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      How TikTok Helped Germany’s Left to a Surprise Election Showing

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      Struggling a month ago, the far-left Die Linke party surged into Parliament by riding a backlash against conservative immigration policy.Her fans call her Heidi. She is 36 years old. She talks a mile a minute. She has a tattoo of the Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg on her left arm and a million followers across TikTok and Instagram. She was relatively unknown in German politics until January, but as of Sunday, she’s a political force.Heidi Reichinnek is the woman who led the surprise story of Germany’s parliamentary elections on Sunday: an almost overnight resurgence of Die Linke, which translates as “The Left.”A month ago, Die Linke looked likely to miss the 5 percent voting cutoff needed for parties to earn seats in Germany’s Parliament, the Bundestag. On Sunday, it won nearly 9 percent of the vote and 64 seats in the Bundestag. “It was one of only five parties to win multiple seats in the new Parliament, joining the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the hard-right Alternative for Germany and the Green Party.It was a remarkable comeback, powered by young voters, high prices, a backlash against conservative politicians, and a social-media-forward message that mixed celebration and defiance.At a time when German politicians are moving to the right on issues like immigration, and when the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, doubled its vote share from four years ago, Ms. Reichinnek, the party’s co-leader in the Bundestag, and Die Linke succeeded by channeling outrage from liberal, young voters.They pitched themselves as an aggressive check on a more conservative government, which will almost certainly be led by Friedrich Merz, a businessman who has led the Christian Democrats to take a harsher line on border security and migrants.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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      In Russia, Anniversary of Ukraine War Draws Little Public Mention

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      President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is not scheduled to attend any events on Monday to mark the anniversary of the full-scale invasion that he ordered.No public events. No speeches, memorial church services for fallen soldiers or mentions on state television.Three years after sending troops across the border into Ukraine, Russian officials are marking the anniversary on Monday with a resounding silence.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is not scheduled to attend any events on Monday for the anniversary of the full-scale invasion that he ordered, which has metastasized into Europe’s biggest military conflict since World War II.Russian state TV opened Monday morning news bulletins with routine reports from the front lines in Ukraine, making no reference to the symbolism of the date.And local officials who typically toe the Kremlin’s line on glorifying the invasion — casting Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine as heroes and the war as a moral imperative — were uncharacteristically quiet on Monday.Nor is Russia mourning its casualties — which U.S. intelligence estimates to be in the hundreds of thousands including the wounded — in any public way on Monday.However, independent Russian journalists in exile published a joint report saying that Russia had lost over 165,000 soldiers in three years of fighting, based on publicly available data from court records. Those figures could not be independently confirmed, and Russia’s defense ministry refuses to disclose casualty figures.A top Russian diplomat made no mention of the anniversary on Monday but praised the Trump administration’s efforts to draw closer to Mr. Putin and bring an end to the war.“A cease-fire without a long-term settlement is a path to renewed fighting and conflict at a later date with even graver consequences including for Russian-American ties,” Sergei A. Ryabkov, a deputy foreign minister, told the RIA Novosti news agency, a week after Russian and U.S. officials sat down for talks for the first time in three years.“We don’t want that,” Mr. Ryabkov went on. “We need to look for a long-term settlement that should include a way to deal with the underlying reasons for what has been happening in Ukraine and around it.” More

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      Israel and Hamas Trade Accusations of Violating Fragile Cease-Fire

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      Hamas criticized Israel’s decision to delay the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, amid growing tensions and concerns for the future of the truce in Gaza.Israel and Hamas on Sunday accused each other of violating the already fragile Gaza cease-fire deal after Israel delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be exchanged for hostages.The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the prisoners would not be freed until the release of further hostages “has been assured,” and Hamas committed to letting them go without “humiliating ceremonies.”The growing tensions come after a week of mutual recriminations and strained nerves on both sides. The delay raised more questions about the future of the cease-fire for Gaza, with a temporary, six-week truce set to expire on March 1.There is no clarity yet about a possible extension, or even whether serious negotiations have begun. Some members of Israel’s right-wing government are pressing for a resumption of the fighting after the initial phase of the cease-fire, which has provided a brief lull in the devastating war set off by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.On Saturday, Hamas released six Israeli hostages, the last living captives set to be freed in the first phase of the cease-fire. Earlier it had handed over the remains of four hostages, including those of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, who were all taken alive during the 2023 assault.Israel was supposed to release 620 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in return, the largest group of detainees to be let go since the cease-fire in Gaza began last month, but it delayed the move, citing what Mr. Netanyahu’s office described as Hamas’s “cynical exploitation” of the hostages for propaganda purposes.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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      Shocked by Trump, Europe Turns Its Hopes to Germany’s Election

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      Germany’s economy is stalled and its politics fractured. But it sees an opening for a new chancellor to lead Europe’s response to a changing America.In the final days of Germany’s abbreviated election campaign, the task facing its next chancellor has snapped into focus. It appears far more existential, for the country and for all of Europe, than almost anyone initially imagined.Germany’s coalition government came apart just a day after the U.S. presidential election last November. As a result, a vote that was supposed to come this September is now set for Sunday. German leaders quickly realized that meant their campaign would be largely fought in the early days of President Trump’s second term.They were nervous from the start. But they were nowhere near prepared.In just a few short weeks, the new Trump team has cut Ukraine and Europe out of negotiations to end the war with Russia, and embraced an aggressive, expansionist regime in Moscow that now breathes down Europe’s neck. It also threatened to withdraw troops that have protected Germany for decades.How Germans vote will now be a critical component of Europe’s response to Mr. Trump’s new world order, and will resonate far beyond their borders.“It is not just another change of government” under Mr. Trump, Friedrich Merz, the leading candidate for chancellor, warned on Friday after taking the stage for an arena rally in the western town of Oberhausen, “but a complete redrawing of the world map.”Friedrich Merz at a campaign event in Oberhausen, Germany, on Friday.Martin Meissner/Associated PressWe 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 Elon Musk’s Job?

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      Even as the billionaire tech executive Elon Musk is seemingly everywhere in Washington, his role remains murky.Early on in his interview with President Trump and Elon Musk yesterday, Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried ever so gently to get to the bottom of an important question: What does Musk actually do?“He’s your tech support?” Hannity asked, referring to the words on the T-shirt Musk had opened his blazer to reveal a few moments earlier.Musk said he was.“He’s much more than that,” Trump insisted.The exchange did little to answer the question. Musk’s precise role and responsibilities remain so vague, and so shrouded in secrecy, that even he and the president haven’t quite agreed on what to call it, or exactly how to talk about it.Trump once said that it would be Musk’s job to “lead” the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but a court filing this week said he was not actually the administrator of that effort — although it did not say who was. The White House has called Musk a “special government employee,” and Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, insisted that the department merely advised agencies, without the authority to fire people.“He’s more powerful than a cabinet secretary, but he is not Senate-confirmed,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a former Republican Senate aide, who added that, at the same time, Musk offers little public information about his day-to-day activities.The White House has not laid out exactly how many people are part of Musk’s team, or exactly what they are doing. For all of Musk’s promises of transparency, the public is learning about his team’s work largely through reporting and through, as my colleague Zach Montague pointed out today, legal filings. Even judges are having difficulties ascertaining basic facts about the group’s incursion into agencies and the data its staff is collecting.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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      European Leaders Try to Recalibrate After Trump Sides With Russia on Ukraine

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      The American president’s latest remarks embracing Vladimir Putin’s narrative that Ukraine is to blame for the war have compounded the sense of alarm among traditional allies.President Emmanuel Macron of France called a second emergency meeting of European allies on Wednesday seeking to recalibrate relations with the United States as President Trump upends international politics by rapidly changing American alliances.Mr. Macron had already assembled a dozen European leaders in Paris on Monday after Mr. Trump and his new team angered and confused America’s traditional allies by suggesting that the United States would rapidly retreat from its security role in Europe and planned to proceed with peace talks with Russia — without Europe or Ukraine at the table.Mr. Trump’s remarks late on Tuesday, when he sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war, have now fortified the impression that the United States is prepared to abandon its role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.It was a complete reversal of historic alliances that left many in Europe stunned and fearful.“What’s happening is very bad. It’s a reversal of the state of the world since 1945,” Jean- Yves Le Drian, a former French foreign minister, said on French radio Wednesday morning.“It’s our security he’s putting at risk,” he said, referring to President Trump. “We must wake up.”Fear that Mr. Trump is ready to abandon Ukraine and has accepted Russian talking points has been particularly acute in Eastern and Central Europe, where memories are long and bitter of the West’s efforts to appease Hitler in Munich in 1938 and its assent to Stalin’s demands at the Yalta Conference in 1945 for a Europe cleaved in two.“Even Poland’s betrayal in Yalta lasted longer than Ukraine’s betrayal in Riyadh,” Jaroslaw Walesa, a Polish lawmaker and the son of Poland’s anti-Communist Solidarity trade union leader, Lech Walesa, said Wednesday on social media, referring to the American-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.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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      Trump Media Group Sues Brazilian Judge Weighing Arrest of Jair Bolsonaro

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      The lawsuit came hours after the justice received an indictment of Brazil’s former president, who is an ally of President Trump.President Trump’s media company sued a Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday, accusing him of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media.The unusual move was made all the more extraordinary by its timing: Just hours earlier, the Brazilian justice had received an indictment that would force him to decide whether to order the arrest of Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president and an ally of Mr. Trump. The justice is overseeing multiple criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro.The Trump Media & Technology Group — which is majority owned by Mr. Trump and runs his Truth Social site — sued the Brazilian justice, Alexandre de Moraes, in U.S. federal court in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday morning. Joining as a plaintiff was Rumble, a Florida-based video platform that, like Truth Social, pitches itself as a home for free speech.The lawsuit appeared to represent an astonishing effort by Mr. Trump to pressure a foreign judge as he weighed the fate of a fellow right-wing leader who, like him, was indicted on charges that he tried to overturn his election loss.Mr. Bolsonaro had explicitly called on Mr. Trump to take action against Justice Moraes in an interview with The New York Times last month. At the time, it was not clear how Mr. Trump might be able to influence Brazil’s domestic politics.Supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro clashing with the police as they stormed the Brazilian Supreme Court, Congress and presidential offices in 2023.Eraldo Peres/Associated PressWe 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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      South Korean Officials Convicted Over Forcibly Sending North Koreans Home

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      The case of two North Korean fishermen, who murdered 16 compatriots before they sought asylum, has become a political minefield in the South.In 2019, two North Korean fishermen confessed to murdering 16 shipmates ​before they fled to South Korea by boat​ and sought asylum.​ The then-progressive government in ​the South denied them refugee status ​or a trial there and, in an unprecedented move, sent them back to the North​.​That decision triggered ​not only a political firestorm at the time​ but also criminal charges against four senior officials prosecuted after the current conservative government, with a more hard-line stance against North Korea, took power in Seoul in 2022.On Tuesday, a three-judge panel in the Seoul Central District Court found the four top national security aides to former President Moon Jae-in guilty of abusing their official power when they sent the fleeing North Korean fishermen back. The court announced prison sentences but decided not to impose them immediately, indicating in its verdict that it considered the criminal charges against the​ officials to be politically motivated under Mr. Moon’s successor, President Yoon Suk Yeol.The four former officials — Mr. Moon’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong; his director of national intelligence, Suh Hoon; his presidential chief of staff, Noh Young-min; and his unification minister, Kim Yeon-chul — were sentenced to six to 10 months in prison. But the sentences were suspended for two years, after which they will be removed.The criminal charges the four faced were the first of their kind in South Korea and reflect the polarization between the country’s two main political parties when it comes to dealing with its decades-old foe North Korea.​When South Korea captured the two North Korean fishermen, then ages 22 and 23, in its waters in 2019​, they were no ordinary defectors. They confessed that they fled after killing the captain and 15 other crewmen on their boat with ​hammers, dumping​ their bodies into the sea.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