the plan, he responded, “I don’t agree, but I have my orders.”
The counteroffensive was to begin on May 1. The intervening months would be spent training for it. General Syrsky would contribute four battle-hardened brigades — each between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers — for training in Europe; they would be joined by four brigades of new recruits.
The general had other plans.
In Bakhmut, the Russians were deploying, and losing, vast numbers of soldiers. General Syrsky saw an opportunity to engulf them and ignite discord in their ranks. “Take all new guys” for Melitopol, he told General Aguto, according to U.S. officials. And when Mr. Zelensky sided with him, over the objections of both his own supreme commander and the Americans, a key underpinning of the counteroffensive was effectively scuttled.
Now the Ukrainians would send just four untested brigades abroad for training. (They would prepare eight more inside Ukraine.) Plus, the new recruits were old — mostly in their 40s and 50s. When they arrived in Europe, a senior U.S. official recalled, “All we kept thinking was, This is not great.”
The Ukrainian draft age was 27. General Cavoli, who had been promoted to supreme allied commander for Europe, implored General Zaluzhny to “get your 18-year-olds in the game.” But the Americans concluded that neither the president nor the general would own such a politically fraught decision.
A parallel dynamic was at play on the American side.
The previous year, the Russians had unwisely placed command posts, ammunition depots and logistics centers within 50 miles of the front lines. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS’ reach. So Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.
ATACMS were a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration. Russia’s military chief, General Gerasimov, had indirectly referred to them the previous May when he warned General Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line. There was also a question of supply: The Pentagon was already warning that it would not have enough ATACMS if America had to fight its own war.
The message was blunt: Stop asking for ATACMS.
Underlying assumptionshad been upended. Still, the Americans saw a path to victory, albeit a narrowing one. Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1, before the Russians repaired their fortifications and moved more troops to reinforce Melitopol.
But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto’s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn’t commit until they had it all.
At one point, frustration rising, General Cavoli turned to General Zabrodskyi and said: “Misha, I love your country. But if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose the war.”
“My answer was: ‘I understand what you are saying, Christopher. But please understand me. I’m not the supreme commander. And I’m not the president of Ukraine,’” General Zabrodskyi recalled, adding, “Probably I needed to cry as much as he did.”
At the Pentagon, officials were beginning to sense some graver fissure opening. General Zabrodskyi recalled General Milley asking: “Tell me the truth. Did you change the plan?”
“No, no, no,” he responded. “We did not change the plan, and we are not going to.”
When he uttered these words, he genuinely believed he was telling the truth.
In late May, intelligence showed the Russians rapidly building new brigades. The Ukrainians didn’t have everything they wanted, but they had what they thought they needed. They would have to go.
General Zaluzhny outlined the final plan at a meeting of the Stavka, a governmental body overseeing military matters. General Tarnavskyi would have 12 brigades and the bulk of ammunition for the main assault, on Melitopol. The marine commandant, Lt. Gen. Yurii Sodol, would feint toward Mariupol, the ruined port city taken by the Russians after a withering siege the year before. General Syrsky would lead the supporting effort in the east around Bakhmut, recently lost after months of trench warfare.
Then General Syrsky spoke. According to Ukrainian officials, the general said he wanted to break from the plan and execute a full-scale attack to drive the Russians from Bakhmut. He would then advance eastward toward the Luhansk region. He would, of course, need additional men and ammunition.
The Americans were not told the meeting’s outcome. But then U.S. intelligence observed Ukrainian troops and ammunition moving in directions inconsistent with the agreed-upon plan.
Soon after, at a hastily arranged meeting on the Polish border, General Zaluzhny admitted to Generals Cavoli and Aguto that the Ukrainians had in fact decided to mount assaults in three directions at once.
“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried.
What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition’s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.
“It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,” one Ukrainian official remarked.
Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point.
“We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.
But they would not.
“These decisions involving life and death, and what territory you value more and what territory you value less, are fundamentally sovereign decisions,” a senior Biden administration official explained. “All we could do was give them advice.”
The leader of the Mariupol assault,General Sodol, was an eager consumer of General Aguto’s advice. That collaboration produced one of the counteroffensive’s biggest successes: After American intelligence identified a weak point in Russian lines, General Sodol’s forces, using Wiesbaden’s points of interest, recaptured the village of Staromaiorske and nearly eight square miles of territory.
For the Ukrainians, that victory posed a question: Might the Mariupol fight be more promising than the one toward Melitopol? But the attack stalled for lack of manpower.
The problem was laid out right there on the battlefield map in General Aguto’s office: General Syrsky’s assault on Bakhmut was starving the Ukrainian army.
General Aguto urged him to send brigades and ammunition south for the Melitopol attack. But General Syrsky wouldn’t budge, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Nor would he budge when Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner paramilitaries had helped the Russians capture Bakhmut, rebelled against Mr. Putin’s military leadership and sent forces racing toward Moscow.
U.S. intelligence assessed that the rebellion could erode Russian morale and cohesion; intercepts detected Russian commanders surprised that the Ukrainians weren’t pushing harder toward tenuously defended Melitopol, a U.S. intelligence official said.
But as General Syrsky saw it, the rebellion validated his strategy of sowing division by impaling the Russians in Bakhmut. To send some of his forces south would only undercut it. “I was right, Aguto. You were wrong,” an American official recalls General Syrsky saying and adding, “We’re going to get to Luhansk.”
Mr. Zelensky had framed Bakhmut as the “fortress of our morale.” In the end, it was a blood-drenched demonstration of the outmanned Ukrainians’ predicament.
Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians’ casualties — in the tens of thousands — far outstripped the Ukrainians’. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)
Which left Melitopol.
A primary virtue of the Wiesbaden machine was speed — shrinking the time from point of interest to Ukrainian strike. But that virtue, and with it the Melitopol offensive, was undermined by a fundamental shift in how the Ukrainian commander there used those points of interest. He had substantially less ammunition than he had planned for; instead of simply firing, he would now first use drones to confirm the intelligence.
This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.
American officials recounted the ensuing battle. The Ukrainians had been pummeling the Russians with artillery; American intelligence indicated they were pulling back.
“Take the ground now,” General Aguto told General Tarnavskyi.
But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.
In Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers — to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march.
General Tarnavskyi, though, wouldn’t move until the threat was eliminated. So Wiesbaden sent the Russians’ coordinates and advised him to simultaneously open fire and advance.
Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.
Which took time. Only then did he order his men to fire.
And after the strike, he once again dispatched his drones, to confirm the hilltop was indeed clear. Then he ordered his forces into Robotyne, which they seized on Aug. 28.
The back-and-forth had cost between 24 and 48 hours, officers estimated. And in that time, south of Robotyne, the Russians had begun building new barriers, laying mines and sending reinforcements to halt Ukrainian progress. “The situation was changed completely,” General Zabrodskyi said.
An abandoned Ukrainian military vehicle near the front line of Robotyne.
Reuters
General Aguto yelled at General Tarnavskyi: Press on. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren’t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going.
The Ukrainian advance, in fact, was slowed by a mix of factors. But in Wiesbaden, the frustrated Americans kept talking about the platoon on the hill. “A damned platoon stopped the counteroffensive,” one officer remarked.
The Ukrainianswould not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.
Now their objective would be the small occupied city of Tokmak, about halfway to Melitopol, close to critical rail lines and roadways.
General Aguto had given the Ukrainians greater autonomy. But now he crafted a detailed artillery plan, Operation Rolling Thunder, that prescribed what the Ukrainians should shoot, with what and in what order, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But General Tarnavskyi objected to some targets, insisted on using drones to verify points of interest and Rolling Thunder rumbled to a halt.
Desperate to salvage the counteroffensive, the White House had authorized a secret transport of a small number of cluster warheads with a range of about 100 miles, and General Aguto and General Zabrodskyi devised an operation against Russian attack helicopters threatening General Tarnavskyi’s forces. At least 10 helicopters were destroyed, and the Russians pulled all their aircraft back to Crimea or the mainland. Still, the Ukrainians couldn’t advance.
The Americans’ last-ditch recommendation was to have General Syrsky take over the Tokmak fight. That was rejected. They then proposed that General Sodol send his marines to Robotyne and have them break through the Russian line. But instead General Zaluzhny ordered the marines to Kherson to open a new front in an operation the Americans counseled was doomed to fail — trying to cross the Dnipro and advance toward Crimea. The marines made it across the river in early November but ran out of men and ammunition. The counteroffensive was supposed to deliver a knockout blow. Instead, it met an inglorious end.
General Syrsky declined to answer questions about his interactions with American generals, but a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces said, “We do hope that the time will come, and after the victory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian and American generals you mentioned will perhaps jointly tell us about their working and friendly negotiations during the fighting against Russian aggression.”
Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office of Ukraine and arguably the country’s second-most-powerful official, told The Times that the counteroffensive had been “primarily blunted” by the allies’ “political hesitation” and “constant” delays in weapons deliveries.
But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.”
Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli in Wiesbaden in December 2023.
Susanne Goebel/U.S. European Command
December 2023–January 2025
Kursk
offensive
Sumy
Russia
Kyiv
Kharkiv
Ukraine
Dnipro R.
Pokrovsk
Black
Sea
Kerch Strait
Bridge
Crimea
Sevastopol
Ukrainian advances
Reclaimed by Ukraine
Russian advances
Held by Russia
Antonio A.AgutoJr.General
Lloyd J.AustinIIIDefense Sec.
David S.BaldwinGeneral
Joseph R.BidenJr.President
Christopher G.CavoliGeneral
Christopher T.DonahueGeneral
Donald J.TrumpPresident
OleksandrSyrskyGeneral
MykhayloZabrodskyiGeneral
VolodymyrZelenskyPresident
Shortly before Christmas, Mr. Zelensky rode through the Wiesbaden gates for his maiden visit to the secret center of the partnership.
Entering the Tony Bass Auditorium, he was escorted past trophies of shared battle — twisted fragments of Russian vehicles, missiles and aircraft. When he climbed to the walkway above the former basketball court — as General Zabrodskyi had done that first day in 2022 — the officers working below burst into applause.
Yet the president had not come to Wiesbaden for celebration. In the shadow of the failed counteroffensive, a third, hard wartime winter coming on, the portents had only darkened. To press their new advantage, the Russians were pouring forces into the east. In America, Mr. Trump, a Ukraine skeptic, was mid-political resurrection; some congressional Republicans were grumbling about cutting off funding.
A year ago, the coalition had been talking victory. As 2024 arrived and ground on, the Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.
But first, the immediate business in Wiesbaden: Generals Cavoli and Aguto explained that they saw no plausible path to reclaiming significant territory in 2024. The coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.
The Ukrainians would have to temper expectations, focusing on achievable objectives to stay in the fight while building the combat power to potentially mount a counteroffensive in 2025: They would need to erect defensive lines in the east to prevent the Russians from seizing more territory. And they would need to reconstitute existing brigades and fill new ones, which the coalition would help train and equip.
Mr. Zelensky voiced his support.
Yet the Americans knew he did so grudgingly. Time and again Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.
Just weeks before, the president had instructed General Zaluzhny to push the Russians back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders by fall of 2024. The general had then shocked the Americans by presenting a plan to do so that required five million shells and one million drones. To which General Cavoli had responded, in fluent Russian, “From where?”
Several weeks later, at a meeting in Kyiv, the Ukrainian commander had locked General Cavoli in a Defense Ministry kitchen and, vaping furiously, made one final, futile plea. “He was caught between two fires, the first being the president and the second being the partners,” said one of his aides.
As a compromise, the Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory — a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia. It would be code-named Operation Lunar Hail.
Until now, the Ukrainians, with help from the C.I.A. and the U.S. and British navies, had used maritime drones, together with long-range British Storm Shadow and French SCALP missiles, to strike the Black Sea Fleet. Wiesbaden’s contribution was intelligence.
But to prosecute the wider Crimea campaign, the Ukrainians would need far more missiles. They would need hundreds of ATACMS.
At the Pentagon, the old cautions hadn’t melted away. But after General Aguto briefed Mr. Austin on all that Lunar Hail could achieve, an aide recalled, he said: “OK, there’s a really compelling strategic objective here. It isn’t just about striking things.”
Mr. Zelensky would get his long-pined-for ATACMS. Even so, one U.S. official said, “We knew that, in his heart of hearts, he still wanted to do something else, something more.”
General Zabrodskyiwas in the Wiesbaden command center in late January when he received an urgent message and stepped outside.
When he returned, gone pale as a ghost, he led General Aguto to a balcony and, pulling on a Lucky Strike, told him that the Ukrainian leadership struggle had reached its denouement: General Zaluzhny was being fired. The betting was on his rival, General Syrsky, to ascend.
The Americans were hardly surprised; they had been hearing ample murmurings of presidential discontent. The Ukrainians would chalk it up to politics, to fear that the widely popular General Zaluzhny might challenge Mr. Zelensky for the presidency. There was also the Stavka meeting, where the president effectively kneecapped General Zaluzhny, and the general’s subsequent decision to publisha piece in The Economistdeclaring the war at a stalemate, the Ukrainians in need of a quantum technological breakthrough. This even as his president was calling for total victory.
General Zaluzhny, one American official said, was a “dead man walking.”
General Syrsky’s appointment brought hedged relief. The Americans believed they would now have a partner with the president’s ear and trust; decision-making, they hoped, would become more consistent.
General Syrsky was also a known commodity.
Part of that knowledge, of course, was the memory of 2023, the scar of Bakhmut — the way the general had sometimes spurned their recommendations, even sought to undermine them. Still, colleagues say, Generals Cavoli and Aguto felt they understood his idiosyncrasies; he would at least hear them out, and unlike some commanders, he appreciated and typically trusted the intelligence they provided.
For General Zabrodskyi, though, the shake-up was a personal blow and a strategic unknown. He considered General Zaluzhny a friend and had given up his parliamentary seat to become his deputy for plans and operations. (Soon he would be pushed out of that job, and his Wiesbaden role. When General Aguto found out, he called with a standing invitation to his North Carolina beach house; the generals could go sailing. “Maybe in my next life,” General Zabrodskyi replied.)
And the changing of the guard came at a particularly uncertain moment for the partnership: Goaded by Mr. Trump, congressional Republicans were holding up $61 billion in new military aid. During the battle for Melitopol, the commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. Wiesbaden was still churning out points of interest, but the Ukrainians were barely using them.
“We don’t need this right now,” General Zabrodskyi told the Americans.
The red lineskept moving.
There were the ATACMS, which arrived secretly in early spring, so the Russians wouldn’t realize Ukraine could now strike across Crimea.
And there were the SMEs. Some months earlier, General Aguto had been allowed to send a small team, about a dozen officers, to Kyiv, easing the prohibition on American boots on Ukrainian ground. So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as “subject matter experts.” Then, after the Ukrainian leadership shake-up, to build confidence and coordination, the administration more than tripled the number of officers in Kyiv, to about three dozen; they could now plainly be called advisers, though they would still be confined to the Kyiv area.
Perhaps the hardest red line, though, was the Russian border. Soon that line, too, would be redrawn.
In April, the financing logjam was finally cleared, and 180 more ATACMS, dozens of armored vehicles and 85,000 155-millimeter shells started flowing in from Poland.
Coalition intelligence, though, was detecting another sort of movement: Components of a new Russian formation, the 44th Army Corps, moving toward Belgorod, just north of the Ukrainian border. The Russians, seeing a limited window as the Ukrainians waited to have the American aid in hand, were preparing to open a new front in northern Ukraine.
The Ukrainians believed the Russians hoped to reach a major road ringing Kharkiv, which would allow them to bombard the city, the country’s second-largest, with artillery fire, and threaten the lives of more than a million people.
The Russian offensive exposed a fundamental asymmetry: The Russians could support their troops with artillery from just across the border; the Ukrainians couldn’t shoot back using American equipment or intelligence.
Yet with peril came opportunity. The Russians were complacent about security, believing the Americans would never let the Ukrainians fire into Russia. Entire units and their equipment were sitting unsheltered, largely undefended, in open fields.
The Ukrainians asked for permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons across the border. What’s more, Generals Cavoli and Aguto proposed that Wiesbaden help guide those strikes, as it did across Ukraine and in Crimea — providing points of interest and precision coordinates.
The White House was still debating these questions when, on May 10, the Russians attacked.
This became the moment the Biden administration changed the rules of the game. Generals Cavoli and Aguto were tasked with creating an “ops box” — a zone on Russian soil in which the Ukrainians could fire U.S.-supplied weapons and Wiesbaden could support their strikes.
At first they advocated an expansive box, to encompass a concomitant threat: the glide bombs — crude Soviet-era bombs transformed into precision weapons with wings and fins — that were raining terror on Kharkiv. A box extending about 190 miles would let the Ukrainians use their new ATACMS to hit glide-bomb fields and other targets deep inside Russia. But Mr. Austin saw this as mission creep: He did not want to divert ATACMS from Lunar Hail.
Instead, the generals were instructed to draw up two options — one extending about 50 miles into Russia, standard HIMARS range, and one nearly twice as deep. Ultimately, against the generals’ recommendation, Mr. Biden and his advisers chose the most limited option — but to protect the city of Sumy as well as Kharkiv, it followed most of the country’s northern border, encompassing an area almost as large as New Jersey. The C.I.A. was also authorized to send officers to the Kharkiv region to assist their Ukrainian counterparts with operations inside the box.
The box went live at the end of May. The Russians were caught unawares: With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war.
The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.
Summer 2024: Ukraine’s armies in the north and east were stretched dangerously thin. Still, General Syrsky kept telling the Americans, “I need a win.”
A foreshadowing had come back in March, when the Americans discovered that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia. The C.I.A. station chief in Kyiv confronted the HUR commander, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov: If he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support. He did, only to be forced back.
At moments like these, Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.
To the Ukrainians, though, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was “better than ask and stop,” explained Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, a former Ukrainian military intelligence commander. He added: “We are allies, but we have different goals. We protect our country, and you protect your phantom fears from the Cold War.”
In August in Wiesbaden, General Aguto’s tour was coming to its scheduled end. He left on the 9th. The same day, the Ukrainians dropped a cryptic reference to something happening in the north.
On Aug. 10, the C.I.A. station chief left, too, for a job at headquarters. In the churn of command, General Syrsky made his move — sending troops across the southwest Russian border, into the region of Kursk.
For the Americans, the incursion’s unfolding was a significant breach of trust. It wasn’t just that the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark; they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line, taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russian territory encompassed by the ops box, in violation of rules laid down when it was created.
The box had been established to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kharkiv, not so the Ukrainians could take advantage of it to seize Russian soil. “It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail,” a senior Pentagon official said.
The Americans could have pulled the plug on the ops box. Yet they knew that to do so, an administration official explained, “could lead to a catastrophe”: Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk would perish unprotected by HIMARS rockets and U.S. intelligence.
Kursk, the Americans concluded, was the win Mr. Zelensky had been hinting at all along. It was also evidence of his calculations: He still spoke of total victory. But one of the operation’s goals, he explained to the Americans, was leverage — to capture and hold Russian land that could be traded for Ukrainian land in future negotiations.
Provocative operationsonce forbidden were now permitted.
Before General Zabrodskyi was sidelined, he and General Aguto had selected the targets for Operation Lunar Hail. The campaign required a degree of hand-holding not seen since General Donahue’s day. American and British officers would oversee virtually every aspect of each strike, from determining the coordinates to calculating the missiles’ flight paths.
Of roughly 100 targets across Crimea, the most coveted was the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the peninsula to the Russian mainland. Mr. Putin saw the bridge as powerful physical proof of Crimea’s connection to the motherland. Toppling the Russian president’s symbol had, in turn, become the Ukrainian president’s obsession.
It had also been an American red line. In 2022, the Biden administration prohibited helping the Ukrainians target it; even the approaches on the Crimean side were to be treated as sovereign Russian territory. (Ukrainian intelligence services tried attacking it themselves, causing some damage.)
But after the partners agreed on Lunar Hail, the White House authorized the military and C.I.A. to secretly work with the Ukrainians and the British on a blueprint of attack to bring the bridge down: ATACMS would weaken vulnerable points on the deck, while maritime drones would blow up next to its stanchions.
But while the drones were being readied, the Russians hardened their defenses around the stanchions.
The Ukrainians proposed attacking with ATACMS alone. Generals Cavoli and Aguto pushed back: ATACMS alone wouldn’t do the job; the Ukrainians should wait until the drones were ready or call off the strike.
In the end, the Americans stood down, and in mid-August, with Wiesbaden’s reluctant help, the Ukrainians fired a volley of ATACMS at the bridge. It did not come tumbling down; the strike left some “potholes,” which the Russians repaired, one American official grumbled, adding, “Sometimes they need to try and fail to see that we are right.”
The Kerch Bridge episode aside, the Lunar Hail collaboration was judged a significant success. Russian warships, aircraft, command posts, weapons depots and maintenance facilities were destroyed or moved to the mainland to escape the onslaught.
For the Biden administration, the failed Kerch attack, together with a scarcity of ATACMS, reinforced the importance of helping the Ukrainians use their fleet of long-distance attack drones. The main challenge was evading Russian air defenses and pinpointing targets.
Longstanding policy barred the C.I.A. from providing intelligence on targets on Russian soil. So the administration would let the C.I.A. request “variances,” carve-outs authorizing the spy agency to support strikes inside Russia to achieve specific objectives.
Intelligence had identified a vast munitions depot in the lakeside town of Toropets, some 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border, that was providing weapons to Russian forces in Kharkiv and Kursk. The administration approved the variance. Toropets would be a test of concept.
C.I.A. officers shared intelligence about the depot’s munitions and vulnerabilities, as well as Russian defense systems on the way to Toropets. They calculated how many drones the operation would require and charted their circuitous flight paths.
On Sept. 18, a large swarm of drones slammed into the munitions depot. The blast, as powerful as a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Videos showed immense balls of flame and plumes of smoke rising above the lake.
A munitions depot in Toropets, Russia.
Maxar Technologies
The depot after a drone strike assisted by the C.I.A.
Maxar Technologies
Yet as with the Kerch Bridge operation, the drone collaboration pointed to a strategic dissonance.
The Americans argued for concentrating drone strikes on strategically important military targets — the same sort of argument they had made, fruitlessly, about focusing on Melitopol during the 2023 counteroffensive. But the Ukrainians insisted on attacking a wider menu of targets, including oil and gas facilities and politically sensitive sites in and around Moscow (though they would do so without C.I.A. help).
“Russian public opinion is going to turn on Putin,” Mr. Zelensky told the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Kyiv in September. “You’re wrong. We know the Russians.”
Mr. Austin and General Cavolitraveled to Kyiv in October. Year by year, the Biden administration had provided the Ukrainians with an ever-more-sophisticated arsenal of weaponry, had crossed so many of its red lines. Still, the defense secretary and the general were worrying about the message written in the weakening situation on the ground.
The Russians had been making slow but steady progress against depleted Ukrainian forces in the east, toward the city of Pokrovsk — their “big target,” one American official called it. They were also clawing back some territory in Kursk. Yes, the Russians’ casualties had spiked, to between 1,000 and 1,500 a day. But still they kept coming.
Mr. Austin would later recount how he contemplated this manpower mismatch as he looked out the window of his armored S.U.V. snaking through the Kyiv streets. He was struck, he told aides, by the sight of so many men in their 20s, almost none of them in uniform. In a nation at war, he explained, men this age are usually away, in the fight.
This was one of the difficult messages the Americans had come to Kyiv to deliver, as they laid out what they could and couldn’t do for Ukraine in 2025.
Mr. Zelensky had already taken a small step, lowering the draft age to 25. Still, the Ukrainians hadn’t been able to fill existing brigades, let alone build new ones.
Mr. Austin pressed Mr. Zelensky to take the bigger, bolder step and begin drafting 18-year-olds. To which Mr. Zelensky shot back, according to an official who was present, “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.”
“And your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned,” the official recalled Mr. Austin responding. “They don’t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.”
That was the perennial standoff:
In the Ukrainians’ view, the Americans weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help them prevail.
In the Americans’ view, the Ukrainians weren’t willing to do what was necessary to help themselves prevail.
Mr. Zelensky often said, in response to the draft question, that his country was fighting for its future, that 18- to 25-year-olds were the fathers of that future.
To one American official, though, it’s “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
General Baldwin, who early on had crucially helped connect the partners’ commanders, had visited Kyiv in September 2023. The counteroffensive was stalling, the U.S. elections were on the horizon and the Ukrainians kept asking about Afghanistan.
The Ukrainians, he recalled, were terrified that they, too, would be abandoned. They kept calling, wanting to know if America would stay the course, asking: “What will happen if the Republicans win the Congress? What is going to happen if President Trump wins?’”
He always told them to remain encouraged, he said. Still, he added, “I had my fingers crossed behind my back, because I really didn’t know anymore.”
Mr. Trump won, and the fear came rushing in.
In his last, lame-duck weeks, Mr. Biden made a flurry of moves to stay the course, at least for the moment, and shore up his Ukraine project.
He crossed his final red line — expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia — after North Korea sent thousands of troops to help the Russians dislodge the Ukrainians from Kursk. One of the first U.S.-supported strikes targeted and wounded the North Korean commander, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok, as he met with his Russian counterparts in a command bunker.
The administration also authorized Wiesbaden and the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.
In December, General Donahue got his fourth star and returned to Wiesbaden as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. He had been the last American soldier to leave in the chaotic fall of Kabul. Now he would have to navigate the new, unsure future of Ukraine.
General Cavoli, center, passed the colors to General Donahue in a ceremonial change of command in Wiesbaden.
Volker Ramspott/U.S. Army
So much had changed since General Donahue left two years before. But when it came to the raw question of territory, not much had changed. In the war’s first year, with Wiesbaden’s help, the Ukrainians had seized the upper hand, winning back more than half of the land lost after the 2022 invasion. Now, they were fighting over tiny slivers of ground in the east (and in Kursk).
One of General Donahue’s main objectives in Wiesbaden, according to a Pentagon official, would be to fortify the brotherhood and breathe new life into the machine — to stem, perhaps even push back, the Russian advance. (In the weeks that followed, with Wiesbaden providing points of interest and coordinates, the Russian march toward Pokrovsk would slow, and in some areas in the east, the Ukrainians would make gains. But in southwest Russia, as the Trump administration scaled back support, the Ukrainians would lose most of their bargaining chip, Kursk.)
In early January, Generals Donahue and Cavoli visited Kyiv to meet with General Syrsky and ensure that he agreed on plans to replenish Ukrainian brigades and shore up their lines, the Pentagon official said. From there, they traveled to Ramstein Air Base, where they met Mr. Austin for what would be the final gathering of coalition defense chiefs before everything changed.
With the doors closed to the press and public, Mr. Austin’s counterparts hailed him as the “godfather” and “architect” of the partnership that, for all its broken trust and betrayals, had sustained the Ukrainians’ defiance and hope, begun in earnest on that spring day in 2022 when Generals Donahue and Zabrodskyi first met in Wiesbaden.
Mr. Austin is a solid and stoic block of a man, but as he returned the compliments, his voice caught.
“Instead of saying farewell, let me say thank you,” he said, blinking back tears. And then added: “I wish you all success, courage and resolve. Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.”
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Sources and methodology
For each war map, we used data from the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project to calculate changes in territorial control. Russian forces in eastern Ukraine include Russian-backed separatists. The composite image in the introduction draws on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was compiled using Google Earth Engine. We combined images from January and February of each year since 2020 to generate a cloud-free satellite image.
Oleksandr Chubko and Julie Tate contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran, Kenan Davis and Rumsey Taylor. Maps by Leanne Abraham. Additional production by William B. Davis. Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Damaged Cultural Sites
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/world/asia/earthquake-devastates-myanmars-cultural-sites.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Earthquakein Myanmar and Thailand
The authorities said that thousands of buildings had been damaged, including about 150 mosques and pagodas.
Credit...Video by AFP
Supported by
ByMalachy Browne
The powerful earthquake that shook Myanmar on Friday took a considerable toll on historic and religious sites across the country, toppling pagodas, collapsing sections of Buddhist monasteries and reducing centuries-old monuments to rubble, according to photographs and videos shared by witnesses and verified by The New York Times.In its latest count on Saturday morning,Myanmar’s government saidthat over 3,000 buildings had been damaged, including about 150 mosques and pagodas.
Southwest of Mandalay, the 200-year-old Me Nu Brick Monastery appeared to belargely destroyed. Tiers of the building’sdistinctive balconieshad collapsed around the bulky interior walls.
Southeast of Mandalay, a video showed the ornate golden spire of the Shwe Sar Yan Pagoda toppling over, to the screams of onlookers.
In Mandalay city, a large pagoda that stood on the palace walls was lefttilted at a sharp angle; elsewhere, asection of the wallscrumbled.To the west of the city, a video showed Buddhist monks gathered around the ruins of adecorative clock towerthat had served as a centerpiece of the New Masoeyein Monastery.
Seconds later, video showed their five-story monastery building collapsing before them. Dozens of monks who lived at the monastery slept out on mats in nearby streets on Friday night. One of them, Moe Nat Ashin,photographedthe scene.
Photos shared by theBurma Human Rights Networkshowed fallen minarets and domes of mosques in several parts of the country. The online news outlet Mizzima, citing local officials and residents, reported that 490 people werekilled in mosque collapseson Friday.In Pindaya, 70 miles from the epicenter, Buddhist monuments known as stupas that adorned a large monastery were toppled, and cracks split the foundations of others that survived.All around the stupas, the remains of golden spires and the red bricks common to the region littered the ground.In one witness video, onlookers wailed as the top of the monastery’s largest stupas crumbled in an aftershock.
“Pindaya felt some earthquakes before but not so strong like today’s,” said Tun Tun Aye, the administrator of a Facebook page for the monastery. He said that the stupas were believed to be more than a century old, and that he did not know how the monastery would be restored.In Nepal in 2015,billions of dollars were pledgedtoward reconstruction after two earthquakes devastated the country. Initiallyhampered by bureaucracy, the restoration led to aresurgence in traditional craftsmanshipin the country.
But in Myanmar, which isruled by a military juntathat has terrorized civilian areas as it battles a rebel movement, establishing a unified and internationally supported reconstruction effort is likely to be more challenging.
Malachy Browneis enterprise director of theVisual Investigations teamat The Times. He was a member of teams awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2020 and 2023.More about Malachy Browne
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
They Found Love at a Construction Site, Then Were Trapped Beneath ItThe Bangkok building razed by Friday’s quake employed men and women who had found love at work. Despite glimmers of hope, many were still beneath the rubble.4 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/asia/collapsed-bangkok-building-rescue-earthquake.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Earthquakein Myanmar and Thailand
Advertisement
Supported by
The Bangkok building razed by Friday’s quake employed men and women who had found love at work. Despite glimmers of hope, many were still beneath the rubble.
ByDamien CaveandMuktita Suhartono
Reporting from Bangkok
The rescue teams at the collapsed office tower in Bangkok thought they’d found a miracle on Sunday night: a channel into the basement, leading to a wide-open space where workers still unaccounted for might have lived through Friday’s giant earthquake.
“We thought for sure we’d find someone,” said Piyalux Thinkaew, chief of operations for the Ruamkatanyu Foundation, one of Thailand’s leading emergency organizations. “It was a whole room. It was big.”
Around a dozen rescuers stepped in. They were from Thailand, China, the United States and Israel. They could see the foundation’s pillars holding strong. But the room was empty.
The next morning, another wisp of hope arrived when infrared sensors found potential signs of life. The recovery work fell silent. But after a while, there was nothing. No one was pulled out alive or dead on Monday by the time the clock ticked past the so-called golden window — the 72 hours in which survival is most likely.
Advertisement
“Hope is dimming,” Mr. Piyalux said. “We’re very disappointed.”
Was rescue becoming recovery? Not officially. Around 80 workers were still under the pile of chest-crushing rubble and steel that was tall enough to be seen from blocks away. Rescue workers said they were racing against time, as if 72 hours really meant 96, or maybe more.
The building had been partially finished, at a stage where the interior work involved what employees described as roughly an even mix of male and female workers. Many were in love. Husbands and wives, married for years, worked with young couples in fevered courtships.
Perhaps that’s why the sights and sounds on Monday seemed more urgent. After mostly probing the pile, to avoid disruption and to ensure a careful first sweep for life, a half dozen excavators pinched and punched at the edges all at once, their tweezerlike fingers grabbing at steel and concrete in a haphazard dance.
Maybe, deeper in, more signs of life would emerge.
Apichat Chaihlao, 32, said he was waiting for his girlfriend. Her name was Nayana Phimsan, and she was just 18. They were there together on Friday, for their first day of work after moving from another job. After lunch, he was a few floors away, smoking, when he felt dizzy, saw the building swaying and ran out. A few of his friends didn’t make it.
Advertisement
“As long as they have not found them, I’ll believe she is still alive,” he said.
He described Ms. Nayana as strong and full of life, with a great sense of humor.
“I like to annoy her, tease her until she yells at me,” he said.
“Now it’s so empty,” he added. “I don’t want to go home at all.”
Nearby, Samai Lapphet, 65, said he would keep an open mind until the end of the week — maybe his eldest son, Kittisuk, 40, an electrician, had survived. Kittisuk had met his girlfriend there at work. She was stuck in the ruins, too. They were supposed to marry.
“The most important thing is for him to be found,” Mr. Samai said, “so I can see him again.”
Waiting for news was now a team effort. Many submitted DNA samples to the police so that remains of relatives could be identified, even if very little could be found. Mothers at the site were joined by brothers, cousins, uncles and friends.
Advertisement
On the sidewalk, two teenage girls sat on cardboard and tried to comfort older relatives. In a park, a half-dozen men with connections to someone at the work site gathered on a blanket with a pink pillow covered in cartoon kittens.
All around them, the street where the building entrance would have been had become a community. Tents had multiplied with volunteer assistance, with food for relatives, pallets of water for rescuers and the occasional mental health worker offering support. Each group wore a different uniform: firefighters in red and the police in blue. Mr. Thinkaew and his team wore green jumpsuits with gold lettering. Others wore neon orange or yellow.
The main color to be found, the color that defined everything, was gray, as dust settled on everything and everyone. Something as solid as a giant tower had been reduced to particles, pulled into lungs and eyes with the smell of pulverized concrete.
Somewhere in there, though, were loved ones.
Under a sky blue tarp with a view of tangled steel, Supattra Penjan, 40, dabbed her eyes with a white washcloth. Her son, Worawut Triwut, was 18, she said, a recent graduate, a joker, a lover of soccer. She showed us a photo taken at 7:32 a.m. on the day of the earthquake. He looked happy in his orange vest, his hair combed back, standing near his best friend and co-worker.
He’d been working at the building for a week.
“As a mom, I keep this hope in me that he is still alive,” she said. “But I am also starting to prepare myself for the worst.”
Damien Caveleads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world.More about Damien Cave
Muktita Suhartonoreports on Thailand and Indonesia. She is based in Bangkok.More about Muktita Suhartono
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Trump-Putin Call
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/us/politics/trump-putin-call-ukraine-russia-ceasefire.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Russia-UkraineWar
Advertisement
Supported by
In a call with President Trump, Russia’s leader agreed to pause strikes on energy infrastructure. Ukraine also appeared willing to accept such a halt, though it fell short of the unconditional cease-fire the country had already agreed to.
ByDavid E. SangerandPaul Sonne
David E. Sanger reported from Washington and Paul Sonne from Berlin.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia agreed for the first time on Tuesday to a limited cease-fire that would stop strikes on energy infrastructure, as long as Ukraine does the same, the Kremlin said in a statement.
But in a two-and-a-half-hour phone call with President Trump, the Russian leader declined for now to agree to a broader 30-day halt in fighting that U.S. and Ukrainian officials had proposed, meaning that the attacks on Ukrainian civilians, cities and ports will continue as the two sides vie for territory and an upper hand in negotiations.
Still, if strikes on energy infrastructure by both sides indeed stop, it would mark the first mutually agreed suspension of attacks in the three-year war, which the White House characterized as a first step toward a broader peace. But privately, some administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Putin appeared to be stalling, agreeing to just enough to appear to be engaged in peace talks, while pressing his advantage on the battlefield.
A cease-fire for energy targets would not only benefit Ukraine, which has struggled for years with Russia’s repeated attacks on its energy grid. It would also come as a relief to the Kremlin: Ukraine has conducted extensive strikes on oil and gas facilities deep into the Russian heartland, jeopardizing Moscow’s most crucial stream of state revenue.
Advertisement
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he was awaiting a phone call from Mr. Trump to find out the details of his discussion with Mr. Putin, but noted he was open to a truce on strikes targeting energy infrastructure.
“Russia and Ukraine, through the mediation of the U.S., can agree not to attack energy infrastructure,” he told the Ukrainian public broadcaster, Suspilne, Tuesday night. “Our side will support this. But it cannot be the case that Russia attacks our energy sector and we remain silent. We will respond.”
In a later statement, he said Mr. Putin had “effectively rejected the proposal for a full cease-fire,” and accused Russia of continuing attacks, including a drone strike on a hospital in the northeastern city of Sumy. His claim could not be independently confirmed.
The American and Russian accounts of the call displayed the gulf that remains. Mr. Putin insisted that a long-lasting peace depended on a complete cessation of foreign military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv, the Kremlin said.
In essence, Mr. Putin was demanding an end to all of the military support for Ukraine that the United States and its allies have provided for three years. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been highly critical of the billions of dollars that the United States has spent on the war, but the White House made no reference to that part of the discussion in its vaguely worded account of the conversation. Europe has committed to even more aid.
Advertisement
Nor did the White House describe any discussions over what territory Russia might retain after its seizure of about 20 percent of Ukraine’s land, beginning with the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The result of the call seemed to fall well short of what Mr. Trump had been hoping for in his outreach to Moscow, after several days of optimistic-sounding pronouncements from the White House that peace was within reach. Despite Mr. Trump’s public optimism, which included an exclamation-mark-filled social media post, there was no date set for a meeting between the two presidents. There was no statement of common principles to end the war.
But there were gestures of good will. Mr. Putin said Russia would release 23 seriously wounded Ukrainian soldiers and would carry out a prisoner exchange with Ukraine later this month, consisting of 175 prisoners from each side, the Kremlin said.
The negotiations came after a remarkable public breach between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky that played directly into Mr. Putin’s hands. The Trump administration temporarily suspended military and intelligence aid to Ukraine earlier this month after anexplosive confrontationbetween Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office. Washington restored the flow of aid after U.S. and Ukrainian officials met in Saudi Arabia and agreed to a comprehensive 30-day cease-fire proposal. The Trump administration then brought the proposal to Moscow.
Mr. Putin, keen to avoid upsetting the Kremlin’s rapid rapprochement with the White House, said that the idea was “correct” and that Russia supported it in principle. But he proceeded to lay out conditions known to be unacceptable to Kyiv.
Advertisement
According to the Kremlin, the Russian leader reiterated those concerns during the call on Tuesday. Mr. Putin raised the issue of “ensuring effective control” to implement the cease-fire across a lengthy front, the Kremlin said. The Russian leader also said Ukraine would need to pause personnel mobilization and rearmament, a condition Ukraine has said it will not accept.
On Sunday night, Mr. Trump told reporters he expected much of the discussion would focus on territory that would be ceded to Russia, and on control of nuclear power plants. That seemed to suggest he wanted to discuss the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which is now occupied by Russian forces.
But neither the Kremlin nor the White House mentioned any discussions about the power plant or the territory Russia might retain.
While Washington and Moscow committed last month tonormalizing their diplomatic missions, after years of tit-for-tat expulsions and closures, and midlevel U.S. and Russian officials held talks on the issue in late February. The White House and the Kremlin did not mention the matter, however, in their summaries of the call.
In a White House statement and a separate post by Mr. Trump on Truth Social, Washington said Mr. Putin had agreed to cease strikes on “energy and infrastructure.” But the Kremlin, in its statement, said “energy infrastructure.” It was not clear how the moratorium on energy strikes, if it goes into effect, would be enforced.
Advertisement
The Kremlin said the two leaders also expressed support for a broader normalization in relations between the United States and Russia, and discussed possible future economic cooperation, including in the energy sector. Mr. Trump agreed to Mr. Putin’s idea to hold hockey tournaments in their respective countries, in which American and Russian professional players would compete, the Kremlin added.
The Trump administration’s avoidance of discussing the details, including any discussion the two men may have had on land concessions they would press Mr. Zelensky to make in the name of ending the fighting, may be designed to keep the maximum flexibility in the negotiating room. But it may also reflect a desire to avoid another open confrontation with Mr. Zelensky.
In recent days senior Ukrainian officials have described three red lines going into negotiations: Kyiv will never formally accept Russian sovereignty over occupied Ukrainian territory, agree to neutral status or agree to reduce the size of its armed forces. Officials have also said they must obtain security guarantees as part of any settlement. France and Britain, among others, have offered to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping or “trip wire” force, but the Kremlin has rejected the idea. And military officials question whether such a force is feasible if the United States does not agree to back up the European effort in a crisis.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine would not recognize occupied territory as Russian “under any circumstances,” adding that he understood “that this is precisely what the Russians need, and it will insist on terms it knows Ukraine cannot accept.” Last November, Mr. Zelensky conceded not all territory could be won back by force, and may have to remain under de facto Russian control after a settlement.
In its statement, the White House focused on issues beyond Ukraine, saying that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin “spoke broadly about the Middle East as a region of potential cooperation” and “the need to stop proliferation of strategic weapons.” The sole remaining nuclear arms limitation treaty between the United States and Russia expires next February, and negotiations on a replacement have not begun. In his first term, Mr. Trump said he would not enter a new arms control treaty without China also signing on to limits, though Beijing has expressed no interest as it expands its arsenal.
Advertisement
For Mr. Trump, a Ukraine cease-fire is a first step to amuch broader normalization of relations with Russia, which he is pursuing even while most of his NATO allies follow the strategy of the past three years: sanctions and containment of Russia, and continued aid for Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have accused Mr. Putin of playing for time in order to maintain leverage in negotiations, and allow Russia time to continue bombarding Ukrainian cities and towns.
In its statement, the White House said that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin had agreed to begin “technical negotiations” over a broader maritime cease-fire in the Black Sea, where Russian ships can barely operate now, and a “full cease-fire and permanent peace.” It said those talks would “begin immediately in the Middle East.”
Marc Santora and Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv.
David E. Sangercovers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.More about David E. Sanger
Paul Sonneis an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.More about Paul Sonne
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Gail Collins and Bret StephensTrump Really Likes It When Things Go Wrong7 min readKenny Holston/The New York Times
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/opinion/nothing-ever-goes-wrong-in-trumps-white-house.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
The Conversation
ByGail CollinsandBret Stephens
Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are Opinion columnists. They converse every week.
Bret Stephens:Gail, before we start, is there a journalist from another publication you’d like to invite into this conversation?
Gail Collins:Gee, Bret, could you be referring to Jeff Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who wound up being unwittingly included in a group chat among top Trump officials discussing classified plans for airstrikes in Yemen?
Bret:Best journalistic scoop of the season, and it couldn’t have been easier to get.
Gail:Seems to me that Goldberg behaved very responsibly in a screwed-up situation that once again defined the utter ineptitude of the administration — from top to bottom. My initial reaction was to wish I could fire them all and buy Goldberg a drink.
Bret:If President Trump were, well, someone else entirely, he’d be the one buying Goldberg a drink for keeping the nation’s military secrets to himself for as long as they needed keeping — and then exposing Trump’s top national security aides as the amateurs they are.
Advertisement
Gail:A new week, a new dimwit roundup.
Bret:Paging Tulsi Gabbard. And that’s saying nothing about JD Vance, the vice president whose comments on the Signal chat suggest that he doesn’t think the president grasps the implications of his own foreign policy. What a shame Vance didn’t extend his weekend visit to Greenland for, oh, 45 months.
The other thing worth paying attention to, Gail, is the Republican response, especially in the Senate. Outside of the always gutsy Alaskan Lisa Murkowski, I’m not seeing much more than murmurs of G.O.P. dismay. Just imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot and it had been Joe Biden’s secretary of defense and national security adviser sharing battle plans with, say, Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson.
Subscribe to The Timesto read as many articles as you like.
Gail Collins is a Times Opinion columnist focusing on domestic politics.@GailCollins•Facebook
Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues.Facebook
Advertisement
Enjoy unlimited access to all of The Times.
See subscription options
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
The Random Punch That Wrecked 2 Families’ LivesGary Anderson hit Domingo Tapia, sending Mr. Tapia into a coma and Mr. Anderson to prison. Mr. Tapia later died, and his attacker faces manslaughter charges.9 min readKholood Eid for The New York Times
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/nyregion/brooklyn-punch-murder-charges-domingo-tapia.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Gary Anderson hit Domingo Tapia for reasons never explained, sending Mr. Tapia into a coma and Mr. Anderson to prison. Mr. Tapia later died, and his attacker faces manslaughter charges.
The attack on Domingo Tapia reverberates through two families almost a decade later.Credit...Kholood Eid for The New York Times
Supported by
ByMaia ColemanandWesley Parnell
Domingo Tapia and Gary Anderson crossed paths for no more than a second, two lives colliding in a moment of grainy surveillance footage.
Mr. Tapia, a 38-year-old Mexican immigrant who worked as a fruit vendor, had met his brother for a few beers on a summer evening in 2017. They had passed the time and said their goodbyes.
He turned back momentarily to retrieve a bag of fruit he had forgotten at the bar, mounted his bike and glided off toward his wife and two sons, through the quiet streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It was 1:30 a.m.
Two blocks away, Mr. Anderson, a 26-year-old fitness trainer, was standing at Fulton Street and Albany Avenue among a group of men milling around the corner, gesticulating, apparently arguing.
Suddenly, he stalked into the crosswalk, advancing at just the moment Mr. Tapia pedaled into his path. Mr. Anderson took a step, and another, and then he exploded, launching his fist into Mr. Tapia’s face.
Mr. Tapia’s balance failed. The bike spun out. His head smashed against the hard, dark pavement.
The two men didn’t know each other, and they never would. The punch had arrived like many crimes in New York — random, swift, a bolt out of nowhere.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber?Log in.
Want all of The Times?Subscribe.
Advertisement
|
NY Times
|
What We Know About the Dispute at Prince Harry’s CharityHarry resigned from the charity he co-founded in memory of his mother after a dispute erupted between its chair, Sophie Chandauka, and five trustees.3 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/prince-harry-charity-dispute-harassment.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
Harry resigned from Sentebale, the charity he co-founded in memory of his mother, after a dispute erupted between the charity’s chair, Sophie Chandauka, and five of its trustees.
ByLynsey Chutel
Reporting from London
Prince Harry announced on March 25 that he hadstepped downas a patron of Sentebale, the charity he co-founded in memory of his mother, after a monthslong dispute between the charity’s chair and the board of trustees broke into the open.
Harry and his fellow co-founder, Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, said they had quit in solidarity with five board members who had resigned over a dispute with the chair, Sophie Chandauka.
Both Ms. Chandauka and the group of former trustees have made allegations of wrongdoing against each other, and both parties said they had submitted claims and evidence of their arguments to Britain’s Charity Commission.
Here’s what we know.
Harry founded the charity with Prince Seeiso in 2006. In recent months, the organization’s leadership has been at loggerheads. The five trustees who resigned — Timothy Boucher, Mark Dyer, Audrey Kgosidintsi, Kelello Lerotholi and Damian West — said in a joint statement that they had called on the board’s chair, Ms. Chandauka, to resign from her position, after losing “trust and confidence” in her.
Advertisement
They said that Ms. Chandauka, who was appointed in 2023, responded by filing a lawsuit in Britain “to block us from voting her out,” and that they were resigning to avoid burdening the charity with the cost of the suit.
“We could not in good conscience allow Sentebale to undertake that legal and financial burden and have been left with no other option but to vacate our positions,” the former trustees said in their statement. “This was not a choice willingly made, but rather something we felt forced into in order to look after the charity.”
Lynsey Chutelis a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.More about Lynsey Chutel
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Israel Issues Wide-Ranging Evacuation Order for Southern Gaza3 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-rafah-evacuation-order.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Middle EastTensions
Advertisement
Supported by
The order, which came during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, included Rafah and parts of neighboring Khan Younis.
ByAdam RasgonandAmeera Harouda
Adam Rasgon reported from Jerusalem, and Ameera Harouda reported from Doha, Qatar
The Israeli military issued a sweeping evacuation order for the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, signaling that it could relaunch intensive assaults in the area.
The order, which came during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, heralded renewed hardship for Palestinians in the southernmost city of Rafah, which has been battered by the war between Israel and Hamas. The city has endured periods of being overwhelmed with displaced people and of being depopulated by evacuation orders. The warrestarted two weeks agoafter a monthslong cease-fire collapsed.
In the past, the Israeli military has ordered evacuations before both aerial attacks and ground maneuvers that it has said were targeting Hamas.
Deir
al Balah
2 miles
GAZA
STRIP
Khan
Younis
Area Israel ordered
to evacuate
on Monday
Area
evacuated
March 18
Rafah
GAZA
STRIP
EGYPT
ISRAEL
GAZA
STRIP
Khan
Younis
ISRAEL
Area Israel ordered
to evacuate
on Monday
Area
evacuated
March 18
Rafah
EGYPT
GAZA
STRIP
Source: Israeli military
By The New York Times
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, on Monday posted a map of the affected areas on his social media accounts, including Rafah and parts of neighboring Khan Younis. He said Palestinians must relocate to shelters in a coastal region to the north.
Advertisement
Israel’s military “is returning to fighting with great force to take out the capabilities of terrorists organizations in these areas,” he wrote.
This month, Mr. Adraee announced an evacuation order for some neighborhoods in Rafah, and the maps he posted on Monday again included those.
It was not clear how many people were still in Rafah when Mr. Adraee made his post and how many intended to follow his instructions. While hundreds of thousands of people lived there before the war, wide swaths of the city have since been reduced to rubble.
Over the past two weeks, Mr. Adraee hasissued evacuation ordersfor other parts of Gaza, but many residents of those areas have seemingly ignored them.
Advertisement
Since the start of the war ignited by the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, Palestinians in Gaza have been repeatedly displaced by the fighting — a miserable experience that has forced many people to live in crowded makeshift shelters next to strangers.
The Israeli military resumed its attacks against Hamas in Gaza on March 18, after Israel and Hamas failed to reach an agreement to extend a cease-fire that started in January.
Israel and Hamas have been speaking to mediators abouta potential dealto restore the cease-fire, but a breakthrough has not been achieved.
Photos posted on social media showed a succession of people fleeing Rafah on foot while carrying bags of belongings.
Advertisement
Hazem Haniyeh, an official in the Gaza-based office of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, said that the displacement from Rafah was particularly challenging for people still looking for a new place to stay.
“This decision has exacerbated the suffering of the people,” he said, adding that some, especially those with disabilities, were struggling to leave the city.
With a shortage of fuel, the cost of a ride to the north is out of reach for many families.
ّWafa Abu Duba, 43, a resident of Rafah, said she was getting used to living in a home with her mother, sister and children but now had no idea where to go.
“Our lives are shattered,” she said. “Where will I go now with my children? We have no food, no money, no essentials for survival,” she added. “Who will help us? Where will we find food and money?”
Ms. Abu Duba expressed frustration that the Israeli military was continuing its offensive in Gaza, but she also accused Hamas of giving Israel a pretext to wage war, with its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
“May God avenge Hamas,” she said.
Adam Rasgonis a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.More about Adam Rasgon
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Tracking the Layoffs
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/us/politics/trump-doge-federal-job-cuts.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
FederalLayoffs
Advertisement
ByElena ShaoandAshley Wu
*Many of these employees have been temporarily reinstated, following court orders.
Tens of thousands of employees across the federal government have left their jobs, been put on leave or been fired as a part of the government-gutting initiative of the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk. Federal agencies have been directed to make plans to reduce their work forces even further.
Note: Offices or agencies with less than 200 employees at the beginning of the year are not shown here.
Based on the latest available information, reductions could affectat least12percentof the 2.4 million civilian federal workers — a number that could grow as more of the agencies’ plans come into focus.
Theso-called Department of Government Efficiency— created by executive order — has circumvented a Republican-controlled Congress, which has chosen not to check its authority. Still, it has been subject tofrequent legal challenges, and many of those fired so far have been reinstated and put on paid leave, following court orders.
No official tally of cuts to the federal work force exists. Here are the layoffs, buyouts taken and planned reductions, by agency, that The New York Times has confirmed through verified sources within federal agencies, court filings and press and public statements.
Reduction so far:6%
*Most have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:11%
Total planned reduction:19%
*Most have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:12%
Total planned reduction:64%
*Some have returned to work after court orders.
Reduction so far:2%
Total planned reduction:6%
*Includes four senior officials and top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Reduction so far:46%
Total planned reduction:46%
*Sixty-five probationary workers have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:13%
*About 550 probationary workers have been reinstated and put on paid leave.
Reduction so far:3%
Total planned reduction:10%
*About 420 probationary workers have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:10%
*Most have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:3%
*Most have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:16%
Total planned reduction:16%
*Some 2,500 probationary workers have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:More than 99%
Reduction so far:More than 99%
*The administration shut down the entire civil rights branch alongside two ombudsman offices.
Reduction so far:4%
Reduction so far:Less than 1%
*Most have been contacted for reinstatement.
Reduction so far:4%
Total planned reduction:14%
*Most are in the process of getting reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:3%
*About 450 are back at work, and most of the rest have been reinstated and put on administrative leave.
Reduction so far:Less than 1%
*Includes more than two dozen prosecutors who worked either for the special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump or on cases related to Jan. 6; more than 20 immigration judges; and nine high-ranking F.B.I. officials.
Reduction so far:1%
*Most have been reinstated and are back at work.
Reduction so far:Less than 1%
Reduction so far:10%
*Half of the fired employees were quickly rehired.
Reduction so far:5%
Total planned reduction:46%
*Most have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:Less than 1%
Total planned reduction:12%
Reduction so far:Less than 1%
Reduction so far:1%
*Most have been reinstated and are back at work.
Reduction so far:13%
Total planned reduction:50%
*All employees will be reinstated and placed on paid leave.
*Most have been reinstated and put on paid administrative leave.
Reduction so far:More than 99%
Total planned reduction:More than 99%
Reduction so far:More than 99%
Total planned reduction:More than 99%
*The State Department said it would reduce the staff to some 15 positions.
Reduction so far:Less than 1%
Total planned reduction:17%
*Most have been reinstated and are in the process of returning to work.
Notes and Methodology
The figures above are most likely an undercount. Agencies that have let go of an unspecified number of employees are not reflected here.
Outside of the general effort to shrink the size of the federal work force and gut diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Mr. Trump has also targeted specific individuals at a number of independent agencies, many of which are also not reflected here.
Most federal agencies have not made verified numbers public, and no centralized database of confirmed figures exists. As a result, The New York Times compiled data from sources within the federal agencies, court documents and press statements.
Confirmed cuts:The number of federal workers who have been sent termination notices, fired, laid off, placed on administrative leave, sent home or who were told to halt work, regardless of subsequent reinstatementsbecause of court order or agency reversals.
Confirmed buyouts:In February, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said that about 75,000 workers across departments had accepted deferred resignation offers. Confirmed buyouts shown here do not reflect that entire total, and they are shown only when information about the number of buyouts at a particular agency level is known.
More planned reductions:Can include a combination of buyouts, firings and layoffs. In some cases, the breakdown between the three categories was not specified.
To determine the amount of the proposed reduction in each agency or subagency’s work force, The Times compiled these numbers into a database alongside data on agency size, as of September 2024, from the O.P.M.database on federal employment. More recent numbers on agency sizes were used where available.
The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.
You can also submit information to us using ourtips page.
Amy Schoenfeld Walker, June Kim and Sarah Cahalan contributed reporting.
Advertisement
Enjoy unlimited access to all of The Times.
See subscription options
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
What to Know
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/world/asia/earthquake-myanmar-thailand-death-toll.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Earthquakein Myanmar and Thailand
Advertisement
Supported by
The death toll in Myanmar has exceeded 1,600, the country’s military government said. The powerful earthquake also jolted other parts of Southeast Asia.
ByLynsey ChutelandJohn Yoon
A 7.7-magnitude earthquakestruck central Myanmaron Friday, sending shock waves across other parts of Southeast Asia and China and leaving a trail of death and destruction.
The death toll exceeded 1,600 and more than 3,400 people were injured, the country’s military government said Saturday, and those numbers were expected to rise.
Hundreds of miles from the epicenter, the earthquake caused the collapse of a high-rise building under construction in Bangkok, killing at least nine people and leaving dozens of others missing.
Myanmar is in the throes of a civil war that has left nearly 20 million people without proper food and shelter. Censorshipimposed by its military governmenthas limited the spread of information from the heart of the disaster, even as the scale of damage in Thailand and other countries has slowly become clearer.
Advertisement
The quake struck near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, at roughly 12:50 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Approximately 11 minutes later, an aftershock hit the same area.
Central Myanmar, where large plates of the Earth’s crust are in motion, isprone to powerful earthquakes. The country lies on the eastern end of the Alpide Belt, one of the world’s most active seismic zones. Three quakes of magnitude 7.7 or greater have struck in or near Myanmar in the last century, according to a U.S.G.S. database, with the most recent in 1988.
Advertisement
The earthquake on Friday struck at a relatively shallow depth of six miles, meaning it was likely to cause more violent shaking. It devastated areas near theSagaing Fault, which runs north-south through the center of Myanmar.
Despite the limited information from the authorities in Myanmar, the earthquake was almost certainly most destructive there. The city of Mandalay, the largest major city near the epicenter, has anestimated populationof 1.5 million.
Strong tremors were also felt in neighboring Thailand, particularly in Bangkok, wherearound 11 million peoplelive in the metropolitan area. Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra declared the city an “area of emergency,” asking residents to evacuate from tall buildings to avoid aftershocks.
In China, news media outlets in Yunnan Province, which neighbors Myanmar, reported damage to buildings in the busy border city of Ruili. The shaking was also felt in Bangladesh, to Myanmar’s west, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
Advertisement
Myanmar’s military government said on Saturday that 1,644 people had been killed by the quake, with 3,408 others injured. The full extent of the toll was hard to assess in a country that facesheavy censorshipenforced by Myanmar’s military government and has largely been isolated from the rest of the world.
The number of deaths was expected to rise as rescue workers dug through the rubble and injured people made their way to hospitals. Modeling by the U.S.G.S. estimated that the number of deaths was likely tosurpass 10,000.
In Mandalay, video showed that the Ava Bridge, originally built by the British in the 1930s, had partly collapsed, according to footage verified by The New York Times. The quake was especially damaging to Myanmar’shistoric and religious sites, reducing centuries-old monuments to rubble.
In Thailand,at least nine people diedand scores more were feared buried under the rubble after a high-rise building that had been under constructioncollapsed in Bangkok. The city’s elevated train service was shut down in the wake of the tremor and people fled from tall buildings after the city was placed in a state of emergency.
Advertisement
The areas worst hit are in the center of Myanmar, which is controlled by the military junta. When disasters have struck in the past, like Cyclone Mocha in 2023 and Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the military government avoided asking for international assistance and throttled aid in areas not under its control.
After Friday’s earthquake, the juntamade a rare appealfor help as it declared a state of emergency in six regions.
Areas of the country that are controlled by rebel forces are farther from the epicenter of the quake. These areas appear to be relatively unscathed, but information in these often isolated areas may be slow to emerge.
Advertisement
International aid began arriving on Saturday. China and India sent food and blankets for survivors, as well as rescue teams equipped with drones and other tools to help with the search effort.
President Trump said the United States would help, despite having slashed foreign aid and staff. Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and other countries offered or sent aid in the form of teams of people, equipment and funds.
Reporting was contributed by Sui-Lee Wee, Keith Bradsher, John Keefe, Richard C. Paddock, Muktita Suhartono, Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur.
Lynsey Chutelis a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.More about Lynsey Chutel
John Yoonis a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.More about John Yoon
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
AnalysisMarine Le Pen Falls to the Rule of Law, and a Great Battle LoomsA court’s conviction of the far-right leader for embezzlement and its ban on her running for office have set off a new crisis for France.4 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/marine-le-pen-embezzelment-democracy.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
TrumpAdministration
Advertisement
Supported by
News Analysis
A court’s conviction of the far-right leader for embezzlement and its ban on her running for office have set off a new crisis for France.
ByRoger Cohen
Last year, Marine Le Pen spoke menacingly of the possible fallout from her trial on embezzlement charges. “Tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people will see themselves deprived of their candidate for the presidency.”
After acourt disqualified heron Monday from running for public office for five years, those millions of French voters are adrift and angry. France is a democracy governed by the rule of law, as the verdict demonstrated. But it is unclear how far its troubled Fifth Republic can resist an inevitable gale of political protest before the 2027 election.
Unlike President Trump, who met with convictions, indictments and criminal cases on the way to his election last year, possibly even benefiting from perceived persecution, Ms. Le Pen could find no political path past the verdict of the French legal system.
“The independence of our justice system and the separation of powers stand at the heart of our democracy,” said Valérie Hayer, a centrist lawmaker in the European Parliament. “Nobody is above the law.”
Advertisement
That view is certain to come under sustained attack in a global environment where questioning of the legitimacy of legal systems has become frequent — across Europe, but particularly in Mr. Trump’s United States. Mr. Trump has called for the impeachment of judges who rule against him and called them “lunatics.”
“When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents,” Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s billionaire aide, said after the verdict.
European societies, given their history, are sensitive to the revival of far-right movements. France, like Germany, has a visceral memory of how fragile democratic institutions are and how once the rule of law goes, the way is open to dictatorial power.
“After Ms. Le Pen, the next direct target of a big political battle is going to be the rule of law,” said Alain Duhamel, a prominent political scientist. “There will be accusations that this is a government of judges, attacks on our highest court, not just from the National Rally but the center right,” he said, naming Ms. Le Pen’s party.
Advertisement
But, he added, “French magistrates are resolutely independent.”
Jordan Bardella, Ms. Le Pen’s carefully groomed protégé, pronounced French democracy dead, killed by the court. It is not; and to Mr. Bardella will no doubt fall the task of leading the anti-immigrant party into the election, unless Ms. Le Pen’s appeal overturns her ban in time.
At 29, he is young to aspire to the highest office, but he has demonstrated broad appeal and a near-unflappable command of detail. Just how he disentangles his ambitions from Ms. Le Pen’s remains to be seen. Up to now, they have avoided conflict.
Across Europe, the far right leaped on the court’s decision.
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s hard-right deputy prime minister, said those “who are afraid of voters’ judgment” often seek reassurance from courts’ judgment. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, said that he stood with Ms. Le Pen.
In Moscow, Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said, “More and more European capitals have opted for the violation of democratic norms.”
Advertisement
Of course, critiques of democracy from President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia are hardly persuasive. But in this case they overlap significantly with those of the U.S. vice president, JD Vance, who in February attacked European states for trying to stifle the far right in the name of saving democracy.
Ms. Le Pen, like it or not, may now become another element in the Vance-Musk case for European democratic failure. The fact is, however, she was convicted, after prolonged investigation and on detailed evidence, of embezzling millions of dollars of European Union funds to pay party staff members with money intended for aides to European lawmakers.
Over the past decade, Ms. Le Pen led a campaign of “de-demonization,” shifting her National Rally party from its fascist antisemitic roots to an anti-immigrant mainstream party that has more seats in the National Assembly than any other.
She could now direct the party to make trouble.
The most direct means would be to overturn the centrist government of Prime Minister François Bayrou by supporting a no-confidence motion this year, in effect saying to the French people that they should be the judges and issue their verdict in a parliamentary election.
Advertisement
A major swing to the National Rally would not open the way for Ms. Le Pen to become president, but it would be a powerful statement.
If there is a parliamentary election, which can be held after June, Ms. Le Pen could not defend her current seat, but nothing would prevent her from becoming prime minister if the National Rally won big.
“The tribunal demonstrated its political will, not legal but political,” said Wallerand de Saint-Just, a former party treasurer who was also convicted.
Not so, said a host of centrist politicians, who have made their pride in the French legal system clear as Mr. Trump attacks a supposedly “weaponized” American judiciary.
“Madame Le Pen, whether elected or a candidate, is a French citizen,” said Sacha Houlié, a center-left lawmaker. “The law of the Republic applies.”
Roger Cohenis the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist.More about Roger Cohen
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Maps
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/28/world/asia/myanmar-earthquake-tracker.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Earthquakein Myanmar and Thailand
Advertisement
ByWilliam B. Davis,Pablo Robles,Agnes Chang,Madison Dong,Judson Jones,John Keefe,Bea MalskyandSamuel Granados
A major, 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck in Myanmar on Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey. At a depth of about six miles, the quake was relatively shallow, which made it likely to cause violent shaking.
The temblor happened at 12:50 p.m. Myanmar time about 10 miles northwest of Sagaing, Myanmar, data from the agency shows.
The area near the quake is heavily populated, suggesting that the death toll may rise significantly. Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, sits near the epicenter. And heavy damage to buildings was reported as far as Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, 650 miles away.
CHINA
BANGLADESH
Sagaing
fault
Severely
shaken area
MYANMAR
Epicenter
Magnitude
7.7 earthquake
Mandalay
LAOS
Naypyidaw
Population density
Less
More
Chiang Mai
Yangon
Bay of Bengal
THAILAND
Bangkok
CAMBODIA
CHINA
Sagaing
fault
Epicenter
Magnitude 7.7 earthquake
Mandalay
Severely
shaken area
LAOS
Naypyidaw
MYANMAR
Chiang Mai
Bay of Bengal
Yangon
THAILAND
Population density
Less
More
Bangkok
CHINA
Sagaing
fault
Epicenter
Magnitude 7.7 earthquake
Mandalay
Severely
shaken area
LAOS
Naypyidaw
Chiang Mai
MYANMAR
Yangon
THAILAND
Bangkok
Population density
Less
More
Source: The LandScan Program, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Global Earthquake Model Foundation
Myanmar’s junta has repeatedlyshut off the internet, complicating efforts to determine the full extent of the damage. But modeling by the United States Geological Survey roughly estimates that the death toll is likely tosurpass 10,000, and could be much higher.
Earthquakes of this size are rare on the mainland of Southeast Asia. Only three quakes of magnitude 7.7 or greater have struck in or near Myanmar in the last century, according to a U.S.G.S. database.
Collapsed buildings were seen across a vast expanse of Southeast Asia. The quake will without a doubt deepen the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, a country that has been battered in a bloody civil war since 2021.
Here is what the damage looked like in some of the region’s largest cities:
In Bangkok, a 33-story skyscraper under constructioncollapsed, killing at least three people.
@Khon Su Cheevit Adeet Mai Suay Rok Na/Facebook, via AFP
The city’s streets were full of people who were afraid of aftershocks or were not allowed back into their buildings. Traffic was at a virtual standstill.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of Thailand declared Bangkok to be an “area of emergency,” asking residents to evacuate from tall buildings to avoid aftershocks.
In Mandalay, the city closest to the epicenter, the damage may be wide-ranging. A hospital there wasoverwhelmedwith injured people lined up on stretchers, or cardboard, in 100-degree heat.
A bridge on the Irrawaddy River collapsed.
Before
After
Before
After
Before: Google Mapsuser image; After: Still image from video by Khaing Zar Thin/Facebook, via Agence France-Presse
Satellite imagery shows that the earthquake has destroyed numerous shacks and buildings in one neighborhood in the city.
Before
After
Source: Maxar Technologies/Maxar, via Associated Press
Downed power lines, destroyed roads and a lack of equipment made rescue work even harder in a city already enduring a repressive military government and a civil war that is now in its fourth year.
Sai Aung Main/Agence France-Presse — Getty Image
Buildings collapsed and roads buckled in Myanmar’s capital city, The emergency department of a hospital was damaged, and injured people had to be treated outside in the compound.
Before
After
Before
After
Before: Google Mapsuser image; After: Sebastien Berger/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
About 11 minutes after the initial 7.7-magnitude earthquake, a strong, 6.4-magnitude aftershock struck the same area, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
An aftershock is usually a smaller earthquake that follows a larger one in the same general area. Aftershocks are typically minor adjustments along the portion of a fault that slipped at the time of the initial earthquake.
Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.
Source: United States Geological Survey | Notes: Shaking categories are based on theModified Mercalli Intensityscale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Myanmar time. Shake data is as of Friday, March 28 at 2:39 a.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Monday, March 31 at 3:50 p.m. Eastern.
Maps: Daylight (urban areas); MapLibre (map rendering); Natural Earth (roads, labels, terrain); Protomaps (map tiles)
Note: As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.
Additional work byBora Erden
Advertisement
Enjoy unlimited access to all of The Times.
See subscription options
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Trump’s Science Policies Pose Long-Term Risk, Economists WarnSince World War II, U.S. research funding has led to discoveries that fueled economic gains. Now President Trump’s cutbacks are jeopardizing that legacy.7 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/business/economy/trump-research-cutbacks-economy.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
TrumpAdministration
Advertisement
Supported by
Since World War II, U.S. research funding has led to discoveries that fueled economic gains. Now cutbacks are seen as putting that legacy in jeopardy.
ByBen Casselman
President Trump’s tariffs could drive up prices. His efforts to reduce the federal work force could increase unemployment. But ask economists which of the administration’s policies they are most concerned about and many point to cuts to federal support for scientific research.
The Trump administration in recent weeks has canceled or frozenbillions of dollars in federal grantsmade to researchers through the National Institutes of Health, and has moved tosharply curtail fundingfor academic medical centers and other institutions. It has also, through the initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency,tried to fire hundreds of workersat the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency. And it hasrevoked the visasof hundreds of foreign-born students.
To economists, the policies threaten to undermine U.S. competitiveness in emerging areas like artificial intelligence, and to leave Americans as a whole poorer, less healthy and less productive in the decades ahead.
“Universities are tremendously important engines of innovation,” said Sabrina Howell, a New York University professor who has studied the role of the federal government in supporting innovation. “This is really killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”
Advertisement
Scientistshave warned that the United States riskslosing its statusas a leader in cutting-edge research and its reputation as a magnet for top scientific minds from around the world.
Already, labs across the country have begun laying off workers and canceling projects — in some casesstopping clinical trialsthat were already underway — and top universities including Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania haveannounced hiring freezes. France and other countries have begunrecruiting American scientists, promising a more welcoming environment.
Economists across a broad ideological spectrum argue that investments in scientific research — especially the kind of fundamental, early-stage research that is too risky to attract private investors — are among the most efficient uses of taxpayer dollars. Research has found that every dollar invested in research and development returns about $5 in economic gains, a figure that likely understates the true return because it doesn’t account for benefits that aren’t captured in measures of gross domestic product, like longer lives and increased leisure time.
“It’s like a machine — you put a dollar in the machine and you get $5 back,” said Benjamin F. Jones, an economist at Northwestern University. “From a societal point of view, it’s an incredibly high-return activity that we already do too little of.”
Hudson Freeze was an undergraduate at Indiana University in the 1960s when he began helping his professor, Thomas Brock, study microbes living in hot springs at Yellowstone National Park — work that was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. He recalls the jolt of excitement the first time he looked through a microscope and saw one of those microbes,Thermus aquaticus,growing at a temperature previously thought impossible.
Advertisement
“I got goose bumps,” he said. “I was the first person in the world to see this under a microscope.”
Two decades later, that organism proved critical to the development of polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., a process of replicating DNA that is at the basis of virtually all genetic science. And Dr. Freeze went on to his own research career — also heavily supported by federal grants — studying a biological process that plays a role in dozens of rare genetic disorders.
Dr. Freeze’s work, both as an undergraduate and as a professional scientist, illustrates the unique role for government in scientific research. Few private investors would take an interest in disorders affecting just a handful of patients, much less in a project studying yellow slime growing in a national park. Yet that research has yielded tremendous dividends.
“Some of these things really pay off, some don’t — that’s science,” Dr. Freeze said. “The federal government has an ability to take a chance.”
The U.S. research and development system traces its roots to World War II, when the government poured money into universities and private companies as it scrambled to make advances in flight, communications and atomic weapons. Those relationships deepened in the following decades as the federal government funded projects tied to the Cold War and the space race, as well as research in basic sciences and medicine.
That research paved the way for many technologies that are central to the modern economy. The internet began as a network of university computers, funded by the Defense Department. Google began as a graduate student research project at Stanford,funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Virtually all of modern medicine relies, to some degree, on research that was supported by federal dollars. So does much of commercial agriculture.
Advertisement
Those discoveries, collectively, helped propel the United States’ rapid economic growth and rising standard of living in the 20th century. Arecent paperpublished by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that government investments in research and development accounted for at least a fifth of U.S. productivity growth since World War II.
“It has had a massive impact on people’s standards of living,” said Andrew Fieldhouse, an economist at Texas A&M University who was one of the study’s authors. “It fueled economic growth to a sizable degree.”
Federal investments in science have fallen, as a share of the economy, since the end of the Cold War, and Dr. Fieldhouse’s work suggests that is part of the reason that productivity growth, too, has slowed.
Researchers warn that the Trump administration’s policies could allow U.S. science to fall behind. The National Institutes of Health, for example, have proposed capping the rate at which the government reimburses universities and other research institutions for “indirect costs,” such as facilities and staff members not tied to a specific research project. In aworking paper published Mondayby the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists found that the policy would lead to substantial funding cuts and would disproportionately affect institutions with the most successful research programs.
Advertisement
“We’ve had a pretty good run over the past 60 to 80 years,” said Daniel P. Gross, a Duke University economist who was one of the study’s authors. “Sometimes you don’t realize the value of something until it’s gone.”
The concerns about losing ground in science are particularly acute in artificial intelligence, the technology that experts believe is most likely to drive productivity gains in coming decades. American companies have dominated the early phases of the A.I. revolution, partly because much of the foundational work was done at U.S. universities.
But the release this year of DeepSeek, an advanced A.I. model developed by a Chinese company, was seen bysome American technology leadersas a new “Sputnik moment” — a sign that the United States needs to redouble its efforts to avoid falling behind.
White House officials reject the notion that the administration’s policies are undermining U.S. leadership in science and technology. Vice President JD Vance, in aspeech in Parisin February, called for easing restrictions on A.I. development, among other steps, to ensure that the United States remains ahead of China and other rivals.
A White House official, speaking on background, said the administration’s moves to freeze grants and cut reimbursement rates reflect an effort to make federal investments in research more efficient, not to reduce support for the sciences overall.
Advertisement
Experts say there is ample room to reform the federal grant-making system. Application times for federal funding have gotten progressively longer over the years, and researchers dedicate an increasing share of their time to paperwork meant to ensure that government funds aren’t wasted.
“When I heard the initial idea of DOGE, I thought, well maybe there’s finally some momentum or impetus behind doing something here,” said Stuart Buck, director of the Good Science Project, a nonprofit organization and newsletter that has been critical of the federal research and development system.
So far, though, Dr. Buck has been disappointed. By focusing on purported waste, he said, and canceling projects seen as out of step with the administration’s political priorities — such as research related to race and gender or climate change — DOGE and other Trump administration efforts could make researchers even more risk-averse.
“It’s just puzzling to me that so many of these efforts seem to be geared toward being paranoid about any fraud or any potential wasteful activity,” Dr. Buck said. “There’s so many examples where a study that looked frivolous at one point in time ended up leading to a breakthrough later on.”
Scientists have similar concerns about some of the administration’s recent moves on immigration, including revoking the visas of students involved in political protests.
Advertisement
Immigrants have long played a disproportionate role in scientific and technological advancement in the United States. A2022 studyfound that immigrants have accounted for 36 percent of total innovation in the country since 1990, as measured through patents, despite making up less than 20 percent of the population. They are also more likely to start companies and to work at start-ups than native-born Americans.
“Immigrants are really critical, they punch above their weight,” said Britta Glennon, a University of Pennsylvania economist who has studied the role of immigrants in innovation.
Even without formal shifts in immigration policy, she added, the United States could become less attractive to global talent if foreign students and scientists no longer see the country as welcoming. Arecent working paperby Dr. Glennon and three co-authors found that Chinese students became less likely to study in the United States during the first Trump administration, even before it established formal restrictions.
“We know that international students are responsive to how they perceive the labor market to be in the U.S. and how receptive it’ll be for immigrants,” she said. “It’s pretty clear that it is not super receptive right now, so that is going to have effects.”
Ben Casselmanis the chief economics correspondent for The Times. He has reported on the economy for nearly 20 years.More about Ben Casselman
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
5 Minutes to Make You Love Music
|
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/27/arts/music/music-fivemins-collection.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
We asked writers, critics and musicians including Meshell Ndegeocello and Angel Bat Dawid to tell us what moves them in Coltrane’s spiritual jazz.
Listen to all the moods from the grand master of Western classical music: consoling, rousing, peaceful, passionate.
Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell: They altered the course of American music and raised the bar for improvisation. Listen to 10 experts’ favorites.
This is the best of the stormy, tender work of the composer who changed music.
Listen as Carlos Santana, Branford Marsalis and others pick their favorites of the moody master of 19th-century music.
It’s bossa nova and samba, but so much more — funky, soulful and esoteric. Listen to these songs chosen by Joyce Moreno, Marcos Valle, Amaro Freitas and more lovers of Brazilian rhythms.
What would Yo-Yo Ma, John Williams and Andrew Lloyd Webber pick to make a friend love the sweet-toned cello?
Listen to the gorgeous sound of a mass of voices: ancient, contemporary, gospel, opera, sacred, romantic.
We asked jazz musicians, writers and others to tell us what moves them. Listen to their choices.
We asked musicians and experts, including Thundercat, Patrice Rushen and Nicole Sweeney, which Hancock song they would play for a friend.
Writers, scholars, radio hosts and musicians, including the bassist Ron Carter, share songs that shine a light on an instrument that lays the foundation of jazz.
Coltrane changed the game in American music a few times over. Here’s a guided tour to his career, courtesy of 15 musicians, scholars, poets, writers and other experts.
Listen to the best of opera’s defining diva, chosen by Patti LuPone, Renée Fleming, Marina Abramovic and many more.
We asked a dozen musicians, scholars and critics to help take us on a tour of the music and mind of a pianist whose decades-long career made her a Mount Rushmore figure in jazz.
The drummer helped pioneer bebop in the 1940s and delivered a message of resistance and liberation from the 1960s on. Listen to 13 selections from musicians, writers and critics.
Navigate the trumpeter’s snaky, endless grooves with picks from Flying Lotus, Cindy Blackman Santana and Terence Blanchard, among other musicians, writers and critics.
Let Mark Hamill, Condoleezza Rice and Mitsuko Uchida be your guide to this bright, vivid master.
Many cities have rich jazz histories, but none goes back as far as New Orleans. We asked Wendell Pierce, Courtney Bryan and others what song they would play to get a friend to join the party.
Patti Smith, John Turturro and Renée Fleming chose their favorite dramatic passages.
We asked writers, critics and musicians including Kamasi Washington, Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings to tell us how they connect with Coleman’s fearless artistry.
We asked Lang Lang and some other favorite artists for the piano music they’d share.
All it might take is a second and a half of hearing her sing to make your spine tingle or your heart drop. Opera singers, jazz vocalists, writers and Vaughan’s biographer share their favorites.
The pianist and vocalist was at once magnetically powerful and laid-back, glamorous and understated. A mix of musicians, writers and radio personalities share their favorites.
The country has a rich, original relationship to jazz, with American techniques layered into regional traditions and rhythms. Explore 50 years of recordings picked by musicians, poets and writers.
Listen as our writers and some of our favorite artists share music of intimacy, intensity and joy.
Questlove, Dawn Richard and a range of other musicians, writers and critics share their favorites from the experimental pianist, organist and bandleader’s wide-ranging catalog.
Rufus Wainwright, Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli and others choose opera’s most passionate, golden voices.
We asked Jon Batiste, Arooj Aftab, Mary Halvorson and others to share their favorites.
Listen to Louis Armstrong’s sweetness, Miles Davis’s wild squall, Handel’s Baroque majesty and other favorites.
Are the vibes good? These tracks by Milt Jackson, Lionel Hampton, Roy Ayers and others, chosen by 12 musicians and writers, should convince you.
“He always was a genius,” Herbie Hancock says of his friend and collaborator. Hear a sampling of that genius in these 13 tracks.
Ivo van Hove, Justin Peck, Du Yun and others explore the music of today.
Five Minutes That Will Make You Love Classical MusicFive Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz
Enjoy unlimited access to all of The Times.
See subscription options
|
NY Times
|
Sexual Assault in the War
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/world/europe/ukraine-women-sexual-violence-war.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Russia-UkraineWar
Thousands of women may have been raped by Russian soldiers, experts say, but have kept quiet for fear of the stigma. But that is changing.
Thousands of women may have been raped by Russian soldiers, experts say, but have kept quiet for fear of the stigma. But that is changing.
Liudmyla in Ukraine’s Kherson region last year.Credit...Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times
Supported by
ByCarlotta GallandOleksandr Chubko
New York Times reporters spent several days with women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Kherson region of southern Ukraine.
A 77-year-old former high school teacher, turned out in a neat dress and hat, has been creating a quiet revolution in the villages of Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
Standing before a group of 10 women in a tent in the center of a village in Ukraine’s south last summer, she recounted her ordeal three years ago under Russian occupation.
“What I went through,” said the woman, named Liudmyla, her voice wavering. “I was beaten, I was raped, but I am still living thanks to these people.”
Beginning last year, Liudmyla and two other survivors, Tetyana, 61, and Alisa Kovalenko, 37, have spoken at a series of village meetings to raise awareness about conflict-related sexual violence. The meetings have been among the first efforts by survivors of sexual assault to bring into the open one of the most painful aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: what prosecutors and humanitarian workers say is widespread sexual assault of Ukrainian women under Russian occupation.
Liudmyla and Tetyana asked that their surnames and village names not be published to protect their privacy. Ms. Kovalenko has long spoken openly about the assault on her, which occurred in 2014 during the war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Relatively few women in Ukraine have come forward to report cases of rape during the conflict because of the stigma attached to sexual assault in Ukrainian society, which is deeply religious and conservative, especially in rural areas. Prosecutors have registered more than 344 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, 220 of them women, including 16 underage women.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber?Log in.
Want all of The Times?Subscribe.
Advertisement
|
NY Times
|
Cheap and Easy Dinner Ideas
|
https://cooking.nytimes.com/68861692-nyt-cooking/41238156-cheap-and-easy-dinner-ideas
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Staff Picks
From Our Newsletters
Perfect For
Everyday Recipes
By Meal
By Diet
By Method
Meat & Seafood
Vegetables & Fruits
Plant-Based Proteins
Rice, Grains, Pasta
By Upcoming Holiday
By Occasion
Staff Picks
From Our Newsletters
Perfect For
Everyday Recipes
By Meal
By Diet
By Method
Meat & Seafood
Vegetables & Fruits
Plant-Based Proteins
Rice, Grains, Pasta
By Upcoming Holiday
By Occasion
Editors’ Collection
Plenty of budget-friendly, delicious dinner recipes for inflation-heavy times.
Lidey Heuck
1,262
25 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Yotam Ottolenghi
256
1 hour 10 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Eric Kim
66
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Christian Reynoso
3,345
35 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Hetty Lui McKinnon
600
50 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
5,617
45 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kristina Felix
3 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kia Damon
6
1 hour 10 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Christian Reynoso
44
35 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sherry Rujikarn
26
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Andy Baraghani
321
15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Andy Baraghani
92
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Knific
134
1 hour
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kay Chun
420
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Genevieve Ko
224
4 3/4 hours, plus 4 hours' marinating
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kay Chun
63
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ashley Lonsdale
192
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
40
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ashley Lonsdale
5
1 ¾ hours, plus at least 8 hours’ soaking
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Dan Pelosi
1,238
2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Knific
205
1 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Carolina Gelen
1,050
35 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Andy Baraghani
285
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kay Chun
43
15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kay Chun
20
20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Alexa Weibel
647
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Knific
14
About 16 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Knific
132
About 2 hours 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Hetty Lui McKinnon
856
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
283
15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Zainab Shah
276
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Vallery Lomas
130
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Andy Baraghani
2,239
1 hour
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Yotam Ottolenghi
130
1 hour
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ashley Lonsdale
31
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Hetty Lui McKinnon
1,314
30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Eric Kim
235
15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Pati Jinich
1,262
10 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Kay Chun
101
1 hour 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Eric Kim
3,613
20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Knific
929
45 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Carolina Gelen
902
20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Priya Krishna
1,428
15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Martha Rose Shulman
3,865
55 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Knific
861
1 hour 30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Yasmin Fahr
1,007
20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Melissa Clark
16,453
45 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Anna Francese Gass
396
40 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
1-48of186results
363recipes
148recipes
43recipes
80recipes
Get recipes, tips and NYT special offers delivered straight to your inbox.
Opt out orcontact usanytime. See ourPrivacy Policy.
New York Times Cooking offers subscribers recipes, advice and inspiration for better everyday cooking. From easy weeknight dinners to holiday meals, our recipes have been tested and perfected to meet the needs of home cooks of all levels.Subscribe nowfor full access.
|
NY Times
|
Photos
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/world/asia/myanmar-thailand-earthquake-photos.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Earthquakein Myanmar and Thailand
The 7.7-magnitude quake caused widespread damage in Myanmar, a country already in chaos because of civil war. It was also felt in neighboring countries, including Thailand.
In Photos and Videos
The 7.7-magnitude quake caused widespread damage in Myanmar, a country already in chaos because of civil war. It was also felt in neighboring countries, including Thailand.
In Photos and Videos
Muslims offering morning prayers to start the Eid al-Fitr festival, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, on a road near destroyed mosques in Mandalay.Credit...Sai Aung Main/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Supported by
ByThe New York Times
A strong earthquake struck near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, on Friday, damaging or collapsing bridges and buildings across a swath of Southeast Asia. More than 1,600 people were killed and more than 2,300 injured, Myanmar’s military government said Saturday. With the full extent of the disaster still emerging, those numbers are likely to rise.
The 7.7-magnitude quake struck just before 1 p.m. local time, and a strong, 6.4-magnitude aftershock followed 11 minutes later. The shaking was felt in southern China and Vietnam and as far away as Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, where a tall building under construction collapsed.
A mother and her daughter lying on a mattress in the compound of Mandalay General Hospital in Mandalay.
Members of a China search-and-rescue team transferring a pregnant survivor from a collapsed building in the aftermath of the earthquake.
A partially collapsed building in Mandalay.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber?Log in.
Want all of The Times?Subscribe.
Advertisement
|
NY Times
|
3 U.S. Soldiers Found Dead in Lithuania After Their Vehicle Sank in a SwampThe soldiers were in a vehicle that became trapped in a bog during a training mission last week. A fourth soldier was still missing.3 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/lithuania-us-army-soldiers-swamp.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
The soldiers were in a vehicle that became trapped in a bog during a training mission last week. A fourth soldier was still missing.
ByAmanda HolpuchandYan Zhuang
Three U.S. Army soldiers were found dead in Lithuania on Monday, nearly a week after the armored vehicle they had been using during a training mission became stuck in a deep and muddy bog, the Army said.
Search and recovery operations for a fourth soldier who was also in the vehicle continued on Monday, the Army said.
The 70-ton vehicle was pulled out of the bog early on Monday morning, the Army said. For days, hundreds of people, including technical experts and U.S. Navy divers, had worked to solve the complex engineering challenge of recovering the vehicle from the bog. The operation required excavators, pumps and other construction equipment.
The soldierswere reported missing on Tuesdayafter they did not return from a training mission, according to the U.S. military. Their vehicle, an M88 Hercules, was found submerged in the bog on Wednesday.
Advertisement
The missing soldiers, from the First Brigade, Third Infantry Division, were training near Pabrade, a city in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus,a close ally of Russiaand a stalwart supporter of its war in Ukraine.
Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, the Third Infantry Division’s commanding general,said in a statementon Monday that “the search isn’t finished until everyone is home.”
“Words cannot express our gratitude to those still working around the clock during these extensive search and recovery efforts and your unwavering commitment not to rest until all are found,” General Norrie said.
The soldiers had been sent out in the M88 Hercules, essentially a giant armored tow truck, to extract another Army vehicle, the military said. They may have driven off the road and into the bog, and the soldiers appeared to have been trapped inside, according to an Army official in Europe.
Advertisement
U.S. Navy divers swam into the muddy bog, with zero visibility, to attach two cables to the sunken vehicle on Sunday night, the Army said. It took about two hours of winching to pull it out of the bog.
On Sunday, rescue efforts were hampered by a landslide, Dovile Sakaliene, the Lithuanian defense minister,saidon social media. She described the effort as an“exhausting fight with the power of the deep swamp.”
The search for the fourth soldier will be challenging, according to a senior U.S. Army official in Europe.
American and Lithuanian search crews were able to use sophisticated sonar technology to find the large, armored vehicle but such technology is less useful for locating a human body in a peat bog. The dive team has set up a grid system to methodically search for the fourth soldier, the official said.
The initial search for the soldiers, through thick forests and swampy terrain, involved Lithuanian military helicopters and dive teams, and hundreds of American and Lithuanian soldiers and law enforcement officers, the U.S. Army said.
Advertisement
Both Belarus and Russia have frequently criticized Lithuania, a member of NATO that used to be part of the Soviet Union, for hosting American and other allied troops.
Lithuania and other former Soviet states in Eastern Europe are growing worried that President Trump will weaken NATO. Their participation in recovery efforts to find the missing U.S. soldiers showcased what President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuaniasaid was the value of allies acting together.Poland, Lithuania’s neighbor and another member of NATO, also sent military engineers to help.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Amanda Holpuchcovers breaking news and other topics.More about Amanda Holpuch
Yan Zhuangis a Times reporter in Seoul who covers breaking news.More about Yan Zhuang
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
What We Know About Le Pen’s Conviction3 min read
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/marine-lepen-embezzlement-france.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Advertisement
Supported by
The far-right French politician was a leading candidate to become the country’s next president, but has now been barred from running for public office for five years.
ByAmelia NierenbergandAurelien Breeden
Amelia Nierenberg reported from London and Aurelien Breeden reported from Paris.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far right and a leading candidate to become the country’s next president, has beenbarredfrom running for public office for five years, after she and her party were convicted of embezzling millions of euros of European Union funds.
Ms. Le Pen, an anti-immigrant, populist politician, was also sentenced to four years in prison — with two years suspended and two that could be served under house arrest — and fined 100,000 euros, or about $108,000. She has consistently denied any wrongdoing and will appeal the verdict, which would put her jail sentence and the fine on hold.
But the ruling against Ms. Le Pen and her party, the National Rally, threatens to ruin her plans to run for the presidency in 2027. She has spent years trying to soften her party’s image and move it into the mainstream by disavowing its antisemitic roots after succeeding her father as leader of France’s far right.
Ms. Le Pen, 56, became the face of France’s far right after taking over the party in 2011 from her father,Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Advertisement
Ms. Le Pen has sought todetoxify the political movementhe built by softening some of its policies, changing the name of the party from the National Front to the National Rally, publicly rejecting her father’s antisemitism — he was convicted by a French court of Holocaust denial for saying that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” of history — and trying to court disaffected voters.
But even if the tone has changed, Ms. Le Pen’s platform is still staunchly hard right. Her policies include using severe measures to curb immigration and pushing for French-born citizens to have more rights to social benefits and other areas of state support, even though some argue that this could violate the French Constitution.
Ms. Le Pen has run for the country’s highest office three times, and although she has yet to win she has succeeded in steadily increasing her share of the vote and expanding her party’s reach. In the last presidential election in 2022, she won 41.5 percent of the vote, up from 33.9 percent in the previous election five years earlier.
Last year, the National Rally became the biggest single party in the National Assembly, the country’s lower house of Parliament, for the first time.
Advertisement
A French criminal court ruled that Ms. Le Pen played a “central role” in an illegal scheme by the party, when it was still called the National Front, touse the equivalent of almost $5 millionof European Parliament funds for party expenses between 2004 and 2016. The party was short of cash at the time, and Ms. Le Pen was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2017.
The court found that the party used European Parliament funds to pay assistants to National Front members of the body for work that was unrelated to E.U. business. The judges rejected Ms. Le Pen’s argument that it was appropriate for the assistants to do party-related work.
Bénédicte de Perthuis, the presiding judge, called the ban necessary because of the seriousness of the charges and the fact that the accused seemed unwilling to acknowledge the facts. The court has to “ensure that elected officials, like any citizen, do not benefit from any favorable treatment,” she said.
Ms. Le Pen has called the case a political witch hunt.
Ms. Le Pen left the court before the full verdict was read out and did not address reporters as she departed. She is set to speak on French television later on Monday.
The ruling does not strip her of her seat in the National Assembly, but Ms. Le Pen will only be able to run for president in 2027 if she secures a more favorable ruling on appeal before the deadline to enter the race. But even a successful appeal could take some time.
Advertisement
The court also ruled that the National Rally had to pay a 2 million euro fine, half of which would be suspended. Twenty-three other people were convicted on charges related to the scheme to embezzle European Parliament funds.
The ruling does not bar Jordan Bardella, Ms. Le Pen’s 29-year-old protégé, from running for president in her absence. He is seen as the leading alternative candidate.
The ruling could reignite the political chaos that roiled France last year after President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections. The French government is not popular, and struggled to pass a budget this year. It could be toppled by lawmakers in the National Assembly.
Ms. Le Pen and the National Rally could also paint the verdict as a threat against a popular politician and party, and French democracy itself.
Amelia Nierenbergis a breaking news reporter for The Times in London, covering international news.More about Amelia Nierenberg
Aurelien Breedenis a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.More about Aurelien Breeden
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Photos
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/world/europe/images-ukraine-war-fourth-year.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Russia-UkraineWar
A photographic chronicle of Russia’s invasion.
A photographic chronicle of Russia’s invasion.
Family members and friends of Vasyl Ratushnyi, 28, gathering in Maidan Square during his funeral in Kyiv, on March 5.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Supported by
With the largest and deadliest conflict in Europe since the end of World War II now in its fourth year, the scale of the devastation wreaked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to mount.
The front line is a place of ghastly violence where hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded, according toconservativeWesternestimates. The list of Ukrainian cities and towns largely leveled to the ground by Russian bombs and artillery grows with each passing month.
Russian forces have moved forward in small increments, sustaining a staggering number of casualties to take cities like Avdiivka, which they captured last year. Ukraine has been able to slow the advance by committing some of its limited reserves to counterattacks, includinginto the western Russian region of Kursk in a surprise assault, and in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in recent weeks.
President Trump has recentlysignaled a thawing relationshipbetween the United States and Russia, in what he characterized as the beginning of a negotiation to end the war. That has raised concerns he could favor Russia in a peace deal while leaving Ukraine on the sidelines.
Negotiations to end the warwill shape the future of Ukraine, and the recent developments mean some of its territory is likely to remain under Russian occupation.
Away from the front, millions of Ukrainians have spent hours in bomb shelters as Russia rains down missiles and drones on military units and civilians across the nation. Ukraine’s energy grid, severely damaged, is working but sporadically. Thousands of schools, hospitals and cultural institutions have been damaged or destroyed. Millions of people have lost their homes.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber?Log in.
Want all of The Times?Subscribe.
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
NY Times
|
Slow Cooker Recipes
|
https://cooking.nytimes.com/68861692-nyt-cooking/950138-amazing-slow-cooker-recipes
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Staff Picks
From Our Newsletters
Perfect For
Everyday Recipes
By Meal
By Diet
By Method
Meat & Seafood
Vegetables & Fruits
Plant-Based Proteins
Rice, Grains, Pasta
By Upcoming Holiday
By Occasion
Staff Picks
From Our Newsletters
Perfect For
Everyday Recipes
By Meal
By Diet
By Method
Meat & Seafood
Vegetables & Fruits
Plant-Based Proteins
Rice, Grains, Pasta
By Upcoming Holiday
By Occasion
Editors’ Collection
Whether you want chicken soup, beef stew or pulled pork, these slow cooker recipes will do the heavy lifting while you’re on the go.
Sarah DiGregorio
7,149
5 to 6 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
11,118
3 to 5 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
938
10 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
205
6 hours 30 minutes plus overnight soaking
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,926
10 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
2,692
4 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
961
8 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
484
5 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sam Sifton, Robin Chapman
12,095
6 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
3,184
8 hours 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
8,737
4 to 6 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
541
7 hours and 30 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio, Julie Sahni
313
4 hours and 25 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
362
6 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
492
About 6½ hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
942
About 3 ½ hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
610
About 6 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Naz Deravian
672
About 4 to 8 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
245
2 hours 50 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
194
6 hours and 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Ali Slagle
1,355
8 1/2 to 10 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
303
About 4 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
2,447
6 hours and 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
739
4 hours and 10 minutes to 5 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
3,744
About 8 to 10 hours, plus overnight soaking
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
349
7 hours and 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
577
7 hours and 15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
626
5 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,225
4 1/4 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
2,460
4 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Margaux Laskey
3,456
8 to 10 hours, plus refrigeration
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
137
4 1/4 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
536
8 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
3,873
6 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
515
About 8 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,382
8 hours 15 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
3,120
6 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
800
5 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,176
7 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
2,819
6 hours 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
651
7 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
818
4 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
900
6 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Jennifer Steinhauer
10,037
About 5 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,643
6 hours 20 minutes
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
4,226
10 to 12 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,825
4 1/2 to 6 1/2 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Sarah DiGregorio
1,167
4 to 5 hours
Log inorsign upto save this recipe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
1-48of80results
363recipes
148recipes
43recipes
94recipes
Get recipes, tips and NYT special offers delivered straight to your inbox.
Opt out orcontact usanytime. See ourPrivacy Policy.
New York Times Cooking offers subscribers recipes, advice and inspiration for better everyday cooking. From easy weeknight dinners to holiday meals, our recipes have been tested and perfected to meet the needs of home cooks of all levels.Subscribe nowfor full access.
|
NY Times
|
Israel’s Internal Fight
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/world/middleeast/israel-turmoil-government.html
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Middle EastTensions
Advertisement
Supported by
For months, Israelis put aside their deep rifts to fight a common enemy. Now, amid a renewed government push for power, they are battling one another.
ByPatrick Kingsley
Reporting from Jerusalem
Eighteen months ago, in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israelis suspended theirinternal conflictsto form a united military front against a shared external threat.
Now, that semblance of common cause has been cast aside. Beyond its borders, Israel has resumed fighting on four fronts — in Gaza, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Yemen. And internally, Israel’s citizens have returned to thebitter domestic feudsthat once again, pose existential questions about their country’sfuture.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition hasrevived its contentious efforts, frozen after the attack in 2023, to expand its control over other branches of government. The moves have set off mass protests after the government tried to fire the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service as well as the attorney general — two powerful gatekeepers who are overseeing investigations into both Mr. Netanyahu and his aides.
This week, Parliament will vote on the government’s plan to give itself greater control over the selection of justices on the Supreme Court, an institution that has long thwarted the ambitions of Mr. Netanyahu’s ultranationalist and religiously conservative allies.
Advertisement
“The foundations of the state are shaking,” Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, said in an interview. “In Israel, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice everything for his survival and we are closer to a civil war than people realize. In Gaza, we have returned to fighting — and for what? And overseas, I never remember such hatred, such opposition, to the state of Israel.”
To Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters, the moves are a legitimate effort to rein in unelected bureaucrats and judicial officials who have stymied the will of an elected government. “The leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote on social media last week.
But to his critics, Mr. Netanyahu’s decisions constitute, at best, a huge conflict of interest for a prime ministercurrently standing trial for corruption. At worst, they are an attempted putsch against the judicial branches of government.
Mr. Netanyahu has further spurred domestic anger by breaking the cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza; the return to war endangers not only Palestinians but up to 60 Israeli hostages still held in the territory. In returning to war, Mr. Netanyahu has also drawn retaliation from Hamas’s allies inLebanonand Yemen. And he has tested the patience and resolve of tens of thousands of exhausted military reservists who will be required to sustain what was already Israel’s longest war.
Advertisement
The public anger is exacerbated by the impression that Mr. Netanyahu has benefited politically from the return to war, which has helped shore up his fragile coalition government.
A far-right faction, Jewish Power, quit the government at the outset of a cease-fire in January,which raised the possibility that the war might end with Hamas still in charge of Gaza.
Hours after Israel restarted strikes on Gaza last Tuesday, killing hundreds of Palestinians, the party’s leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, praised the move and returned his group to the government, bolstering Mr. Netanyahu's majority in Parliament. That paves the way for the party to vote in favor of a new national budget whose passage by the end of the month is necessary to prevent the government’s collapse.
Mr. Ben-Gvir, who now oversees the police, is also one of the strongest supporters of the move to sack Ronen Bar, the head of the domestic intelligence service, and Gali Baharav-Miara, the attorney general. Both are considered to be significant checks on the far-right leader who was barred from serving in the Israeli military because of his extreme views and who has several convictions for incitement to racism and support for a terrorist group.
Advertisement
Analysts are divided about whether Mr. Netanyahu intends to continue endlessly with his various moves — both on the battlefield in Gaza and against his critics at home.
Some think he could soften some of his stances after the budget votes at the end of March, reducing his reliance on Mr. Ben-Gvir. A major litmus test is expected on April 8, when the Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on the legality of Mr. Bar’s firing. Mr. Netanyahu has hinted that he may ignore the ruling, and his response will indicate how far he is willing to defy the constitutional order.
“I don’t see him saying ‘no’ to the Supreme Court,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, adding, “In the vast majority of cases, Netanyahu ends up being conservative.” But even if the Israeli leader steps back from the brink, his critics say that Mr. Netanyahu has already caused irreparable damage by breaking so many norms to reach this point.
Mr. Olmert, the former prime minister, was also investigated for corruption while in office, and was ultimatelyconvicted and jailed. But he resigned his post before the case reached trial, and his government never tried to fire the attorney general who oversaw the investigation.
“What Netanyahu is doing would have been unthinkable,” Mr. Olmert said.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
Patrick Kingsleyis The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.More about Patrick Kingsley
Advertisement
We encourage you to review our updatedTerms of Sale,Terms of Service, andPrivacy Policy. By continuing, you agree to the updated Terms listed here.
|
BBC News
|
Is compulsory dog insurance needed to ensure victims of attacks get help?
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxgl1ewy1eo
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
A father wants a change in the law over pet insurance, after his daughter's face was left scarred by a dog attack outside their home.
Currently, it is not a legal requirement for owners to have cover in the UK.
But Alex, 39, from Bridgend, believes it should be mandatory in the same way car insurance is to cover things such as medical care, counselling and compensation, after Lilly, 11, was attacked.
Alex is also worried that future work, such as cleaning up the scar, will have to be paid for by his family privately.
The UK government said it was working to explore measures.
Warning: This story contains graphic details and images
Lilly was 10 when she was attacked in September 2023, and had just finished playing football with a neighbour when the Staffordshire bull terrier cross breed bit her face.
Her father said "it was horrific".
"My wife and I were watching TV, and my youngest daughter was getting her hair plaited," said Alex
"Lilly was out playing football with the local boys and popped back to one of their houses and we heard a scream because it's only 50 yards away.
"We saw Lilly coming away with a piece of her face missing.
"There was loads of blood."
Alex drove his daughter to the accident and emergency unit at the Princess of Wales hospital in Bridgend.
Alex said "she asked me in the car am I going to die, dad".
"She's a very tough kid but it obviously hurt and she cried a lot but the shock sent her white," he added.
Lilly underwent surgery at Morriston Hospital in Swansea soon afterwards and spent two nights at the hospital.
"My friends were worried about me when I was away in hospital, I am improving but every now and again it's really scary and sometimes I look at my scar and I don't like the look of it and it's scary that this can happen," she said.
"I put on a scar cream most nights to help it improve."
The family also have a dog called Snapple, and Lilly was cautious about going near him after the attack by the neighbour's dog.
They never have the dog around guests because it now makes Lilly anxious.
Lilly said: "When Snapple sneezed, it would make me jump and I would burst into tears but now I find I'm not really scared about myself I'm scared of it happening to other people.
"So, when my dog is around my friends I get really panicked and I want to put her away so that nothing can happen."
Alex said the dog that attacked Lilly was destroyed and the owner was fined.
"It was very upsetting when there was nothing more that I could do and there's nothing we could have done to prevent it," he said.
"It's just not something you expect 50 yards from you own front door."
Lilly has not undergone counselling because of the waiting times and her father describes her as being "resilient."
After advice from a local GP Lilly started keeping a diary and her parents were allowed to read it and would address any entries they found upsetting and see how they could help.
She also received support from her primary school, having weekly discussions with a teacher and would share how she was coping after the dog attack.
Lilly said she would like to be a judge or a maths teacher when she is older and is concentrating on her schoolwork and sport to help her recovery.
"I really enjoy playing football because it gives me a break from the world, and nothing can hurt me there and the best thing about it is I can be with my friends," she said.
Alex said his daughter was emotional because of the scarring when she attended her leaving prom at primary school last year.
"It's a time when everyone gets dressed up and Lilly was upset when she was getting ready," he said.
"My worry is when she gets older, if she was to have surgery to clean the scar up, she can't have that on the NHS, it'll have to be done privately.
"I don't think it's fair she has no recourse to remedy a scar which was left through no fault of her own."
Alex is now calling for a change in the law and for all dog owners to insure their animals.
The consumer group, Which, said pet insurance policies currently available will have third-party liability.
It means, if your dog injures someone or damages their property it will cover legal costs and compensation.
Alex said: "It should be as normal as owning a car, any animal owner but especially dog owners, should have insurance.
"If you own an animal that could cause harm at a minimum you should insure them for a liability against that harm.
"It seems insane that it doesn't already happen.
""We have insurance on our dog and it's not the cheapest thing, a lot of people are struggling with cash, so they don't want to pay insurance.
"We want it to be a legal requirement, If you own a dog you must insure it."
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Transport and Rural Affairs said: "Owners of any breed of dog which is dangerously out of control are breaking the law. We are working at pace to explore measures to reduce dog attacks and promote responsible dog ownership across all breeds of dog.
"We continue to work with the police, local authorities and animal welfare groups to prevent dog attacks by addressing dog control issues before they escalate and using the full force of the law where needed."
Gill Grose was among the Postcode Lottery winners in Walkington Drive, Market Weighton.
Tourists make up the majority of those fined and this "sends the wrong message", a councillor says.
Natalie Hodge runs 30 miles, with her dog for most of it, to raise money for Mind Jersey.
A schnauzer-poodle cross died after being attacked by another dog on its walk in Banbury.
Planners say noise, including barking dogs, could cause a disturbance around the clock.
Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.TheBBCisnot responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93gpqvp8w5o
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Rubbish has been piling up on Birmingham streets for almost a month
A major incident has been declared by Birmingham City Council over the ongoing bin strike, which has left 17,000 tonnes of waste on the streets.
Leader John Cotton said it was in response to concerns for public health as the authority struggles to clear the rubbish, which has led to the issue being raised in Parliament.
It declaration means the authority can increase its street cleaning operation and fly-tipping removal, by bringing in an extra 35 vehicles and crews.
Unite union members have been on all-out strike since 11 March in a row over pay, and over this latest move bosses accused the council of being "hellbent on imposing" its plan for salary cuts and demotions.
Residents in many areas of the city say they have had enough of seeing mountains of rubbish piling up, and are asking questions as to why some areas are apparently seeing bins being emptied while others are not.
As the strike was being raised in the House of Commons, the government said it was "monitoring the situation closely".
Mr Cotton said a lot of the difficulty in clearing the waste in the streets had been caused by staff on picket lines who, he said, were preventing vehicles from getting out of depot.
Birmingham City Council said 17,000 tonnes of waste had gone uncollected due to the strike
It was "regrettable" the council had to take this step, Mr Cotton said.
"[But] we cannot tolerate a situation that is causing harm and distress to communities across Birmingham," he said.
"I respect the right to strike and protest, however actions on the picket line must be lawful and sadly the behaviour of some now means we are seeing a significant impact on residents and the city's environment.
"Unless we declare a major incident and deploy the waste service's contingency plan, then we would be unable to clear the backlog of waste on the streets."
Talks between the council and Unite broke down at the end of last week, after no agreement was reached in the all-out strike, which began on 11 March
Declaring the major incident also allows the council to "work with partners to better manage the risks the city is facing", which could include increased sharing of data.
Further support from neighbouring councils and the government could also be explored, the authority said.
Tories call for government action over bin strike
Union hopes over bin strike redundancy plans
Councillor cancels Unite membership amid bin strikes
Speaking in the House of Commons, local government minister Jim McMahon said "well-established arrangements" were in place in the city.
"If local leaders on the ground in Birmingham feel that tackling these issues goes beyond the resources available to them and they request national support, then of course we stand ready to respond," he said.
"This government will always back local leaders and give them the support that they need."
However, Kevin Hollinrake, shadow local government secretary, accused the Labour government of being in "total denial" and said declaring a major incident was not enough.
The move came after the Conservatives wrote to ministers to hold urgent talks and send in "strike-busting private rubbish collectors to help clean up the rat-infested rubbish covered streets".
Unite said it was "determined" to find a resolution to the ongoing strike action
Negotiations between the council and Unite were held on Thursday but broke down, with the authority saying all offers on the table had been rejected.
In response, the council said it had launched aperiod of collective consultation regarding compulsory redundancies.
Unite claims planned restructuring of the refuse service will see some 50 workers lose £8,000 a year, and about 20 lose £2,000 per annum.
Sharon Graham, its general secretary, said that instead of declaring a major incident, the authority could easily resolve the dispute but instead was "hellbent on imposing its plan of demotions and pay cuts at all costs".
"We can only conclude that this massive pay cut for hundreds of refuse workers is only the start and this is really about stamping out any future opposition to its plans to unleash austerity 2.0 on Birmingham," Ms Graham said.
"I urge Birmingham council to rethink this disastrous strategy and to find a way forward that doesn't involve workers and communities having to pay for politicians' mistakes."
Residents of the Small Heath area of the city told BBC Midlands Today they were fed up with the worsening conditions.
Ian Cook, who lives on Henshall Road, said he has had to keep his windows closed because of the smell.
Pointing to the pile of rubbish on his street, he said: "We didn't have any rats until this lot appeared. Now we've got them having parties on the grass."
Basmin Khan, of the Small Heath Forum, said the mounting rubbish piles were becoming a "health hazard"
Basmin Khan, from Small Heath Forum, said: "There have been rats going under the cars, going into the bins, going into the front gardens – it's a health hazard."
She said there were parts of Birmingham where rubbish was being collected and that questions needed to be asked over why Small Heath was being ignored.
Naeem Yusuf, another Small Heath Forum member, said people were "getting depressed" around the area.
"We've had a lot of people complaining that we don't want to open the front doors now because of the stench that these bags are bringing out," he said.
Tell us which stories we should cover in Birmingham and the Black Country
Follow BBC Birmingham onBBC Sounds,Facebook,external,X,externalandInstagram,external.
Striking bin workers may face losing jobs - council
Striking bin worker speaks out on risks and cuts
Birmingham City Council
Rollout of Birmingham's fortnightly bin collections 'delayed' as bins strike chaos continues
What next for Priory Square as massive scheme that could replace it approved five years ago
Gorgeous local bridal shop makes prestigious regional awards shortlist
Government accused of ‘washing its hands’ of Birmingham bin strike problem
Police cordon in place after woman found dead
Main road set to be closed for several days
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
Sentencing guidelines ditched after 'two-tier' row
Le Pen attacks ban from running for public office as 'political decision'
Germany decides to leave history in the past and prepare for war
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
Secret filming reveals brazen tactics of UK immigration scammers
Three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises
Alarms, overdoses and saving lives: Two days in UK's first drug injection room
AI was enemy No. 1 during Hollywood strikes. Now it's in Oscar-winning films
In pictures: Eid celebrations around the world
'Greedy landlords are cashing in and forcing us out of town'
Royal Watch: Get the latest royal stories and analysis with Sean Coughlan’s weekly newsletter
Stacey Dooley explores Britain’s shoplifting epidemic
Watchlist Add Stacey Dooley to your Watchlist in iPlayer
Lily and Miquita discuss the new drama Adolescence
Subscribe Add Miss Me? to My Sounds
The devil's in the detail and every crime leaves a trace
Watchlist Add Forensics: The Real CSI to your Watchlist in iPlayer
The historic handshake in space in July 1975
Subscribe Add Witness History to My Sounds
Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y9134jy0jo
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
This picture shows the moment Sam Wall (l) met Brad Burton (c) and his friend Alan Price (r) in Birmingham
The meeting between motivational speaker Brad Burton and Sam Wall lasted less than a minute. She posed for a picture with him after attending one of his workshops and later left a glowing video testimonial.
It was unremarkable, Mr Burton says. "Just one of the thousands of people I must have met over the years."
Two years later, she started attacking him online.
In hundreds of posts, Wall described him as manipulative, a psychopath and a sociopathic abuser. Day after day, she accused him of making death threats, breaking her windows and killing her cat - all false allegations.
"She put it on social media across all platforms. She was painting a picture that, somewhere along the way, I had done all these things and I was trying to cover it up," Mr Burton tells BBC Panorama.
"How do you prove a negative? That I had not poisoned the cat? Social media and the way it works, it's guilty until proven innocent."
Sam Wall has been told to expect a prison sentence after pleading guilty to stalking and harassment
Wall, 55, a social media consultant, pleaded guilty to charges of stalking and sending false messages at Manchester Magistrates' Court last November.
Her sentencing was delayed for a second time last week, but the judge told her to expect a prison sentence.
Wall's legal team said a psychiatric report shows she has a chronic delusional mental health illness.
Her conviction was in relation to two victims - Mr Burton and businesswoman Naomi Timperley - who were targeted with abusive messages over the past four years.
"It's just been hideous, really hideous, and I don't know why it happened," Mrs Timperley tells us. "I'm still really anxious, sometimes I get really sad."
BBC Panorama has spoken to other victims who say they were stalked by Wall over a period of more than 10 years.
Some had never met Wall, while others only knew her as a passing acquaintance.
Wall posted false accusations about Mr Burton across all social media platforms, including these on X and Facebook
At the time Wall targeted Mr Burton, he was running a network supporting hundreds of small businesses across the UK.
Many of her abusive posts were detailed - one was 20,000 words long. Some were shared on LinkedIn, where she had 30,000 followers - the very platform Mr Burton relied on to promote his work.
While the pandemic hit him hard, he says she helped to sink his business.
Wall also falsely claimed that Mr Burton had in fact been harassing her for 10 years - and that he had been arrested and jailed.
Mr Burton posted pictures of himself online to prove he was not in prison. Wall responded by claiming his psychopathic twin was taking the photos and appearing at events to cover up the fact he had been locked up.
His friend Alan Price knew Wall was lying about the 10-year claim, because he had introduced them at the workshop two years earlier.
"She's telling everybody that Brad Burton is in jail, but I was actually out in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset having a curry with him," he says.
In an attempt to stop her, Mr Burton went to a solicitor who advised him to send a cease and desist letter. Wall then responded by publishing the letter online and saying he could sue her - but she had no money.
"I've been personally attacked... and accused of really vile things," Naomi Timperley tells Panorama
Mrs Timperley had only met Wall in passing - she followed her on Twitter and they were connected on LinkedIn. She was also targeted with hundreds of messages - accused of criminal damage, destroying Wall's business and of joining up with others to carry out so-called gang stalking.
Wall also falsely claimed Mrs Timperley had been arrested for harassment.
"I've been personally attacked on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and accused of really vile things," she tells us.
Wall continued her online attacks even after she had been charged with stalking.
Panorama - My Online Stalker
About 600,000 people a year report online stalking and harassment to the police in England and Wales. So, what does it feel like to be a victim?
Watch now on iPlayer or on Monday 31 March at 20:00 GMT on BBC One (20:30 in Northern Ireland)
Manchester-based entrepreneur Justine Wright was targeted over a decade. She had employed Wall for a couple of months and, when Wall left, the online stalking began.
Ms Wright is a marketing consultant and Wall repeatedly targeted her clients - major companies - with false claims. Justine had never met Brad, but Wall accused her of conspiring with him to poison her cat.
People might be surprised by the number of victims and that Wall did not disguise her identity, says Rory Innes, chief executive of the Cyber Helpline, a charity that helps victims of online crime.
But he says this is common.
"It's a horrendous case and she will be causing harm to lots of people and changing their lives. But this is happening to hundreds of thousands of people every year."
Listen to Darragh read this article
BBC Panorama reporter Darragh MacIntyre explains how one woman targeted several people.
Panorama has spoken to other victims who do not want to be identified. One says he was stalked for more than a decade, during which time Wall sent thousands of texts, plus 10,000-word emails to his friends and business contacts.
Wall would also turn up at his work pretending to be his wife, he says, and accusing him of domestic abuse.
All of the victims complained to the social media companies about Wall's posts, but they have not been taken down.
Social media lawyer Paul Tweed tells Panorama he was not surprised the companies had failed to help.
"They decide what should be taken down, they decide when it should be taken down and how it should be taken down. And they will say, when you ask them, that they comply with the law," he says.
LinkedIn says it can't comment on individual users, but it does not allow bullying or harassment and it will take action against anything that violates its policies. Instagram, Facebook and X did not respond to Panorama's request for comment.
None of the companies have taken down Wall's abusive messages, even though Panorama told them about Wall's conviction two months ago.
Last week, she posted another abusive message about Mr Burton.
Brad Burton says he forgives Wall and hopes she gets the help she needs.
The charity Cyber Helpline has estimated that 600,000 people report online stalking to the police every year. Another charity, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, says fewer than 2% of stalking and harassment complaints end with a conviction.
A major review by policing bodies last year found a lack of understanding of online stalking and evidence of the police failing to take it seriously.
The advice to victims of online stalking is basic - don't engage, keep records and report it to the police. But the people Panorama spoke to did that, and the abuse continued.
Mr Burton and and Mrs Timperley were unhappy with the response they got from Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
Outcomes for victims are really poor, Roy Innes from the Cyber Helpline says.
"So few of these cases actually end up with an investigation," he says. "And when an investigation does happen, the technology element can mean it takes years to get to the point where the evidence is being looked at."
A spokesperson for GMP says delays in the wider criminal justice system affected Wall's case and the force achieved positive outcomes for more than 3,000 victims of this type of crime last year.
We approached Wall for comment, but she did not respond.
Meanwhile, Mr Burton says he forgives her. "I hope she gets the help that she needs and she finds peace in her own life," he says.
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
Sentencing guidelines ditched after 'two-tier' row
Le Pen attacks ban from running for public office as 'political decision'
Germany decides to leave history in the past and prepare for war
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
Secret filming reveals brazen tactics of UK immigration scammers
Three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises
Alarms, overdoses and saving lives: Two days in UK's first drug injection room
AI was enemy No. 1 during Hollywood strikes. Now it's in Oscar-winning films
In pictures: Eid celebrations around the world
'Greedy landlords are cashing in and forcing us out of town'
Royal Watch: Get the latest royal stories and analysis with Sean Coughlan’s weekly newsletter
Stacey Dooley explores Britain’s shoplifting epidemic
Watchlist Add Stacey Dooley to your Watchlist in iPlayer
Lily and Miquita discuss the new drama Adolescence
Subscribe Add Miss Me? to My Sounds
The devil's in the detail and every crime leaves a trace
Watchlist Add Forensics: The Real CSI to your Watchlist in iPlayer
The historic handshake in space in July 1975
Subscribe Add Witness History to My Sounds
Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Primark boss quits after complaint about behaviour
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c934pzekdz9o
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Primark boss Paul Marchant has resigned following an allegation by a woman about "his behaviour towards her in a social environment".
Associated British Foods (ABF), which owns Primark, said following an investigation by external lawyers, Mr Marchant "acknowledged his error of judgement and accepts that his actions fell below the standards expected" by the business.
Mr Marchant co-operated with the investigation and apologised to the individual, said ABF.
The Primark boss had also been involved in a previous incident involving "inappropriate communication", ABF later confirmed.
The company said that incident had been investigated "some time ago" and that "proportionate action" had been taken.
ABF declined to provide any further details, including whether the incidents involved colleagues or individuals from outside the company. A spokesperson told the BBC this was to protect their identities as much as possible.
Mr Marchant became chief executive of Primark in 2009, taking over from the firm's founder Arthur Ryan.
In announcing Mr Marchant's resignation, George Weston, chief executive of ABF, said: "I am immensely disappointed. Colleagues and others must be treated with respect and dignity. Our culture has to be, and is, bigger than any one individual."
He added: "At ABF, we believe that high standards of integrity are essential. Acting responsibly is the only way to build and manage a business over the long term."
The company said it remains in contact with the individual "who rightly raised her concerns and have offered her our support".
While Primark - or Penneys as it is known in Ireland - has been around since 1969 when Mr Ryan opened the first shop in Dublin, it began ramping up its overseas expansion under Mr Marchant's leadership.
Its low-price clothing and rapidly changing stock won over cash-strapped but fashion-conscious younger customers. Although, according to Catherine Shuttleworth, retail analyst at the consultancy Savvy, it has got "ubiquitous appeal".
She said: "It has allowed access to affordable clothing for everybody and that has tied into a period of time where global supply chains have significantly changed, so that means you can access products and materials better and more easily."
Prior to Primark, Mr Marchant worked for a number of retailers such as Debenhams, Topman and New Look. But, like his predecessor Mr Ryan, he has remained out of the spotlight.
Ms Shuttleworth said Primark's leadership "flies under the radar a bit because - it sounds a bit cheesy - they let their shops and their products do the talking".
Unlike many of its rivals, Primark resisted selling its products online before finally relenting in 2022 after Covid restrictions drove people to internet shopping. Even then, Primark onlylaunched a click-and-collect serviceas opposed to offering deliveries.
Like other low-cost fashion chains, Primark has been criticised for producing cheap, throwaway clothing.
In a rare interview, Mr Marchant told the BBC in 2022: "We have worked so hard and continue to work hard on ensuring that we're improving the quality and the durability of our clothing.
"We don't want customers to buy something and then discard it. We want them to buy, love and keep it in their wardrobe [and] hand it down to their friends."
Primark is a key part of the wider ABF business, contributing nearly half of the group's overall sales of £20bn.
However, in its most recent trading update covering the Christmas period, Primark reported a fall in sales for the UK and Ireland, which accounts for 45% of the retailer's revenues.
ABF's share price fell by nearly 4% to £18.64 after Monday's announcement.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Mr Marchant's departure came at a trying time for Primark.
''The change at the top will be unsettling particularly given that Primark delivered a very mixed bag of results at the last count," she said.
"This leadership upset comes amid weaker consumer sentiment which has meant footfall at its stores has fallen - and the chain has been losing market share in the UK."
She said that internationally the company has performed well, but added: "There could be uncertainty ahead about the speed of expansion given the change of boss."
Following Mr Marchant's "immediate" departure, ABF's finance director Eoin Tonge will become Primark's interim chief executive.
The firm's financial controller, Joana Edwards, will step into Mr Tonge's role. The company said: "Both executives have the experience to perform these roles well."
ABF is majority-owned by the billionaire Weston family who, until 2021, owned the department store Selfridges.
Many of the shops and restaurants on Mill St have been closed or boarded up for years.
The 233-year-old chain will become TGJones but the WH Smith brand will continue at airports and railway stations.
The Square, in Birmingham city centre, closed without warning on Tuesday.
Businesses on Hitchin's High Street say the Budget is increasing their costs by thousands of pounds.
Nearby pub, The Grey Lantern, says the closure of the centre means they have been forced to shut.
Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.TheBBCisnot responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Girl, 11, missing in Thames in east London
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2x807n7p8o
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
An 11-year-old girl is missing after she went into the River Thames in east London, police have said.
Metropolitan Police were called to reports the girl had entered the river close to Bargehouse Causeway in North Woolwich, at about 13:15 BST.
A "large scale" search was launched - but it was scaled down a few hours later, with London Ambulance Service (LAS) and London Fire Brigade (LFB) saying the police were now in charge of the operation.
It is believed the girl and some friends were on a slipway by the waterside before the girl went into the water.
Neighbours tried to help after some youngsters raised the alarm.
One woman who lives nearby got a lifeguard ring and ran over - but she said she couldn't find the girl.
"I found her clothes - socks, shoes and jacket and a mobile phone and gave them to the police.
"There was a little boy with her and he said he tried to hold her hand to pull her out but her hand slipped.
"It was terrible."
The LFB, which used its drone team and fire boat, said search operations for firefighters concluded at about 15:50 BST, when "responsibility for the incident was left with the police".
Also in attendance were HM Coastguard, the RNLI, the London Ambulance Service, including a hazardous area response team, and the Metropolitan Police Service.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio London onSoundsand follow BBC London onFacebook,XandInstagram. Send your story ideas tohello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk
Steven Grygelko, whose stage name was Heklina, was found dead in a flat in Soho two years ago.
The woman, thought to be the baby's mother, is held on suspicion of concealing a birth and neglect.
Fourteen of the Square Mile's 25 wards were not contested at the Common Council election on 20 March.
Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community photographed during prayer at Baitul Futuh Mosque.
Necklaces, hair pins and watches seized by police in London are waiting for owners to claim them.
Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.TheBBCisnot responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Camera set up to catch Loch Ness Monster discovered
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx20g82y1k8o
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine said it was remarkable that the camera had survived 55 years in the loch
An underwater camera set up 55 years ago to try and photograph the Loch Ness Monster has been found by accident by a robot submarine.
The ocean-going yellow sub -called Boaty McBoatface- was being put through trials when its propeller snagged the mooring for the 1970s camera system.
It is believed it was lowered 180m (591ft) below the loch's surface by the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, a group set up in the 1960s to uncover the existence of Nessie in the waters.
No footage of Nessie has been found on the camera, but one of the submarine's engineers was able to develop a few images of the loch's murky waters.
The camera was protected inside a glass container.
The camera was put into the loch in the 1970s
Boaty McBoatface has been used in trials in Loch Ness
Adrian Shine, of The Loch Ness Project - which has been researching the loch since the 1970s, helped to identify the camera.
He said it was likely to be one of six deployed. Three were lost in the loch during a gale.
Mr Shine said: "It was an ingenious camera trap consisting of a clockwork Instamatic camera with an inbuilt flash cube, enabling four pictures to be taken when a bait line was taken.
"It is remarkable that the housing has kept the camera dry for the past 55 years, lying more than 130m (426ft) deep in Loch Ness."
No sign of Nessie was found on the camera's film
The film and camera have been handed over to an exhibition centre
The UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has been carrying out trials of marine autonomous underwater vehicles for almost 10 years.
NOC's Matt Kingsland said: "At 230m (754ft) deep, Loch Ness is an ideal location to testing our robotics, their sensors and systems, before they're deployed in the deep ocean to help answer the big questions we have.
"While this wasn't a find we expected to make, but we're happy that this piece of Nessie hunting history can be shared and perhaps at least the mystery of who left it in the loch can be solved."
The film, camera and its housing have been handed to The Loch Ness Centre, in Drumnadrochit, near to where it was found.
A member of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau works on a film camera in the hills above the loch in 1966
Robot Boaty McBoatface got its name following an online initiative in 2016 in which the public was asked to suggest a name for a new polar ship.
Boaty McBoatfacewas the suggestion that gained most support.
UK government ministers rejected this as inappropriate, and ordered that ship be called RRS Sir David Attenborough. It was decided, however, that one of its robot submarines could be named Boaty McBoatface.
10 Times 'Nessie' Made a Splash
The Loch Ness Monster myth is surrounded by claims and confirmed hoaxes. Over 90 years on from the first ‘sighting’ here's a rundown of ten weird and wonderful headline making moments.
Hundreds join huge search for Loch Ness Monster
Nessie hunter: I thought this job would be easier
Loch Ness Monster may be giant eel, say scientists
What happens if Nessie is found?
Veteran Highland councillor in shock resignation Veteran Highland councillor in shock resignation
Is this the perfect pass for 24 hours in London?
March ends on a high as Wick experiences warmest day so far
Inverness Travellers leave ‘20 bags of rubbish and underwear’ after Torvean Park stay
Proposed tourist tax should be used to address housing crisis, say Living Rent Highland campaigners
Timetable for looming A9 roadworks on Cromarty Bridge revealed Timetable for looming A9 roadworks on Cromarty Bridge revealed
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
Sentencing guidelines ditched after 'two-tier' row
Le Pen attacks ban from running for public office as 'political decision'
Germany decides to leave history in the past and prepare for war
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
Secret filming reveals brazen tactics of UK immigration scammers
Three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises
Alarms, overdoses and saving lives: Two days in UK's first drug injection room
AI was enemy No. 1 during Hollywood strikes. Now it's in Oscar-winning films
In pictures: Eid celebrations around the world
'Greedy landlords are cashing in and forcing us out of town'
Royal Watch: Get the latest royal stories and analysis with Sean Coughlan’s weekly newsletter
Stacey Dooley explores Britain’s shoplifting epidemic
Watchlist Add Stacey Dooley to your Watchlist in iPlayer
Lily and Miquita discuss the new drama Adolescence
Subscribe Add Miss Me? to My Sounds
The devil's in the detail and every crime leaves a trace
Watchlist Add Forensics: The Real CSI to your Watchlist in iPlayer
The historic handshake in space in July 1975
Subscribe Add Witness History to My Sounds
Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Has the government really 'returned' 24,000 people?
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyw8jw11jwo
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Sir Keir Starmer has highlighted his government efforts to tackle illegal immigration, saying: "We've returned more than 24,000 people who have no right to be here."
He was speaking at an international summit in London aimed at tackling people-smuggling gangs.
The Home Office has also posted a video on X, showing people being escorted onto planes by immigration enforcement officials, with the words: "we have removed more than 24,000 people".
But the claim is misleading.The government's latest figures show that only 6,339 of these were "enforced returns".The majority were "voluntary returns" - and a significant number of these happen without the government's direct involvement or even knowledge.
The Home Office says all returns outcomes are the result of collective efforts by the department - we asked it for a full breakdown of its latest figures which it has not provided.
The Home Office records "returns" of people who have no legal right to be in the UK.
This could be because they have entered illegally - on a small boat for example - or have overstayed their visa or are subject to deportation action because of a criminal conviction.
Returns are classified as "enforced" or "voluntary".
An enforced return might require an immigration officer to escort an individual on to a flight to ensure that they have left the UK.
Some voluntary returns involve government assistance, for example individuals can have their flight paid for and get up to £3,000 towards resettlement costs.
But in other voluntary returns, people leave the UK independently without the government's knowledge at the time. These departures may only come to light later, through checks against visa or flight records, for example.
These are called "other verified" - or independent - returns.
We asked the Home Office for a full breakdown of the 24,000 figure used by the prime minister to see how many of these returns fall into this last category.
It was not able to provide this.
However, we can look back at the last full set of published returns figures which cover the period between July (when Labour came to power) and December 2024.
Over this period there were 17,300 returns.
Out of this overall figure, 6,150 returns (35%) were categorised as "other verified" - in order words, individuals who left the UK without notifying the government.
This was the largest single returns category.
As the above chart shows, after 'independent' the next largest category was 'enforced' at 26%.
The remaining categories are 'assisted' (25%) - where a person leaves as part of a Home Office scheme and 'controlled' (14%) - where a person either leaves at their own expense and tells officials before they go, or where the Home Office oversees their departure
A recent report by the Migration Observatory, University of Oxford said: "It is unclear to what extent, if at all, government activity and policy affects the number of people returning independently (as opposed to other factors like economic conditions)."
"There are many evidence and data gaps that make it difficult to get a full picture of deportations and returns", it added.
However, ministers and Labour MPs have repeatedly implied that the government is actively involved in all returns of immigration offenders.
Claims using an overall returns figure and either the words "removed" or "returned" have been made in interviews, in Parliament and on social media at least 20 times in recent months.
And Border Security minister Dame Angela Eagle said on 31 March: "We have already deported – sent home – 19,000 people with no right to be here."
We asked the Home Office how the government can claim credit for individuals who leave of their own accord and without it being aware of their departure at the time.
It said it has both a direct and an indirect role in returns and pointed to wider measures that discourage and prevent immigration offending.
On its social media posts showing people being escorted onto planes, it says these are illustrative and the public will understand that ways of offenders leaving the country will vary considerably.
The returns figures also reveal that 1,053 people who arrived in the UK on small boats were returned over the July to December period. The number includes both enforced and voluntary returns.
In the same period, 23,242 people arrived on small boats.
What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
Downing Street does not rule out retaliating if new tariffs are imposed on Wednesday.
Keir Starmer tells them there is not a "policy lever that can be pulled" to combat online misogyny.
Sir Keir Starmer says upgrading rail connections could "massively improve" people's lives.
Speculation over the proposed law increased after Sir Keir Starmer reportedly cancelled a meeting.
Veteran Labour spin doctor Matthew Doyle says "it's time to pass the baton" on in a shake-up of the PM's media team.
Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.TheBBCisnot responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Lib Dems aim to become 'party of Middle England'
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxn6x39qyxo
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said he wants to replace the Conservatives as the "party of Middle England", as he launched his campaign for the local elections.
Sir Ed said the Lib Dems were vying for votes in 20 Tory-run council areas and aiming to overtake the Conservatives as the second-biggest party in local government.
The Lib Dem leader told activists May's elections were a "two-horse race" between his party and the Tories in much of the country.
He also said his party was now the "natural home" for voters fed up with Labour and disappointed with its record in government so far.
Sir Ed said: "These local elections are a chance for the Liberal Democrats to replace the Conservatives as the party of Middle England.
"We can overtake the Conservatives as the second biggest party of local government, replacing failing Conservative-run councils that take their residents for granted with Liberal Democrat ones that work hard for their local communities."
Sir Ed kicked off his party's campaign in typically zany fashion in Oxfordshire, where he was given a lesson in hobbyhorsing and ran through an obstacle course.
The Lib Dems lead the county council in Oxfordshire and did well there in last year's general election, ending up with five MPs.
Overall, the Lib Dems have 72 MPs, their highest ever, and are hoping to build on that success in elections to 24 of England's 317 councils and mayoral authorities on 1 May.
Under Sir Ed's leadership, they've made a point of focusing their campaigning in Tory-held areas in the south of England, described by them as the "blue wall".
The Lib Dems toppeda recent YouGov opinion pollin the south of England.
In particular, the party is targeting Conservative-run councils up for election in May, including those in Shropshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, Devon and Gloucestershire.
"If you look at what happened last July in the general election, we won many of these seats," Sir Ed told the BBC. "That's why we've got a spring in our step."
In last year's local elections, the Lib Dems gained an extra 104 councillors and took control of two councils.
The Lib Dems currently have majority control of 37 councils, short of the 49 held by the Tories, across the UK.
But the Lib Dems are looking to pick up votes at the expense of other parties as well.
Sir Ed said voters were "deeply disappointed" with the Labour government, which he said had "failed to deliver the change they promised".
The Lib Dem leader said Nigel Farage and his party Reform UK were "too busy fighting amongst themselves to fix the problems we face", pointing to the infighting involving MP Rupert Lowe.
The Lib Dem election launch follows similar events by the Tories and Reform.
About 1,650 seats will be contested on 14 county councils, eight unitary authorities, one metropolitan district, and in the Isles of Scilly.
There will also be mayoral elections in the West of England, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and - for the first time - in Hull and East Yorkshire, and Greater Lincolnshire.
Elections to all 21 county councils in England were due to take place.
But last month, the government announced elections would be postponed in nine areas, where the councils are undertaking reorganisation and devolution.
The Liberal Democrat leader says there has not been enough detail on the government's cuts to benefits.
Sir Ed Davey calls for a strategy to tackle the "appalling criminality" of countryside gangs.
It comes as ministers face pressure to set out defence plans after talks begin to end war in Ukraine.
Sir Ed Davey mucks out in a farmyard while listening to fears about "devastating" tax changes.
The Lib Dem leader says the US president needs to hear a "strong" response over threatened steel tariffs.
Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.TheBBCisnot responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Trump labels alleged Turnberry vandals 'terrorists'
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r5wkee8z5o
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
The Trump Turnberry resort was targeted earlier this month
Donald Trump has labelled people accused of vandalising the Trump Turnberry golf resort as "terrorists".
Grafitti was sprayed on the clubhouse in red paint and the course was dug up and daubed with the words "Gaza is not for sale"
The US president said those who caused damage at the Ayrshire resort should be "treated harshly" by authorities.
Kieran Robson, 33, appeared at Ayr Sheriff Court on Monday on a single charge of malicious mischief in connection with the incident. He made no plea and was released on bail.
The case was committed for further examination, with Mr Robson, of Galashiels, set to appear again at a later date.
Another man, aged 75, and a 66-year-old woman were previously arrested and released pending further inquiries.
In an earlier post on his Truth Social platform, after a conversation with Sir Keir Starmer, Trump incorrectly claimed that "three people were in prison" over the incident.
He wrote: "I was just informed by Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom, that they caught the terrorists who attacked the beautiful Turnberry, in Scotland.
"They did serious damage, and will hopefully be treated harshly.
"You cannot let things like this attack happen, and I greatly appreciate the work of Prime Minister Starmer, and UK law enforcement."
Police were called to the resort, on Maidens Road in the South Ayrshire village, at about 04:40 on 8 March.
The incident came after Trump sparked international concern by suggesting he wanted to turn Gaza into a resort, displacing Palestinians in the process.
Hesuggested the US could "take over" Gazafollowing talks with the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump bought Turnberry from a Dubai-based group in 2014.
Police Scotland said inquiries into the vandalism were ongoing.
Five retailers opening stores in Silverburn this year
Family's lovely surprise as girl finds heart-shaped crisp on Mother's Day
How much will ScotRail fares increase by in April? Everything you need to know
Jackie Baillie welcomes plans to improve Dumbarton Castle
'Powerful' Brahms piece performed by Greenock choir
People of Erskine: 7 famous faces who were pupils at Park Mains High School in Erskine
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
Sentencing guidelines ditched after 'two-tier' row
Le Pen attacks ban from running for public office as 'political decision'
Germany decides to leave history in the past and prepare for war
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
Secret filming reveals brazen tactics of UK immigration scammers
Three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises
Alarms, overdoses and saving lives: Two days in UK's first drug injection room
AI was enemy No. 1 during Hollywood strikes. Now it's in Oscar-winning films
In pictures: Eid celebrations around the world
'Greedy landlords are cashing in and forcing us out of town'
Royal Watch: Get the latest royal stories and analysis with Sean Coughlan’s weekly newsletter
Stacey Dooley explores Britain’s shoplifting epidemic
Watchlist Add Stacey Dooley to your Watchlist in iPlayer
Lily and Miquita discuss the new drama Adolescence
Subscribe Add Miss Me? to My Sounds
The devil's in the detail and every crime leaves a trace
Watchlist Add Forensics: The Real CSI to your Watchlist in iPlayer
The historic handshake in space in July 1975
Subscribe Add Witness History to My Sounds
Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Le Pen attacks ban from running for public office as 'political decision'
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyq40yz70qo
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Marine Le Pen has criticised a court ruling that bans her from running for public office as a "political decision" and says she will appeal.
The French far-right politician was found guilty on Monday of embezzling EU funds and she was barred from standing in an election for five years, with immediate effect.
The decision means that, unless she can get her sentence overturned before the 2027 presidential election, Le Pen will likely not be able to stand.
"I'm not going to let myself be eliminated like this," Le Pen told French TV station TF1. She will appeal against the verdict "as soon as possible" she said, with "whatever legal avenues I can."
Judges imposed immediate ineligibility with her conviction, meaning the ban on holding public office will now come into effect even if she appeals.
She has also been given a four-year prison sentence, of which two will be suspended. The other two can be spent with an electronic tag rather than in custody.
Le Pen has also been handed a €100,000 (£82,635) fine.
"Millions of French people are outraged" she said, claiming that judges have "implemented measures that are reserved for authoritarian regimes."
Le Pen added that she was "scandalised, indignant, but this indignation, this feeling of injustice, is an additional push to the fight that I fight for them [the voters]."
But the appeal process may take a long time.
The appeals trial would probably not happen for another year, and a verdict would come several months after that.
Preparing a presidential campaign under these circumstances could prove complicated.
The 2027 election would have been her fourth attempt, and the one offering the greatest chance of victory.
Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of the RN, said on Monday that Le Pen's sentencing was a "democratic scandal".
Bardella also called for a "popular, peaceful mobilisation".
He then posted a link to an online petition which says a "dictatorship of judges... wished to prevent French people from expressing themselves."
"Let's show those who want to circumvent democracy that the will of the people is stronger!", the petition reads.
At the start of the reading of the verdict, the judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said Le Pen had been at the "heart of the system" which saw the embezzlement of €2.9m worth of European funds.
Two dozen RN figures were also found guilty and the party was ordered to pay a €2m fine, with half the amount suspended.
Le Pen was accused, along with more than 20 other senior party figures, of hiring assistants who worked on her RN party affairs rather than for the European Parliament which paid them.
During the trial last year, Le Pen denied she had committed "the slightest irregularity".
Before the sentence was issued on Monday, she stormed out of the court, alongside other defendants and headed to the RN's Paris headquarters, where the party held a "crisis meeting".
At the weekend, Le Pen had told media that while she was "not nervous", the judges had "the power of life or death over the [political] movement."
Shortly before her sentencing, Le Pen received messages of support from the Kremlin, as well as European allies such as Hungary's Viktor Orban and Italy's Matteo Salvini.
But some of Le Pen's opponents have also stated they disapprove of the judge's decision.
Media reported that centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou was "troubled" by the ruling against Marine Le Pen, although he did not intend to make a public statement on the matter.
"The choice to dismiss an elected official should only belong to the people," said Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI).
And Laurent Wauquiez, of the right-wing Republicans, said that the decision would "weigh very heavily on the functioning of our democracy".
"It's undoubtedly not the route that should have been taken."
The reading of the verdict, which started shortly after 10:00 (09:00 BST), took nearly three hours.
Prosecutors probe Marine Le Pen campaign funding
The far right came close to power in France. What about the rest of Europe?
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
Sentencing guidelines ditched after 'two-tier' row
Le Pen attacks ban from running for public office as 'political decision'
Germany decides to leave history in the past and prepare for war
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
Secret filming reveals brazen tactics of UK immigration scammers
Three ways to cushion the blow of bill rises
Alarms, overdoses and saving lives: Two days in UK's first drug injection room
AI was enemy No. 1 during Hollywood strikes. Now it's in Oscar-winning films
In pictures: Eid celebrations around the world
'Greedy landlords are cashing in and forcing us out of town'
Royal Watch: Get the latest royal stories and analysis with Sean Coughlan’s weekly newsletter
Stacey Dooley explores Britain’s shoplifting epidemic
Watchlist Add Stacey Dooley to your Watchlist in iPlayer
Lily and Miquita discuss the new drama Adolescence
Subscribe Add Miss Me? to My Sounds
The devil's in the detail and every crime leaves a trace
Watchlist Add Forensics: The Real CSI to your Watchlist in iPlayer
The historic handshake in space in July 1975
Subscribe Add Witness History to My Sounds
Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
BBC News
|
Birmingham & Black Country
|
https://bbc.co.uk/news/england/birmingham_and_black_country
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Follow Birmingham & Black Country
Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike
Council leader John Cotton says it is over public health concerns, but union bosses condemn the move.
City shopping centre to remain closed indefinitely
Murder arrest after woman found dead
'Very sad day' as centre closes, says sister
Police chair's comments breached standards - panel
Tories call for government action over bin strike
Two more guilty of DPD driver murder
Train services cut over carriage spare parts delay
'I want to help others with additional needs thrive'
They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years
Man arrested over alleged child abduction
Man and dog die in severe house fire
Tonight,
Low
Low of3°
Tuesday 1 April,Tue1st
High of16°
Low of3°
Wednesday 2 April,Wed2nd
High of16°
Low of4°
Thursday 3 April,Thu3rd
High of19°
Low of4°
Friday 4 April,Fri4th
High of17°
Low of3°
'His swagger is back' but Villa won't 'waste time' on Rashford future
Aston Villa loanee Marcus Rashford scored his first goals for Aston Villa in the FA Cup quarter-final win at Preston as he continues to show some of his old swagger.
EFL midweek preview: Crunch time
Rashford scores double as Aston Villa beat Preston in FA Cup quarters
Aston Villa earn valuable win at Liverpool
Forest v Man City, Palace v Villa - semi-final draw
Aston Villa earn valuable win at Liverpool
Time for a new FA Cup winner, or a first since the 1950s?
Norwich get late win against play-off rivals West Brom
Birmingham City 4-1 Shrewsbury Town
Bin workers begin indefinite all-out strike. BBC Radio WM. Audio, 00:06:08Bin workers begin indefinite all-out strike
BBC Radio WM
How is the Black Country accent exotic? BBC Radio WM. Audio, 00:05:18How is the Black Country accent exotic?
BBC Radio WM
When the West Midlands becomes a home. BBC Radio WM. Audio, 00:03:25When the West Midlands becomes a home
BBC Radio WM
'Embarrassing' state of the streets in Selly Oak. BBC Radio WM. Audio, 00:03:23'Embarrassing' state of the streets in Selly Oak
BBC Radio WM
'UK's longest-running husband and wife business' BBC Radio WM. Audio, 00:02:26'UK's longest-running husband and wife business'
BBC Radio WM
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
X
Rollout of Birmingham's fortnightly bin collections 'delayed' as bins strike chaos continues
What next for Priory Square as massive scheme that could replace it approved five years ago
Gorgeous local bridal shop makes prestigious regional awards shortlist
Government accused of ‘washing its hands’ of Birmingham bin strike problem
Police cordon in place after woman found dead
Main road set to be closed for several days
Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.Read about our approach to external linking.
|
The Economist
|
Trump’s “Liberation Day” is set to whack America’s economy
|
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/03/30/trumps-liberation-day-is-set-to-whack-americas-economy?itm_source=parsely-api
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
EVEN HISmost ardent detractors would grant that Donald Trump is a masterful marketer. So it goes for the barrage of tariffs that he is set to unveil on April 2nd. The president has promised they will mark “Liberation Day” for America—a turning-point when the country starts to claw back the respect and money that, he thinks, it has lost over the decades.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
What clergymen can learn from economists
Wall Street still needs more to coax it back. But non-American firms may be ready to return
But foreign investors might want to tread carefully
The country’s struggling economy provides a push
As “liberation day” nears, American businesses suffer
Even if America lifts sanctions, the old continent has its own weapons
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Barring Marine Le Pen is a political thunderbolt for France
|
https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/03/31/barring-marine-le-pen-is-a-political-earthquake-for-france?itm_source=parsely-api
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
EVEN BEFOREthe sentence was pronounced,Marine Le Penswept out of the courtroom, her handbag dangling from her arm. The French hard-right leader had heard enough, and had reason to fear the worst. On March 31st the Paris criminal court barred her from running for elected office for five years, and hence from making a bid for the presidency in 2027. The decision has sent a shock wave through her party, the National Rally (RN), and upends the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron as president. Ms Le Pen hadled pollsfor the first round of the 2027 election.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Preparations are under way for a presidential vote, though many doubt they can be done in wartime
Augustinian friars are protesting against a redevelopment plan
Could you survive 72 hours without outside food, water or electricity?
The war may end on terms too dangerous to lure them home
But the continent will have to invest more to lure top talent
A Black Sea deal starts sinking as soon as America announces it
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Israel’s expansionism is a danger to others—and itself
|
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/27/israels-expansionism-is-a-danger-to-others-and-itself?itm_source=parsely-api
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
IT IS HARDto believe today, but 18 months ago Israel was in grave peril. Surrounded by enemies, bickering with its main ally in Washington and reeling after Hamas’s attack caused the most murderous day in the country’s history, the Jewish state seemed vulnerable and confused. Now, by contrast, Israel is rampant. It is still fighting—occasionally in Lebanon and Syria, more permanently against Palestinian militants in the West Bank and once more, on an even larger scale, in Gaza, where an American-sponsored ceasefire has broken down. But this time Israel is fighting on its own terms and with full American backing. You might think that makes it safe again. Yet its renewed military supremacy comes with a danger of overextension and bitter strife at home. As its government charges ahead, it risksturning hubris into disaster.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
As aid shrinks, donors and recipients should focus more on health
So far, there is more destruction than creation
Businesses are struggling to adjust
But after a messy Spring Statement, the window of opportunity is narrowing
But no one outside Turkey seems to care
The rule of law is at stake
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Ekrem Imamoglu’s wife on how his arrest has turned a mayor into a movement
|
https://economist.com/by-invitation/2025/03/26/ekrem-imamoglus-wife-on-how-his-arrest-has-turned-a-mayor-into-a-movement
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
WHEN MY HUSBAND, Ekrem Imamoglu, was arrested in the early hours of March 19th, millions across Turkey felt exactly as I did: not only sorrow but a strong sense of injustice and rising anger. Under the rule of the present government, spanning more than two decades, many Turks have been forced to face these feelings as their country sinks deeper into authoritarianism.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
More must be done to nurture innovators while driving the completion of the European project, writes Roland Busch
The conditions in which the atomic bomb was produced can’t be replicated in the race for superintelligence, writes the AI-safety expert
A former deputy treasury secretary and a presidential economic adviser on the need to draw a sharper line between open economies and the rest
From Korea to Cuba, America has been at its best diplomatically when it has encouraged its friends to be candid
Undermining regulatory independence in America and Britain will deter investment, write William Kovacic and John Vickers
Over 100,000 civilians died in an American attack that was the beginning of the end for Japan
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
→Gene editing is already revolutionising research in the laboratory
|
https://economist.com/technology-quarterly/2025/02/21/gene-editing-is-already-revolutionising-research-in-the-laboratory
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
In the late2010s eight macaque monkeys were born at a laboratory in Shanghai. At first they seemed much like the other infants in the colony, but differences soon became obvious. They were much more active at night than their peers. Their hormones were unusual, too. Melatonin, which typically oscillates with the day-night cycle and aids sleep, was all over the place. Cortisol, a stress hormone, was perpetually high. Then their behaviour took a turn: they sat frozen in corners for long periods of time, fled in fear from their caretakers, and began burying their little heads in their hands—all signs of mental illness.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Khartoum changes hands, heralding a new phase in Sudan’s civil war
|
https://economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/03/30/khartoum-changes-hands-heralding-a-new-phase-in-sudans-civil-war
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
It was notthe heroic final stand their leader had perhaps envisioned. On March 15th Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo had called on his troops not to surrender or retreat. In the end they disobeyed. Within days of Mr Dagalo’s entreaties the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) ceded control of the presidential palace in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). By March 26th the central bank and international airport were back in the hands of theSAF,Sudan’snational army. Columns of bedraggled fighters could be seen retreating west across the last Nile bridge still in theRSF’s hands as General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army chief and Sudan’s de facto president since a coup in 2019, returned to the capital for the first time in two years. Surrounded by cheering troops, he toured the palace and declared that at last Khartoum was “free”.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
They have found uneasy alliances with their new protectors on the right
Why Israel seeks alliances outside the Arab and Sunni Muslim majority
A crisis in the oil-rich Niger Delta raises questions about the rule of law
But someone needs to pay for it—just when aid budgets are being slashed
How has it managed to outshine its peers?
A sexual-harassment scandal in parliament shows why
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Dan Hendrycks warns America against launching a Manhattan Project for AI
|
https://economist.com/by-invitation/2025/03/28/dan-hendrycks-warns-america-against-launching-a-manhattan-project-for-ai
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
THE RECENTwave ofAIsystems from China has sparked fears that America is falling behind in artificial intelligence. This month OpenAI, one of the most advancedAIlabs, warned the White House that America’s lead “is not wide and is narrowing”, and some policymakers are entertaining the idea of anAIManhattan Project, modelled on the top-secret American-led research during the second world war that produced the atomic bomb. America’s new energy secretary, Chris Wright, recently appeared to endorse this, declaring that the nation is “at the start of Manhattan Project 2”.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
More must be done to nurture innovators while driving the completion of the European project, writes Roland Busch
Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t defeat democracy, says Dilek Imamoglu
A former deputy treasury secretary and a presidential economic adviser on the need to draw a sharper line between open economies and the rest
From Korea to Cuba, America has been at its best diplomatically when it has encouraged its friends to be candid
Undermining regulatory independence in America and Britain will deter investment, write William Kovacic and John Vickers
Over 100,000 civilians died in an American attack that was the beginning of the end for Japan
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Is Elon Musk remaking government or breaking it?
|
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/27/is-elon-musk-remaking-government-or-breaking-it?itm_source=parsely-api
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
NEXT TO SPACEtravel, remaking the government sounds easy. Elon Musk conceives of himself as the saviour of humanity, who willput people on Marsas a prelude to making humankind a multiplanetary species. But of all the things President Donald Trump has done at home since his inauguration in January, puttingDOGE(the Department of Government Efficiency) under Mr Musk has turned out to be the mostpolarising. The world’s richest man is exalted by some as an altruistic genius and hated by others as a self-dealing villain. Is he remaking the government, or breaking it?
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
As aid shrinks, donors and recipients should focus more on health
It risks turning hubris into disaster
Businesses are struggling to adjust
But after a messy Spring Statement, the window of opportunity is narrowing
But no one outside Turkey seems to care
The rule of law is at stake
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Zelensky, Trump and Putin may all have done U-turns on elections in Ukraine
|
https://economist.com/europe/2025/03/30/zelensky-trump-and-putin-may-all-have-done-u-turns-on-elections-in-ukraine
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
THE PREMIEREon February 28th of a new staging of “Macbeth” at the venerable Franko theatre in Kyiv was initially eclipsed by the diplomatic disaster unfolding the same day between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump in the White House. Since then the production has become the talk of the city’s elite. Ivan Urivsky, the director, says he decided to put on the tragedy after sensing a change in the country’s mood since Mr Trump’s election four months earlier. He had wanted to stage “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, a comedy, he says: “But you can’t do theatre without thinking about politics, war or the people watching.” His viewers are drawing parallels between Shakespeare’s characters and current events. For some, Macbeth resembles the bloodthirsty dictator in Moscow. For others the story of ambition, power and treachery feels closer to home.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Her sentence for improper use of EU funds could strengthen the hard right
Augustinian friars are protesting against a redevelopment plan
Could you survive 72 hours without outside food, water or electricity?
The war may end on terms too dangerous to lure them home
But the continent will have to invest more to lure top talent
A Black Sea deal starts sinking as soon as America announces it
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Schooled by Trump, Americans are learning to dislike their allies
|
https://economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/03/31/schooled-by-trump-americans-are-learning-to-dislike-their-allies
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMPrepeatedly claims that the European Union was “formed in order to screw the United States”. Canada, America’s northern neighbour and second-largest trading partner, is “one of the nastiest countries”. Russia was “doing what anyone would do” when it bombed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during a pause inAmerican intelligence sharing. Our polling with YouGov shows how this rhetoric is reshaping people’s opinions about their countries’ allies.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
National identities and rivalries still drive changes
What are they, how are they used and where are they found?
Did it live up to its promises?
What’s their secret?
A look at the impact of Trumponomics, as revealed by data
In one country American aid is the equivalent of almost 350% of the government’s health spending
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Barnes & Noble, a bookstore, is back in the business of selling books
|
https://economist.com/business/2025/03/27/barnes-and-noble-a-bookstore-is-back-in-the-business-of-selling-books
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
CENTRAL PARKbisects upper Manhattan, creating two neighbourhoods and, apparently, two reading cultures. On the Upper West Side, theNew York Timesis “a standout for us” in terms of driving book purchases, says Victoria Harty, assistant manager of the local branch of Barnes & Noble, America’s biggest bookstore chain. On the east side, meanwhile, customers prefer recommendations from theWashington Postand theAtlantic.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Taxing imported motors may not create many new jobs at home
Fed up with your colleagues? It could be worse
23andMe’s demise raises thorny legal questions
As well as being a moral failure
They have their work cut out
Christophe Fouquet says the continent’s champions could move elsewhere if they are not better protected
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Are these the world’s most beautiful airports?
|
https://www.economist.com/asia/2025/03/13/are-these-the-worlds-most-beautiful-airports?itm_source=parsely-api
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
AIR TRAVELin India can be frustrating. Flights at major airports are often delayed. Security protocols vary from one city to the next. The price of an airside beer would cause blushes even at Heathrow. Yet there is a redeeming factor that compensates for the annoyances: Indian airports are some of the most beautiful in the world. They reveal what India is capable of—and where it falls short.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
The generals have a dire record of exploiting natural disasters
Where will aid come from, and how will the junta use it?
Two disasters in 1995 captured the spirit of the country’s lost decades
After decades of inertia, workers are now on the move. Why?
It is unlikely to turn the tide of the war
India’s prime minister is due to visit Nagpur, the site of the violence
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Trump’s “Liberation Day” is set to whack America’s economy
|
https://economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/03/30/trumps-liberation-day-is-set-to-whack-americas-economy
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
EVEN HISmost ardent detractors would grant that Donald Trump is a masterful marketer. So it goes for the barrage of tariffs that he is set to unveil on April 2nd. The president has promised they will mark “Liberation Day” for America—a turning-point when the country starts to claw back the respect and money that, he thinks, it has lost over the decades.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
What clergymen can learn from economists
Wall Street still needs more to coax it back. But non-American firms may be ready to return
But foreign investors might want to tread carefully
The country’s struggling economy provides a push
As “liberation day” nears, American businesses suffer
Even if America lifts sanctions, the old continent has its own weapons
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
→Epigenetic editors are a gentler form of gene editing
|
https://economist.com/technology-quarterly/2025/02/24/epigenetic-editors-are-a-gentler-form-of-gene-editing
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
More thana decade ago Sonia Vallabh, a lawyer, and her husband, an engineer, decided to retrain as molecular biologists. They had an urgent motivation. Dr Vallabh’s mother had died suddenly of a mysterious dementia. An autopsy had revealed the cause to be prion disease, in which the prion protein, the normal function of which is unclear, changes form and spontaneously clumps together and causes the brain to die. Most prion disease is infectious, set off by exposure to an already clumping protein. In this case, it was genetic. “I learned that I’d inherited her mutation,” Dr Vallabh says. They needed to find a cure before the disease came for her, too.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
The boss of Siemens on how to re-energise the German economy
|
https://economist.com/by-invitation/2025/03/31/the-boss-of-siemens-on-how-to-re-energise-the-german-economy
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
IS GERMANY FINALLYready for a reset? That’s the question many askedwhen a broad centrist coalition recently shattered a long-held fiscal taboo in Europe’s largest economy, embracing debt-funded investment in security, infrastructure and sustainable growth at a scale once unthinkable. It was a clear signal that sparked optimism at home and abroad. But one decision alone cannot undo years of complacency. For too long, Germany had resisted change and relied on a great legacy to continue powering it forwards.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
The conditions in which the atomic bomb was produced can’t be replicated in the race for superintelligence, writes the AI-safety expert
Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t defeat democracy, says Dilek Imamoglu
A former deputy treasury secretary and a presidential economic adviser on the need to draw a sharper line between open economies and the rest
From Korea to Cuba, America has been at its best diplomatically when it has encouraged its friends to be candid
Undermining regulatory independence in America and Britain will deter investment, write William Kovacic and John Vickers
Over 100,000 civilians died in an American attack that was the beginning of the end for Japan
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Ten indicators explain what’s going on with America’s economy
|
https://economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/03/14/ten-indicators-explain-whats-going-on-with-americas-economy
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
To read more of The Economist’s data journalism visit ourGraphic detailpage.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Our polling shows that Americans’ and Europeans’ attitudes towards each other are changing quickly
National identities and rivalries still drive changes
What are they, how are they used and where are they found?
Did it live up to its promises?
What’s their secret?
In one country American aid is the equivalent of almost 350% of the government’s health spending
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Charlemagne: The prospect of war has turned Europe into a continent of preppers
|
https://economist.com/europe/2025/03/27/the-prospect-of-war-has-turned-europe-into-a-continent-of-preppers
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
In the run-upto Christmas, Swedes opening their mailboxes in hopes of greeting cards instead got a chilling reminder of the troubled times they live in. A 32-page brochure mailed by the authorities to the country’s 5m households urged citizens to consider how they would behave should Sweden come under attack. “In Case of Crisis or War” is full of practical advice, should an unspecified foe stage an invasion: how to stem severe bleeding (apply firm pressure on the wound), where to find reliable information (tune in to public radio rather than social media) and useful tips on nuclear fallout (radiation levels will fall drastically after a couple of days, apparently). Illustrations of forlorn-looking Swedes sitting in civil-defence shelters ram home the point that war is not something that happens only to other people. It could be you, one day. So what are you going to do about it?
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Her sentence for improper use of EU funds could strengthen the hard right
Preparations are under way for a presidential vote, though many doubt they can be done in wartime
Augustinian friars are protesting against a redevelopment plan
The war may end on terms too dangerous to lure them home
But the continent will have to invest more to lure top talent
A Black Sea deal starts sinking as soon as America announces it
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
The war in Gaza has unsettled the Jewish diaspora
|
https://economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2025/03/27/the-war-in-gaza-has-unsettled-the-jewish-diaspora
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
Nailed to theentrance of the Gun For Hire shooting range in Woodland Park, New Jersey, is a largemezuzah, the prayer-scroll that Jews attach to their doors. In the gift-shop arekippot(head-coverings) embroidered with guns. The range advertises in local Jewish newspapers and trains synagogue security teams. “We get fullminyanim[Jewish prayer quorums of at least ten] who come to shoot here,” says Phil Stern, one of the managers.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
The national army may now try to push into Darfur
Why Israel seeks alliances outside the Arab and Sunni Muslim majority
A crisis in the oil-rich Niger Delta raises questions about the rule of law
But someone needs to pay for it—just when aid budgets are being slashed
How has it managed to outshine its peers?
A sexual-harassment scandal in parliament shows why
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Will Trump’s tariffs turbocharge foreign investment in America?
|
https://economist.com/business/2025/03/17/will-trumps-tariffs-turbocharge-foreign-investment-in-america
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
For Globalcompanies there is no place quite like America. As growth in China and Europe has slowed, its economy has continued expanding at a decent clip. America remains by far the world’s biggest consumer market, accounting for almost 30% of total spending, and is home to the largest stock of foreign direct investment (FDI), at around $5trn.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Taxing imported motors may not create many new jobs at home
Fed up with your colleagues? It could be worse
23andMe’s demise raises thorny legal questions
Toys, backpacks and bottled water are out
As well as being a moral failure
They have their work cut out
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Donald Trump’s plan for American carmaking is full of potholes
|
https://economist.com/business/2025/03/31/donald-trumps-plan-for-american-carmaking-is-full-of-potholes
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
Donald Trumphas promised to impose sweeping tariffs on imported goods on April 2nd, dubbing it “Liberation Day”. The car industry got a preview of what is in store a week earlier, when on March 26th America’s president said he would charge hefty levies on imported cars and parts. The aim is to restore carmaking to America. But it will come at a high cost. Raised prices will hit sales and reduce choice for American consumers. Carmakers, meanwhile, will be “liberated” from large chunks of their profits.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Fed up with your colleagues? It could be worse
23andMe’s demise raises thorny legal questions
Toys, backpacks and bottled water are out
As well as being a moral failure
They have their work cut out
Christophe Fouquet says the continent’s champions could move elsewhere if they are not better protected
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Elon Musk is powersliding through the federal government
|
https://economist.com/united-states/2025/03/27/elon-musk-is-powersliding-through-the-federal-government
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
The United States Institute of Peace(usip) was established by Congress in 1984 to promote an end to conflict all over the world. Forty years later it came to an end with an armed stand-off at its headquarters, a glass and acid-etched concrete building just off the National Mall.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
A judicial race has become a referendum on the billionaire’s behaviour
America may soon be unable to measure itself properly
An unremarked cost of greater border security
A wiser president would admit a lapse and be grateful for the chance to prevent a more devastating blunder
The breach raises questions of security and legality
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
China can greatly reduce its reliance on coal, but probably won’t
|
https://economist.com/china/2025/03/31/china-can-greatly-reduce-its-reliance-on-coal-but-probably-wont
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
In Shuozhou, anondescript city of 1.6m people in northern China’s Shanxi province, the veins of the local economy run black with coal. To the north of the city lies one of the largest open-pit mines in the country. Shuozhou’s mines churn out 200m tonnes of the black stuff every year (the country as a whole produces 4.8bn tonnes). Lines of trucks carry it to be washed, sorted, then burned in power stations across the country. If China ditched coal in favour of cleaner sources of power, the city “would be finished”, warns Sun Zhigang, a recently retired miner who is out walking his dog in the park.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
You can place your deposit in bushels of wheat or strings of garlic
Extortion by local officials causes a lot of anger
Experts say it is the main shift in the cyber-threat landscape in a decade
It could land troops there more speedily than ever
Never mind the middle-aged; millennials beware
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
How Shonda Rhimes became a billion-dollar asset for streamers
|
https://economist.com/culture/2025/03/27/how-shonda-rhimes-became-a-billion-dollar-asset-for-streamers
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
FOR SHONDA RHIMES, deciding whether an idea is screen-worthy is easy. “We make shows that we want to watch,” she says of Shondaland, her production company. “If we don’t want to watch it, we don’t want to make it.” Since its founding in 2005, Shondaland has been behind some of television’s most popular shows, including “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Scandal”, “How to Get Away with Murder”,“Inventing Anna”and “Bridgerton”. “The Residence”, a new mystery drama on Netflix inspired by a book about the White House, may also reside among Ms Rhimes’s successes.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Four titles that are worth your time—and one to avoid
Viewers encounter new dangers—and old ones—alongside its characters
An oft-forgotten negotiation between Winston Churchill and Andrew Mellon resonates
The history of one of epidemiology’s least favourite ideas
Four books and an essay that provide insight into a trade-war weapon
Meta’s attempt to put a gag on “Careless People” is backfiring
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
China’s stockmarket rally
|
https://economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/03/27/can-foreign-investors-learn-to-love-china-again
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
FOR CHINESEstocks to outperform American ones is rare enough. But this year theMSCIChina index has beaten its American equivalent by an impressive 20 percentage points, on the back of excitement about cutting-edge tech firms such as DeepSeek and ManusAI. American shares, meanwhile, have been weighed down by worries about a bellicose Trump administration and the danger of a slowing economy.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
A rush of new tariffs will hurt growth, raise prices and worsen inequality
What clergymen can learn from economists
But foreign investors might want to tread carefully
The country’s struggling economy provides a push
As “liberation day” nears, American businesses suffer
Even if America lifts sanctions, the old continent has its own weapons
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Myanmar’s junta is exploiting the devastating earthquake
|
https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2025/03/31/myanmars-junta-is-exploiting-the-devastating-earthquake
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
Your browser does not support the <audio> element.
Civil warin Myanmar ishampering relief effortsafter the devastating earthquake on Friday, as the ruling military regime intensifies attacks on resistance fighters. The impact of Donald Trump’s attempt to silence“Voice of America”and other federally-funded broadcasters (8:45). And, “The Economist” reveals the best places to be a working woman in 2025 in its annualglass-ceiling index(17:37). Runtime: 23 min
Listen on:Apple Podcasts|Spotify
Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+
For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit ourFAQs pageor watchour videoexplaining how to link your account.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
PodcastScam Inc
Thousands of people have been freed from Myanmar scam centres
32:53
PodcastEditor’s picks
A handpicked article read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist
08:18
PodcastThe Weekend Intelligence
The oldest continent is aging fast
48:00
PodcastChecks and Balance
Our weekly podcast on democracy in America. This week we look at what DOGE has accomplished so far, and what the federal government may look like once it’s done.
49:29
PodcastThe Intelligence
Also on the daily podcast: the quiet but influential non-military donor to Ukraine and why “Adolescence” is such a global hit
26:19
PodcastMoney Talks
Our podcast on markets, the economy and business. This week, more and more products made in China are ending up on its neighbours’ shores
41:56
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
A visual guide to critical materials and rare earths
|
https://economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/03/24/a-visual-guide-to-critical-materials-and-rare-earths
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
THE NORTH POLEis a polarising topic. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he wants toacquire Greenland; he has not ruled out taking it by force. A delegation of American officials will arrive in the autonomous Danish territory later this week, ostensibly to learn about its culture and history. But what really motivates Mr Trump’s lunge for Arctic land is Greenland’s “rare earths”—a category of materials vital to modern armies and economies.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Our polling shows that Americans’ and Europeans’ attitudes towards each other are changing quickly
National identities and rivalries still drive changes
Did it live up to its promises?
What’s their secret?
A look at the impact of Trumponomics, as revealed by data
In one country American aid is the equivalent of almost 350% of the government’s health spending
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Barring Marine Le Pen is a political thunderbolt for France
|
https://economist.com/europe/2025/03/31/barring-marine-le-pen-is-a-political-thunderbolt-for-france
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
EVEN BEFOREthe sentence was pronounced,Marine Le Penswept out of the courtroom, her handbag dangling from her arm. The French hard-right leader had heard enough, and had reason to fear the worst. On March 31st the Paris criminal court barred her from running for elected office for five years, and hence from making a bid for the presidency in 2027. The decision has sent a shock wave through her party, the National Rally (RN), and upends the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron as president. Ms Le Pen hadled pollsfor the first round of the 2027 election.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Preparations are under way for a presidential vote, though many doubt they can be done in wartime
Augustinian friars are protesting against a redevelopment plan
Could you survive 72 hours without outside food, water or electricity?
The war may end on terms too dangerous to lure them home
But the continent will have to invest more to lure top talent
A Black Sea deal starts sinking as soon as America announces it
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Myanmar’s junta is exploiting the devastating earthquake
|
https://economist.com/podcasts/2025/03/31/myanmars-junta-is-exploiting-the-devastating-earthquake
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
Your browser does not support the <audio> element.
Civil warin Myanmar ishampering relief effortsafter the devastating earthquake on Friday, as the ruling military regime intensifies attacks on resistance fighters. The impact of Donald Trump’s attempt to silence“Voice of America”and other federally-funded broadcasters (8:45). And, “The Economist” reveals the best places to be a working woman in 2025 in its annualglass-ceiling index(17:37). Runtime: 23 min
Listen on:Apple Podcasts|Spotify
Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+
For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit ourFAQs pageor watchour videoexplaining how to link your account.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
PodcastScam Inc
Thousands of people have been freed from Myanmar scam centres
32:53
PodcastEditor’s picks
A handpicked article read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist
08:18
PodcastThe Weekend Intelligence
The oldest continent is aging fast
48:00
PodcastChecks and Balance
Our weekly podcast on democracy in America. This week we look at what DOGE has accomplished so far, and what the federal government may look like once it’s done.
49:29
PodcastThe Intelligence
Also on the daily podcast: the quiet but influential non-military donor to Ukraine and why “Adolescence” is such a global hit
26:19
PodcastMoney Talks
Our podcast on markets, the economy and business. This week, more and more products made in China are ending up on its neighbours’ shores
41:56
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
The Economist
|
Lessons from the happiest countries in the world
|
https://economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/03/20/lessons-from-the-happiest-countries-in-the-world
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Catch up on global daily news
Dive into compelling long reads
Tune into engaging conversations
Watch engaging short films
Gain insights from experts
Curated news, direct to your inbox
Unlimited digital access to all reporting, podcasts, newsletters and events
To read more of The Economist’s data journalism visit ourGraphic detailpage.
A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism
Our polling shows that Americans’ and Europeans’ attitudes towards each other are changing quickly
National identities and rivalries still drive changes
What are they, how are they used and where are they found?
Did it live up to its promises?
A look at the impact of Trumponomics, as revealed by data
In one country American aid is the equivalent of almost 350% of the government’s health spending
To enhance your experience and ensure our website runs smoothly, we use cookies and similar technologies.
Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6HT | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876
© The Economist Newspaper Limited2025
|
AP News
|
Dow wants to power its Texas manufacturing complex with new nuclear reactors instead of natural gas
|
https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-dow-xenergy-texas-climate-change-electricity-reactors-natural-gas-43013c8fd95ddeff0b71a38ac4808606
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
A Dow sign is shown in Midland, Mich., Aug. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Dow, a major producer of chemicals and plastics, wants to use next-generation nuclear reactors for clean power and steam at a Texas manufacturing complex instead of natural gas.
Dow’s subsidiary, Long Mott Energy, applied Monday to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction permit. It said the project with X-energy, an advanced nuclear reactor and fuel company, would nearly eliminate the emissions associated with power and steam generation at its plant in Seadrift, Texas, avoiding roughly 500,000 metric tons of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions annually.
If built and operated as planned, it would be the first U.S. commercial advanced nuclear power plant for an industrial site, according to the NRC.
For many,nuclear power is emerging as an answerto meet a soaring demand for electricity nationwide, driven by the expansion of data centers and artificial intelligence, manufacturing and electrification, and to stave off the worst effects of a warming planet. However, there are safety and security concerns, the Union of Concerned Scientists cautions. The question of how to store hazardous nuclear waste in the U.S. is unresolved, too.
Dow wants four of X-energy’s advanced small modular reactors, the Xe-100. Combined, those could supply up to 320 megawatts of electricity or 800 megawatts of thermal power. X-energy CEO J. Clay Sell said the project would demonstrate how new nuclear technology can meet the massive growth in electricity demand.
The Seadrift manufacturing complex, at about 4,700 acres, has eight production plants owned by Dow and one owned by Braskem. There, Dow makes plastics for a variety of uses including food and beverage packaging and wire and cable insulation, as well as glycols for antifreeze, polyester fabrics and bottles, and oxide derivatives for health and beauty products.
Edward Stones, the business vice president of energy and climate at Dow, said submitting the permit application is an important next step in expanding access to safe, clean, reliable, cost-competitive nuclear energy in the United States. The project is supported by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
The NRC expects the review to take three years or less. If a permit is issued, construction could begin at the end of this decade so the reactors would be ready early in the 2030s, as the natural gas-fired equipment is retired.
A total of four applicants have asked the NRC for construction permits for advanced nuclear reactors. The NRC issued a permit to Abilene Christian University for a research reactor and to Kairos Power for one reactor and two reactor test versions of that company’s design. It’s reviewing an application byBill Gates and his energy company, TerraPower, to build an advanced reactor in Wyoming.
X-energy is also collaborating with Amazon to bring more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear power projects online across the United States by 2039, beginning in Washington state.Amazon and other tech giants have committed to using renewable energyto meet the surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence and address climate change.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’sstandardsfor working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas atAP.org.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
AI and satellites help aid workers respond to Myanmar earthquake damage
|
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-mandalay-earthquake-artificial-intelligence-microsoft-ai-for-good-42a8d502f135bcbea21a2f36b41aa8e2
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers carry out search and rescue on the damaged buildings in the aftermath of an earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Monday, March 31, 2025. (Jiang Chao/Xinhua via AP)
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Chinese rescuers looks at a collapsed building before conducting a search and rescue operation in the aftermath of an earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Myo Kyaw Soe/Xinhua via AP)
Just after sunrise on Saturday, a satellite set its long-range camera on the city of Mandalay in Myanmar, not far from the epicenter ofFriday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquakethat devastated the Southeast Asian country’ssecond-largest city.
The mission was to capture images that, combined withartificial intelligence technology, could help relief organizations quickly assess how many buildings had collapsed or were heavily damaged and where helpers most needed to go.
At first, the high-tech computer vision approach wasn’t working.
“The biggest challenge in this particular case was the clouds,” said Microsoft’s chief data scientist, Juan Lavista Ferres. “There’s no way to see through clouds with this technology.”
The clouds eventually moved and it took a few more hours for another satellite from San Francisco-based Planet Labs to capture the aerial pictures and send them to Microsoft’sphilanthropic AI for Good Lab. By then it was already about 11 p.m. Friday at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. A group of Microsoft workers was ready and waiting for the data.
The AI for Good lab has done this kind of AI-assisted damage assessment before, trackingLibya’s catastrophic floodingin 2023 orthis year’s wildfiresin Los Angeles. But rather than rely on a standard AI computer vision model that could run any visual data, they had to build a customized version specific to Mandalay.
“The Earth is too different, the natural disasters are too different and the imagery we get from satellites is just too different to work in every situation,” Lavista Ferres said. For instance, he said, while fires spread in fairly predictable ways, “an earthquake touches the whole city” and it can be harder to know in the immediate aftermath where help is needed.
Once theAI analysis was complete, it showed 515 buildings in Mandalay with 80% to 100% damage and another 1,524 with between 20% and 80% damage. That showed thewidespread gravity of the disaster, but, just as important, it helps pinpoint specific locations of damage.
“This is critical information for teams on the ground,” Lavista Ferres said.
Microsoft cautioned that it “should serve as a preliminary guide and will require on-the-ground verification for a complete understanding.” But in the meantime, the tech company has shared the analysis with aid groups such as the Red Cross.
Planet Labs says its satellites — it has 15 of them orbiting the Earth — have now photographed roughly a dozen locations in Myanmar and Thailand since Friday’s quake.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Scientists shielding farming from climate change need more public funding. But they’re getting less
|
https://apnews.com/article/farming-research-development-agriculture-public-funding-climate-change-9aec16fc632326b3be97280612405756
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Jude Addo-Chidie, a Ph.D. student in agronomy at Purdue University, places a probe in soil as he takes samples from a corn field July 12, 2023, at the Southeast-Purdue Agricultural Center in Butlerville, Ind. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)
Soil researcher Asmita Gautam, a Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, prepares a soil sample for carbon content analysis, July 13, 2023, in West Lafayette, Ind. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)
Katrina Cornish, a professor at Ohio State University who studies rubber alternatives, harvests rubber dandelion seeds inside a greenhouse, Feb. 6, 2024, in Wooster, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)
A villager tends to his vegetable garden in a plot that is part of a climate-smart agriculture program funded by the United States Agency for International Development in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
Bill Werner, Lead Greenhouse Manager of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis, walks between plants and evaporative cooling pads in a greenhouse at the Core Greenhouse Complex on the campus in Davis, Calif., May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
Erin McGuire spent years cultivating fruits and vegetables like onions, peppers and tomatoes as a scientist and later director of a lab at the University of California-Davis. She collaborated with hundreds of people to breed drought-resistant varieties, develop new ways to cool fresh produce and find ways to make more money for small farmers at home and overseas.
Then the funding stopped. Her lab, and by extension many of its overseas partners, were backed financially by the United States Agency for International Development, which Trump’s administrationhas been dismantling for the past several weeks. Just before it was time to collect data that had been two years in the making, her team received a stop work order. She had to lay off her whole team. Soon she was laid off, too.
“It’s really just been devastating,” she said. “I don’t know how you come back from this.”
The U.S. needs more publicly funded research and development on agriculture to offset the effects of climate change, according to apaper out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month.But instead the U.S. has been investing less.United States Department of Agriculture data showsthat as of 2019, the U.S. spent about a third less on agricultural research than its peak in 2002, a difference of about $2 billion. The recent pauses and freezes to funding for research on climate change and international development are only adding to the drop. It’s a serious issue for farmers who depend on new innovations to keep their businesses afloat, the next generation of scientists and eventually for consumers who buy food.
If scientists have reliable backing, they can keep improving crop varieties to better withstand perilous weather conditions likedroughtsorfloods,find new uses for existing crop species,figure outhow to protect workers,develop new technologyto aid in planting and harvesting orcreate more effective ways of fighting pests.They can also investigate agriculture’spotential roleinfighting climate change.
“This is terrible news for the U.S. agricultural sector,” said Cornell associate professor Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, the lead author of the paper.
As the Trump administration pauses and shutters research programs funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, USDA and other agencies, Ortiz-Bobea and other experts have seen field trials stopped, postdoctoral positions eliminated and a looming gap forming between the reality of climate change and the tools farmers have to deal with it.
The EPA declined to comment, and the USDA and USAID did not respond to Associated Press queries.
Ortiz-Bobea and his team quantified overall U.S. agricultural productivity, estimated how much it would be slowed by climate change in coming years and calculated how much money would need to be invested in research and development to counteract that slowdown.
Think of it like riding a bike into a headwind, Ortiz-Bobea said. To maintain the same speed, you have to pedal harder; in this case, R&D can be that extra push.
Some countries are heading that direction. China spends almost twice as much as the U.S. on agricultural research, and has increased its research investments by five times since 2000, wrote Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the Food and Environment team at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an email.
Spending cutbacks have also shuttered agricultural research across almost all of the Feed the Future Innovation Labs, of which McGuire’s was one. Those 17 labs across 13 universities focused on food security, technical agriculture research, policy and various aspects of climate change. The stop-work orders at those labs not only disappointed researchers, but made useless much of their work.
“There are many, many millions of dollars of expenditure that will generate nothing now because the work couldn’t be finished,” said David Tschirley, a professor who had been directing another one of those programs, the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity and Influence at Michigan State University, since 2019.
Bill Werner, Lead Greenhouse Manager of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis, walks between plants and evaporative cooling pads at the Core Greenhouse Complex in Davis, Calif., May 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
Some researchers hope that other sources of funding can fill the gaps: “That’s where private sector could really step up,” said Swati Hegde, a scientist in the Food, Land, and Water Program at the World Resources Institute.
From an agricultural point of view, climate change is “really scary,” with larger and larger regions exposed to temperatures above healthy growing conditions for many crops, said Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer, a multinational biotechnology and pharmaceutical company that invested nearly $3 billion in agricultural research and development last year. But private companies have their own constraints on R&D investment, and he said Bayer can’t invest as much as it would like in that area.
“I don’t think that private industry can replicate” how federal funding typically supports early stage, speculative science, he said, “because the economics don’t really work.” He added that industry tends to be better suited to back ideas that have already been validated.
Goswami, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, also expressed concerns that private research funding isn’t as trackable and transparent as public funding. And others said even sizeable investments from companies don’t give anywhere near enough money to match government funding.
The full impact may not be apparent for many years, and the damage won’t easily be repaired. Experts think it will be a blow in other countries where climate change is already decimating yields, driving hunger and conflict.
“I really worry that if we don’t really look at the global food situation, we will have a disaster,” said David Zilberman, a professor at UC Berkeley who won a Wolf Prize in 2019 for his work on agriculture.
But even domestically, experts say one thing is almost certain: this will mean even higher prices at the grocery store now and in the future.
“More people on the Earth, you need more productivity to prevent food prices going crazy,” said Tom Hertel, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. Even if nothing changes right away, he thinks “10 years from now, 20 years from now, our yield growth will surely be stunted” by cuts to research on agricultural productivity.
Many scientists said the wound isn’t just professional but personal.
“People are very demoralized,” especially younger researchers who don’t have tenure and want to work on international food research, said Zilberman.
Now those dreams are on hold for many. In carefully tended research plots, weeds begin to grow.
A villager tends to his vegetable garden in a plot that is part of a climate-smart agriculture program funded by the United States Agency for International Development in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli, File)
Follow Melina Walling on X@MelinaWallingand Bluesky@melinawalling.bsky.social.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’sstandardsfor working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas atAP.org.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Plastics are seeping into farm fields, food and eventually human bodies. Can they be stopped?
|
https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-agriculture-microplastics-soil-plastic-health-food-34c578dcdcada4abf06b03866d66e607
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Around the world, plastics are finding their way into farm fields. Some farmers say agricultural plastic, already a necessity for many crops, is becoming even more necessary as climate change fuels extreme weather. (AP video by Patric Onen. Produced by Brittany Peterson)
Water runs out of a drain under an agricultural field, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Sabina, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)
Alexandra Water Warriors volunteers cleanup the Juksei river in the heart of Alexandra township from plastic pollution in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
A crew applies biosolids, also known as sewage sludge, to a field, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025, in Wellston, Okla. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
Muddy plastic bottles have flowed downstream and become lodged against fallen trees and within the dense foliage in Tisza River near Tiszaroff, Hungary, Aug. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos, File)
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — In Uganda’s Mbale district, famous for its production of arabica coffee, a plague of plastic bags locally known as buveera is creeping beyond the city.
It’s a problem that has long littered the landscape in Kampala, the capital, where buveera are woven into the fabric of daily life. They show up in layers of excavated dirt roads and clog waterways. But now, they can be found in remote areas of farmland, too. Some of the debris includes the thick plastic bags used for planting coffee seeds in nurseries.
Some farmers are complaining, said Wilson Watira, head of a cultural board for the coffee-growing Bamasaba people. “They are concerned – those farmers who know the effects of buveera on the land,” he said.
Around the world, plastics find their way into farm fields. Climate change makes agricultural plastic, already a necessity for many crops, even more unavoidable for some farmers. Meanwhile, research continues to show that itty-bitty microplastics alter ecosystems and end up in human bodies. Scientists, farmers and consumers all worry about how that’s affecting human health, and many seek solutions. But industry experts say it’s difficult to know where plastic ends up or get rid of it completely, even with the best intentions of reuse and recycling programs.
According to a 2021report on plastics in agricultureby the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, soils are one of the main receptors of agricultural plastics. Some studies have estimated that soils are more polluted by microplastics than the oceans.
“These things are being released at such a huge, huge scale that it’s going to require major engineering solutions,” said Sarah Zack, an Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Great Lakes Contaminant Specialist who communicates about microplastics to the public.
Water runs out of a drain under an agricultural field, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Sabina, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)
Micro-particles of plastic that come from items like clothes, medications and beauty products sometimes appear in fertilizer made from the solid byproducts of wastewater treatment — calledbiosolids— whichcan also be smelly and toxic to nearby residentsdepending on the treatment process used. Some seeds are coated in plastic polymers designed to strategically disintegrate at the right time of the season, used in containers to hold pesticides or stretched over fields to lock in moisture.
But the agriculture industry itself only accounts for a little over 3% of all plastics used globally. About 40% of all plastics are used in packaging, including single-use plastic food and beverage containers.
Microplastics, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines as being smaller than five millimeters long, are their largest at about the size of a pencil eraser. Some are much smaller.
Studies have already shown that microplastics can be taken up by plants on land or plankton in the ocean and subsequently eaten by animals or humans. Scientists are still studying the long-term effects of the plastic that’s been found in human organs. Early findings suggest possible links to a host of health conditions including heart disease and some cancers.
A crew applies biosolids, also known as sewage sludge, to a field, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025, in Wellston, Okla. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
Despite “significant research gaps,” the evidence related to the land-based food chain “is certainly raising alarm,” said Lev Neretin, environment lead at the FAO, which is currently working on another technical report looking deeper into the problem of microplastic pollution in soils and crops.
A study out this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that microplastics pollution can even impact plants’ ability to photosynthesize, the process of turning light from the sun into energy. That doesn’t “justify excessive concern” but does “underscore food security risks that necessitate scientific attention,” wrote Fei Dang, one of the study’s authors.
Alexandra Water Warriors volunteers cleanup the Juksei river in the heart of Alexandra township from plastic pollution in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
The use of plastics has quadrupled over the past 30 years.Plastic is ubiquitous.And most of the world’s plastic goes to landfills, pollutes the environment or is burned. Less than 10% of plastics are recycled.
At the same time, some farmers are becoming more reliant on plastics to shelter crops from the effects of extreme weather. They’re using tarps, hoop houses and other technology to try to control conditions for their crops. And they’re depending more on chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers to buffer against unreliable weather and more pervasive pest issues.
“Through global warming, we have less and less arable land to make crops on. But we need more crops. So therefore the demand on agricultural chemicals is increasing,” said Ole Rosgaard, president and CEO of Greif, a company that makes packaging used for industrial agriculture products like pesticides and other chemicals.
Extreme weather, fueled by climate change, also contributes to the breakdown and transport of agricultural plastics. Beating sun can wear on materials over time. And more frequent and intense rainfall events in some areas could drive more plastic particles running into fields and eventually waterways, said Maryam Salehi, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Missouri.
Muddy plastic bottles have flowed downstream and become lodged against fallen trees and within the dense foliage in Tisza River near Tiszaroff, Hungary, Aug. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos, File)
This past winter, leaders from around the world gathered in South Korea to produce thefirst legally binding global treaty on plastics pollution. Theydidn’t reach an agreement, but the negotiations are scheduled to resume in August.
Neretin said the FAO produced aprovisional, voluntary code of conducton sustainable management of plastics in agriculture. But without a formal treaty in place, most countries don’t have a strong incentive to follow it.
“The mood is certainly not cheery, that’s for sure,” he said, adding global cooperation “takes time, but the problem does not disappear.”
Without political will, much of the onus falls on companies.
Rosgaard, of Greif, said that his company has worked to make their products recyclable, and that farmers have incentives to return them because they can get paid in exchange. But he added it’s sometimes hard to prevent people from just burning the plastic or letting it end up in fields or waterways.
“We just don’t know where they end up all the time,” he said.
Some want to stop the flow of plastic and microplastic waste into ecosystems. Boluwatife Olubusoye, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Mississippi, is trying to see whether biochar, remains of organic matter and plant waste burned under controlled conditions, can filter out microplastics that run from farm fields into waterways. His early experiments have shown promise.
He said he was motivated by the feeling that there was “never any timely solution in terms of plastic waste” ending up in fields in the first place, especially in developing countries.
Even for farmers who care about plastics in soils, it can be challenging for them to do anything about it. In Uganda, owners of nursery beds cannot afford proper seedling trays, so they resort to cheaply made plastic bags used to germinate seeds, said Jacob Ogola, an independent agronomist there.
Farmers hardest hit by climate change are least able to reduce the presence of cheap plastic waste in soils. That frustrates Innocent Piloya, an agroecology entrepreneur who grows coffee in rural Uganda with her company Ribbo Coffee.
“It’s like little farmers fighting plastic manufacturers,” she said.
Walling reported from Chicago.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’sstandardsfor working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas atAP.org.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
UN agency closes its remaining Gaza bakeries as food supplies dwindle under Israeli blockade
|
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-ceasefire-hostages-04-01-2025-0672fee1c04524fc1765d167fe8dcd7b
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Palestinians receive bags of flour and other humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians receive bags of flour and other humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Mourners carry the bodies of three members of Dahouh family, killed when an Israeli army strike hit their tent, before their burial at the hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Mourners carry the bodies of three members of Dahouh family, killed when an Israeli army strike hit their tent, before their burial at the hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian girls dressed for Eid al-Fitr celebrations walk next to destructions in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli ground and air operations stand in northern of Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli ground and air operations stand in northern of Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Palestinians receive bags of flour and other humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians receive bags of flour and other humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians receive bags of flour and other humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians receive bags of flour and other humanitarian aid distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The U.N. food agency is closing all of its bakeriesin the Gaza Strip, officials said Tuesday, as supplies dwindle after Israel sealed off the territory from all imports nearly a month ago.
Israel, which laterresumed its offensiveto pressure the Hamas militant group into accepting changes to their ceasefire agreement, said enough food had entered Gaza during the six-week truce to sustain the territory’s roughly 2 million Palestinians for a long time.
U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Israel’s assertion was “ridiculous,” calling the food shortage very critical. The organization is “at the tail end of our supplies” and a lack of flour and cooking oil are forcing the bakeries to close, Dujarric said Tuesday.
Markets largely emptied weeks ago. U.N. agencies say the supplies they built up during the truceare running out. Gaza is heavily reliant on international aid because the war has destroyed almost all of its food production capability.
Mohammed al-Kurd, a father of 12, said his children go to bed without dinner.
“We tell them to be patient and that we will bring flour in the morning,” he said. “We lie to them and to ourselves.”
For the second consecutive day, Israel’s military warned residents of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah toimmediately evacuate, a sign that it could soon launch a major ground operation. At least 140,000 people were under orders to leave, according to the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
A World Food Program memo circulated to aid groups said it could no longer operate its remaining bakeries, which produce the bread on which many rely. The U.N. agency said it was prioritizing its remaining stocks to provide emergency food aid and expand hot meal distribution. WFP spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said WFP was closing its remaining 19 bakeries after shuttering six last month. She said hundreds of thousands of people relied on them.
The Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian affairs, known as COGAT, said more than 25,000 trucks entered Gaza during the ceasefire, carrying nearly 450,000 tons of aid. It said the amount represented around a third of what has entered during the war.
“There is enough food for a long period of time, if Hamas lets the civilians have it,” it said.
U.N. agencies and aid groups say theystruggled to bring in and distribute aidbefore the ceasefire took hold in January. Their estimates for how much aid reached people in Gaza were consistently lower than COGAT’s, which were based on how much entered through border crossings.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that at least 42 bodies and more than 180 wounded arrived at hospitals over the past 24 hours. At least 1,042 Palestinians have been killed in the two weeks since Israel broke the ceasefire and resumed heavy bombardments.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Hamas is still holding 59 captives — 24 believed to be alive — after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, including hundreds killed in strikes since the ceasefire ended, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Israel sealed off Gaza from all aid at the start of the war but later relented under pressure from Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, which took credit for helping to broker the ceasefire, has expressedfull support for Israel’s actions, including its decision to end the truce.
Israel has demanded that Hamas release several hostages before further talks on ending the war. Those negotiations were supposed to begin in early February. It has also insisted that Hamas disarm and leave Gaza, conditions that weren’t part of the ceasefire agreement.
Hamas has called for implementing the agreement, in which the remaining hostages would be released in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.
Palestinians mourned Mohamed Salah Bardawil, a journalist with Hamas-affiliated Aqsa Radio who was killed along with his wife and three children by an Israeli strike early Tuesday at their home in southern Gaza.
Associated Press footage showed the building in Khan Younis collapsed, with dried blood splattered on the rubble. A child’s school notebook, dust-covered dolls and clothing lay half-buried in the ruins. The Israeli military declined to comment.
The journalist is the nephew of Salah Bardawil, a well-known member of Hamas’ political bureau who was killed in an Israeli strike that also killed his wife last month.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 170 journalists and media workers since the war began, the Committee to Protect Journalists has estimated.
Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Fatma Khaled in Cairo and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage athttps://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Israel’s defense minister says the country’s military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize “large areas” of the Palestinian territory.
|
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-gaza-operation-04-02-2025-6b653fc8fa1e6f0c1a0c8d322bd48ccc
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Displaced Palestinians carry water in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip on Monday, March 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz listens during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the war in Gaza, March 11, 2024, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military operation in theGaza Stripis expanding to seize “large areas,” the defense minister said Wednesday.
Israel’s offensivein the Palestinian territory was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and seizing large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a written statement.
Israel’s security perimeter, which runs along the border with Israel in northern and eastern Gaza, has been a crucial part of the country’s defense for decades, used as a way to protect its citizens living near the territory.
Katz didn’t specify which areas of Gaza would be seized in the expanded operation, which includes the “extensive evacuation” of the population from fighting areas.
The minister called on Gaza residents to “expel Hamas and return all hostages.” The militant group still holds 59 captives, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
“This is the only way to end the war,” Katz said.
The Hostage Families Forum, which represents most captives’ families, said that it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the Defense Minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza.”
The group said the Israeli government “has an obligation to free all 59 hostages from Hamas captivity — to pursue every possible channel to advance a deal for their release,” and stressed that every passing day puts their loved ones’ lives at greater risk.
“Their lives hang in the balance as more and more disturbing details continue to emerge about the horrific conditions they’re being held in — chained, abused, and in desperate need of medical attention,” said the forum, which called on the Trump administration and other mediators to continue pressuring Hamas to release the hostages.
“Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home — the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial — and end this war,” the group said.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, including hundreds killed in strikes since a ceasefire ended about two weeks ago, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Follow AP’s war coverage athttps://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
The Large Hadron Collider is getting an even larger successor
|
https://apnews.com/article/cern-future-circular-collider-switzerland-france-physics-2eb0b838b11940b3ab70d0a872ca4fdd
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
GENEVA (AP) — Top minds at the world’s largest atom smasher have released a blueprint fora much bigger successorthat could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.
The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva — published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making atCERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase — planned for 2070 — that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
“History of physics tells that when there is more data, the human ingenuity is able to extract more information than originally expected,” Chiarelli, who was not involved in the plans, said in an e-mail.
For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been making plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.
The blueprint lays out the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and project cost. Independent experts will take a look before CERN’s two dozen member countries — all European except for Israel — decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about $16 billion).
CERN officials tout the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind.
Outside experts point to the promise of learning more about theHiggs boson,the elusive particlethat has been controversially dubbed “the God particle,” which helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.
Work at the Large Hadron Colliderconfirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson, the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.
CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti said the future collider “could become the most extraordinary instrument ever built by humanity to study the constituents and the laws of nature at the most fundamental levels in two ways,” by improving study of the Higgs boson and paving the way to “explore the energy frontier,” and by looking for new physics that explain the structure and evolution of the universe.
One unknown is whether the Trump administration, which has been cuttingforeign aidandspending in academia and research, will continue to support CERN a year after the Biden administration pledged U.S. support for the study and collaboration on the FCC’s construction and “physics exploitation” if it’s approved.
The United States is home to 2,000 users of CERN, making them the single largest national contingent among the 17,000 people working there, including outside experts abroad and staff on site, Gianotti said.
While an observer state and not a member, the U.S. doesn’t pay into the CERN regular budget but has contributed to specific projects. Most of the CERN regular budget comes from Europe.
Costas Fountas, the CERN Council president, said he had spoken with some U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy staff who relayed the message that so far “they’re ‘under the radar of the cuts of the Trump administration’. That’s their words.”
CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the plans considered at least 100 scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 91-kilometer circumference at an average depth of 200 meters (656 feet). The tunnel would be about 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, CERN said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Myanmar reporta más de 2.700 muertos en sismo mientras se pierde esperanza de hallar sobrevivientes
|
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-tailandia-sismo-sobrevivientes-bangkok-mandalay-4107841f20aeb68965ebbdd4d1e451e4
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Rescatistas de Myanmar buscan entre los restos de un edificio derruido tras el sismo del viernes en Naipyidó, Myanmar, el martes 1 de abril de 2025. (AP Foto)
BANGKOK (AP) — Los equipos de rescate salvaron el martes a una mujer de 63 años de entre los escombros de un edificio en la capital de Myanmar, pero la esperanza de encontrar muchos más sobrevivientes del violento terremoto que mató a más de 2.700 personas se desvanecía, agravando una crisis humanitaria causada por una guerra civil.
El departamento de bomberos de Naipyidó informó que la mujer fue rescatada con éxito de los escombros 91 horas después de haber quedado sepultada cuando el edificio colapsó en el terremoto de magnitud 7,7 que golpeó el viernes al mediodía. Los expertos dicen que la probabilidad de encontrar sobrevivientes disminuye drásticamente después de 72 horas.
El líder del gobierno militar de Myanmar, el general Min Aung Hlaing, dijo en Naipyidó que se habían encontrado 2.719 muertos, a los que se sumaban 4.521 heridos y 441 desaparecidos, según el sitio web de Myanmar Western News.
Se espera que las cifras de víctimas aumenten. El terremoto afectó a una amplia franja del país y dejó muchas áreas sin electricidad, conexiones telefónicas o celulares, además de dañar carreteras y puentes, lo que dificulta evaluar la magnitud total de la devastación.
La mayoría de los reportes hasta ahora han provenido de Mandalay, la segunda ciudad más grande de Myanmar, que estaba cerca del epicentro del terremoto, y de Naipyidó.
“Las necesidades son enormes y aumentan cada hora”, dijo Julia Rees, representante adjunta de UNICEF para Myanmar. “ La ventana para la respuesta que salva vidas se está cerrando. En todas las áreas afectadas, las familias enfrentan una escasez aguda de agua potable, alimentos y suministros médicos”.
El departamento de bomberos de Myanmar dijo que 403 personas han sido rescatadas en Mandalay y se han encontrado 259 cuerpos hasta ahora. En un solo incidente, 50 monjes budistas que estaban haciendo un examen religioso en un monasterio murieron cuando el edificio colapsó y se cree que 150 más están enterrados en los escombros.
La Organización Mundial de la Salud dijo que, en total, se sabe que más de 10.000 edificios han colapsado o han quedado gravemente dañados en el centro y noroeste de Myanmar.
El terremoto también sacudió a la vecina Tailandia, causó el colapso de un rascacielos en construcción y sepultó a muchos trabajadores. Se recuperaron dos cuerpos de entre los escombros el lunes y otro fue recuperado el martes, pero decenas seguían desaparecidos. En total, 21 personas murieron y 34 resultaron heridas en Bangkok, principalmente en el sitio de construcción.
En Myanmar, los esfuerzos de búsqueda y rescate en toda la zona afectada se detuvieron brevemente al mediodía del martes mientras la gente guardaba un minuto de silencio en homenaje a los muertos.
Los trabajadores humanitarios extranjeros han llegado poco a poco para ayudar en los esfuerzos de rescate, pero el progreso sigue siendo lento debido a la falta de maquinaria pesada en muchos lugares. En un sitio en Naipyidó el martes, los trabajadores formaron una cadena humana, pasando trozos de ladrillo y concreto de mano en mano desde las ruinas de un edificio colapsado.
El Global New Light of Myanmar, el medio oficial del gobierno militar de Myanmar, informó el martes que un equipo de rescatistas chinos salvó a cuatro personas el día anterior de las ruinas del Sky Villa, un gran complejo de apartamentos que colapsó durante el terremoto. Entre ellos se encontraban un niño de 5 años y una mujer embarazada que llevaban atrapados más de 60 horas.
El mismo medio también informó que dos adolescentes pudieron salir arrastrándose de los escombros del mismo edificio hasta donde trabajaban los equipos de rescate, usando las linternas de sus teléfonos celulares para ayudarse a encontrar el camino. Los rescatistas pudieron entonces usar los detalles que les proporcionaron para localizar a su abuela y a un hermano.
Había equipos de rescate internacionales de varios países sobre el terreno, incluidos Rusia, China, India, Emiratos Árabes Unidos y varios países del sudeste asiático. La embajada de EEUU dijo que se había enviado un equipo estadounidense pero aún no había llegado.
Mientras tanto, varios países han prometido millones en ayuda para asistir a Myanmar y a las organizaciones humanitarias con la monumental tarea que tienen por delante. Incluso antes del terremoto, más de 3 millones de personas habían sido desplazadas de sus hogares por la brutal guerra civil de Myanmar, y casi 20 millones necesitaban ayuda, según la ONU.
Muchos ya carecían de atención médica básica y vacunas estándar, y la destrucción de la infraestructura de agua y saneamiento por el terremoto aumenta el riesgo de brotes de enfermedades, advirtió la Oficina de Coordinación de Asuntos Humanitarios de la ONU.
“El desplazamiento de miles de personas a refugios superpoblados, junto con la destrucción de la infraestructura de agua y saneamiento, ha aumentado significativamente el riesgo de brotes de enfermedades transmisibles”, dijo OCHA en su último informe. “La vulnerabilidad a infecciones respiratorias, enfermedades de la piel, enfermedades transmitidas por vectores como el dengue y enfermedades prevenibles por vacunación como el sarampión está aumentando”, agregó.
El refugio también es un problema importante, especialmente ante la cercanía de la temporada de monzones. Desde el terremoto, muchas personas han estado durmiendo al aire libre, ya sea porque sus hogares fueron destruidos o por miedo a las réplicas.
El ejército de Myanmar arrebató el poder en 2021 al gobierno elegido democráticamente de Aung San Suu Kyi, provocando lo que se ha convertido en una resistencia armada significativa y una brutal guerra civil. Las fuerzas gubernamentales han perdido el control de gran parte de Myanmar, y muchos lugares eran peligrosos o imposibles de alcanzar para los grupos de ayuda incluso antes del terremoto.
Los ataques militares y los de algunos grupos que combaten al Ejército no han cesado tras el terremoto, aunque el gobierno de unidad nacional en la sombra ha llamado a un alto el fuego unilateral para sus fuerzas. El NUG, establecido por legisladores electos que fueron derrocados en 2021, pidió a la comunidad internacional que garantice que la ayuda humanitaria se entregue directamente a las víctimas del terremoto, instando a “la vigilancia contra cualquier intento de la junta militar de desviar u obstruir la asistencia humanitaria”.
“No está claro de inmediato si el ejército ha estado impidiendo la ayuda humanitaria. En el pasado, inicialmente se negó a permitir la entrada de equipos de rescate extranjeros o muchos suministros de emergencia después del ciclón Nargis en 2008, lo que resultó en más de 100.000 muertes. Incluso una vez que permitió la asistencia extranjera, fue con severas restricciones. En este caso, sin embargo, Min Aung Hlaing dijo enfáticamente el día del terremoto que el país aceptaría ayuda externa.
Tom Andrews, un observador de derechos en Myanmar comisionado por el Consejo de Derechos Humanos respaldado por la ONU, dijo en X que para facilitar la ayuda, los ataques militares deben detenerse. “La prioridad en Myanmar debe ser salvar vidas, no quitarlas”, dijo.
Grant Peck en Bangkok y Jamey Keaten en Ginebra contribuyeron a este despacho.
Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Chomp, chomp: Florida has a knack for rallying from deficits and coming through in crunch time
|
https://apnews.com/article/march-madness-final-four-walter-clayton-jr-todd-golden-3585dd0d9a6f080efd1575057522df5f
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Florida head coach Todd Golden does the Gator Chomp after cutting down the net after defeating Texas Tech in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. (1) shoots a three pointer over Texas Tech forward Darrion Williams (5) during the second half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Florida forward Thomas Haugh celebrates their win over Texas Tech in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Florida head coach Todd Golden reacts to an official’s call during the first half in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament against Texas Tech, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in San Francisco. (Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Florida guard Alijah Martin sits on the court after defeating Texas Tech in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Florida head coach Todd Golden celebrates after cutting down the net following his team’s win over Texas Tech in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 29, 2025, in San Francisco. (Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
▶Follow AP’sfull coverage of March Madness.
▶Get theAP Top 25 men’s college basketball polldelivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts.Sign up here.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Beware: these Gators bite, especially when they feel threatened.
Florida, which has shown a knack for wearing down opponents all season, has become the ultimate closer in the NCAA Tournament. Late-game rallies againsttwo-time defending national champion UConn in the second roundandagainst Texas Tech in the Elite Eighthave the Gators (34-4) believing that no hole is too deep for this gritty group.
Coach Todd Golden pointed to confidence and maturity as the keys to his team’s penchant for comebacks. He also joked thathaving All-American guard Walter Clayton Jr. on the floormakes a huge difference.
“It’s our ability to not get too high or too low,” Golden said Tuesday.
Golden clearly would prefer to have his team get off to a better start when it faces fellowSoutheastern Conference foe Auburn(32-5) — the Gatorswon their first meeting in February— to open theFinal Four in San Antonioon Saturday. But he’s seen enough to know there’s no reason to panic if Florida falls behind.
After all, these Gators have looked fairly harmless for the first 20, 30 or even 35 minutes of games before attacking with a frenzy.
Just ask UConn or Texas Tech. Or Alabama, Georgia, LSU and South Carolina. The Gators overcame daunting deficits against all of them.
“Undying belief,” Clayton said. “It goes to show how together we all are. Many times (we) could easily just break, start pointing the finger, blaming each other for this and that. But we just stayed together through the end and stayed the course.”
None of Florida’s rallies have been as impressive as its latest one. The Gators trailed Texas Tech 71-61 with 5:30 to play when Clayton took over. The senior made three 3-pointers, a layup and two free throws down the stretch. He also dished out two assists by finding Thomas Haugh for open 3s.
“Instead of letting our emotions get the best of us or pointing fingers, we did a good job staying the course,” Golden said. “Obviously our guys did a good job understanding it’s now or never and made every big play down the stretch.”
Added Haugh: “When you’ve got guards like these guys, the game’s never over. It’s just wild.”
Florida ranks second in the country in second-half scoring margin, a clear indication of the team’s coaching/talent/depth combination. The Gators wore down against Alabama and Tennessee in the SEC tournament last month and did the same to the Huskies and Maryland in NCAA play.
UConn led much of the game until Clayton stepped up in the closing minutes. The Terrapins held tough early — they trailed 40-38 at halftime — before Florida made a few adjustments at the beak and dominated the second half.
It’s hardly anything new for Golden’s group, either.
The Gators nearly beat Missouri in mid-January despite trailing by 19. They rallied to shock South Carolina a week later after being down 14 in the second half. Although less dramatic, they did something similar at LSU in late February. Down eight in the second half, Florida flipped a switch and routed the Tigers the rest of the way.
Golden’s squad nearly pulled off another stunner three days later. After trailing by 26 in the first half, Florida fought back to take a lead at Georgia before Cain Blue hit a dagger 3 with a minute to play.
“Again, the consistency, the maturity and their belief in each other is a big part of that,” Golden said.
Golden has spent three years rebuilding Florida, which is in the Final Four for the first time since 2014. He ended up with three senior guards — Clayton, Will Richard and Florida Atlantic transfer Alijah Martin — who comprise the core of the team. Each of them has made plays to spark comebacks, although Richard and Martin have so far taken a backseat to Clayton in the postseason.
Still, the trio is the main reason these Gators have won 10 in a row and have a shot at a third national title and first since going back-to-back in 2006-07. And all of them have the potential to chomp, especially in crunch time.
“Guys could just break apart during those moments,” Clayton said. “We all stay the course, stay together. And I think that just goes to show the togetherness of the team, the love we have for each other to get through those tough times.”
AP March Madness bracket:https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracketand coverage:https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign uphere.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
The US Bank executive killed in a plane crash died of blunt-force injuries
|
https://apnews.com/article/plane-crash-brooklyn-park-minnesota-us-bank-executive-80de0437704c2677d3decc3e8c509485
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
A small plane traveling from Iowa to Minnesota crashed Saturday in a residential area of a Minneapolis suburb, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Officials did not immediately provide information about possible deaths or injuries related to the crash in Brooklyn Park.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The U.S. Bank executive killed when hisplane crashed into a homein suburban Minneapolis died of blunt-force injuries, a medical examiner ruled Tuesday.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the sole occupant of the plane as Terrance Robert Dolan, 63, of Edina. The aircraft was a single-engine Socata TBM7, which went down Saturday in Brooklyn Park.
Dolan was vice chair and chief administration officer at Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank. He was named chief administration officer in 2023 and had been with the company for more than 26 years.
The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the cause of the crash.
Dolan was flying back to Minnesota from Naples, Florida. After a stop in Des Moines, Iowa, he departed for the Anoka County-Blaine Airport, which is a few miles from the crash site.
A man inside the house escaped the resulting fire, but the house was destroyed.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Believe at your own risk: Experts advise caution with online health claims
|
https://apnews.com/article/wellness-advice-social-media-influencers-supplements-cf040ff9a3f2f3d8e759a8333747fa91
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
A man uses a cell phone in New Orleans on Aug. 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks after being sworn in as Health and Human Services Secretary in the Oval Office at the White House, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Washington. (Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Walkers and joggers are silhouetted on a jetty as the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020, in Bal Harbour, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
In the corners of social media dominated by wellness content, influencers recommend an assortment of treatments and products to support weight loss, fight exhaustion or promote other desired health outcomes.
Some of the endorsed approaches may be helpful. Many play into fads with scant evidence to back up enthusiasts’ claims, medical experts say.
Some influencers encourage their followers to avoid specific food items, such asseed oils, while others advocate going all in on certain foods, such as the meat-heavy carnivore diet. There are video pitches for berberine, a chemical compound that’s been touted online as “nature’s Ozempic,” and for non-medical IV vitamin therapy, which businesses popularly known as drip bars market as cures for hangovers or fatigue.
To be sure, alternative health practices and cures that lacked the medical establishment’s backing were a part of popular culture long before the internet age. But the plethora of advice shared online has both prompted calls for safeguards and found a measure ofmainstream acceptance.
The new U.S. health secretary,Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had hisInstagram account suspendedin 2021 for posting misinformation about vaccine safety and COVID-19, but many of the ideas he champions have a widespread following. Critics of Dr.Mehmet Ozaccused him of sometimes making misleading assertions on the talk show he used to host; Oz now is President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
A Netflix series released last month explored the story of Belle Gibson, a popular Australian wellness influencer who amassed a following talking about curing her terminal brain cancer with a healthy lifestyle and alternative medicine. In 2015, Gibson admitted to lying about having a cancer diagnosis. Australia’s federal court later fined her for failing to donate money she said would go to charity through sales of her cookbook and app.
With personal wellness remaining a hot topic, here are some tips health experts have for evaluating the material you see online:
Most influencers have or want business relationships with companies that allow them to earn income by promoting products. The arrangements don’t necessarily mean content creators don’t believe in what they’re marketing, but they do have a vested interest in publicizing products that may or may not work.
Creators can get paid for pictures or videos that hype up a product and also earn commissions on sales through features such as affiliate links. Experts note it’s therefore better to proceed with caution when someone inspires you to hit the “buy” button, whether it’s for natural supplements, teas with purported weight loss benefits or any other wellness products that show up in your social media feed.
Researchpublished last monthin the Journal of the American Medical Association showed a sizable amount of Instagram and TikTok posts that discussed five popular medical tests mostly came from account holders with “some form of financial interest” in promoting the screenings.
After analyzing roughly 980 posts on the two platforms, researchers said most of the posts they found were misleading and failed to “mention important harms, including overdiagnosis” resulting from health people having full-body MRIs or tests to detect early signs of cancer, evaluate microorganisms in the gut or measure hormone levels.
Promoting dietary supplements has been a particularly lucrative exercise for many influencers, said Timothy Caulfield, a health policy and law professor at the University of Alberta. He views the supplements industry as “the backbone” of health misinformation aimed at consumers and designed to fuel billions of dollars in revenue.
“It’s gotten to the point where if someone is selling a supplement, it’s a red flag,” he said. “I don’t think it was always like that, but it certainly is now.”
In general, consumers should take all bold claims with a degree of skepticism, said Cedric Bryant, chief executive officer at the nonprofit American Council on Exercise. The goal of creators is to increase engagement with their content, and some influencers may be tempted to make unproven assertions to draw in more viewers.
“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is,” Bryant said.
Some health and wellness influencers have medical training, but many do not. Before taking health tips from someone on social media, it’s a good idea to make sure they have the proper expertise or at least able to share the data that led them to recommend certain products or lifestyle choices.
In the fitness area, Bryant recommends checking to see if a creator holds certification from an accreditation organization and then confirming the information through the U.S. Registry of Exercise Professionals database.
The American Medical Association and The American Board of Medical Specialties maintain searchable databases for medical doctors, which may help verify the qualifications of creators who share their legal names and general locations. States also operate databases that allow users to check if someone is licensed to practice medicine or has been disciplined for misconduct.
If an influencer holding the appropriate credentials pushes certain products, consumers still may want to consider if a brand partnership or other factors are shaping their recommendations.
Federal Trade Commission guidelines that reflected the agency’s interpretation of federal law directed influencers featuring specific products or services to prominently disclose any endorsements. Yet sponsorships and potential conflicts of interest are not always revealed.
In 2023, the year the guidelines were issued, the FTC issued warnings to a dozen online influencers for failing to adequately disclose paid social media posts that promoted “sugar-containing products” and aspartame, a sweetener found in diet soda, ice cream and other foods. Some of the influencers were registered dieticians.
If a creator cites studies to support health and diet claims, it’s best to check and see if what they’re saying aligns with the latest evidence-based medical consensus.
“Just because somebody has an ‘M.D.’ after their name doesn’t make them entirely trustworthy,” said Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist and Stanford University professor who studies the intersection of psychology and technology.
Aboujaoude suggests double-checking health claims with traditionally reputable sources, such as major academic institutions or government health agencies. He also advised looking at studies cited by creators and assessing whether they’ve been published in reputable journals and subjected to peer review.
In some cases, it might be too soon to know if promising results should be trusted or not, said Katherine Zeratsky, a registered dietitian with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. For example, a study might show the benefits of a specific type of herb. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the findings have been replicated in other research, a requirement for treatment methods to be considered proven effective, she said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Agencia ONU cierra sus últimas panaderías en Gaza mientras escasean alimentos por bloqueo israelí
|
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinos-hamas-guerra-alto-el-fuego-rehenes-cc0ceefce2ece0100e36e2f0b5f781db
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Niñas palestinas vestidas para las celebraciones de Eid al-Fitr caminan cerca de los escombros en Jabaliya, Franja de Gaza, el lunes 31 de marzo de 2025. (AP foto/Jehad Alshrafi)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Franja de Gaza (AP) — La agencia alimentaria de la ONU está cerrando todas sus panaderías en la Franja de Gaza, dijeron funcionarios el martes, ya que los suministros de alimentos disminuyen después de que Israel selló el territorio de todas las importaciones hace casi un mes.
Israel, que endureció su bloqueo y luego reanudó su ofensiva para presionar a Hamás a aceptar cambios en su acuerdo de alto el fuego, dijo que durante la tregua de seis semanas entró suficiente comida en Gaza para sostener a los aproximadamente dos millones de palestinos del territorio.
Los mercados se vaciaron en gran medida hace semanas, y las agencias de la ONU dicen que los suministros que acumularon durante la tregua se están agotando. Gaza depende en gran medida de la ayuda internacional, porque la guerra ha destruido casi toda su capacidad de producción de alimentos.
Mohammed al-Kurd, padre de 12 hijos, dijo que sus hijos se acuestan sin cenar. “Les decimos que sean pacientes y que traeremos harina por la mañana”, expresó. “Les mentimos a ellos y a nosotros mismos”.
Un memorando del Programa Mundial de Alimentos distribuido el lunes a los grupos humanitarios indicaba que ya no podía operar las panaderías que le quedaban, que producen el pan de pita del que dependen muchas personas. La agencia de la ONU dijo que estaba dando prioridad a sus reservas restantes para proporcionar ayuda alimentaria de emergencia y ampliar la distribución de comidas calientes. Los portavoces del PMA no han respondido por el momento a las solicitudes de comentarios.
Olga Cherevko, portavoz de la Oficina de Coordinación de Asuntos Humanitarios de la ONU, dijo que el PMA estaba cerrando sus 19 panaderías restantes después de cerrar otras seis el mes pasado. Señaló que cientos de miles de personas dependían de ellas.
El cuerpo militar israelí a cargo de los asuntos palestinos, conocido como COGAT, dijo que más de 25.000 camiones entraron en Gaza durante el alto el fuego, transportando casi 450.000 toneladas de ayuda. Indicó que esa cantidad representaba alrededor de un tercio de lo que ha entrado durante toda la guerra.
“Hay suficiente comida para un largo período de tiempo, si Hamás deja que los civiles la tengan”, manifestó.
Las agencias de la ONU y los grupos de ayuda dicen que lucharon para traer y distribuir ayuda antes de que el alto el fuego entrara en vigor en enero. Sus estimaciones de cuánta ayuda realmente llegó a las personas en Gaza fueron consistentemente más bajas que las de COGAT, que se basaron en cuánto entró a través de los cruces fronterizos.
La guerra comenzó cuando milicianos liderados por Hamás atacaron el sur de Israel el siete de octubre de 2023, matando a alrededor de 1.200 personas, en su mayoría civiles, y tomando 251 rehenes. Hamás todavía mantiene a 59 cautivos —24 de los cuales se cree que están vivos— después de que la mayoría del resto fueron liberados en acuerdos de alto el fuego u otros tratos.
La ofensiva israelí ha matado a más de 50.000 palestinos, cientos de ellos en ataques realizados desde el fin del alto el fuego, según el Ministerio de Salud de Gaza, que no aclara si los muertos en la guerra son civiles o combatientes. Israel afirma que ha matado a unos 20.000 milicianos, pero no aporta pruebas.
Israel selló Gaza de toda ayuda al inicio de la guerra, pero luego cedió bajo presión de Washington. El gobierno del presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, que se atribuyó el mérito de ayudar a negociar el alto el fuego, ha expresado su pleno apoyo a las acciones de Israel, incluida su decisión de terminar la tregua.
Israel ha exigido que Hamás libere a varios rehenes antes de comenzar las conversaciones para poner fin a la guerra, negociaciones que se suponía debían comenzar a principios de febrero. También ha insistido en que Hamás se desarme y abandone Gaza, condiciones que no formaban parte del acuerdo de alto el fuego.
Hamás ha pedido la implementación del acuerdo, en el que los rehenes restantes serían liberados a cambio de la liberación de más prisioneros palestinos, un alto el fuego duradero y una retirada israelí.
Mednick informó desde Tel Aviv, Israel. Fatma Khaled contribuyó a este informe desde El Cairo.
Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Boys with cancer can face infertility as adults. Can storing their stem cells help?
|
https://apnews.com/article/childhood-cancer-infertility-fertility-preservation-1206e85790dd896bdf373fb53a785118
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Researchers have performed the first known transplant of sperm-producing stem cells in hopes of restoring fertility in a man who survived childhood cancer.
This photo provided by Jeng Hsu shows her son, Jaiwen Hsu, at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington in August 2011, weeks before his last round of chemotherapy for bone cancer. (Jeng Hsu via AP)
This photo provided by Jeng Hsu shows her son, Jaiwen Hsu, at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington in November 2010, shortly after he started chemotherapy for bone cancer. (Jeng Hsu via AP)
This photo provided by Jeng Hsu shows her son, Jaiwen Hsu, second right, celebrating his 12th birthday with siblings at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington. (Jeng Hsu via AP)
In this image from video provided by UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences, Jaiwen Hsu sits with his mother, Jeng Hsu, before a stem cell implant procedure at the UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh on Nov. 10, 2023. (UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences via AP)
In this image from video provided by UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences, Jaiwen Hsu sits with his mother, Jeng Hsu, before a stem cell implant procedure at the UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh on Nov. 10, 2023. (UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A man who battled childhood cancer has received the first knowntransplant of sperm-producing stem cells, in a study aimed at restoring the fertility of cancer’s youngest survivors.
Jaiwen Hsu was 11 when a leg injury turned out to be bone cancer. Doctors thoughtgrueling chemotherapycould save him but likely leave him infertile. His parents learned researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were freezing testicular cells ofyoung boys with cancerin hopes of preserving their future fertility — and signed him up.
Hsu, now 26, is the first to return as an adult and test if reimplanting those cells might work.
“The science behind it is so incredibly new that right now it’s kind of a waiting game,” said Hsu, of Vienna, Virginia. “It’s kind of eagerly crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.”
It may seem unusual to discuss future fertility when a family is reeling from the diagnosis of a child’s cancer. But 85% of children with cancer now survive to adulthood and about 1 in 3 are left infertile from chemotherapy or radiation.
Young adults with cancer can bank sperm, eggs or sometimes embryos ahead of treatment. But children diagnosed before puberty don’t have that option because they’re not yet producing mature sperm or eggs.
Boys are born with stem cells inside spaghetti-like tubes in the testes, cells that start producing sperm after puberty sparks a rise in testosterone. Withfunding from the National Institutes of Health, Pitt reproductive scientist Kyle Orwig studies how to preserve and potentially use testicular cells to restore fertility.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health.Read more Be Well.
It starts with a biopsy-like removal of a small amount of testicular tissue that contains millions of cells – some of them precious sperm-producing stem cells.Since 2011, Orwig’s team has frozen samplesfrom about 1,000 prepubertal boys.
It’s impossible to tell if enough stem cells are in each tiny sample to matter. But in 2019, Orwig used preserved testicular tissue from a young male monkey that, in an animal version of IVF, led to the birth of a healthy baby monkey.
By 2023, Orwig was ready to reimplant now-grown cancer survivors’ cells when Hsu — not ready to start a family yet but curious about his long-ago study participation — reached out.
“We’re not expecting a miracle result,” cautioned Orwig, whose colleagues transplanted Hsu’s thawed cells in November 2023.
In a paperposted onlinethis week, Orwig reported the injection, guided by ultrasound to the right spot, was safe and easy to perform. His work has not yet been reviewed by other scientists.
And Orwig said it’s too soon to know if the experiment worked and standard tests likely won’t tell, as animal testing found assisted reproduction techniques were needed to detect and retrieve small amounts of sperm. Still, he hopes the ongoing research will alert more families to consider fertility preservation so they’d have the option if it eventually pans out.
Belgian researchers announced a similar experiment in January, implanting pieces of testicular tissue rather than cells in a childhood cancer survivor.
“These developments are of great importance,” said researcher Ellen Goossens of Vrije Universiteit Brussel. While animal research “was very promising, transplantations in humans will be the only way” to tell if this really works.
Similar research with immature ovarian tissue is underway for female childhood cancer survivors, too, noted Dr. Mahmoud Salama, who directs the Oncofertility Consortium at Michigan State University.
Hsu said even if his experimental transplant doesn’t work, it will guide further research. He’s grateful his parents years ago “made a call that gave me the option to make the choice for myself today.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Paraguay recalls ambassador to Brazil and suspends dam talks over espionage revelations
|
https://apnews.com/article/paraguay-brazil-lula-bolsonaro-dam-cyber-espionage-24bd56c84442acfc08c5b6985df344f2
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Paraguay Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano speaks during a press conference during his visit in Taipei, Taiwan, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — Paraguay announced Tuesday that it was recalling its ambassador to Brazil a day after Brazilian authorities acknowledged that their country’sintelligence agency spied on Paraguayan officials in 2022. Paraguay’s government also said it would suspend negotiations with Brazil over the massive hydroelectric dam it jointly operates with its more powerful neighbor.
Paraguay’s decision came after Brazil’s foreign ministry revealed that the administration ofJair Bolsonaro, the right-wing predecessor of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had conducted espionage against the small South American nation.
Lula’s government insisted that it had halted the surveillance against Paraguay immediately after becoming aware of it, without elaborating on the nature of the operation or whom it targeted.
Brazilian news site UOL reported that the country’s intelligence agents had infiltrated Paraguayan computer systems to obtain intel on sensitive tariff negotiations related to the Itaipu dam on their shared border.
Paraguay on Monday said it would stop talks that had been underway for months with Brazil over the costs of hydropower generation from the Itaipu dam until Brazil can clarify “the intelligence action ordered against our country.”
Paraguay’s Foreign Ministry said it had launched an investigation into what exactly occurred between June 2022 and March 2023, when the espionage operation reportedly took place under then-President Bolsonaro. Paraguayan authorities said they had not been aware of any such infiltration.
“It is a violation of international law, the interference in the internal affairs of one country in another,” Paraguayan Foreign Minister Rubén Lezcano told journalists. “We are under constant attack, and the ministry is taking all necessary steps to defend our confidential information.”
Lezcano said the ministry was recalling Paraguay’s ambassador to Brazil and had also summoned the Brazilian ambassador to Paraguay to deliver a formal explanation about the cyber-spying campaign.
The move does not represent a permanent rupture in diplomatic relations, as Brazil’s Embassy in Paraguay will remain open.
But the discord does reflect a revival of historical tensions between the neighbors dating back to Brazil’s invasion of the country in the 1860s, which started a brutal war in which Paraguay lost a quarter of its territory and most of its male population.
The Itaipu dam, with a capacity to generate some 14,000 megawatts of electricity, has long been a sore subject in Paraguay. Many Paraguayans consider the original treaty — in mandating Paraguay to cede to Brazil whatever share of the energy it does not use domestically rather than sell to other countries — as an affront to the nation’s sovereignty.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Meta’s head of AI research stepping down
|
https://apnews.com/article/meta-ai-research-chief-stepping-down-joelle-pineau-c596df5f0d567268c4acd6f41944b5db
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris, France, on June 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — The head of Meta’s artificial intelligence research division said she plans to step down, vacating a high-profile position at a time of intense competition in the development of AI technology.
Joelle Pineau, Meta’s vice president for AI research, said Tuesday she is leaving at the end of May after eight years with the company.
“Today, as the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” she wrote in a social media post.
Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about the move. Pineau didn’t announce a replacement.
Based in Montreal, where she is also a computer science professor at McGill University, Pineau has been the face of Meta’s “open-source” approach to building AI systems, such as its flagship large language model called Llama, in which core components are publicly released for others to use or modify.
Her announcement comes ahead of the company’s debut of a new LlamaCon AI conference on April 29.
In 2023, she began directing Meta’s AI research division, formerly known as Facebook AI Research, which had been founded a decade earlier by a group that included pioneering AI researcher Yann LeCun. LeCun stepped down as the group’s director in 2018 but remains Meta’s chief AI scientist.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Here’s a look at the election ban on France’s far-right Le Pen and the legal issues
|
https://apnews.com/article/france-marine-le-pen-verdict-presidential-election-348a9dad6f207c77eaa80c6ace78d516
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
A French court has barred Marine Le Pen from seeking public office for five years for embezzlement in a hammer blow to the far-right leader’s presidential hopes. Although she can appeal the verdict, such a move won’t suspend her ineligibility and could rule her out of the 2027 presidential race. AP Video shot by Nicolas Garriga
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen reacts at the National Assembly during a session Tuesday, April 1, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen reacts at the National Assembly during a session Tuesday, April 1, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen attends a session at the National Assembly, Tuesday, April 1, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Head of Marine Le Pen’s party list for the European Parliament elections, Jordan Bardella poses after an interview with Associated Press in Nanterre, outside Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)
French far right leader Marine Le Pen celebrates with newly elected chief of the National Rally president Jordan Bardella during the party congress in Paris, Saturday, Nov.5, 2022. Jordan Bardella is the first party chief outside the Le Pen family in a half-century. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly, File)
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives as he goes on trial over alleged illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by the government of late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
France’s former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, left, and his wife Penelope, arrive at the Paris courthouse, in Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
French conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon addresses his supporters after the first partial official results and polling agencies projections were announced, Sunday, April 23, 2017 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
French conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, left, listens to former Prime Minister Alain Juppe, as they visit the music streaming services Deezer’s headquarters in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, Pool, File)
In this Sept. 14, 2016 file photo, former French budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac leaves the courthouse, in Paris. Cahuzac has been sentenced Thursday Dec. 8, 2016 to three years in prison for tax fraud and money laundering for hiding his wealth in tax havens around the world. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)
Former French prime minister Alain Juppe delivers his speech in Bordeaux, southwestern France, Monday, March 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)
PARIS (AP) — Frenchfar-right leader Marine Le Penhas denounced as “a democratic scandal” the court ruling that placed afive-year ban on her seeking public officefor embezzling European Union funds. The Paris court says it would be undemocratic to allow a convicted official to run for president.
Monday’s decisiontakes effect immediatelyand could bar Le Pen from participating in France’s next presidential election in 2027.
The Paris appeals court said Tuesday that three appeals have been filed so far over the verdict, and that it will ‘’examine the case in a time frame that should allow for rendering a decision in the summer of 2026.’' But if other defendants file appeals — Le Pen was among two dozen people convicted — that could slow down the proceedings.
The ruling hasreverberated beyond France, sending ripples through far-right circles across Europe and beyond after some parties, including Le Pen’s, have gained ground in recent years.
Le Pen is not the first high-profile political figure in France to be sentenced to ineligibility. Here’s a look at the French judicial system, the court’s motives for the ruling and previous decisions.
The three-judge panel said in a written statement they considered the “major disruption to democratic public order” by the election to the presidency of someone convicted of embezzlement.
The ruling is meant to ensure that “elected officials, like all other persons, do not benefit from preferential treatment, not compatible with the trust citizens seek in political life,” the judges said.
They called their decision “proportionate to the constitutional objectives of safeguarding public order.”
In France, judges are independent magistrates who have not been elected. Under the constitution, they cannot be removed from their posts.
“The (judicial) system brought out the nuclear bomb,” Le Pen said Tuesday in the National Assembly, where she is a lawmaker. “And if it is using such a powerful weapon against us, it’s obviously because we’re about to win the elections.”
Le Pen denounced the ruling as “a democratic scandal, a real shame, staining our country.”
She said she hopes an appeal decision will come before the presidential election.
Le Pen herself once strongly denounced judicial scandals involving politicians from the mainstream left and right, calling for a “lifelong” ban on seeking office for those convicted of embezzlement.
In a 2013 video interview now viral on French social media, she can be heard saying, “We need to introduce the lifelong ineligibility for all those who have been convicted for actions committed thanks to or during their mandate.”
Three months before France’s 2017 presidential election, a scandal ruined conservative Prime Minister Francois Fillon’s chances to win. He later received a 10-year ban from seeking officein a fraud trial.
Former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, another conservative, received a 10-year ban in 2004 in a corruption case. An appeals court reduced the ban to one year. Juppé later made a comeback in French politics.
Socialist Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac received a five-year ban in 2018 after acknowledging that he was dodging taxes.
And Le Pen’s father, thelate Jean-Marie Le Pen, was sentenced to a one-year ban for committing violence against a Socialist rival during the 1997 parliamentary campaign.
Last week, French prosecutorsrequested a seven-year prison sentenceand a five-year period of ineligibility for former President Nicolas Sarkozy over charges that his 2007 presidential campaignwas illegally financedby former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s government.
Last week, the Constitutional Council ruled that a period of ineligibility with immediate effect is in line with the constitution.
But it stressed that it’s up to the judges to assess the consequences of imposing such a ban right away and make sure the ruling is “proportionate” and takes into consideration “the preservation of voters’ freedom.”
The Constitutional Council ruled in a separate case with no direct link with Le Pen’s. But its conclusions have been scrutinized for legal guidance that judges are likely to take into consideration.
On Tuesday, Le Pen suggested she would ask the Constitutional Council to issue a decision in her case.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
Judge holds ICE agent in contempt after he detained suspect during a trial
|
https://apnews.com/article/boston-immigration-ice-municipal-court-due-process-f2d13626ffba28025a3e0314fa6ca908
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Boston Municipal Court Judge Mark Summerville addresses the court room, while holding an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in contempt after he detained a suspect while he was on trial, Monday, March 31, 2025, in Boston. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via AP)
BOSTON (AP) — A judge in Boston is holding aU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcementagent in contempt after he detained a suspect while the man was on trial.
ICE agent Brian Sullivan detained Wilson Martell-Lebron last week as he was leaving court. But a Boston Municipal Court judge issued a ruling Monday against Sullivan, arguing that he had deprived Martell-Lebron of his rights to due process and a fair trial by taking him into custody.
“It’s a case of violating a defendant’s right to present at trial and confront witnesses against him,” Judge Mark Summerville said from the bench. “It couldn’t be more serious.”
Summerville dismissed the charge against Martell-Lebron of making false statements on his driver’s license application -- namely that he wasn’t Martell-Lebron. After that, Summerville filed the contempt charge against Sullivan, which could lead Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden review the case to determine if any charges should be filed.
“It’s reprehensible,” Ryan Sullivan, one of Martell-Lebron’s lawyers said. “Law enforcement agents have a job to see justice is done. Prosecutors have a job to see justice is done. There is no greater injustice in my mind than the government arresting someone, without identifying themselves, and preventing them from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial.”
A spokesman for ICE did not return a call seeking comment.
The move by ICE is the latest effort totarget Bostonover its handling of immigration.
President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Republicans in Congress have accused the city of failing to cooperate to get people charged with violent crimes deported. Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat up for reelection this year, said she wants Boston be a welcoming place for immigrants and that city policies limit cooperation with immigration enforcement.
Sullivan described a tense scene, in which ICE agents pounced on Martell-Lebron without identifying themselves, put him into a pickup truck and sped away. The trial Thursday had just begun with opening statements and the first witnesses.
Sullivan said Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and living with family in Massachusetts, is now at the Plymouth detention facility for allegedly being an undocumented immigrant, he said.
“What we were challenging is that they arrested him in the middle of his trial and did not return him,” he said. “If he had been brought to court on Friday morning by ICE, we would not have moved to dismiss. We would not be asking for sanctions. We would have just finished the trial.”
Immigration officers were a growing presence at courthouses during Trump’s first term, prompting some pushback from judges and other local officials. Trump has gone further in his second term by repealing a policy in place since 2011 to generally avoid schools, places of worship and hospitals.
Under current policy, immigration officials can make arrests “in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present” and as long as they are not prohibited by state or local law.
During the two-day hearing, Sullivan said that the lead prosecution witnessed confirmed that both the Massachusetts State police and prosecutors were aware of ICE plans to arrest Martell-Lebron.
In a statement, state police said they acted appropriately after learning of the plans of ICE. “As in any situation where a member becomes aware of federal immigration enforcement, the Troopers responded appropriately by neither assisting nor obstructing the federal action,” the statement said.
James Borghesani, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said “we were dismayed and surprised when our prosecution of Wilson Martell-Lebron was interrupted by ICE apprehending him in the middle of his trial.”
“Any claim that we were aware of an attempt to prevent Mr Martell-Lebron from exercising his right to a trial is false.,” he said in a statement. “It was our intention to try Mr. Martell-Lebron and hold him accountable for the crimes alleged in the complaint. Federal authorities should not have detained him and interfered with our efforts to hold him accountable.”
The contempt case has been referred to the Suffolk district attorney’s office and a spokesman there said they were looking into it.
During Trump’s first term, the judicial system in the state wrestled with how to respond to ICE.
Two district attorneys in Massachusetts sued the federal government in 2019 seeking to prevent arrests at courthouses but dropped the case when former President Joe Biden took office.
Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph also faced charges - which were later dropped — of helping a man who was living in the U.S. illegally evade an immigration enforcement agent. The charges were dropped after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
AP News
|
University of Minnesota student who was detained by ICE sues for immediate release
|
https://apnews.com/article/university-minnesota-graduate-student-detained-ice-f325d9abc3161f7fb4888a75e06b8a52
|
News
|
Non-Slop
|
Thank you for letting us know.
This ad has already been reported.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
A person walks on campus at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on April 21, 2020. (Glenn Stubbe/Star Tribune via AP, File)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A University of Minnesota graduate business student who’sbeing held by Immigration and Customs Enforcementis suing for his immediate release, saying his arrest violated his rights and he’s been given little explanation for why he’s being held.
The lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Doğukan Günaydın, 28, a Turkish citizen, says two plainclothes federal officersarrested him on the streetoutside his St. Paul home while he was on his way to class Thursday.
“Doğukan feared he was being kidnapped as a man in a hooded sweatshirt grabbed him and handcuffed him,” according to his petition.
The lawsuitpartially comports with a statementissued Monday by the Department of Homeland Security that he was arrested because he had a conviction for drunken driving on his record. The federal agency said he was not detained for any political activity. His petition says Günaydın has attended no protests and has written no politically driven publications.
His attorney, Hannah Brown, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday, nor did Justice Department and State Department officials in Washington.
Elected officials in Minnesota — including Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith — have been demanding an explanation from Homeland Security officials.
“Snatching up students who come here legally to work hard and get an education does not make you tough on immigration,” Walz tweeted. “We need answers.”
Günaydın was in the U.S. on a student visa until the Department of Homeland Security canceled it Thursday. The petition alleges that action was illegal. It says he was held for several hours after his arrest without being told why, except that his F-1 student visa was “retroactively revoked.”
But the petition cites online records showing that his student visa wasn’t terminated until roughly seven hours after his arrest, with the only reason listed as “otherwise failing to maintain status,” citing laws that say an alien is deportable if they fail to maintain the immigration status under which they were admitted to the U.S. or whose presence in the U.S. “would have potentially adverse foreign policy consequences.”
The petition says authorities have met none of those legal grounds for terminating his student visa. It says a drunken driving condition is not a legal basis,citing a DHS listof termination reasons.
His petition acknowledges that Günaydın was arrested for drunken driving on June 27, 2023, but says he pleaded guilty, served his sentence and complied with all conditions of his release. It says he has no other criminal convictions or arrests except for a 2021 speeding ticket when he was an undergraduate at St. Olaf College in Northfield.
After his conviction, Günaydın was accepted into the university’s Carlson School of Business, awarded a scholarship and maintained a full course load with a high grade-point average, the petition says.
“Importantly, Mr. Günaydın has committed no crime that is cause for termination of his Student Status or that renders him deportable,” his attorney wrote.
After his arrest, Günaydın was taken to the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, which also holds federal prisoners, and was told he’d get a hearing before an immigration judge April 8, but as of the lawsuit’s filing, he hadn’t been given any kind of charging document or hearing notice, his petition says.
“Without a charging document, Mr. Günaydın and counsel remain in the dark about the basis for his detention,” his attorney wrote.
The petition asks the court to order Günaydın’s immediate release, declare his arrest and continued detention illegal, and restore his student status.
“Even if he is ultimately freed, as long as Doğukan remains in ICE’s physical custody, he will be prevented from speaking freely and openly and his unlawful detention will serve to chill others,” his attorney wrote.
State court records show that Günaydın was arrested in Minneapolis in 2023 after a police officer saw him driving erratically. A preliminary breath test showed his blood alcohol level at 0.20%, well above the legal limit of 0.08%. A breath test in jail almost 90 minutes later registered 0.17%.
He pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor count of drunken driving, was given credit for four days served in custody and was ordered to perform one day of community service in lieu of further jail time. His fines and court fees totaled $528.
In his plea document, which both Günaydın and his attorney signed, he agreed he understood that, as a noncitizen, his guilty plea could result in deportation.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
These tracking technologies (such as cookies) are needed for our web site to function and are always active.
|
Ireland Top News
|
Terms and Conditions
|
https://irelandtopnews.com/terms-and-conditions/
|
News
|
Slop
|
These terms and conditions outline the rules and regulations for the use of IRELAND TOP NEWS’s Website, located at https://irelandtopnews.com.
By accessing this website, we assume you accept these terms and conditions. Do not continue to use IRELAND TOP NEWS if you do not agree to take all of the terms and conditions stated on this page.
The website uses cookies to help personalize your online experience. By accessing IRELAND TOP NEWS, you agreed to use the required cookies.
A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.
We may use cookies to collect, store, and track information for statistical or marketing purposes to operate our website. You have the ability to accept or decline optional Cookies. There are some required Cookies that are necessary for the operation of our website. These cookies do not require your consent as they always work. Please keep in mind that by accepting required Cookies, you also accept third-party Cookies, which might be used via third-party provided services if you use such services on our website, for example, a video display window provided by third parties and integrated into our website.
Unless otherwise stated, IRELAND TOP NEWS and/or its licensors own the intellectual property rights for all material on IRELAND TOP NEWS. All intellectual property rights are reserved. You may access this from IRELAND TOP NEWS for your own personal use subjected to restrictions set in these terms and conditions.
Copy or republish material from IRELAND TOP NEWS
Sell, rent, or sub-license material from IRELAND TOP NEWS
Reproduce, duplicate or copy material from IRELAND TOP NEWS
Redistribute content from IRELAND TOP NEWS
This Agreement shall begin on the date hereof.
Parts of this website offer users an opportunity to post and exchange opinions and information in certain areas of the website. IRELAND TOP NEWS does not filter, edit, publish or review Comments before their presence on the website. Comments do not reflect the views and opinions of IRELAND TOP NEWS, its agents, and/or affiliates. Comments reflect the views and opinions of the person who posts their views and opinions. To the extent permitted by applicable laws, IRELAND TOP NEWS shall not be liable for the Comments or any liability, damages, or expenses caused and/or suffered as a result of any use of and/or posting of and/or appearance of the Comments on this website.
IRELAND TOP NEWS reserves the right to monitor all Comments and remove any Comments that can be considered inappropriate, offensive, or causes breach of these Terms and Conditions.
You warrant and represent that:
You are entitled to post the Comments on our website and have all necessary licenses and consents to do so;
The Comments do not invade any intellectual property right, including without limitation copyright, patent, or trademark of any third party;
The Comments do not contain any defamatory, libelous, offensive, indecent, or otherwise unlawful material, which is an invasion of privacy.
The Comments will not be used to solicit or promote business or custom or present commercial activities or unlawful activity.
You hereby grant IRELAND TOP NEWS a non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, edit and authorize others to use, reproduce and edit any of your Comments in any and all forms, formats, or media.
Hyperlinking to our Content:The following organizations may link to our Website without prior written approval:
Government agencies;
News organizations;
Online directory distributors may link to our Website in the same manner as they hyperlink to the Websites of other listed businesses; and
System-wide Accredited Businesses except soliciting non-profit organizations, charity shopping malls, and charity fundraising groups which may not hyperlink to our Web site.
These organizations may link to our home page, to publications, or to other Website information so long as the link: (a) is not in any way deceptive; (b) does not falsely imply sponsorship, endorsement, or approval of the linking party and its products and/or services; and (c) fits within the context of the linking party’s site.
We may consider and approve other link requests from the following types of organizations:
Commonly-known consumer and/or business information sources;
Dot.com community sites;
Associations or other groups representing charities;
Online directory distributors;
Internet portals;
Accounting, law, and consulting firms; and
Educational institutions and trade associations.
We will approve link requests from these organizations if we decide that: (a) the link would not make us look unfavorably to ourselves or to our accredited businesses; (b) the organization does not have any negative records with us; (c) the benefit to us from the visibility of the hyperlink compensates the absence of IRELAND TOP NEWS; and (d) the link is in the context of general resource information.
These organizations may link to our home page so long as the link: (a) is not in any way deceptive; (b) does not falsely imply sponsorship, endorsement, or approval of the linking party and its products or services; and (c) fits within the context of the linking party’s site.
If you are one of the organizations listed in paragraph 2 above and are interested in linking to our website, you must inform us by sending an e-mail to IRELAND TOP NEWS. Please include your name, your organization name, contact information as well as the URL of your site, a list of any URLs from which you intend to link to our Website, and a list of the URLs on our site to which you would like to link. Wait 2-3 weeks for a response.
Approved organizations may hyperlink to our Website as follows:
By use of our corporate name; or
By use of the uniform resource locator being linked to; or
Using any other description of our Website being linked to that makes sense within the context and format of content on the linking party’s site.
No use of IRELAND TOP NEWS’s logo or other artwork will be allowed for linking absent a trademark license agreement.
Content Liability:We shall not be held responsible for any content that appears on your Website. You agree to protect and defend us against all claims that are raised on your Website. No link(s) should appear on any Website that may be interpreted as libelous, obscene, or criminal, or which infringes, otherwise violates, or advocates the infringement or other violation of, any third party rights.
Reservation of Rights:We reserve the right to request that you remove all links or any particular link to our Website. You approve to immediately remove all links to our Website upon request. We also reserve the right to amend these terms and conditions and its linking policy at any time. By continuously linking to our Website, you agree to be bound to and follow these linking terms and conditions.
Removal of links from our website:If you find any link on our Website that is offensive for any reason, you are free to contact and inform us at any moment. We will consider requests to remove links, but we are not obligated to or so or to respond to you directly.
We do not ensure that the information on this website is correct. We do not warrant its completeness or accuracy, nor do we promise to ensure that the website remains available or that the material on the website is kept up to date.
Disclaimer:To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all representations, warranties, and conditions relating to our website and the use of this website. Nothing in this disclaimer will:
Limit or exclude our or your liability for death or personal injury;
Limit or exclude our or your liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
Limit any of our or your liabilities in any way that is not permitted under applicable law; or
Exclude any of our or your liabilities that may not be excluded under applicable law.
The limitations and prohibitions of liability set in this Section and elsewhere in this disclaimer: (a) are subject to the preceding paragraph; and (b) govern all liabilities arising under the disclaimer, including liabilities arising in contract, in tort, and for breach of statutory duty.
As long as the website and the information and services on the website are provided free of charge, we will not be liable for any loss or damage of any nature.
Copyright © 2025 irelandtopnews.com
|
Ireland Top News
|
Privacy Policy
|
https://irelandtopnews.com/privacy-policy/
|
News
|
Slop
|
Suggested text:Our website address is: https://irelandtopnews.com.
Suggested text:When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Suggested text:If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Suggested text:If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Suggested text:Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Suggested text:If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
Suggested text:If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
Suggested text:If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Suggested text:Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Copyright © 2025 irelandtopnews.com
|
Ireland Top News
|
Home
|
https://irelandtopnews.com/
|
News
|
Slop
|
We bring you the best stories, please support us.
The best stories often revolve around universal themes such as love, sacrifice, adventure, and the human experience. Classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” explore morality and justice, while modern works like “The Night Circus” captivate through imaginative storytelling. Tales of resilience, such as “The Kite Runner,” highlight the power of friendship and redemption. Additionally, fantasy epics like “The Lord of the Rings” transport readers to richly-built worlds, while poignant narratives like “The Book Thief” showcase the impact of literature and humanity in times of despair. Ultimately, the best stories resonate emotionally, offering insights into life and the complexities of the human condition.
There are countless relationship stories that explore themes of love, growth, and resilience. One classic tale involves two childhood friends who, over the years, navigate the complexities of life and love, only to realize their deep feelings for each other as adults. Their journey is filled with misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and heartfelt reconciliations, highlighting the importance of communication and vulnerability. Ultimately, they learn that true love can withstand the test of time, as they embrace their past and step confidently into a shared future. These stories remind us that love can evolve and endure, often in unexpected ways.
The best relationships are built on mutual respect, trust, and open communication. They thrive on emotional support, shared values, and the ability to navigate challenges together. Partners should celebrate each other’s successes, practice empathy, and maintain a balance between togetherness and independence, fostering a deep emotional connection that enhances both individuals’ growth and happiness.
A fake relationship typically refers to a romantic partnership that is not genuine, often characterized by one or both parties pretending to be emotionally or physically invested for various reasons such as gaining publicity, social status, or other benefits. These relationships can be seen in various contexts, including celebrity culture, social media, or even personal circumstances where individuals may feel pressured to present a certain image. While they may seem advantageous on the surface, they often lack the depth and authenticity inherent in true romantic connections.
Health for Life refers to a holistic approach to wellness that emphasizes maintaining physical, mental, and emotional well-being throughout one’s lifespan. It involves adopting healthy lifestyle habits such as regular exercise, balanced nutrition, stress management, and preventative healthcare practices. The concept encourages individuals to prioritize their health to enhance their quality of life, promote longevity, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. It is about making informed choices that contribute to overall vitality and resilience.
Beauty is important because it can evoke emotions, inspire creativity, and foster a sense of connection among individuals and cultures. It often enhances our experiences, contributes to well-being, and influences perceptions in various aspects of life, including art, nature, and relationships. Additionally, beauty can serve as a catalyst for social and personal growth, encouraging introspection and appreciation for the diverse forms of expression found in the world around us.
Problems in life typically end through a combination of personal growth, problem-solving, and external support. Individuals may find resolutions by learning from their experiences, adapting their perspectives, and actively seeking solutions. Support from friends, family, or professionals can also play a crucial role in navigating challenges. Ultimately, the resolution often depends on the willingness to confront the issue, make necessary changes, and embrace new opportunities.
Copyright © 2025 irelandtopnews.com
|
Infowars
|
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Investigative Journalist Savanah Hernandez Breaks New Developments From Her Viral Report Exposing How Illegal Aliens Are Signed Up By Democrat Party Allied Corporations To File Fraudulent Tax Refund Claims, Stealing Billions From The American Taxpayer
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/exclusive-interview-investigative-journalist-savanah-hernandez-breaks-new-developments-from-her-viral-report-exposing-how-illegal-aliens-are-signed-up-by-democrat-party-allied-corporations-to-file-fr
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
The aliens invade, then suck off American's tax money.
On the Monday show Alex Jones spoke with Savanah Hernandez about the illegal alien tax money grift operations.
Don’t miss:
Breaking Terrorism Alert: Drug Cartel Operatives Are Surveilling and Compiling Lists Of Key Military and Civilian Personnel To Be Targeted For Assassination if and When Trump Goes To War With Iran
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Texas Residents Blast 400-Acre “EPIC” Islamic Compound Planned Outside of Dallas
BREAKING: Box Truck Plows Through Crowd in Boston
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/democrat-domestic-terrorism-alert-delta-force-veteran-global-security-expert-dale-comstock-warns-that-a-massive-build-up-of-foreign-state-backed-terrorists-working-with-major-drug-cartels-are-pre
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
Famous Delta Force operator warns the Democrats and globalists are trying to turn Americans against each other.
Says criminal networks inside the U.S. are developing a target list of high-profile Trump supporters.
Delta Force operator Dr. Dale Comstock joins The Alex Jones Show to break the latest on gangs infiltrating our military, border security & Trump’s fight for a nuclear deal with iran!
VIDEO: Famous Delta Force Operator Warns The Democrats & Globalists Trying To Turn Americans Against Each Other:"If There's A Civil War- That Will Broil Into A Revolution, And That Revolution Will Be Directed At Those That Have Caused This Problem. It Won't Be Long Before We…pic.twitter.com/lBjjaIiS4U
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Criminal Networks Inside The US Are Developing A Target List Of High-Profile Trump SupportersAmerican Badass Dale Comstock & Alex Jones Break Down How These Cartels Operate, And Who's Behind Them» LIVE X STREAM:https://t.co/787NYLg3Zdpic.twitter.com/HJOyV3797m
Support Infowars by picking up the newLimited Edition Silver Alex Jones Signature Fundraiser Coinor the newUltra Methylene BlueatTheAlexJonesStore.com.
You can support Jamie White’s family HERE.
‘Fairly Integrated’ Youth Released into France Pending Further Alleged Rape Investigation
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
Texas Residents Blast 400-Acre “EPIC” Islamic Compound Planned Outside of Dallas
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
Watch: Kid Rock Joins President Trump In White House For Signing Of Executive Order Targeting Concert & Sports Price-Gouging
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/watch-kid-rock-joins-president-trump-in-white-house-for-signing-of-executive-order-targeting-concert-sports-price-gouging
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
Live event attendees rejoice!
President Donald Trump sat beside musician Kid Rock inside the Oval Office on Monday to sign an executive order cracking down on ticket scalping and price-gouging for live events such as concerts and sporting events.
BREAKING: With Kid Rock in attendance, President Trump signs executive order targeting unfair scalping of concert ticketspic.twitter.com/70z6wUeRod
Trumpdirectedthe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ensure competition laws are appropriately enforced, apply the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, ensure price transparency, and take enforcement action to prevent unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct in the secondary ticketing market.
Kid Rock, whose name is Robert Ritchie, told the press that the order should help consumers who are fed up with hidden fees raising ticket prices and bots purchasing all the tickets in order to relist them at a higher price.
Ritchie also explained that artists such as himself have little to no control over the prices of tickets for their shows, saying he’d love to lower the cost so working class people could more easily afford to attend his concerts.
Kid Rock lays it out.Trump’s executive order takes down the scalpers, the bots, and the hidden fees.Real fans. Real prices. No more getting ripped off.Stadium price = your price.Big W for the people.pic.twitter.com/y0TC3tizGv
At one point, the president asked Fox News Senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy, “Did Biden do news conferences like this?”
Doocy responded with a quip about Ritchie’s outfit, saying, “He [Biden] was never standing next to somebody who looked like they were about to be shot out of a cannon.”
Peter Doocy pokes fun at Kid Rock's outfit:Trump: "Did Biden do news conferences like this?"Peter Doocy: "No. He was never standing next to someone who looked like they were about to be shot out of a cannon."pic.twitter.com/f4GQV4BFZh
Ritchie was able to play on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grand piano during the White House visit.
🚨Kid Rock playing President FDR’s Grand Piano Gifted by the Steinway Family in 1938 at the White House:pic.twitter.com/W7JzFTGuVg
The executive order should be universally celebrated by Americans regardless of political ideology as it benefits consumers and artists alike.
Support Infowars by visitingTheAlexJonesStore.comand purchasing the hit new productUltra Methylene Bluein addition to t-shirts, nutraceuticals, posters, flags and more amazing products!
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Texas Residents Blast 400-Acre “EPIC” Islamic Compound Planned Outside of Dallas
BREAKING: Box Truck Plows Through Crowd in Boston
Liberal Comedian Bill Maher’s White House Dinner With Trump A Smash Success – “Everybody’s Mind Was Kind Of Blown”
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
Canadian Activist âBillboard Chrisâ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/canadian-activist-billboard-chris-challenges-australian-government-over-censorship-of-post-criticizing-un-trans-activist
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
Chris Elston challenges Australia’s eSafety censorship over blocked Daily Mail tweet about Teddy Cook and WHO trans advisory board.
A Canadian free speech activist is taking legal action against the Australian government after one of his tweets was blocked from being viewed in the country under orders from Australia’s “eSafety” commission.
Chris Elston, better known as “Billboard Chris” for his sandwich-board-style activism in public spaces, is challenging Australia’s censorship order before the Administrative Review Tribunal. The controversy began after Elston shared a Daily Mail UK article titled “Kinky secrets of UN trans expert revealed,” which focused on Teddy Cook, a transgender activist from Australia appointed to a World Health Organization advisory board.
Cook filed a complaint with the eSafety commissioner, prompting the agency to demand that X restrict the tweet in Australia. X initially resisted the order but complied after receiving a formal government directive. The legal battle is now being supported by Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI).
Lois McLatchie Miller of ADFI traveled to Australia ahead of the hearing and posted about the case on X, stating: “I’m in Australia because their government think their people don’t deserve to know and to make their own mind up about toxic gender ideology.”
Speaking toFox News Digital, McLatchie Miller described the case as “monumental” for global speech rights. She emphasized the international dimension of the case: “It’s an Australian authority bucking the speech of a Canadian man on an American platform.” She went on to state: “So the Australian authorities have found that because they don’t want Australians to be able to hear a message and discuss a certain topic, they have now reached over to other countries to block that free speech, which is in and of itself fascinating.”
She connected the incident to broader concerns about cross-border censorship: “Over the last few weeks, when it comes to foreign governments having very surreal policies which are thought to only impact their citizens and their citizens’ human rights, but also the rights for Americans, rights for Canadians, others around the world.”
Meanwhile, platform X is also disputing a substantial financial penalty issued by the Australian government in 2023, after authorities claimed the company failed to provide details on how it addresses exploitation and abuse on the platform.
The Threat of Nuclear War is Now the Highest It’s Ever Been in History – President Trump Says He is “Pissed Off” with Putin as the UK and France Publicly Send Troops To Ukraine to Fight Russia
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Texas Residents Blast 400-Acre “EPIC” Islamic Compound Planned Outside of Dallas
BREAKING: Box Truck Plows Through Crowd in Boston
Liberal Comedian Bill Maher’s White House Dinner With Trump A Smash Success – “Everybody’s Mind Was Kind Of Blown”
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
UK Crime and Policing Bill 2025 Advances, Reignites Controversy Over Facial Recognition Access to Driverâs License Photos
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/uk-crime-and-policing-bill-2025-advances-reignites-controversy-over-facial-recognition-access-to-drivers-license-photos
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
Clause 95 hides a sweeping surveillance shift behind the rhetoric of public safety.
UK’s Crime and Policing Bill 2025, introduced in February and sponsored by the Home Office headed by Yvette Cooper, is progressing in the House of Commons, having reached the Committee stage.
Thelegislation, which is now two steps away from being sent to the House of Lords, aims to give law enforcement more powers in a number of areas, including greater access to driver’s license data.
This, in turn, is taken by critics, including civil rights groups, as clearing the path for law enforcement to start using more than 50 million driver’s license photos for facial recognition searches.
The Labour government has effectively reintroduced a provision contained in the Criminal Justice Bill pushed by the previous cabinet, which eventually had to abandon these plans due to strong criticism.
Big Brother Watchlikens feeding tens of millions of driver’s license photos into the facial recognition machine to turning those photos “into mugshots,” while pooling this type of personal data into “a vast police database” – and all that, without proper privacy safeguards.
The group also recalls that the Conservative government’s attempt, which it says Labour is now “rehashing” via the new Policing Bill, sought to give law enforcement – police and the National Crime Agency (NCA) included – access to the photos in order to do facial recognition searches.
But what former Minister of State for Policing Chris Philp at the time called “anomalously (..) currently quite difficult” – now has a fair chance of succeeding.
The authorities’ overall justification for why the Crime and Policing Bill needs the proposed changes is to more effectively tackle “the epidemic of serious violence and violence against women and girls that stains our society,” and, “equip police with the powers they need to combat antisocial behavior, crime and terrorism” – with Clause 95 tucked in there, that happens to dramatically broaden biometric surveillance powers.
Namely, the clause specifies that it would be up to the Secretary of State for the Home Department (office currently held by Cooper) to issue a regulation that would then give police, NCA, and also the Independent Office for Police Conduct access to “driving license information” for policing or law enforcement purposes.
Big Brother Watch sees this as granting extraordinary powers that facilitate the identification and tracking of everyone with a driver’s license in the UK.
“Not only would this be an unprecedented breach of privacy, but would also put innocent citizens at risk of misidentifications and injustice,” the non-profit has warned.
The Threat of Nuclear War is Now the Highest It’s Ever Been in History – President Trump Says He is “Pissed Off” with Putin as the UK and France Publicly Send Troops To Ukraine to Fight Russia
‘Fairly Integrated’ Youth Released into France Pending Further Alleged Rape Investigation
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
Liberal Comedian Bill Maherâs White House Dinner With Trump A Smash Success â âEverybodyâs Mind Was Kind Of Blownâ
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/liberal-comedian-bill-mahers-white-house-dinner-with-trump-a-smashing-success-everybodys-mind-was-kind-of-blown
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
POTUS extends olive branch to anti-MAGA celebrity.
President Donald Trump reportedly had a positive encounter with left-wing comedian Bill Maher at the White House Monday night as theReal Timehost wasinvited to an exclusive dinneralong with musician Kid Rock and UFC owner Dana White.
One day before the meeting, Trump posted on Truth Social to explain how Kid Rock set up the dinner and admit he “didn’t like the idea much.”
The president wrote that he accepted the idea as a favor to his friend Kid Rock, adding, “It might be fun or, it might not, but you will be the first to know!”
During an appearance on Fox News Tuesday, Kid Rock revealed the gathering “could not have been better,” saying, “Everyone was so surprised, so pleasant.”
The musician noted the “most shocking thing” to him was that Maher had never been invited to the White House by prior Democrat presidents who he had vocally and financially supported.
“He [Maher] had never been to the White House. The President was so gracious he took us up to the private residence, we saw the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom. I was like, ‘You’ve never been here Bill?’ And, I was like, ‘How about this? President Trump, you know extending this olive branch,’ and we talked about things we had in common, you know, anti-wokeness, securing the border…” Kid Rock said.
“The President was asking him what he thought about policy going on with Iran and Israel and things, you know it blew my mind. I was very proud,” the “Bawitdaba” singer stated.
Kid Rock reveals how the White House dinner with President Trump, Bill Maher, and Dana White went last night.pic.twitter.com/jvY6tfFqC4
Fox News host Lawrence Jones then asked if Kid Rock thought Maher came away from the meeting with a favorable view of Trump.
“Absolutely! Bill even said to me after that, he goes, ‘Wow.’ Everybody’s mind was kind of blown, even the President’s I think because the President called me late-night last night and, you know, everyone was a little suspect about going into this and even the President kind of allured [sic] to me a little bit like, ‘What do you got me doing?’ And I go, ‘Man, we’re just trying to show people that even though we’ve been pretty hard on each other that when you get face-to-face maybe we can have a little bit more civility in this country and try to bring people together.'”
Lawrence Jones: “Do you think [Bill Maher] walked away liking [President Trump]?”Kid Rock: “Me and Dana White both said there was like — there’s never been anybody who’s ever met the President [Trump] in any scenario that’s walked away without saying, ‘Wow, what a great guy.…pic.twitter.com/WZLBGY8u65
Trump and Maher have yet to comment on the get-together, but Kid Rock’s description suggests a politically divided America may be starting to heal.
Support Infowars by visitingTheAlexJonesStore.comand purchasing the hit new productUltra Methylene Bluein addition to t-shirts, nutraceuticals, posters, flags and more amazing products!
‘Fairly Integrated’ Youth Released into France Pending Further Alleged Rape Investigation
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/trump-freezes-27-5-million-to-planned-parenthood-for-allegedly-violating-anti-dei-immigration-orders
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
The Trump administration is temporarily withholding $27.5 million in Title X federal grants from Planned Parenthood, citing possible violations of executive orders related to DEI policies and immigration.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — U.S. President Donald Trump is withholding millions in federal grants from Planned Parenthood for promoting DEI ideology and possibly violating civil rights laws.
On March 31, nine Planned Parenthood state affiliatesreceivednotices that federal grants under the Title X a “family planning” program were being temporarily withheld, according to information obtained by left-wing outlet Politico.
The letter states that government funding is being “temporarily withheld” due to “possible violations” of federal civil rights law and Trump’s executive orders, including those banning the promotion of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and “taxpayer subsidization of open borders.”
The letter explained that the mission statements and other documents of Planned Parenthood chapters suggest they are violating Trump’s anti-DEI policies. Furthermore, the letter accuses Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion business in the country, of accepting illegal aliens as clients.
Amy Margolis, deputy director of HHS’ Office of Population Affairs, said that the documents “paint a picture of Planned Parenthood that suggests it is engaged, across its affiliates, in widespread practices across hiring, operations, and patient treatment that unavoidably employ race in a negative manner,” according to Politico.
READ:Most U.S. Planned Parenthoods located in minority communities: report
Planned Parenthood affiliates were given 10 days to respond to the letter, at which time the grants will be reviewed. Upon completion of a compliance review, funds could be restored, permanently rescinded, or redistributed to other entities.
It is unknown if Planned Parenthood plans to abide by Trump’s new policies in order to receive federal funding.
Currently, the Trump administration is withholding and reviewing $27.5 million of Title X’s over $200 million budget.
Within weeks of returning to office, Trumpreinstatedthe Hyde Amendment (which forbids most federal funds from directly supporting elective abortions) and the Mexico City Policy (which forbids non-governmental organizations from using taxpayer dollars for elective abortions abroad) andcutmillions in pro-abortion subsidies by freezing U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending.
But those moves do not yet cut off the nation’s largest abortion chain from public funding. So congressional Republicans have proposed two different measures: theNo Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, which permanently bans federal funds from being used for abortion; and theDefund Planned Parenthood Act, which disqualifies the organization and its affiliates specifically.
Furthermore, last week, Trumppromisedthat his administration would look into Planned Parenthood’s illegal sale of aborted baby body parts.
The Threat of Nuclear War is Now the Highest It’s Ever Been in History – President Trump Says He is “Pissed Off” with Putin as the UK and France Publicly Send Troops To Ukraine to Fight Russia
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Texas Residents Blast 400-Acre “EPIC” Islamic Compound Planned Outside of Dallas
BREAKING: Box Truck Plows Through Crowd in Boston
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
VIDEO: Man Who Savagely Beat An Innocent Woman For Simply Driving A Tesla Identified & Arrested
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/video-man-who-savagely-beat-an-innocent-woman-for-simply-driving-a-tesla-identified-arrested
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
DoJ must begin arresting leaders of orgs funding terrorism -- or America will descend into total chaos!
Investigative journalist Savanah Hernandez breaks down the escalating domestic terror attacks against Trump supporters and Tesla owners, as recently seen when a 33-year-old motorist conducted aroad-rage attackagainst a 61-year-old female Tesla driver.
Savanah warns if the DoJ doesn’t begin arresting the leaders of orgs funding the terrorism, America will descend into total chaos — just as the deranged Democrats desire!
Banned.video:
Support Infowars by picking up the newLimited Edition Silver Alex Jones Signature Fundraiser Coinor the newUltra Methylene BlueatTheAlexJonesStore.com.
You can support Jamie White’s family HERE.
‘Fairly Integrated’ Youth Released into France Pending Further Alleged Rape Investigation
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
From Diversity to Death: Afghan Alien Cuts The Throat of Man in Front of French McDonaldâs
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/from-diversity-to-death-afghan-alien-cuts-the-throat-of-man-in-front-of-french-mcdonalds
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
Diversity became deadly when the murder suspect stabbed his victim 11 times, including in the heart, reportedly over a family dispute from years ago.
An Afghan man had been charged with murder after killing another Afghan for “bad behavior” in a dramatic scene captured on video in France.
Frantic screaming began after witnesses saw a horrific scene develop in front of them on Friday, at around 6:30 p.m. in Bordeaux, France. At Place de la Victoire, a 28-year-old Afghan was stabbed to death by a fellow 27-year-old Afghan national, with the victim splayed on his back as he bled out from his neck.
The suspect, who has been charged with murder, can be seen on the video sitting calmly after the murder.
The attacker reportedly arranged to meet with the victim before murdering him due to the victim’s “bad behavior” towards the suspect’s family in Afghanistan, according to French newspaperLe Parisien.
WARNING: Sensitive imagesWitnesses are horrified after an Afghan suspect killed another 28-year-old Afghan man by slashing his throat in front of a McDonald's in Bordeaux.It has now been revealed the murder was over a "family dispute."pic.twitter.com/B6rT9ibhWi
The victim was discovered by police lying on a bench unconscious in front of McDonald’s. Medical services were unable to revive the victim, who suffered 11 stab wounds, including one to the heart.
The man did not flee after the attack but instead sat on a bench and held his knife. Police report that they seized a “large knife” from him. He also to the police that he “was the perpetrator of the attack” immediately upon being arrested.
Once in police custody, he told investigators that he had known the victim “for several years,” and had “arranged to meet him with the intention of killing him.”
The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office related that he gave his testimony in a “rather confused manner,” but claimed the man had acted poorly to the suspect’s family during their time in Afghanistan.
Prior to the attack, both the suspect and the victim were not known criminals in France.
The investigation will be overseen by the Territorial Crime Division of the Bordeaux (DIPN). The suspect has been charged with murder and is in pre-trial detention.
The Threat of Nuclear War is Now the Highest It’s Ever Been in History – President Trump Says He is “Pissed Off” with Putin as the UK and France Publicly Send Troops To Ukraine to Fight Russia
UK Crime and Policing Bill 2025 Advances, Reignites Controversy Over Facial Recognition Access to Driver’s License Photos
‘Fairly Integrated’ Youth Released into France Pending Further Alleged Rape Investigation
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Infowars
|
âFairly Integratedâ Youth Released into France Pending Further Alleged Rape Investigation
|
https://www.infowars.com/posts/fairly-integrated-youth-released-into-france-pending-further-alleged-rape-investigation
|
News
|
Slop
|
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
A judge has released a teen accused of dragging another teen to an isolated area, raping her, and filming it, saying he "has no criminal record and leads a fairly integrated life in society"
A 15-year-old has been taken into custody in the town of Perpignan, in the Pyrénées-Orientales region of France. He stands accused of rape and invasion of sexual privacy. Public prosecutor Jean-David Cavaillé confirmed the news toActu Perpignan. The prosecutor’s office has also confirmed that “massive alcohol consumption” was involved.
The alleged rape took place on a Saturday night, March 15, into the morning hours of March 16, after a party both reportedly had attended. The 15-year-old French youth claims he had consensual sex with the 18-year-old woman, while the woman claims she was raped by a “hooded man” after being forcefully dragged “to an isolated location,” according to the Indépendant.
The female victim contacted her mother on Sunday morning before being taken to the emergency room where she underwent a medical examination.
The 15-year-old was taken into custody on March 20. The prosecution sought to place him in pre-trial detention. He has no prior convictions, but also allegedly filmed and broadcast images from the incident, according to the prosecutor.
After his hearing, he was released, with the judge placing him under judicial supervision while the investigation continues. He cited the fact that he “has no criminal record and leads a fairly integrated life in society,” indicating the boy may in fact be a migrant.
🇫🇷👩🦰 "Do you want to f**k me?"This French woman can't even enjoy a morning on the beach without being sexually harassed.This migrant man was arrested shortly after this incident for choking and assaulting another woman.pic.twitter.com/4PONWl4PR9
The mayor of Perpignan, home to some 120,000 residents, has also been in the news, as he was sentenced along with Marine Le Pen in her recent embezzlement scandal. Perpignan is the largest city with a National Rally mayor. Louis Aliot will serve 18 months in prison and three years of ineligibility to run for public office.
It is largely seen that Le Pen and the National Rally party have been targeted due to their anti-migration stance and conservative views. Le Pen was leading the polls for France’s next presidential election.
The Threat of Nuclear War is Now the Highest It’s Ever Been in History – President Trump Says He is “Pissed Off” with Putin as the UK and France Publicly Send Troops To Ukraine to Fight Russia
Trump Freezes $27.5 Million to Planned Parenthood For Allegedly Violating Anti-Dei, Immigration Orders
Canadian Activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Challenges Australian Government Over Censorship of Post Criticizing UN Trans Activist
DEMOCRAT DOMESTIC TERRORISM ALERT: Delta Force Veteran / Global Security Expert Dale Comstock Warns That A Massive Build Up Of Foreign State-Backed Terrorists- Working With Major Drug Cartels- Are Preparing Widespread Attacks / Political Assassinations Inside The US, And Are Under The Command Of A Criminal Alliance Of Globalists & Deep State Democrats, Allied With Iran & Venezuela
Texas Residents Blast 400-Acre “EPIC” Islamic Compound Planned Outside of Dallas
Terms of ServiceDMCAAdvertise with usAffiliatesMedia InquiriesAbout
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.