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2022/07/03

Your Monday Briefing: Russia Seizes Lysychansk

Russia seizes Lysychansk Ukraine’s military said Sunday that it had withdrawn from the key eastern city of Lysychansk, the last city in Luhansk Province still held by Ukraine. Moscow’s victory means Russian forces are in control of large parts of the Donbas, a coal-rich region that has become Russia’s focal point since its defeat around Kyiv in the spring. Ukrainian forces are now bolstering defenses along the border line between Luhansk and the neighboring province of Donetsk, residents said. After Ukraine withdrew from Lysychansk, explosions hit the center of a Russian city just north of Ukraine, killing four, officials said. It is the deadliest known episode affecting civilians in Russia since the start of the war. Moscow blamed Ukraine for the attack in Belgorod; Ukraine’s military had no immediate comment.

2022/07/15

The War on Ukrainian Culture

With Russia actively trying to erase Ukraine’s national identity, the country’s music, literature, movies and monuments have become battlefields, my colleague Jason Farago writes. A critic at large for the Times, Jason spent two weeks in Ukraine, traveling to the war zone to report on the role that cultural identity is playing in the conflict. The true culture war of our age is the war for democracy, he writes. Ukrainian culture, past and present, has become a vital line of defense for the whole liberal order. I spoke to him just as he was about to board a flight. Our conversation has been lightly edited. Why does culture play such an important role in this war? Jason: Wars destroy culture. And this one is no different. The last 25 years brought with them an absolutely appalling tide of cultural destruction. The war in Syria, particularly, resulted in dreadful damage to that country’s classical and Islamic heritage.

2022/07/15

In a Flash of Fire and Shrapnel, a Smiling 4-Year-Old’s Life Is Snuffed Out

Whether through callousness in targeting or simply by malevolent design, terror has rained down from the skies on shopping malls, apartment buildings, schools and medical facilities, killing dozens of civilians. Some military analysts have said that Russia, running low on precision weaponry, is firing haphazardly at targets in densely populated areas, heedless of collateral death and destruction. Others, like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other Ukrainian officials, say the strikes are part of a “terrorist” campaign to break the country’s will to resist. The missile strike on Vinnytsia killed 23 people, including Liza and two other children, and wounded 140 others. “Russia continues its policy of intimidation and terrorism,” Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, wrote in an online post after speaking with Samantha Power, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, about the strike in Vinnytsia, and missile and artillery bombardments of Mykolaiv in the south, and Chasiv Yar in the east. “That is why it should be recognized as a terrorist state at the international level.” In a statement on Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had aimed its strike in Vinnytsia at the military officer’s club, where members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were meeting with “representatives of foreign armament suppliers.” The ministry’s account, which could not be verified, concluded by noting that the attack resulted in the “elimination of the conference participants.”

2022/07/15

Energy Was the Only Bright Spot in the Stock Market’s Gloom

The energy industry has become the stock market’s equivalent of a road hog. As financial markets around the world fell this spring on worries about high inflation, rising interest rates and the strength of the economy, energy was the only sector gaining ground. Energy funds surged 18.4 percent, on average, in the first half of the year. Funds focused on every other area of the U.S. economy lost ground. Energy funds were also the best sector to own in 2021, according to data from Morningstar Direct. But investors with long memories will recall that the energy industry came in dead last in 2020 as pandemic shutdowns sent the economy into recession. Now drivers are not alone in figuring out how to navigate energy costs. Russia’s war in Ukraine has created so much uncertainty about energy supplies that investors are having trouble making bets about the future of energy prices and the broader economy. A recent investing note from Charles Schwab said the broker did not recommend making significant bets on any market sector, including energy, “partly due to the highly volatile nature of the market and the uncertain trajectory of economic growth.”

2022/07/15

The many parties involved complicate war crimes investigations.

A Russian missile strike on a city in central Ukraine on Thursday killed at least 23 people, including three children. Two weeks earlier, missiles crashed into buildings near Odesa, killing 21. And for weeks in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, civilians bore the brunt of Russia’s assault — killed on their bicycles or while walking down the street, or executed with their hands bound. Indiscriminate Russian attacks on civilian areas have become a hallmark of its invasion, and this week, an international conference in The Hague sought to coordinate an approach to the overwhelming allegations of war crimes in Ukraine. But investigators face a formidable challenge, with as many as 20,000 war crimes investigations, multiple countries and international agencies at work, and a high burden of proof to reach a conviction. Complicating matters further, investigations are working while the war is still raging. The Kremlin has denied allegations against its forces, and Russia’s Defense Ministry has called graphic evidence of atrocities “fake.”

2022/07/03

An American’s Murky Path From Russian Propagandist to Jan. 6

Konstantin Malofeev, an influential oligarch indicted by the United States over alleged sanctions violations, said he had asked Mr. Bausman to appear on his television network because Mr. Bausman was one of the few Russian-speaking Americans willing to do it. “Who else is there to invite?” Mr. Malofeev asked. Mr. Bausman, 58, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. No charges have been brought against him related to the events of Jan. 6, though he appears inside the Capitol in video clips introduced in court cases against others. When a Russian TV host referred to him as “a participant” in storming the Capitol, Mr. Bausman interrupted to say that the description could get him into trouble, and that he was a journalist. But, on other occasions, he has described himself differently. Speaking on a white nationalist podcast in April, in which he attacked critics of Russia as “evil pedophile globalists” who control the “enslaved West,” he explained why he was back in Moscow: “I’m a political refugee here.” Connecticut to Moscow President Vladimir V. Putin had just invaded Crimea in 2014 when Mr. Bausman said he had an idea. He would create an alternative news source to counter what he called Western media’s “inaccurate, incomplete and unrealistically negative picture of Russia.”

2022/07/15

Gaps in Arms Supplies to Ukraine Point to Countries’ Divergent Strategies

BRUSSELS — There is the war on the ground in Ukraine and the war over weapons supplies, on which the first war depends. In the weapons war, there is a significant disparity between the flood of arms supplied by Britain, Poland and the United States, and what the rest of Europe is providing, which has raised the persistent question of whether some countries are slow-walking supplies to bring about a shorter war and quicker negotiations. Those whispers, coming most loudly from countries on NATO’s eastern flank, closest to the war, have not stopped despite the very public visit to Kyiv in June by some of Europe’s top leaders — from France, Germany and Italy — aimed at reassuring the Ukrainians of their support.