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      A Stunned Russian Opposition in Exile Considers a Future Without Navalny

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      The death of Aleksei A. Navalny in a Russian prison has been a blow to an opposition movement in which he was the figurehead. But it has also raised hopes of a united front against President Vladimir V. Putin.The death of Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader, has stunned Russian dissidents. But it is also spurring some hope that in its desperate moment, the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin will be able to unite like never before.Doing so will be a challenge, given the often aloof approach of Mr. Navalny’s movement and the disparate assembly of other leading opposition Russian figures: nearly all of them in exile, and none with his broad national appeal.Among them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch who fell out with Mr. Putin, spent 10 years in prison and in London became one of his most prominent opponents in exile. Then there is Maxim Katz, a YouTube influencer and a former poker champion, who is based in Israel. There is also Ilya Yashin, a longtime liberal politician who is serving an eight-year sentence for publicizing Russian atrocities in Ukraine.Beyond these figures who are trying to speak for the whole of Russia is a plethora of small antiwar groups focused on particular Russian regions, social issues or ethnic minorities. Some of their demands — like a reckoning with Russia’s imperial history — have clashed with the more conservative position of Mr. Navalny, who had flirted with Russian nationalism in order to gain a broader following.Many operate their own YouTube channels, or use other social media like Telegram and podcasts, to beam their messages to millions of viewers in Russia despite the Kremlin’s tightening its control of information.But looming over all of them will be Mr. Navalny, even after his death in a Russian prison on Friday. As of Sunday, Mr. Navalny’s family has still not been able to locate his body, according to his team.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 and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Restoring the Past Won’t Liberate Palestine

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      Amid the graphic images, fierce polemics and endless media criticism that have dominated my social media feeds since the war in Gaza began late last year, I noticed a seemingly bizarre subplot emerge: skin cancer in Israel.“You are not Indigenous if your body cannot tolerate the area’s climate,” one such post read, highlighting outdated news coverage claiming that Israelis had unusually high rates of skin cancer. (They do not.) Skin cancer, these posts claimed, was proof that Israeli Jews were not native to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea but are in fact white Europeans with no ancestral connection to the region, enactors of one of the worst crimes of the modern age: settler colonialism.On one level, the claims about skin cancer — like similar ones about Israeli cuisine and surnames — are silly social media talking points from keyboard warriors slinging hashtags, hyped up on theories of liberation based on memes of Frantz Fanon quotes taken out of context. In the context of the ongoing slaughter in Gaza — more than 28,000 people dead, mostly women and children — such posturing may seem trivial. But even, or maybe especially, at this moment, when things are so grim, the way we talk about liberation matters. And I find this kind of talk revealing of a larger trend on the left these days, emanating from important and complex theories in the academy but reflected in crude and reductive forms in the memes and slogans at pro-Palestine protests — an increasingly rigid set of ideas about the interloping colonizer and the Indigenous colonized. In this analysis, there are two kinds of people: those who are native to a land and those who settle it, displacing the original inhabitants. Those identities are fixed, essential, eternal.I have spent much of my life and career living and working among formerly colonized peoples attempting to forge a path for themselves in the aftermath of empire. The rapacious carving up of much of the globe and the genocide and enslavement of millions of people by a handful of European powers for their own enrichment was the great crime of early modernity. The icons who threw off the yoke of colonial oppression — including Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and Fanon — were my childhood heroes, and they remain my intellectual lodestars. But I sometimes struggle to recognize their spirit and ideas in the way we talk about decolonization today, with its emphasis on determining who is and who is not an Indigenous inhabitant of the lands known as Israel and Palestine.A good deal of the antipathy toward Israeli Jews today is undergirded and enabled, I believe, by something that to some ears sounds progressive: the idea that people and lands that have been colonized must be returned to their indigenous peoples and original state. But that belief, when taken literally, is at best a kind of left-wing originalism, a utopian politics that believes the past answers all the questions of the present. At worst it is a left-wing echo to the ancestral fantasies of the far right, in which who is allowed to live in which places is a question of the connection of one’s blood to a particular patch of soil.Implicit in the emphasis on indigeneity is a promised restoration, albeit one of a very different sort from the imperial fantasies of Vladimir Putin or the gender obsessions of Ron DeSantis. Decolonization “is not converting Indigenous politics to a Western doctrine of liberation; it is not a philanthropic process of ‘helping’ the at-risk and alleviating suffering; it is not a generic term for struggle against oppressive conditions and outcomes,” as the scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang write in an influential academic paper published in 2012, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” More

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      Netanyahu Says He Won’t Bow to Pressure to Call Off Rafah Invasion

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      The Israeli leader has come under international pressure to drop a threatened incursion into the city where more than a million Palestinians are gathered, seeking refuge from the war.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel insisted on Saturday that Israel would not bow to international pressure to call off its plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that is now packed with more than a million Palestinians.Many of the people now in Rafah are displaced and living in schools, tents or the homes of friends and relatives, part of a desperate search for any safe refuge from Israel’s military campaign, which has dragged on for more than four months. Their lives are a daily struggle to find enough food and water to survive.“Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are basically telling us: Lose the war,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference in Jerusalem on Saturday evening. “It’s true that there’s a lot of opposition abroad, but this is exactly the moment that we need to say that we won’t be doing a half or a third of the job.”About the same time as Mr. Netanyahu addressed the news conference, thousands of anti-government protesters filled a central thoroughfare in Tel Aviv — the largest protest against the prime minister in months. They filled the same street where mass protests against Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the country’s judiciary riled the nation before the start of the Israel-Hamas war.Calls for an immediate election rose above a din of air horns. Protesters lit a red flare in the middle of a drum circle while others wielding flags stared down half a dozen police officers on horseback.“The people need to rise up, and the government needs to go,” said one protester, Yuval Lerner, 57. Mr. Lerner said that even before the war, he lost confidence that the government has the nation’s best interest at heart, but “Oct. 7 proved it,” he said.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 and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Dictators Do Not Go on Vacation,’ Zelensky Warns Washington and Europe

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back against skepticism of a Ukraine victory, calling on world leaders not to ask when the war would end, but why Russia was still able to wage it.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called on world leaders not to abandon his country, citing the recent death of a Russian dissident as a reminder that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of would continue to test the international order, and pushing back against the idea of a negotiated resolution to the war.Mr. Zelensky, speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, said that if Ukraine lost the war to Russia, it would be “catastrophic” not only for Kyiv, but for other nations as well.“Please do not ask Ukraine when the war will end,” he said. “Ask yourself why is Putin still able to continue it.”The two topics that have loomed over nearly every discussion at the yearly meeting of world leaders have been Russia and the potential weakening of trans-Atlantic relations, amid an increasingly pessimistic assessment of Kyiv’s ability to beat Moscow.Mr. Zelensky’s speech on Saturday came as Ukrainian forces retreated from a longtime stronghold, Avdiivka, giving Russian troops their first significant victory in almost a year.And it came a day after attendees of the conference were shaken by the news that the prominent dissident Aleksei A. Navalny had died in a Russian Arctic penal colony. It was a stark reminder, Mr. Zelensky warned, of how Moscow would continue to test the Western-backed international rules-based order.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 and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul Apologizes For Israel-Hamas Analogy to Canada

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      In remarks made at a Jewish philanthropy event, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that if Canada attacked the United States as Hamas did Israel, “there would be no Canada the next day.”Gov. Kathy Hochul apologized on Friday night for remarks she made at a Jewish philanthropy event in New York City that implied that Israel would be justified in destroying Gaza because of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.In a speech on Thursday at the event, for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, Ms. Hochul began by calling out Hamas for being a terrorist organization that “must be stopped,” saying that Israel could not continue to live with “that threat, that specter over them.” She then attempted to make an analogy to the United States, relating the war to her hometown, Buffalo.“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” Ms. Hochul said in a video of the speech posted on social media. “That is a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure that it never happens again. And that is Israel’s right.”In a statement provided to The New York Times on Friday night, after the speech began circulating on social media, Ms. Hochul said that she regretted her “inappropriate analogy.” She apologized for her “poor choice of words.”“While I have been clear in my support of Israel’s right to self-defense, I have also repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid must go to the people of Gaza,” she said.In a post on X, Assemblyman Zohran Kwame Mamdani said: “Governor Hochul justifying genocide, while laughing. Disgusting.”The backlash to the governor’s comments represented new territory for Ms. Hochul, who has rarely courted controversy during her time in office, in stark contrast to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.Ms. Hochul had been addressing the annual U.J.A. lawyers division event at the Pierre Hotel. The event was geared toward supporting the foundation’s “critical work in response to mounting needs on the ground in Israel and ongoing needs in New York and around the world,” according to its website.The foundation posted about Ms. Hochul’s remarks later Thursday night on X, thanking her “for always standing with the Jewish community and against antisemitism and hate in New York.”The governor’s speech comes as the war in Gaza is escalating. Israel ramped up its military operations this week along the Gaza-Egypt border, where the vast majority of Gazans have fled during the war. International leaders have warned that the operation could end in catastrophe, with President Emmanuel Macron of France saying that the situation could become an “unprecedented humanitarian disaster.” More

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      Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic, Dies in Prison, Russian Authorities Say

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      Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, died Friday in a prison inside the Arctic Circle, according to the Russian authorities. His death was announced by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, which said that Mr. Navalny, 47, lost consciousness on Friday after taking a walk in the prison where he was moved late last year. He was last seen on Thursday, when he had appeared in a court hearing via video link, smiling behind the bars of a cell and making jokes.Footage from the Russian news outlet SOTA shows Aleksei Navalny laughing and making jokes behind bars during his last court appearance via video link.SOTAVISION, via ReutersLeonid Volkov, Navalny’s longtime chief of staff, said he was not yet ready to accept the news that Mr. Navalny was dead. “We have no reason to believe state propaganda,” Volkov wrote on the social platform X. “If this is true, then it’s not ‘Navalny died,’ but ‘Putin killed Navalny,’ and only that. But I don’t trust them one penny.”Mr. Navalny had been serving multiple sentences that would most likely have kept him in prison until at least 2031 on charges that his supporters say were largely fabricated in an effort to muzzle him. Despite increasingly harsh conditions, including repeated stints in solitary confinement, he maintained a presence on social media, while members of his team continued to publish investigations into Russia’s corrupt elite from exile.Mr. Navalny was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence in February 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from being poisoned with a nerve agent the previous August. In March 2022, he received a nine-year sentence for embezzlement and fraud in a trial that international observers denounced as “politically motivated” and a “sham.” And in August 2023, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism.”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 and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Conservatives Suffer Setback in Parliamentary Election in Britain

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      The results came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deals with a shrinking economy and discontent over a crisis gripping the country’s health system.Britain’s governing Conservative Party has lost the first of two parliamentary elections in a new blow to its embattled leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose future has been questioned by critics within his fractious political party.The Conservatives were defeated in Kingswood, near Bristol, by 8,675 to 11,176 votes, losing a seat that the party had previously held. Votes were cast Thursday to replace two Conservative lawmakers who had quit Parliament, with the first set of results announced early Friday morning.With a general election expected later this year, the result is likely to compound Mr. Sunak’s difficulties at a time when the British economy is shrinking, interest rates are high, and Britain’s health service seems to be in a state of almost permanent crisis. Opinion polls show his party trailing the opposition Labour Party by double-digit margins.The results from the second parliamentary election, in Wellingborough, are expected later on Friday morning. Turnout in both contests was low at less than 40 percent, with many people staying home rather than casting a ballot.A woman leaving a polling station after casting her vote in the Kingswood by-election near Bristol, Britain, on Thursday.Phil Noble/ReutersThe gloomy mood within the Conservative Party had already deepened on Thursday, after the release of economic data showing that in the last months of 2023, Britain had officially entered a recession.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 and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What is Joko Widodo’s Role in Indonesia’s Election?

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      Today’s vote is seen as a referendum on President Joko Widodo, who focused on economic growth but eventually curtailed liberties, critics say.More than 100 million people are voting on Wednesday in one of the biggest elections in the world. The contest for the top prize — the presidency of Indonesia — is a three-way race.But looming large is someone not on the ballot.That person is Joko Widodo, the incumbent president, who is not allowed to seek a third five-year term and will step down in October. A decade after Mr. Joko presented himself as a down-to-earth reformer and won office, he remains incredibly popular.Many of his supporters say that he has largely delivered on his promise of putting Indonesia on the path to becoming a rich country in the coming decades, with ambitious infrastructure and welfare projects like the plan to build a new capital city and a universal health system.At the same time, Mr. Joko has also overseen what critics describe as the regression of civil liberties. He has stripped down the powers of an anti-corruption agency, rammed through a contentious labor law and, more recently, appeared to engineer the placement of one of his sons on the ballot for vice president.Mr. Joko appears to be backing Mr. Prabowo, a former general who has been accused of rights abuses. Ulet Ifansasti for The New York TimesMaking matters worse, critics say, is the presidential hopeful he appears to be backing: Prabowo Subianto, a former general who was once a rival of Mr. Joko and who is accused of committing human rights abuses when Indonesia was a dictatorship. Mr. Prabowo, whose running mate is Mr. Joko’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, has been ahead in the polls.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 and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More