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      Orban Urges Hungary’s Parliament to Back Sweden’s NATO Bid

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      In a post on social media, the Hungarian leader said he would urge Parliament, as he has done in the past, to vote in favor of Sweden’s admission to the security alliance.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary said on Wednesday that he would “continue to urge” Hungarian legislators to vote in favor of accepting Sweden as a member of NATO, a day after Turkey, the only other holdout, endorsed the Nordic nation’s entry to the military alliance. The Turkish decision left Hungary isolated as the last country that has not yet approved NATO’s expansion. The Hungarian Parliament, which voted to accept Finland into the alliance last spring but left Sweden in limbo, is in winter recess and not currently scheduled to reconvene until Feb. 15.It was unclear whether Mr. Orban’s remarks, posted on the social media platform X after a conversation with NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, meant that the Parliament would swiftly vote on Sweden’s membership. He has often said in the past that he wanted Sweden to join NATO but that legislators were “not enthusiastic,” blaming Hungary’s repeated delays in accepting Sweden on the right of legislators to make their own decisions. Most analysts questioned that explanation, noting that Mr. Orban has a tight grip on the governing Fidesz party and that its members, who constitute a large majority in Parliament, invariably follows the prime minister’s instructions. He said on Wednesday that he wanted Parliament to vote in favor of Sweden’s membership “at the first possible opportunity,” but gave no indication of when that might be.Mr. Orban stood alone last month against other European leaders to torpedo an aid package for Ukraine worth $52 billion. Leaders will take another run at convincing Mr. Orban to fall into line when they reconvene on Feb. 1 for an extraordinary summit in Brussels. More

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      Russia Sees a Western Hand Behind Serbian Street Protests

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      The accusations made by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia were the latest efforts by Moscow to thwart a diplomatic campaign to lure Serbia out of Russia’s orbit.Fishing in Serbia’s troubled waters after a contested general election, Russia on Monday accused the West of orchestrating anti-government street protests in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, that flared into violence on Sunday evening.Claims of a Western plot by Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Harchenko, were the latest efforts by Moscow to thwart a so far mostly fruitless diplomatic campaign by the United States and Europe to lure Serbia out of Russia’s orbit and break traditionally strong ties between the two Slavic and Orthodox Christian nations.Previously peaceful street protests in Belgrade over what the opposition says was a rigged general election on Dec. 17 turned ugly on Sunday after protesters tried to storm the capital’s City Council building and were met by volleys of tear gas from riot police officers.The Russian ambassador, in a television interview, said there was “irrefutable evidence” that the “riot” had been incited by the West. This echoed claims by Serbia’s strongman leader, President Aleksandar Vucic, that his government had come under attack from outside forces seeking a “color revolution,” a term coined by Russia to describe popular revolts that it invariably dismisses as Western conspiracies.“This was an attempted violent takeover of the state institutions of the Republic of Serbia,” Mr. Vucic told Pink TV, a pro-government television station, deriding accusations of election irregularities as “lies” ginned up by his political opponents.There is no evidence that Western governments instigated the past week’s street protests against Mr. Vucic and what his opponents believe was a stolen Belgrade election.Protests against the election continued on Monday. A demonstration led by university students attracted only a modest turnout but blocked traffic on a central Belgrade street to government headquarters.Protesters in front of Belgrade’s city council building on Sunday.Oliver Bunic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA report last Monday by election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that Serbian voters had been given a wide choice of candidates and that “freedom of expression and assembly were generally respected.” But, it said, the governing party had enjoyed a “tilted playing field” because “pressure on voters as well as the decisive involvement of the president and the ruling party’s systemic advantages undermined the election process overall.”Mr. Vucic’s governing Serbian Progressive Party trounced the opposition in this month’s parliamentary vote but fared less well in an election for the Belgrade City Council, eking out a narrow win that the opposition attributed to voters whom they say were illegally bused into the capital from other areas of the country and from neighboring Kosovo and Bosnia.While accepting defeat in the vote for a new Parliament, the opposition vowed to overturn what it sees as a rigged result in the Belgrade municipal election and has staged daily street protests over the past week.Western countries, wary of burning bridges with Mr. Vucic, have been muted in their criticism of the election. The U.S. ambassador to Serbia, Christopher R. Hill, last week called on the country to address “deficiencies” in the electoral system but stressed that “the U.S. government looks forward to continuing our work with the Serbian government” and bringing it “more fully into the family of Western nations.”Serbia applied to join the European Union in 2009, but its application has been stalled for years. There has been growing pressure from the West on Mr. Vucic to pick a side since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.Mr. Vucic condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but has balked at joining European sanctions on Russia and shown only fitful interest in settling a long-running dispute over the status of Kosovo, formerly Serbian territory that declared itself an independent state in 2008. Kosovo, inhabited largely by ethnic Albanians, severed its ties to Serbia after a 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Belgrade and other cities that left even many pro-European Serbs deeply suspicious of the West’s intentions.President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia during a public address in Belgrade, on Sunday.Darko Vojinovic/Associated PressBad blood has slowly eased between Serbia and the West, which blamed Kosovo, not Mr. Vucic, for exacerbating tensions after a flare-up of violence in mainly Serb areas of northern Kosovo in September. That stance led to accusations of “appeasement” of Belgrade from European politicians and commentators who see Mr. Vucic as the principal threat to peace in the Balkans.Instead of giving Mr. Vucic more leeway to break with hard-line Serbian nationalist forces closely aligned with Russia as Washington had hoped, the recent election appears to have only pushed him closer to Moscow.After the clashes in Belgrade on Sunday evening, Serbia’s prime minister Ana Brnabic, a close ally of Mr. Vucic, thanked Russian security forces for sharing information pointing to a Western hand in the opposition protests.“It probably won’t be popular with those from the West, but I feel especially tonight that it is important to stand up for Serbia and to thank the Russian security services that had that information and shared it with us,” Ms. Brnabic said. More

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      Trump ‘Could Tip an Already Fragile World Order Into Chaos’

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      Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending,” by Robert Kagan.Four days later, The Times published “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First,” by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, one in an ongoing series of articles.On the same day, The Atlantic released the online version of its January/February 2024 issue; it included 24 essays under the headline “If Trump Wins.”While the domestic danger posed by a second Trump administration is immediate and pressing, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — sometimes referred to as the “alliance of autocracies” — have an interest in weakening the global influence of the United States and in fracturing its ties to democracies around the globe.“Clearly, this coalition threatens global security and deterrence and requires policies suited to the assaults Russia and China regularly conduct,” Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote in a recent column published in The Hill, “The ‘No Limits’ Russo-Chinese Alliance Is Taking Flight.”In a 2020 essay, Michael O’Hanlon, the director of foreign policy research at Brookings, pointed out that “many Americans” question whethera global economy and alliances around the world are good for them. As the election of Donald Trump had proved in 2016, numerous voters are willing to rethink our place in the world. If we do not listen to that message, the entire domestic basis for a strong United States and an engaged foreign policy leadership role could evaporate.This conversation, “more than any other,” O’Hanlon wrote, “is the debate we need to have as a country.”If Donald Trump is re-elected, how will the former president — who has openly praised dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who has questioned the value of NATO and who has denigrated key allies — deal with the “the 4 plus 1 threat matrix — the five main threats of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and transnational violent extremism or terrorism”?To gauge the range of possible developments in a second Trump administration, I asked specialists in international affairs a series of questions. On the basic question — how damaging to American foreign policy interests would a second Trump administration be? — the responses ranged from very damaging to marginally so.Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, is quite worried.Asked if Trump would withdraw from NATO — a major blow to European allies and a huge boost for Vladimir Putin — Stelzenmüller replied by email:Very likely. We know that from [former ambassador to the United Nations, John] Bolton’s book and from recent reporting out of Trump’s inner circle. Sumantra Maitra’s dormant NATO article, much read at NATO, suggests a suspension or withdrawal-lite option — but even that would fatally undercut the credibility of Article V.(Article V of the NATO agreement asserts that “the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them.”)Sumantra Maitra is a visiting senior fellow at Citizens for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank. His essay calls for retrenchment of America’s financial and logistical support of NATO, just short of withdrawal:A much more prudent strategy is to force a Europe defended by Europeans with only American naval presence and as a logistics provider of last resort with the U.S. reoriented toward Asia. West Europe will not be serious about the continent’s defense as long as Uncle Sam is there to break the glass during a fire.Stelzenmüller wrote that she sees little or no chance that a Trump administration would join an alliance of Russia, China, North Korea and other dictatorships, “but would Trump see himself as a friend of the authoritarians? Absolutely.” Under Trump, “the spectrum would clearly shift to a much more transactionalist, pro-authoritarian or even predatory mode. That alone could tip an already fragile world order into chaos.”Sarah Kreps, a political scientist at Cornell, suggested that “if past is prologue, we could expect Trump to harp on the issue of free riding but not actually do anything different. He’ll probably do a lot of heckling that’s unmatched by actual policy change.”In this context, Kreps continued, “it will be left to the career diplomats to do the heavy lifting behind the scenes to provide the alliance glue while Trump is hammering the capitals about burden sharing.”How about NATO?“The alliance has such deep roots now and has ebbed and flowed in terms of its strength, but the structural factors present right now will be more powerful than any individual president.”I asked Kreps whether it was conceivable that Trump could join a Russia-China-North Korea coalition.“Again, past being prologue here, we have good reason to think that he talks friendly to autocrats, but won’t act.”How would Trump change the role of the United States in foreign affairs?“I would expect to see more of what we saw in the last administration: a lot of bluster, a lot of braggadocious declarations about how countries are taking the United States seriously now, but not a lot of change.”Kreps was the least alarmed of those I contacted concerning a second Trump administration.Philipp Ivanov, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, staked out a middle — but hardly comforting — ground. In an email, he wrote that because of their conflicting interests, “it’s highly unlikely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will ever form an alliance.”Instead, he described their ties as “a network of highly transactional bilateral relationships — a marriage of convenience — that lacks basic trust, let alone the kind of common strategic vision and military interconnectedness that characterize the U.S. alliances.”Their only commonality, Ivanov argued,is an autocratic or dictatorial governance and a shared objective to disrupt and undermine U.S. power. All four actors realize that individually or together they cannot seriously challenge American hegemony or compete with its alliance system, but they can wreak havoc, threaten and weaken resolve in their respective spheres of interest.The re-election of Trump would, in Ivanov’s view,undermine the significant efforts of the Biden administration to rebuild, strengthen and reimagine American alliance system in Europe and Asia — from rallying the Europeans to support Ukraine to a comprehensive strengthening of strategic and military relations with Korea, Australia, Japan and Philippines to balance Chinese power.Ivanov believes Trump would face insurmountable obstacles if he attempted to withdraw from NATO, but thatUnder Trump, America’s international image in a democratic world is likely to suffer. The biggest risks to U.S. foreign policy are Trump’s disdain for alliances, transactional approach to foreign and security policy, overly aggressive approach to China and Iran, and a more forgiving attitude to Putin and Kim.Pyongyang, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran will cheer his re-election, but its leaders will be quietly anxious about his next moves.Jonathan M. Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, who is now a scholar at the Middle East Institute, put it this way:Trump’s election would, of course, help Russia, threaten Ukraine and threaten western alliances, starting with NATO itself. Trump has it in for Ukraine, as reflected in the fraying of Ukrainian support within the elements of the Republican congressional caucus that is closest to Trump.Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for autocrats. He also already threatened to pull out of NATO during his first term, and attacked democratic European leaders almost as often as he praised the autocratic leadership of China, North Korea, and Russia.Trump is an authoritarian nationalist. He fits right into the mold of the “autocrats,” as his teasing statement to Sean Hannity — and in a very recent Iowa town hall — that he would only behave in a dictatorial fashion on ‘day one’ of his presidency.While it is inconceivable that Trump could realign the United States with China, Russia and North Korea, Winer wrote, “what he could do is make the U.S. ‘neutral,’ just as the American First movement professed ‘neutrality’ in relation to the fascist threat prior to Pearl Harbor.”Some experts pointed out that Trump could make specific policy decisions that might not appear significant to Americans, but that have great consequence for our allies — consequences that could lead in at least one case to further nuclear proliferation.Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, wrote to me in an email that “many in the Republic of Korea national security community are concerned about the North Korean nuclear weapon threat and whether they can really trust the United States security commitment in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, which hit the ROK much harder than I think most Americans realize.”Bennett cited the “fear that if Trump is elected president in 2024, he will talk about removing some U.S. forces from Korea. Whether or not such action actually begins, there is a risk that the Republic of Korea would react to such talk by once again starting a covert nuclear weapon development effort.”James Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring in an email to the perceived threat emanating from the “alliance of autocrats,” observed:If “alliance” is only intended to mean general cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, then that is clearly happening. North Korea and Iran are supplying Russia with artillery shells and drones. Russia is supplying China with energy. China is supplying Russia with political cover at various international venues over the war in Ukraine.Lindsay argued:Trump could effectively gut NATO simply by saying he will not come to the aid of NATO allies in the event they are attacked. The power of Article V rests on the belief that alliance members, and specifically, the most powerful alliance member, will act when called upon. Destroy that belief and the organization withers. Walking away from Ukraine would damage the alliance as well even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Member countries would read it as a signal that Trump is abandoning Europe.One of the major risks posed by a second Trump administration, Lindsay wrote, is thatTrump’s hostility toward alliances, skepticism about the benefits of cooperation writ large, and his belief in the power of unilateral action will lead him to make foreign policy moves that will unintentionally provide strategic windfalls to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The scenario in which he withdraws the United States from NATO or says he will not abide by Article V is the most obvious example. His intent will be to save money and/or free the United States from foreign entanglements. But Vladimir Putin would love to see NATO on the ash heap of history.Lindsay described decisions and policies Trump may consider:It’s easy to imagine other steps Trump might take, given his past actions and current rhetoric, that would similarly give advantage to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang: abandoning Ukraine; questioning the wisdom of defending Taiwan; terminating the alliance with South Korea; ignoring Iranian aggression in the Middle East; recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power; and imposing a 10 percent, across-the-board tariff on all goods.On a larger scale, it would be difficult to overestimate the degree to which a second Trump term would represent a major upheaval in the tenets underlying postwar American foreign policy.Mark Medish is a former senior director of the National Security Council for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs. He argued in an email that “Trump’s rise represented a repudiation of the so-called ‘bipartisan consensus.’ For decades during the Cold War, there was a broad agreement in the US elite and our political culture that we had a clear enemy, the U.S.S.R. and the rest of the Communist bloc.”While there was significant disagreement within this consensus, Medish wrote, “we always knew who the enemy was, whether the Soviet Union or the perpetrators of 9/11.”During the 2016 campaign and his term in office, according to Medish, Trumptook on the establishment and attacked this bipartisan consensus, pointing to failures from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The outside world, particularly our rivals and enemies, perceived this shift as a turning point toward U.S. detachment and decline and made them eager to push the envelope — to test whether the U.S. had indeed lost its “strategic depth.”Trump’s re-election, according to Medish, “would provide further evidence — in the eyes of Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran — of U.S. disarray and the decline of the West.”Medish made the claim that “the challenge for the U.S./West is less military/economic than political. If the political and institutional center does not hold, the rest does not matter so much.”Why?Because our unmatchable power and vitality has been civilizational — the West has thrived through organic growth and it has prevailed globally by attraction, not primarily by force or threats. We are not the Roman Empire, we are the Roman Republic. Trump is a Rubicon-crosser not only on foreign policy, but also domestically. This disruption is the biggest threat to our security.Paul Poast, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, forthrightly agreed that “there is absolutely a push against the U.S.-led ‘liberal international order’ and that this push is being led by China, Russia, along with ‘junior partners’ like North Korea and Iran.”Poast, however, disagreed with many of his colleagues on the prospects for NATO under a second Trump administration.Trump had actually become a “NATO fan” by the end of his term. The key is whether NATO allies, and specifically the next Secretary General, take measures that appease Trump’s demands. In many respects, Trump would just be taking to the extreme what the U.S. has long done with NATO: push and manipulate the allies to do what is in the U.S.’s interest.I asked Robert Kagan what foreign policy might look like in a second Trump administration.“What will Trump do? Who knows?,” Kagan replied. “Who knows whether Trump himself has a foreign policy.” Trump “will certainly not have pro-liberal prejudices as most previous U.S. presidents have, at least since World War II. He will make common cause with right-wing forces in Europe, as he did in his first term.”Kagan’s conclusion?“Trump’s foreign policy will be unpredictable because we haven’t had a dictator as commander in chief. It will be uncharted territory.”During Trump’s term in office, virtually everyone — his adversaries, his allies, the media — consistently underestimated his willingness to break rules. He is a man without borders, without conscience, without dignity, ethics or integrity, committed only to what he perceives to be in his own interest. He admires dictators who rule without constraint, and if he believes it would be to his advantage to join them, there is nothing — in his mind or his character — that would stop him.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Ukraine Faces Critical Tests as It Duels With Russia for Stamina

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      With Western support for Kyiv softening and Congress holding up urgently needed aid, Vladimir Putin’s bet on outlasting Ukraine and its allies is looking stronger.Ukraine faces dwindling reserves of ammunition, personnel and Western support. The counteroffensive it launched six months ago has failed. Moscow, once awash in recriminations over a disastrous invasion, is celebrating its capacity to sustain a drawn-out war.The war in Ukraine has reached a critical moment, as months of brutal fighting have left Moscow more confident and Kyiv unsure of its prospects.The dynamic was palpable last week, as Vladimir V. Putin casually announced plans to run for six more years as president of Russia, swilling champagne and bragging about the increasing competence of Russia’s military. He declared that Ukraine had no future, given its reliance on external help.That air of self-assurance contrasted with the sense of urgency in this week’s trip to Washington by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who pressed Congress to pass a stalled spending bill that includes $50 billion more in security aid for Ukraine.Speaking at the White House alongside Mr. Zelensky, President Biden said lawmakers’ failure to approve the package would “give Putin the greatest Christmas gift they could possibly give him.”But Mr. Zelensky’s pleas fell flat, at least for now, with congressional Republicans, who are insisting that additional aid to Ukraine can come only with a clampdown on migration at the United States’ southern border. After meeting with Mr. Zelensky, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, said his skepticism had not changed.The messages from Moscow and Washington illustrated the growing pressure on Ukraine as it shifts to a defensive posture and braces for a harsh winter of Russian strikes and energy shortages. Kyiv is struggling to maintain support from its most important backer, the United States, a nation now preoccupied with a different war, in Gaza, and the 2024 presidential campaign.Looming over Kyiv’s prospects is the possible return to office in 2025 of former President Donald J. Trump, a longstanding Ukraine detractor and praiser of Mr. Putin who was impeached in 2019 for withholding military aid and pressuring Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden and other Democrats.Almost 22 months into the war, polls broadly have found waning United States support for continued funding of Ukraine, particularly among Republicans. A recent Pew Research Center survey found just under half of Americans believe the United States was providing the right amount of support to Ukraine or should be providing more.Ukrainian soldiers firing at Russian positions in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine last month.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Johnson said money for Ukraine required more oversight of spending, and “a transformative change” in security at the U.S. border with Mexico. “Thus far, we’ve gotten neither,” he said.But the White House still has time to try to work out an agreement that includes border security, and Mr. Zelensky said he remained optimistic about bipartisan support for Ukraine, adding, “It’s very important that by the end of this year we can send a very strong signal of our unity to the aggressor.”A rupture in U.S. funding would risk proving Mr. Putin correct in his longstanding conviction that he can exhaust Western resolve in global politics and conflicts. Though his government bungled the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has regrouped, in part because Mr. Putin was willing to accept enormous casualties.“Putin, soon after the initial offensive didn’t produce the results that Russia had hoped, settled in for a long war and estimated that Russia at the end of the day would have the biggest stamina, the longest staying power, in this fight,” said Hanna Notte, an expert on Russian foreign and security policy at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.Russia has adapted, pumping up its domestic production of ammunition and weaponry, and importing critical matériel from Iran and North Korea, all with the goal of sustaining a long war, Ms. Notte said.“I think there was sort of a dismissiveness, ‘Let the Russians get together with these pariahs, with these global outcasts, and good luck to them,’” Ms. Notte said.But that support has been meaningful for Moscow on the battlefield, she said, particularly with Iran helping Russia enhance its domestic drone production. Ukraine, meanwhile, is struggling to obtain a sufficient flow of ammunition and weaponry from the West, where nations aren’t operating on a wartime footing and face significant production bottlenecks.Ukrainian troops gathered to test-fire their German-made Leopard tanks before moving toward the front line in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine last week.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesDespite his advantages in numbers and weaponry, Mr. Putin also faces limitations, and military analysts say Russia is in no position to make another run at the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, or other major cities.Russia lost huge numbers of personnel in its offensive maneuvers in the past year, and won little territory apart from the city of Bakhmut. With Mr. Zelensky ordering his troops to build defensive fortifications along the front, Russia may continue to suffer heavy losses without gaining much in return.Facing continued signs of displeasure with last year’s mobilization, the Kremlin appears loath to do another forced call-up before the Russian presidential election in March, if at all.“What we have seen in this war is the defense usually has significant advantages,” said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.Still, Ukraine, reliant on the West for weaponry and funding, faces short-term pressures that Russia does not. Kyiv’s allies don’t have the ammunition and equipment to arm another counteroffensive, making a major new campaign unlikely for most of 2024, according to analysts and former U.S. officials.The United States is by far Ukraine’s most important backer, accounting for about half of its donated weaponry and a quarter of its foreign aid funding. The congressional fight, bogged down in a partisan dispute about border security, has unnerved many Ukrainians.“Today, Ukrainians are beginning to suspect that the U.S. wants to force us to lay down our arms and conclude a shameful truce,” Yuriy Makarov, a political commentator for Ukrainsky Tyzhden, a Ukrainian magazine, said in an interview. “That the Ukrainians practically destroyed the professional army of Russia, which until recently was the main enemy of the United States, does not seem to be taken into account.”Hanna Yarotska, second from left, and her husband, Vasyl, left, mourn at the coffin of their son Yaroslav Yarotskyi, 25, a fallen Ukrainian soldier, at the cemetery in Boryspil, Ukraine, last month.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesThe failure of this year’s counteroffensive has exacerbated political friction in Ukraine, most notably between Mr. Zelensky and the military chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. A month after Mr. Zelensky publicly chastised the commander for saying the war had reached an impasse, the two have yet to appear together in public.There are signs Russia intends to be more aggressive through the winter. After weeks of focusing attacks on the city of Avdiivka, Russia over the weekend began a general offensive along the eastern front, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, told Ukrainian news media.The fighting favors Russia’s greater access to artillery ammunition. Earlier this year, the NATO general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, estimated that Ukraine fired 4,000 to 7,000 artillery shells a day, while Russia fired 20,000.The United States has provided more than two million 155-millimeter artillery shells and brokered deliveries from other nations. But stocks in Western militaries, which had not anticipated fighting a major artillery war, are dwindling.Ukraine also needs ammunition for air defenses, lest Russia’s volleys of exploding drones and cruise and ballistic missiles break through the air-defense blanket over the capital and key infrastructure.Ukrainian soldiers grabbing their rifles after firing an artillery shell at a Russian position near Borova-Svatove in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region last week.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesThe United States and its allies have provided a dozen or so types of air defenses, sophisticated NATO systems that have allowed businesses to open and cities to resume mostly normal rhythms of work and sleep. But as Russia fires thousands of cheap, Iranian-made Shahed drones, Ukraine’s air-defense ammunition is being exhausted.A tipping point looms if Russian missiles can reliably penetrate gaps, hitting military targets like airfields and blowing up electrical and heating infrastructure to dampen economic activity with blackouts, deepening Ukraine’s reliance on Western aid.“They can keep doing it as long as needed,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former Ukrainian minister of economy, said of the Russian assaults. Over time, diminishing political backing for Ukraine in the West provides an incentive to keep whittling away at Kyiv’s arsenal, he said. “If they feel Ukraine will lose support, they will try harder.”Ukraine also faces challenges from the attrition of its personnel.Kyiv does not announce mobilization targets or casualties, but a former battalion commander, Yevhen Dykyi, has estimated that Ukraine will need to enlist 20,000 soldiers a month through next year to sustain its army, both replacing the dead and wounded, and allowing rotations.“Unfortunately,” he said, “with all the military tricks and technologies, some things cannot be compensated for by anything but sheer numbers.”A memorial for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv last month.Mauricio Lima for The New York Times More

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      What Is the Real Meaning of ‘Pro-Life’?

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      More from our inbox:The Texas Abortion RulingThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and AntisemitismThe Undemocratic Electoral CollegeTrump and NATO Illustration by Alicia Tatone; Photographs by Yiming Chen, SDI Productions, Joshua Roberts/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Has Too Many Meanings,” by Liz Mair (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 6):Ms. Mair, a G.O.P. campaign strategist, writes about all the desperate ways Republican politicians are trying to explain their stance on abortion now that their decades-long fight to make it illegal has taken a step forward.It seems her clients are scrambling, surprised to find that “rank-and-file G.O.P. voters are not as pro-life as we might have thought.”The medical community is not surprised. You see, there are no party affiliation requirements for unplanned or medically doomed pregnancies. Doctors have seen staunch Republicans obtain safe and legal abortions for decades. I’m sure that every single white male Republican legislator who signs “heartbeat” laws, piously claims he is pro-life and rails against Planned Parenthood knows a woman who has had an abortion. And he may have caused one himself.Instead of spinning the message on their terrible policies, her advice to her G.O.P. clients should be to stop blocking funding for reliable contraception, stop interfering with medical decisions between women and their doctors and start writing laws that support women who can’t afford another pregnancy because of poverty, a lack of postpartum job security or abusive partners.You know, “pro-life” stuff.Cheryl BaileySt. Paul, Minn.The writer is a retired gynecologic oncologist.To the Editor:In recommending that Republicans finesse the abortion issue, Liz Mair doesn’t mention one point. Pro-choice advocates are not anti-life, but we disagree with those who call themselves pro-life in two fundamental ways. We do not believe that humans can claim to know what God — who certainly allows miscarriages — wants, and we do not believe that humans claiming to have this knowledge have a right to impose their religious beliefs on others.Republicans may continue to succeed politically by demagoguing the abortion issue, but most Americans, religious or not, do not believe that the law should forbid women from obtaining a safe abortion.Jamie BaldwinRedding, Conn.To the Editor:Liz Mair is absolutely correct that “pro-life” has many meanings, but she mistakenly focuses only on abortion.Being “pro-life” also means things like good pre- and post-natal care for all mothers; good health care for everyone, including babies born to the poorest among us; accessible and affordable child care and preschool for all; gun safety laws to ensure that bullets are no longer the biggest cause of accidental death among U.S. children, and, not least, more commitment to combating climate change.Republicans need to consider these matters when they (or if they) decide to come up with a better, more marketable definition of “pro-life.”Nadine GodwinNew YorkThe Texas Abortion Ruling Kate Cox, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Woman Who Sought Abortion” (news article, Dec. 12):I hope the women of Texas go on strike and march to the state capital. Women, especially mothers, all over the country will stand with them.Eve Rumpf-SternbergSeattleTo the Editor:Is there no end to these people’s cruelty?Linda GrunbaumNew YorkThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and Antisemitism Adam Glanzman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Censorship Can’t Help University Presidents,” by David French (column, Dec. 11):Mr. French argues that what American campuses need is more viewpoint diversity and true freedom of speech — not the current hypocrisy of some speech being favored and other speech censored.But what Mr. French does not mention at all is the need for morality and truth to be part of the curriculum. President John F. Kennedy, a Harvard alumnus, said “the goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.”The university presidents’ failure before Congress to unambiguously repudiate calls for “the genocide of Jews” reflected how far these schools have strayed from that purpose. Allowing more speech on campus without a moral compass will yield only more noise and little else.Nathan J. DiamentWashingtonThe writer is the executive director for public policy of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.The Undemocratic Electoral College Christopher Lee for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “‘The Exploding Cigar of American Politics,’” by Gail Collins (column, Nov. 30):Ms. Collins’s excellent column about the Electoral College should have commented more on the U.S. Senate, which is even more unrepresentative and undemocratic.Two out of three of our elected national arms of government are unrepresentative. (The third “arm,” the House, is roughly representative, but tainted by gerrymandering, “dark” money and increasing voter suppression.)The Electoral College has overturned the national popular vote five times in America’s nearly 250-year history, but twice already in this still young century. It’s likely to happen again, probably soon (’24?).One reason the founding fathers decided not to have direct elections to the presidency was a fear of a mostly uneducated and ill-informed electorate voting in either a fraudster or a populist demagogue as president. Some would say we got two for the price of one in 2016.We should abolish the Electoral College and directly vote for the president (as we do for the Senate and the House). Failing that, embrace the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.I dread the day when many more Americans despair of the ballot box and instead choose far more dangerous ways of expressing their will — i.e., more Capitol insurrections, but successful ones.The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves at our inability to modernize our now dangerously outdated Constitution.Michael NorthmoreStaten IslandTrump and NATOFormer President Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he primarily sees NATO as a drain on American resources.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Stance Toward NATO Alarms Europe” (front page, Dec. 10):I’m 73 years old and frightened. So many things I have taken for granted my entire life are threatened. My dad fought overseas in World War II. He, and I, always assumed that the things he fought for would remain protected.I never contemplated that the coalitions we established with our allies after the war would be threatened. I came to believe that the isolationism thriving before the war had been essentially put to rest.But now Donald Trump and his disciples have awakened the blind nationalism that raises the specter of totalitarianism. That menace should strike terror in all who treasure our democracy.And we can’t allow a feeling of helplessness or a belief that such things could never happen here prevent us from protecting what we can no longer take for granted.Stephen F. GladstoneShaker Heights, Ohio More

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      Fears of a NATO Withdrawal Rise as Trump Seeks a Return to Power

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      For 74 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been America’s most important military alliance. Presidents of both parties have seen NATO as a force multiplier enhancing the influence of the United States by uniting countries on both sides of the Atlantic in a vow to defend one another.Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he sees NATO as a drain on American resources by freeloaders. He has held that view for at least a quarter of a century.In his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” Mr. Trump wrote that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” As president, he repeatedly threatened a United States withdrawal from the alliance.Yet as he runs to regain the White House, Mr. Trump has said precious little about his intentions. His campaign website contains a single cryptic sentence: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” He and his team refuse to elaborate.That vague line has generated enormous uncertainty and anxiety among European allies and American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign-policy role.European ambassadors and think tank officials have been making pilgrimages to associates of Mr. Trump to inquire about his intentions. At least one ambassador, Finland’s Mikko Hautala, has reached out directly to Mr. Trump and sought to persuade him of his country’s value to NATO as a new member, according to two people familiar with the conversations.In interviews over the past several months, more than a half-dozen current and former European diplomats — speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Mr. Trump should he win — said alarm was rising on Embassy Row and among their home governments that Mr. Trump’s return could mean not just the abandonment of Ukraine, but a broader American retreat from the continent and a gutting of the Atlantic alliance.“There is great fear in Europe that a second Trump presidency would result in an actual pullout of the United States from NATO,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was NATO’s supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013. “That would be an enormous strategic and historic failure on the part of our nation.”Formed after World War II to keep the peace in Europe and act as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, NATO evolved into an instrument through which the U.S. works with allies on military issues around the world. Its original purpose — the heart of which is the collective-defense provision, known as Article V, that states that an armed attack on any member “shall be considered an attack against them all” — lives on, especially for newer members like Poland and the Baltic States that were once dominated by the Soviet Union and continue to fear Russia.Ukrainian soldiers test-fired the guns of tanks provided by NATO before moving to the frontline in Ukraine. NATO’s purpose as a bulwark against the Soviet Union lives on for newer members in Eastern Europe who continue to fear Russian aggression.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesThe interviews with current and former diplomats revealed that European officials were mostly out of ideas for how to deal with Mr. Trump other than returning to a previous playbook of flattery and transactional tributes.Smaller countries that are more vulnerable to Russian attacks are expected to try to buy their way into Mr. Trump’s good graces by increasing their orders of American weapons or — as Poland did during his term — by performing grand acts of adulation, including offering to name a military base Fort Trump in return for his placing a permanent presence there.At this point in the campaign, Mr. Trump is focused on the criminal cases against him and on defeating his Republican primary rivals, and he rarely talks about the alliance, even in private.As he maintains a broad lead in his campaign to become the Republican nominee, the implications for America’s oldest and most critical military alliance are not clearly advertised plans from Mr. Trump, but a turmoil of widely held suspicions charged with unknowability.UkraineAmid those swirling doubts, one thing is likely: The first area where Mr. Trump’s potential return to the White House in 2025 could provoke a foreign policy crisis is for Ukraine and the alliance of Western democracies that have been supporting its defense against Russia’s invasion.Helping Ukraine stave off the attempted Russian conquest has become a defining NATO effort. Ukraine is not a NATO member but has remained an independent country because of NATO support.Camille Grand, who was NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment early in the war, said that how Mr. Trump handled Ukraine would be the first “big test case” that Europeans would use to assess how reliable an ally — or not — he might be in a second term.“Will he throw Zelensky under the bus in the first three months of his term?” Mr. Grand, now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, asked, referring to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.NATO’s collective response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped President Biden, center, rebuild traditional alliances after the turmoil of Mr. Trump’s presidency.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump has repeatedly declared that he would somehow settle the war “in 24 hours.” He has not said how, but he has coupled that claim with suggestions that he could have prevented the war by making a deal in which Ukraine simply ceded to Russia its eastern lands that President Vladimir Putin has illegally seized.Mr. Zelensky has said Ukraine would never agree to cede any of its lands to Russia as part of a peace deal. But Mr. Trump would have tremendous leverage over Ukraine’s government. The United States has supplied huge quantities of vital weapons, ammunition and intelligence to Ukraine. European countries have pledged the most economic assistance to Ukraine but could not make up the shortfall if America stopped sending military aid.Some of Mr. Trump’s congressional allies, who have followed his lead in preaching an “America First” mantra, already oppose sending further military assistance to Kyiv. And in a broader sign of waning support, Senate Republicans last week blocked an emergency spending bill to further fund the war in Ukraine after demanding unrelated immigration policy concessions from Democrats as a condition of passing it.But even if Congress appropriates further aid, Mr. Trump could withhold delivery of it — as he did in 2019 when trying to coerce Mr. Zelensky into announcing a criminal investigation into Mr. Biden, the abuse-of-power scandal that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.Against that backdrop, Russia’s battlefield strategy for now appears to be biding its time; it is carrying out attacks when it sees opportunities and to tie up Ukrainian forces but is not making paradigm-shifting moves or negotiating, officials said. That stasis raises the possibility that Mr. Putin has calculated he could be in a much better position after the 2024 U.S. election.‘Everybody Owes Us Money’Mr. Trump likes to brag that he privately told leaders of NATO countries that if Russia attacked them and they had not paid the money they owed to NATO and to the United States, he would not defend them. He claimed at a rally in October that after he had declared that “everybody owes us money” and was “delinquent,” he made that threat at a meeting and so “hundreds of billions of dollars came flowing in.”That story is garbled at best.There was a spending-related dispute, but it was over Europeans’ meeting their spending commitments to their own militaries, not money they somehow owed to NATO or to the United States. They did increase military spending during the Trump administration — though by nowhere near the amounts Mr. Trump has claimed. And their spending rose significantly more in 2023, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.But Mr. Trump’s exuberance for retelling his story, coupled with his past displeasure with NATO, is giving fresh alarm to NATO supporters.Pressed by The New York Times to explain what he means by “fundamentally re-evaluating” NATO’s mission and purpose, Mr. Trump provided a rambling statement that contained no clear answer but expressed skepticism about alliances.“It is the obligation of every U.S. president to ensure that America’s alliances serve to protect the American people, and do not recklessly endanger American blood and treasure,” Mr. Trump’s statement read.Some Trump supporters who are pro-NATO have argued that Mr. Trump is bluffing. They said he was merely looking to put more pressure on the Europeans to spend more on their own defense.“He’s not going to do that,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a Trump supporter, said of the prospect of Mr. Trump’s withdrawing from NATO. “But what he will do is, he will make people pay more, and I think that will be welcome news to a lot of folks.”Robert O’Brien, who served as Mr. Trump’s final national security adviser, echoed that view.“President Trump withdrawing from NATO is an issue that some people in D.C. discuss, but I don’t believe it’s a real thing,” Mr. O’Brien said. “He understands the military value of the alliance to America, but he just feels — correctly, I might add — like we’re getting played by the Germans and other nations that refuse to pay their fair share for their own defense.”But John Bolton, a conservative hawk who served as national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump had to be repeatedly talked out of withdrawing from NATO. In an interview, Mr. Bolton said “there is no doubt in my mind” that in a second term, Mr. Trump would withdraw the United States from NATO.Germany has increased its defense spending but will still fall short of the 2 percent target European members of the alliance agreed to.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesAs a legal matter, whether Mr. Trump could unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO is likely to be contested.The Constitution requires Senate consent to ratify a treaty but omits procedures to annul one. This has led to debate about whether presidents can do so on their own or need lawmakers’ authorization. There are only a few court precedents regarding the issue, none definitive.Decisions to revoke treaties by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and by President George W. Bush in 2001 led members of Congress to file lawsuits that were rejected by courts, partly on the grounds that the disputes were a “political question” for the elected branches to work out. While the legal precedents are not perfectly clear, both of those presidents effectively won: the treaties are widely understood to be void. Still, any attempt to withdraw from NATO would likely invite a broader challenge.In reaction to Mr. Trump’s threats, some lawmakers — led by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida — put a provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress is likely to vote on this month. It says the president shall not withdraw the United States from NATO without congressional approval. But whether the Constitution permits such a tying of a president’s hands is also contestable.And European diplomats say that even if Mr. Trump were to nominally keep the United States in NATO, they fear that he could so undermine trust in the United States’ reliability to live up to the collective-defense provision that its value as a deterrent to Russia would be lost.A Transactional AttitudeThe uncertainty stemming from Mr. Trump’s maximalist and yet vague rhetoric is bound up in his past displays of consistent skepticism about NATO and of unusual solicitude to Russia.As a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump rattled NATO allies by saying that if Russia attacked the Baltic States, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether they had “fulfilled their obligations to us.” He also repeatedly praised Mr. Putin and said he would consider recognizing Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.As president in July 2018, Mr. Trump not only nearly withdrew from NATO at an alliance summit but denounced the European Union as a “foe” because of “what they do to us in trade.” He then attended a summit with Mr. Putin, after which he expressed skepticism about the idea that the United States should go to war to defend a tiny NATO ally, Montenegro.Mr. Trump held a summit in Helsinki with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2018 after repeatedly praising him and displaying an unusual solicitude toward Russia.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWith no prior experience in the military or government, Mr. Trump brought a transactional, mercantilist attitude to interactions with allies. He tended to base his views of foreign nations on his personal relationships with their leaders and on trade imbalances.Mr. Trump particularly disliked Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, and often complained that German automakers were flooding America with their products. His defenders say his anger was in some ways justified: Germany hadn’t been meeting its military spending commitments, and over his objections, Ms. Merkel pushed ahead with a natural-gas pipeline to Russia. Germany only suspended that project two days before Russia invaded Ukraine.Mr. Trump’s allies also point out that he approved sending antitank weapons to Ukraine, which President Obama had not done after Russia seized Crimea in 2014.Still, in 2020, Mr. Trump decided to withdraw a third of the 36,000 American troops stationed in Germany. Some were to come home, as he preferred, with others redeployed elsewhere in Europe. But the following year, as Russia built up troops on Ukraine’s border, Mr. Biden canceled the decision and added troops in Germany as a show of support for NATO.A Supportive MovementIf he returns to power, Mr. Trump will be backed by a conservative movement that has become more skeptical of allies and of U.S. involvement abroad.Anti-interventionist foreign policy institutes are more organized and better funded than they were during Mr. Trump’s time in office. Those groups include the Center for Renewing America, a Trump-aligned think tank that published a paper titled “Pivoting the U.S. Away From Europe to a Dormant NATO,” which provides a rationale for minimizing America’s role in NATO.On Nov. 1, the Heritage Foundation — a traditionally hawkish conservative think tank that has lately refashioned itself in a Trumpist mold, on matters including opposition to aid to Ukraine — hosted a delegation from the European Council on Foreign Relations.The Europeans exchanged views with ardent nationalists, including Michael Anton, a National Security Council official in the Trump administration; Dan Caldwell, who managed foreign policy at the Center for Renewing America; and national security aides to Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and other Trump-aligned senators.According to two people who attended, Mr. Anton told the Europeans he could imagine Mr. Trump setting an ultimatum: If NATO members did not sufficiently increase their military spending by a deadline, he would withdraw the United States from the alliance. As the meeting broke up, Eckart von Klaeden, a former German politician who is now a Mercedes-Benz Group executive, implored Mr. Anton to ask Mr. Trump to please talk to America’s European allies as he formulated his foreign policy.That seems like wishful thinking.In his statement to The Times, Mr. Trump invoked his slogan “America First” — a phrase once popularized by American isolationists opposed to getting involved in World War II.“My highest priority,” Mr. Trump said in the statement, “has always been, and will remain, to America first — the defense of our own country, our own borders, our own values, and our own people, including their jobs and well-being.”Steven Erlanger More

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      Has Support for Ukraine Peaked? Some Fear So.

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      The war in the Middle East, anxiety about the commitment of the U.S., and divisions in Europe are worrying Kyiv that aid from the West may wane.Clearly anxious, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine went in person this week to see NATO defense ministers in Brussels, worried that the war between Israel and Hamas will divert attention — and needed weapons — from Ukraine’s long and bloody struggle against the Russian invasion.American and NATO officials moved to reassure Mr. Zelensky, pledging another $2 billion in immediate military aid. But even before the war in the Mideast began last week, there was a strong sense in Europe, watching Washington, that the world had reached “peak Ukraine” — that support for Kyiv’s fight against Russia’s invasion would never again be as high as it was a few months ago.The new run for the White House by former President Donald J. Trump is shaking confidence that Washington will continue large-scale support for Ukraine. But the concern, Europeans say, is larger than Mr. Trump and extends to much of his Republican Party, which has made cutting support for Ukraine a litmus test of conservative credibility.Even in Europe, Ukraine is an increasingly divisive issue. Voters in Slovakia handed a victory to Robert Fico, a former prime minister sympathetic to Russia. A vicious election campaign in Poland, one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, has emphasized strains with Kyiv. A far right opposed to aiding Ukraine’s war effort has surged in Germany, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz is struggling to win voters over to his call for a stronger military.“I’m pessimistic,” said Yelyzaveta Yasko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament who is on the foreign affairs committee. “There are many questions now — weapons production, security infrastructure, economic aid, the future of NATO,” she said, but noted that answers to those questions had a timeline of at least five years.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, right, talking with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Wednesday at a NATO meeting in Brussels.Olivier Matthys/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“We have been fighting for 600 days,” she added, “and I don’t see the leadership and planning that is required to take real action — not just statements — in support of Ukraine.”Even more depressing, Ms. Yasko said at a recent security forum in Warsaw, is the way domestic politics are “instrumentalizing Ukraine.”“Opinion polls show the people still support Ukraine,” she said, “but politicians start to use Ukraine as a topic to fight each other, and Ukraine becomes a victim.”“I’m worried,” she continued. “I don’t like the way my country is used as a tool.”The previous bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States no longer seems to hold. “There’s less pushback against the anti-Ukrainian stuff already out there,” said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, mentioning the Republican right wing and influential voices like Elon Musk. “It’s dangerous.”Should Washington cut its aid to Ukraine, deciding that it is not worth the cost, top European officials, including the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell Fontelles, openly acknowledge that Europe cannot fill the gap.He was in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, when Congress excluded support from Ukraine in its temporary budget deal. “That was certainly not expected, and certainly not good news,” Mr. Borrell told a summit meeting of E.U. leaders this month in Spain.European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell Fontelles, right, with Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, this month in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via EPA, via Shutterstock“Europe cannot replace the United States,” he said, even as it proposes more aid. “Certainly, we can do more, but the United States is something indispensable for the support to Ukraine.” That same day, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that without Western aid, Ukraine could not survive more than a week.European leaders have pledged to send more air-defense systems to Ukraine to help fend off a possible new Russian air campaign targeting energy infrastructure as winter looms. Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands said on Friday that his country would send additional Patriot missiles, which have proved effective in defending the skies over Kyiv, according to Mr. Zelensky’s office.At the same time, European vows to supply one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March are falling short, with countries supplying only 250,000 shells from stocks — a little more than one month of Ukraine’s current rate of fire — and factories still gearing up for more production.Adm. Rob Bauer, who is the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said in Warsaw that Europe’s military industry had geared up too slowly and still needed to pick up the pace.“We started to give away from half-full or lower warehouses in Europe” to aid Ukraine, he said, “and therefore the bottom of the barrel is now visible.”Even before the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, a senior NATO official said that the mood about Ukraine was gloomy. Still, the official said that the Europeans were spending more on the military and that he expected Congress to continue aid to Ukraine, even if not the $43 billion authorized previously.Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense research institution, said a key issue now is Ukrainian will and resources in what has become a war of attrition. “It’s not really about us anymore, it’s about them,” he said. “The issue is Ukrainian resilience.”Ukrainians will quietly admit to difficulties with morale as the war grinds on, but they see no option other than to continue the fight, whatever happens in the West.Soldiers with the 128th Brigade repairing a broken down Carnation, a self-propelled artillery piece, before taking it back to the front line in September in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesBut some say that they are fearful that President Biden, facing what could be a difficult re-election campaign against Mr. Trump, will try to push Kyiv to get into negotiations for a cease-fire with Russia by next summer, to show that he is committed to peace.That worry is likely to be exaggerated, American officials suggest, given Mr. Biden’s continuing strong support for Ukraine, which is echoed in American opinion polls. But there remains confusion about any end goal that does not foresee Ukraine pushing all Russian troops out of sovereign Ukraine, or any clear path to negotiations with a Russia that shows no interest in talking.As Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, said at the Warsaw security forum, the mantra “as long as it takes” fails to define “it,” let alone “long.” For him, “it” should mean driving the invading Russians out of all of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.In private, at least, other European officials consider that highly unlikely.Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister, suggested that NATO’s 75th anniversary summit meeting next summer in Washington will be tense because of Ukraine, as it will come at the height of the American presidential campaign. Any invitation for Ukraine to join NATO is likely to help Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate, Mr. Bildt said.But while many worry about the possibility of declining American support for Ukraine, the potential for backsliding is not limited to the United States, as the costs of the war are more deeply felt in Europe.In its campaign in Poland, for elections this weekend, the governing Law and Justice Party has complained angrily that Ukrainian grain exports are flooding the Polish market, damaging the farmers who are a key element of the party’s support and underlining the implications for Polish agriculture should Ukraine join the European Union.Mr. Zelensky responded that “it is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain.”Grain stored in Leszczany, Poland, in April.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesThe Polish government, fighting for votes with parties farther to the right, then said it would cease military aid to Ukraine, even though it has already provided an enormous amount early in the war.Anti-Russian sentiment is a given in Poland, but the animosity toward Germany, an E.U. and NATO ally, was striking, too, said Slawomir Debski, the director the of Polish Institute of International Affairs.He described the campaign as “very dirty,” with wild accusations playing on strong anti-German, anti-Russian, anti-European Union sentiments, combined with growing tensions with Ukraine.It was all a sharp contrast to Poland’s embrace of Ukrainian refugees and important early provision of tanks, fighter jets and ammunition just last year.“I warned many people, including the Americans, that this government is being accused of doing too much for Ukraine, so be careful,” Mr. Debski said.Michal Baranowski, a Pole who is the managing director for the German Marshall Fund East, said he was “disheartened because Polish political leaders know we need to stay the course in Ukraine, but they are letting emotions and politics get the better of them.”Polish division, however political, does not stay in Poland, Mr. Baranowski warned. “The effect of this on the United States and the Republican Party is terrible,” he said.Constant Méheut More

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      Slovakia Election Could Shift Sentiment in a Fierce Ukraine Ally

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      The vote in Slovakia this month will be a test of European unity on Ukraine, and of Russia’s efforts to undermine it. The front-runner wants to halt arms shipments to Kyiv.When Ukraine discovered civilian mass graves in an area recaptured from Russian troops, Russia’s ambassador in neighboring Slovakia countered with his own discovery.The mayor of a remote Slovak village, as the ambassador announced last September, had bulldozed Russian graves from World War I. Ambassador Igor Bratchikov demanded that the Slovak government, a robust supporter of Ukraine, take action to punish the “blasphemous act.”The Slovak police responded swiftly, dismissing the ambassador’s claims as a “hoax,” but his fabrication took flight, amplified by vociferous pro-Russian groups in Slovakia and news outlets notorious for recycling Russian propaganda.A month later, the mayor of the village, Vladislav Cuper, lost an election to a rival candidate from a populist party opposed to helping Ukraine.Today, the same forces that helped unseat Mr. Cuper have mobilized for a general election in Slovakia on Sept. 30 with much bigger stakes.The vote will not only decide who governs a small Central European nation with fewer than six million people, but will also indicate whether opposition to helping Ukraine, a position now mostly confined to the political fringes across Europe, could take hold in the mainstream.Vladislav Cuper, the former mayor of Ladomirova, Slovakia, at his home in the village. Mr. Cuper says he was smeared by pro-Russian forces in Slovakia.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThe front-runner, according to opinion polls, is a party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister who has vowed to halt Slovak arms deliveries to Ukraine, denounced sanctions against Russia and railed against NATO, despite his country’s membership in the alliance.A strong showing in the election by Mr. Fico and far-right parties hostile to the government in Kyiv would likely turn one of Ukraine’s most stalwart backers — Slovakia was the first country to send it air-defense missiles and fighter jets — into a neutral bystander more sympathetic to Moscow. It would also end the isolation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as the only leader in the European Union and NATO speaking out strongly against helping Ukraine.“Russia is rejoicing,” Rastislav Kacer, a former foreign minister and outspoken supporter of Ukraine, said in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. “Slovakia is a great success story for its propaganda. It has worked hard and very successfully to exploit my country as a wedge to divide Europe.”Thanks to widespread public discontent with the infighting between pro-Western Slovak politicians who came to power in 2020, and deep pools of genuine pro-Russian sentiment dating back to the 19th century, Russia has been pushing on an open door.A survey of public opinion across Eastern and Central Europe in March by Globsec, a Bratislava-based research group, found that only 40 percent of Slovaks blame Russia for the war in Ukraine, while 51 percent believe that either Ukraine or the West is “primarily responsible.” In Poland, 85 percent blame Russia. In the Czech Republic, 71 percent think Russia is responsible.The World War I cemetery in Ladomirova that the Russian ambassador to Slovakia falsely said had been destroyed.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDaniel Milo, director of an Interior Ministry department aimed at countering disinformation and other nonmilitary threats, acknowledged that “there is fertile ground here for pro-Russian sentiment.” But he added that genuine sympathy rooted in history had been exploited by Russia and its local helpers to sow division and sour public opinion on Ukraine.Those helpers include Hlavne Spravy, a popular anti-American news site, and a bikers group called Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, which is affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves motorcycle gang in Russia.A freelance writer for Hlavne Spravy, Bohus Garbar, was convicted of espionage this year after being caught on camera taking money from Russia’s military attaché, who has since been expelled.Brat za Brata, which has a large following on social media and close ties to the Russian embassy, has meanwhile worked to intimidate Russia’s critics.Peter Kalmus, a 70-year-old Slovak artist, said he was beaten up by members of the biker group last month after he defaced a Soviet war memorial in the eastern city of Kosice to protest Russian atrocities in Ukraine. In March, the bikers reduced to pandemonium a government-sponsored public debate about the war in a town near the Ukrainian border attended by Mr. Kacer, who was then still a minister. Fiercely pro-Russian protesters bused in by the bikers, recalled Mr. Kacer, “jumped on the stage screaming and spitting at us.”Many Slovaks, said Grigorij Meseznikov, the Russian-born president of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Bratislava research group, “have an invented romantic vision of Russia in their heads that does not really exist” and are easily swayed by “lies and propaganda” about the West.The Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Ladomirova. The former mayor said that in his view, Russia did not care who won the election in the village, but had spotted a good opportunity to “present itself as a victim.”Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThat, he added, has made the country vulnerable to efforts by Moscow to rally pro-Russian sentiment in the hope of undermining European unity over Ukraine. Slovakia is a small country, Mr. Meseznikov said, but “if you take even a small brick out of a wall it can crumble.”That is certainly the hope of Lubos Blaha, a former member of a heavy metal band and the author of books on Lenin and Che Guevara who is now the deputy leader of Mr. Fico’s surging political party, SMER. He is also one of Slovakia’s loudest and most influential Kremlin-friendly voices on social media and regularly denounces his country’s liberal woman president, Zuzana Caputova, as a “fascist” and pro-Ukrainian ministers as “American puppets.”“The mood in Europe is changing,” Mr. Blaha said in an interview, describing the conflict in Ukraine as “a war of the American empire against the Russian empire” that cannot be won because Russia is a nuclear power.Insisting he was “not pro-Russia, just pro my country’s national interests,” Mr. Blaha predicted that countries hostile to arming Ukraine would soon “be in the majority while supporters of Ukraine will be in a small minority,” especially if Donald J. Trump wins the next presidential election in the United States.In the run-up to Slovakia’s own election, the usually placid country has been swamped by heated accusations on all sides of foreign interference. Mr. Fico has accused NATO of meddling in the campaign, while his foes have pointed a finger at Russia.Describing Mr. Fico’s SMER party as a “Trojan horse” for Russia, Jaroslav Nad, a former defense minister who led a push to send arms to Ukraine, claimed this summer that, according to intelligence reports, a Slovak citizen he didn’t identify had visited Russia “to receive financial resources to benefit SMER.” But, citing confidentiality, he produced no evidence, and his claim has been widely dismissed as a pre-election smear.Still, the Russian ambassador’s fabricated story of desecrated war graves highlighted Russia’s skill at fishing in Slovakia’s troubled waters. It also provided what Mr. Milo, the interior ministry official, called “a very rare smoking gun” directly implicating Moscow in scripting a fake scandal. “They usually act more cleverly and try not to get caught red-handed,” he said.Children climbing on Soviet and German tanks at a World War II monument outside Ladomirova. In the run-up to a general election, Slovakia has been swamped by heated accusations of foreign interference.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDuring a visit last week to the still-intact graveyard in Ladomirova, Mr. Cuper said that in his view Russia did not care who won the mayoral vote there, but had spotted a good opportunity “to distract attention from mass graves in Ukraine” and “present itself as a victim.”When the ambassador visited Ladomirova, he met with Mr. Cuper’s bitter rival, a former mayor whom Mr. Cuper had accused of embezzling village funds and who was convicted of fraud in 2019. The former mayor’s wife, Olga Bojcikova, who declined to be interviewed, was at the time running against Mr. Cuper, who was backed by pro-Ukrainian parties, in the local election last October. She won.The ambassador’s story of “razed” Russian graves, though debunked by the police, was, Mr. Cuper recalled, “blown out of all proportion” by Kremlin-friendly Slovaks, particularly the Brat za Brata bikers.The bikers posted incendiary statements on Facebook denouncing the mayor’s “blasphemous act” and rallied its members to respond. This set off calls for Mr. Cuper to be “executed,” “buried alive” and “flogged like a dog.”Slovakia’s prosecutor general, Maros Zilinka, who has a long history of sympathy for Russia and hostility to the United States, added fuel to the fire by announcing that the mayor could be liable for criminal prosecution for a “morally reprehensible act” that needed to be investigated.Mr. Cuper said he never touched the graves but had removed stone border markers because they were falling apart. Nor did he touch a notice board put up as part of renovation work financed by Russia in 2014: It falsely described the cemetery as the resting place of 270 Russian war dead. The cemetery contains the unidentified bodies of soldiers from various countries, including Russia, killed in a World War I battle.The ambassador’s story, he said, was “entirely untrue” but still “created a national uproar.” More