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      Emmanuel Macron Recounts Face-Off With Vladimir Putin

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      The French leader recounted his face-off with Vladimir Putin and dismissed Washington’s exchange of letters with Moscow, gambling that his diplomacy could pay off before April elections.PARIS — Around a table much smaller than the 20-foot-long oval slab across which he confronted President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow, President Emmanuel Macron gathered a few journalists this week to confide that the crisis in Ukraine was taking up “more than half my time, the bulk of my time” because the world stands “at a tipping point” of history.The table was some six miles up in the air, on the presidential plane that whisked Mr. Macron to Moscow, Kyiv and Berlin this week, where he warned of “irreversible” damage if Russia invaded Ukraine, and said it was imperative “not to surrender to fate.”Mr. Macron is convinced that the current crisis, marked by Russian revanchism after its perceived humiliation by the West, reflects a failure to rethink Europe’s collective security after the end of the Cold War. On that, at least, he and Mr. Putin seem to agree. The formidable task before the French president is to figure out what could possibly replace it, and convince others, including the United States, of its virtues.By the end of the week, the standoff with Russia, which conducted military exercises all around Ukraine’s borders, looked as menacing as ever. Yet just nine weeks from a presidential election, Mr. Macron has made the risky bet that he can coax Mr. Putin toward dialogue and that French voters will be more taken with his global stature than alienated by his inattention.If he fails, he risks not only losing their votes and their confidence, but also damaging his prestige and that of his country by being seen abroad as an overreaching leader.Wary of that perception, he has taken great pains to coordinate his efforts with other European leaders, some of them skeptical, and with President Biden. A 75-minute conversation on Friday among Western leaders displayed a united front behind attempts to persuade Russia “to de-escalate the crisis and choose the path of dialogue,” the European Commission said.A satellite image showing the deployment of military housing and vehicles in Rechitsa, Belarus.Maxar Technologies, via ReutersMr. Macron was 11 when the Berlin Wall came down. Mr. Biden was 46. Some divergence of view is probably inevitable. Mr. Macron sees no reason that the structure of the alliance that prevailed over the Soviet Union should be eternal.“The question is not NATO, but how do we create an area of security,” he said. “How do we live in peace in this region?” Part of his goal in Moscow, he suggested, had been to prod Mr. Putin away from a NATO obsession — that Ukraine should never join the alliance — toward another “framework.” He said he had told the Russian leader “the framework you propose is false.”To turn up at the Kremlin, facing the man who has put a gun to the head of the West with 130,000 troops massed on the Ukrainian border, was necessary, Mr. Macron argued. Opening another diplomatic avenue, more flexible than the exchange of letters between Russia and the United States that Mr. Macron repeatedly dismissed as useless, gained time by locking in meetings in the coming weeks. The two leaders are expected to speak again on Saturday.Understand Russia’s Relationship With the WestThe tension between the regions is growing and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.Competing for Influence: For months, the threat of confrontation has been growing in a stretch of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Threat of Invasion: As the Russian military builds its presence near Ukraine, Western nations are seeking to avert a worsening of the situation.Energy Politics: Europe is a huge customer of Russia’s fossil fuels. The rising tensions in Ukraine are driving fears of a midwinter cutoff.Migrant Crisis: As people gathered on the eastern border of the European Union, Russia’s uneasy alliance with Belarus triggered additional friction.Militarizing Society: With a “youth army” and initiatives promoting patriotism, the Russian government is pushing the idea that a fight might be coming.Over more than five hours on Monday, the two leaders confronted each other. Mr. Macron said he hammered on “the guarantees he could give me on the situation at the border” to such a degree that Mr. Putin at one point said he was being “tortured.”Mr. Putin, with equal insistence, attacked NATO’s expansion east since 1997 and the aggression this constituted.Ukrainian marines on Wednesday in the eastern Donetsk region.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesAsked about the much mocked long table, Mr. Macron said, “Well, it was hardly intimate.”The Kremlin has disputed that Mr. Macron won any concessions, but said there were “seeds of reason” in his approach, in contrast to attempted British diplomacy, which was dismissed by the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, as a conversation between “the mute and the deaf.”What Mr. Macron’s new framework might be for Ukraine’s security and Europe’s is unclear. But it appears that it would somehow offer Ukraine ironclad guarantees of its sovereignty and independence in ways that left NATO membership as a mirage, as it simultaneously satisfied Russia that Ukrainian security had not been strengthened at the expense of Moscow’s.In effect, Mr. Macron believes that some sleight of hand is conceivable that would at once leave Ukrainians free and secure to look West for their future, and Mr. Putin free to continue thinking the two countries form one “historical and spiritual space,” as the Russian leader put it in a 5,000-word disquisition on “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published last summer.This is a hybrid concept, but not atypical of its proponent. Over the years, Mr. Macron has become known as the “at the same time” president for his constant juggling of different sides of questions — first in favor of reducing France’s reliance on nuclear power, now in favor of increasing it — and for his intricate dissection of issues that sometimes leaves observers wondering what he really believes.That he believes passionately in the European Union, and the development of Europe as a more independent power, is unquestionable. It is one issue on which he has never wavered, and now he seems to think the hour of reckoning for that conviction has come.If nothing else, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany meeting with Mr. Putin in Moscow next week, Mr. Macron has made Europe count in this crisis, alongside the United States. That is more than can be said for Britain.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday during a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France in Moscow.Pool photo by Thibault Camus“Through its major states, Europe has returned to a stage from which it seemed to have been marginalized,” Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador, commented in a paper published this week by the Institut Montaigne.Mr. Macron has had to work hard to keep doubtful European states, particularly those that once lived under the Soviet yoke, aligned with his diplomatic efforts. With France currently holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, he has tried to reach out to everyone — one reason his days are consumed by Ukraine.His schedule will have to shift somewhat in the coming weeks. Mr. Macron has not yet declared his candidacy for re-election as president, but will almost certainly need to do so in the next couple of weeks. The deadline is March 4, and the first round of voting April 10.For now, Mr. Macron leads in polls, which give him about 25 percent of the vote, with three right-wing candidates trailing him and splintered left-wing parties far behind. Among the rivals to his right there is significant support for Mr. Putin’s strongman image and his denunciation of Western “decadence,” so engagement with the Russian leader also serves Mr. Macron politically.Although he is the favorite to win, the likelihood of a high abstention rate among French people disillusioned with politics and the strong appeal of the far right make Mr. Macron’s re-election anything but certain. If Mr. Putin ignores his diplomacy and does invade Ukraine, all bets will be off.Supporters of the far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour last week in Lille, France.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockÉric Zemmour, the far-right insurgent in this election, said last month that Mr. Putin “needs to be respected,” adding that “Putin’s claims and demands are completely legitimate.” He also said, “I think NATO is an organization that should have disappeared in 1990.”Marine Le Pen, the perennial nationalist and anti-immigrant candidate, said last year that “Ukraine belongs to Russia’s sphere of influence.”“By trying to violate this sphere of influence,” she added, “tensions and fears are created, and the situation we are witnessing today is reached.” Ms. Le Pen refused to sign a statement issued last month by far-right parties gathered in Madrid because it was critical of Mr. Putin.Their stances demonstrate the gulf that separates far-right French admiration of Mr. Putin from Mr. Macron’s engagement. The French president’s conviction that Russia needs to be part of a new European security architecture is combined with resolve that Ukraine maintain its sovereignty.If Mr. Macron has caused unease through his criticism of NATO, he has held the line on not ceding to the Russian leader’s demands.Asked when he would turn his attention to declaring his candidacy, Mr. Macron said: “I am going to have to think about it at some point. You can’t do over hasty things. You need the right moment.”If he does not find that sweet spot, Mr. Macron’s diplomacy, and his ideas of reinvented European security, may come to nothing. What may be doable in a second five-year term leading France will certainly not be doable by April 24, the date of the second round of the election. More

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      Germany’s ‘Invisible’ Chancellor Heads to Washington Amid Fierce Criticism

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      Olaf Scholz will try to repair Germany’s credibility in the Ukraine crisis when he meets President Biden on Monday. Next on his agenda: Kyiv and Moscow.BERLIN — One headline asked, “Where is Olaf Scholz?” A popular magazine mocked the German chancellor’s “art of disappearance.” And his ambassador in Washington wrote home that Germany was increasingly seen as an unreliable ally in a leaked memo that was all the buzz this past week and began with the words: “Berlin, we have a problem.”With the threat of war hanging over Europe and rising tensions in the standoff with Russia over Ukraine, Mr. Scholz is headed to Washington on Monday for his first meeting with President Biden since taking over as chancellor in December. Foremost on his agenda: Show the world that Berlin is committed to the Western alliance — and, well, show his face.Less than two months after taking over from Angela Merkel, his towering and long-serving predecessor, Mr. Scholz is drawing sharp criticism at home and abroad for his lack of leadership in one of the most serious security crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War.His Social Democrat-led government, an untested three-way coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats, has refused to send arms to Ukraine, most recently offering 5,000 helmets instead. And it has been cagey about the type of sanctions that could be imposed in the event of a Russian invasion.As for the chancellor, he has made himself conspicuously scarce in recent weeks — so scarce that the newsmagazine Der Spiegel described him as “nearly invisible, inaudible.”While President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy have been busy calling President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Scholz has so far neither picked up the phone to Moscow nor visited. He has not gone to Kyiv, Ukraine, yet, either, and his visit to Washington, some note, took almost two months to organize.Ukrainian soldiers on Saturday on the front line in eastern Ukraine. While the United States and other NATO countries rushed military aid to Ukraine, Germany offered 5,000 helmets.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesLast week, Emily Haber, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, sent a memo to Berlin, warning of “immense” damage to Germany’s reputation. It was not just the news media but many in the U.S. Congress who questioned Germany’s reliability, she reported. In the view of many Republicans, she wrote, Berlin is “in bed with Putin” in order to keep the gas flowing.It has not helped that since then, Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor from Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, accused Ukraine of “saber rattling” and just on Friday announced that he would join the board of Gazprom, Russia’s most prominent energy company.“Scholz’s central mission for his Washington visit has to be restoring German credibility,” said Thorsten Benner, a founder and the director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.“It’s not how Mr. Scholz envisaged his first U.S. trip as chancellor,” Mr. Benner added. “But international security was never near the top of his agenda.”Mr. Scholz, 63, has been a familiar figure in German politics for more than two decades. He was general secretary of his party and mayor of the northern port city of Hamburg before serving in two governments led by Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, most recently as her finance minister.A labor lawyer and lifelong Social Democrat, Mr. Scholz narrowly won the election last fall on a platform promising workers “respect” and a higher minimum wage, while nudging Germany on a path to a carbon-neutral future.Foreign policy barely featured in his election campaign, but it has come to dominate the first weeks of the new administration. Rarely has a German leader come into office with so many burning crises. As soon as Mr. Scholz took over from Ms. Merkel in early December, he had to deal not just with a resurgent pandemic but with a Russian president mobilizing troops on Ukraine’s borders.Russian infantry vehicles during drills in January in the Rostov region of Russia. The standoff with Russia over Ukraine has proved particularly vexing for Mr. Scholz.Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters“It wasn’t the plan,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the vice president of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “This is a government that has huddled around an ambitious plan of industrial transformation, but the reality of a crisis-ridden world has interfered with their plans.”Of all of the crises, the standoff with Russia has proved particularly uncomfortable for Mr. Scholz. His Social Democrats have traditionally favored a policy of working with Moscow. During the Cold War, Chancellor Willy Brandt engineered “Ostpolitik,” a policy of rapprochement with Russia.The last Social Democratic chancellor, Mr. Schröder, is not just a close friend of Mr. Putin’s, he has also been on the payroll of various Russian energy companies since 2005, notably Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the two gas pipelines connecting Russia directly with Germany under the Baltic Sea.It was not until last week, after Mr. Schröder’s comments about Ukraine, that Mr. Scholz felt compelled to publicly distance himself from the former chancellor.“There is only one chancellor, and that is me,” he told the public broadcaster ZDF.His party’s divisions over Russia are one way to explain why Mr. Scholz has shrunk away from taking a bolder lead in the standoff with Russia, prompting some to lament the loss of leadership of his conservative predecessor.Mr. Scholz won the election last year primarily by convincing voters that he would be very much like Ms. Merkel. Terse, well briefed and abstaining from any gesture of triumph, he not only learned to sound like the former chancellor, he even emulated her body language, holding his hands together in her signature diamond shape.But now that he is running the country, that is no longer enough. German voters are hungry for Mr. Scholz to reveal himself and increasingly impatient to learn who he is and what he actually stands for.The receiving station for the $10 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which connects Russia directly with Germany. If Russia invades Ukraine, Mr. Scholz will be under enormous pressure to close it down. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAs the current crisis unfolds, Mr. Scholz’s imitation of Ms. Merkel is also less and less convincing. She was understated and studious, and often kept her work behind the scenes, but she was not invisible.In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin invaded Crimea, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day. It was Berlin that united reluctant European neighbors behind costly sanctions and persuaded President Barack Obama, distracted by domestic affairs, to focus on a faraway conflict.At that point, of course, Ms. Merkel had already been chancellor for nine years and knew all of the protagonists well.“The crisis came very soon for Scholz,” said Christoph Heusgen, a veteran diplomat and Ms. Merkel’s foreign policy adviser during the last Ukraine crisis.Mr. Scholz’s advisers have been taken aback by the level of criticism, arguing that Mr. Scholz was merely doing what Ms. Merkel had so often done: Make yourself scarce and keep people guessing while engaging in quiet diplomacy until you have a result.When Mr. Scholz has spoken up on the current crisis — referring to the Russia-owned gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 as a “private-sector project” before pivoting to saying that “everything” was on the table — he has conspicuously recycled language that Ms. Merkel used before.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France, in June 2014. In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin first invaded Ukraine, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day.Sasha Mordovets/Getty ImagesBut given the escalation in the current crisis, that language is long outdated, analysts say.“He’s overlearned the Merkel style,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund said. “He’s Merkel-plus, and that doesn’t work in a crisis.”After facing mounting criticism from Kyiv and other Eastern European capitals, Mr. Scholz’s leadership is increasingly being questioned at home, too.In a recent Infratest Dimap poll, Mr. Scholz’s personal approval rating plummeted by 17 percentage points, to 43 percent from 60 percent in early January, the sharpest decline for a chancellor in postwar history, the firm says. Support for his Social Democrats fell to 22 percent, lagging the conservatives for the first time since last year’s surprise election victory.Mr. Scholz’s team announced that after returning from Washington, the chancellor will pivot to a full schedule that he hopes will shift German diplomacy into high gear. Following his meeting with Mr. Biden, he will meet with Mr. Macron; the Polish prime minister, Andrzej Duda; and the three leaders of the Baltic States. The week after, he will travel to Kyiv and Moscow, in that order.Senior diplomats say it is high time for such a pivot, starting with Monday’s visit to the White House.Mr. Scholz has a seeming center-left ally in Mr. Biden, who has so far refrained from publicly criticizing Berlin. Not since President Bill Clinton’s second term have both the White House and the German chancellery been in the hands of center-left leaders, and for all of the wavering on the German side, the two administrations have been in close contact throughout.Mr Scholz, right, listening to President Biden, left, at the start of the virtual Summit for Democracy in December. Mr. Biden has so far held off on publicly criticizing Berlin.Michele TantussiBut patience is running thin, and Mr. Scholz will have to bring something to the table.“There has to be a visible sign of commitment to the alliance,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “That’s what other allies are doing: The Spanish, the Baltic countries, the Poles, the Brits — everyone has offered something to strengthen deterrence on the eastern flank.”German lawmakers have started preliminary conversations about beefing up their troop presence in Lithuania, officials say. Other options include more naval patrols in the Baltic Sea and more air patrols in Bulgaria and Romania.As important as any material commitment may be the words Mr. Scholz uses — or does not use — to publicly communicate that commitment.“Maybe for the first time he could mention Nord Stream 2 by name when talking about possible sanctions,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “He needs to make a clear statement that Germany gets the situation and will stand with its allies in a language that appeals to people in the U.S. and ideally not in his usual flat language,” he added. More

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      Facing Tough Election, Orban Turns to Putin for Support

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      The Hungarian leader made his name by defying Moscow. But he has increasingly turned toward Russia in an effort to secure the natural gas he needs to keep energy prices low and voters happy.BUDAPEST — Facing a tough election in two months, Hungary’s far-right populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, last week opened the centerpiece of a new state-funded museum district celebrating his country’s role as an anchor of European culture and identity.A shrine in the newly opened “House of Music” honors Hungarian champions of democracy routed by Austrian and Russian troops in 1848, anti-communist rebels crushed by Soviet soldiers in 1956 and, on a happier note, Hungary’s successful defiance of Moscow in 1989, when Mr. Orban made his name by demanding that 80,000 Soviet troops go home.On Tuesday, just days after the museum opening, a celebration of the national pride that Mr. Orban has long used to rev up his voters, the Hungarian prime minister swerved in the opposite direction to shore up another vital if contradictory pillar of his support — Russia.Meeting in Moscow with President Vladimir V. Putin, he signaled sympathy for Russia in its standoff with the West over Ukraine, and pleaded for more deliveries of the natural gas he needs to keep energy prices low and voters happy.Mr. Orban has long been seen as a political chameleon — and reviled by foes as a brazen opportunist — but he is now pushing his shape-shifting talents to a new level. He has broken ranks not only with Hungary’s allies over Ukraine but also with his country’s own long history of wariness toward Russia as he seeks to reconcile economic populism with the nationalism that underpins his political brand.Hungary, according to the European Union’s statistical agency, has the lowest electricity prices and third lowest gas prices for consumers in the 27-member European bloc. While prices elsewhere have doubled or tripled over the past year, Hungary has kept them steady, a feat that Mr. Orban’s governing Fidesz party is hoping will help it defeat an unusually united opposition in elections on April 3.A basilica in Budapest last September. A recent poll found that Hungary views Russia and China as more important strategic partners than the United States.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesAnalysts question whether Hungary can keep prices low for consumers indefinitely without crippling the finances of a huge state-owned electricity provider. But Mr. Orban has turned to Moscow to help convince voters he has their economic interests in hand.Hungary has sided unequivocally with Mr. Putin as fellow members of the European Union and NATO have voiced growing alarm over what they see as Russian bullying of Ukraine, on whose borders Moscow has massed more than 100,000 troops.Speaking on Hungarian radio Friday, Mr. Orban brushed off criticism of his cozying up to the Kremlin, saying that Hungary wanted to act as an “icebreaker” by pursuing a policy that he acknowledged “deviates entirely from most E.U. and NATO ally countries.”Understand Russia’s Relationship With the WestThe tension between the regions is growing and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.Competing for Influence: For months, the threat of confrontation has been growing in a stretch of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Threat of Invasion: As the Russian military builds its presence near Ukraine, Western nations are seeking to avert a worsening of the situation.Energy Politics: Europe is a huge customer of Russia’s fossil fuels. The rising tensions in Ukraine are driving fears of a midwinter cutoff.Migrant Crisis: As people gathered on the eastern border of the European Union, Russia’s uneasy alliance with Belarus triggered additional friction.Militarizing Society: With a “youth army” and initiatives promoting patriotism, the Russian government is pushing the idea that a fight might be coming.At a news conference Tuesday in the Kremlin with Mr. Putin, Mr. Orban left no doubt about the main reason for this deviation.“If we have Russian gas, we can provide a cheap supply of it to Hungarian households. If there is no Russian gas then we cannot do this,” he explained.Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital in Budapest, said cheap energy was one of Fidesz’s main selling points to voters. “The party says that while people in the rest of Europe are freezing or becoming impoverished because of energy prices, Hungary has no problems.”Mr. Orban’s Moscow trip, he said, could therefore be a “big win — so long as the war does not escalate in Ukraine.” But if Russia invades, he added, Mr. Orban, who described his trip to Mr. Putin as a “mission of peace,” will be “in serious trouble internationally and also domestically. His whole narrative crumbles.”At a joint news conference with Mr. Orban in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr. Putin effectively endorsed the Hungarian leader.Pool photo by Yuri KochetkovMr. Orban is not the first Hungarian leader to go cap in hand to Moscow in pursuit of energy. But when a predecessor did so in 2007 and reached a gas deal with Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy behemoth, Mr. Orban lambasted the arrangement as evidence his country was slipping back into Moscow’s orbit.Since then, however, Mr. Orban has dropped the anti-Moscow sentiments that catapulted him to prominence in 1989, and instead developed a form of far-right populism more focused on stoking contemporary cultural wars by targeting the European Union as a menacing threat to Hungarian sovereignty and values.Nationalist leaders in other European countries like Poland share Mr. Orban’s hostility toward Brussels but reject his outreach to Mr. Putin, a rift that has hobbled a yearslong effort by Europe’s far right to form a united front.“We had a bad relationship with the Soviet Union for many reasons that I do not need to list here,” Mr. Orban told radio listeners on Friday. “But that era is over, and now we are trying to have a system of relations with this new Russia that is different from what we had with the Soviet Union.”Mr. Putin has returned the favor.After blasting NATO for “ignoring” Russia’s security concerns as Mr. Orban stood at his side in the Kremlin, the Russian president effectively endorsed the Hungarian leader.“As we usually say when our partners are having elections, we will work with any elected leader,” Mr. Putin said, adding: “But I must note that you have done so much in your work on the Russian track in both the interest of Hungary and Russia. I hope our cooperation will continue.”A station for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, owned by the Russian energy company Gazprom, in Lumbin, Germany. Around 80 percent of the gas used in Hungary is imported from Gazprom.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesMore important, he offered Mr. Orban a helping hand with energy, noting that underground storage facilities for gas in Europe are just 40 percent full and “our European partners in Europe will probably face problems next year.” But Hungary, Mr. Putin promised, “will have no problems because we will coordinate additional volumes.”Around 80 percent of the gas used in Hungary is imported from Gazprom, more than double the European Union’s average level of Russian imports. Then there is nuclear energy. The biggest producer of electricity in Hungary is the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, a Soviet-designed facility whose expansion Mr. Orban also discussed with Mr. Putin. It generates around half of Hungary’s electricity. Russia has provided loans of $10 billion to fund the plant’s expansion, a project led by Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom.“It should be clear for everyone that as long as this government is in power, energy prices will be reduced,” Mr. Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, declared last year.Hungary’s dependence on Russia for energy helps explain why, when the Biden administration announced this week that it would send more American troops to the region, Hungary said it didn’t need them. Poland and Romania welcomed the American offer.Hungary has a long history of animosity toward Russia, but this has faded as media outlets controlled by Mr. Orban and his supporters have praised Mr. Putin and steadily eroded trust in the Western alliance.Mr. Putin on TV during his meeting with Mr. Orban in Moscow on Tuesday. Hungary’s long history of animosity toward Russia has faded in recent years.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesA survey of public opinion across East and Central Europe last year by Globsec, a research group in Slovakia, found that Hungary, alone among countries in the region, views Russia and China as more important strategic partners than the United States.Some analysts believe Mr. Putin’s pledges of support for Hungary in Moscow were largely symbolic and won’t help Mr. Orban keep utility prices in check.“The era of cheap Russian gas has ended,” said Attila Weinhardt, an energy analyst at Portfolio, an online financial journal. The government’s hope that it can keep fixed energy prices for households, he said, is probably unsustainable.Mr. Orban’s Moscow visit secured no written commitment of additional supplies and mostly just reaffirmed a 15-year deal signed last September. That deal, which advanced Russian efforts to reduce gas deliveries to Europe through Ukraine by using alternative pipelines, was condemned by Ukraine as a “purely political, economically unreasonable decision.”Mr. Orban’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, responded that Hungary was not playing politics but simply securing its own economic and security interests. “You cannot heat homes with political statements,” he said.Valerie Hopkins More

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      How Independent Voters Feel About Biden

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      More from our inbox:Grading Biden on the EconomyIf Only Republicans Were as Bold as the BritsSanctions Against Russia if It Invades UkraineYes, They Deserve a Lawyer  Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro, photographs by Chris Jackson/Getty Images and Pool photo by Steve ParsonsTo the Editor:“14 Independent Voters Share Their Fears” (Sunday Review, Jan. 23) reflects attitudes that may cause the downfall of the Biden presidency and result in even greater negative consequences.In response to a request for “a word or phrase that describes President Biden,” the answers were weakly moderate (e.g., “reasonable”) to completely negative (e.g., “incoherent,” “pathetic,” “clueless,” “complete disaster,” “spaced out”).Consider the issues and opposition that Mr. Biden faces: Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, Chinese economic and territorial expansionism, Covid, a divided Congress, Iran negotiations, Build Back Better, inflation, Supreme Court rulings, voting rights, economic and social justice, and last, but definitely not least, climate change. Consider also that the Afghanistan pullout and infrastructure bill are done.I do not believe that any president since World War II has confronted and tried to address so many major, even existential, issues at one time. I was not initially a Biden supporter. I do not necessarily agree with him on everything. My solutions may differ on the issues. But if I were to be asked for a word to describe President Biden, it would be “courageous.”Dean R. EdstromEden Prairie, Minn.To the Editor:As I read through the transcript of the focus group with “independent” voters, I couldn’t help but think: I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Where’s my focus group?The media’s obsession with using Obama-Trump voters as a representation of independent voters has never made sense to me. While these voters may represent a segment of independent voters, they seem more drawn to strong personalities than good policies. Many in the group seemed susceptible to misinformation, a trait that I imagine led them to Donald Trump.There are other independents in this country who can provide much more interesting (and dare I say nuanced) takes on how the administration is doing. Those voters can have just as much of an impact on the elections in 2022 and 2024, if not more. I hope The Times will consider highlighting those voices as well in the future.Eric HinkleArlington, Va.Grading Biden on the Economy  Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photographs by Doug Mills/The New York Times, and Lauri Patterson, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “President Biden’s Economy Is Failing the Big Mac Test” (editorial, Jan. 23):Your editorial succinctly summarizes the economic policies of the Biden administration, the current state of the economy and its likely future trajectory. With all that in mind, it concludes that President Biden made the right choice in firing up the economy to avoid a sluggish recovery that would have caused considerable pain for many, even though this approach has caused near-term pain for a segment of the population.Were one, however, to read the headline, or even its first few paragraphs, one would come away with the incorrect notion that Mr. Biden — who the editors acknowledge has less ability to affect the economy than popularly conceived — has engaged in failed policies that have left people worse off than they ought to be.The Times can and should do better.Seth GinsbergEnglewood, N.J.To the Editor:The Times’s failing grade for President Biden’s economic performance needs to be re-examined. The editorial tells us your main measure is real weekly wages — the average worker’s wages adjusted for inflation. The editorial determined that Mr. Biden has failed, since the average real weekly wage fell by 2.3 percent over the last year.There are two major problems with this measure. The first is a composition effect. In 2020, many low-paid workers were laid off. This raises the average, in the same way the average height in a room rises when the shortest person leaves. The composition effect went the opposite way in 2021, as low-paid workers were rehired.The other is a pandemic price effect. Many prices, most notably gasoline, were depressed when the world economy shut down because of the pandemic. Predictably, these price declines were reversed when the economy reopened.If we want a more honest measure, we would look at real wage growth over the last two years, which is a very respectable 2.9 percent.Dean BakerKanab, UtahThe writer is senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.To the Editor:The problem is, nobody really understands the economy.Different economists will give different reasons for why the economy is doing what it’s doing. Some will get it right, many won’t. Some might be only partly right.When it comes down to it, there are often multiple reasons why the economy does what it does. And, no matter what the president does, the economy will go its own way because of multiple factors. So is President Biden at fault? A little bit yes and a little bit no.We have an economy being manipulated by Covid, oil-producing nations, supply chains, businesses inflating prices, etc. The president is the most prominent individual to aim at, but he’s only a small part of the problem. Do you know anyone who’d be more effective?Marshall CossmanGrand Blanc, Mich.To the Editor:Rather than blaming “Democrats, unable to agree on the terms of a permanent expansion” for the expiration of the child tax credit, the blame should be placed on one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin, and the 50 Republicans who are united in opposition.Michael CaplowSeattleIf Only Republicans Were as Bold as the BritsPrime Minister Boris Johnson in Parliament on Tuesday.Jessica Taylor/Uk Parliament, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “How Partying Could Be Boris Johnson’s Undoing” (The Daily podcast, Jan. 25):As I watch the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, tumble into a conflagration of his own lies and hubris as he flagrantly flouted Covid restrictions while the rest of Britain abided by the rules, I am struck by the members of his own Tory Party who are openly stating their disgust at his behavior.Certainly they are motivated by self-interest and the preservation of the Tory majority, but one can only wonder where we would be in this country if Mitch McConnell and other Republicans had confronted Donald Trump and openly declared their actual personal opinions about his mendacity and malignancy as David Davies, a senior member of the Conservative Party, did in Parliament. He quoted the words spoken to Neville Chamberlain: “You have sat there too long for all the good you have done. In the name of God, go!”The Republican leadership simply did not have the morality and courage of David Davies. We are all paying the price for their lack of character.Robert GrossmarkNew YorkTo the Editor:I have been struck throughout the pandemic by the resonances with Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which a prince, attempting to escape a deadly plague, holes himself inside a palace and throws a masquerade ball. Spoiler alert: The plague gets in, disguised as a flamboyantly dressed guest.It does not surprise me that Boris Johnson’s demise may be thanks to a party of his own.Alice WalkerBrooklynSanctions Against Russia if It Invades Ukraine Mikhail Metzel/SputnikTo the Editor:If Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, then the United States, Britain and the European Union should close their borders to Russian citizens and deny them visas.Let the oligarchs find new places to buy their mansions and launder their money. The West should not be a refuge for Russian money and rich Russians.Michael R. SlaterSan Luis Obispo, Calif.Yes, They Deserve a LawyerThe Rev. John Udo-Okon, pastor of the Word of Life International Church in the South Bronx, hopes to be trained to help his congregants defend themselves against debt-collection suits.Thalia Juarez for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Do Debtors Really Need a Lawyer When Sued?” (news article, Jan. 26):Yes, they do! Hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly Black and brown low-income people face debt collection in New York State — from pending cases and cases in which creditors secured court judgments against them. Why should they have to settle for nonprofessional counsel in legal proceedings that can determine if they have food on the table and a roof over their heads for themselves and their families?If you have the means, you would never settle for a nonprofessional, and they should not have to either. New York State should expand civil legal services in this grossly underfunded area, particularly at this critical time.Dora GalacatosNew YorkThe writer is executive director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, Fordham University School of Law. More

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      En la carrera hacia el futuro, la historia sufre un nuevo asedio

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      Una ola de revisionismo engañoso se ha convertido en una epidemia tanto en las autocracias como en las democracias. Ha sido notablemente efectiva… y contagiosa.En Rusia, una organización dedicada a recordar los abusos de la era soviética se enfrenta a la liquidación ordenada por el Estado mientras el Kremlin impone en su lugar una historia nacional aséptica.En Hungría, el gobierno expulsó o asumió el control de las instituciones educativas y culturales y las utiliza para fabricar un patrimonio nacional xenófobo alineado con su política etnonacionalista.En China, el Partido Comunista en el poder usa abiertamente los libros de texto, las películas, los programas de televisión y las redes sociales para escribir una nueva versión de la historia china que se adapte mejor a las necesidades del partido.Y en Estados Unidos, Donald Trump y sus aliados siguenpromoviendo una falsa versión de las elecciones de 2020, en la que aseguran que los demócratas manipularon los votos y afirman que el ataque del 6 de enero para interrumpir la certificación del presidente Joe Biden fue en su mayoría un acto pacífico o escenificado por los opositores de Trump.Unos revoltosos se enfrentaron a las fuerzas del orden del Capitolio de EE. UU. el 6 de enero de 2021.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLa historia se reescribe todo el tiempo, ya sea por los académicos que actualizan sus supuestos, los activistas que reformulan el registro o los políticos que manipulan la memoria colectiva para sus propios fines.Pero una oleada de revisiones históricas falsas o engañosas de manera flagrante, tanto por parte de gobiernos democráticos como autoritarios, puede estar amenazando el ya debilitado sentido de un relato compartido y aceptado sobre el mundo.Los académicos creen que esta tendencia refleja algunas de las fuerzas que definen el siglo. Sociedades polarizadas y receptivas a las falsedades que afirman la identidad. El colapso de la fe en las instituciones centrales o en los árbitros de la verdad. El auge del nacionalismo. Tiranos cada vez más astutos. Líderes elegidos que giran cada vez más hacia el antiliberalismo.Como resultado, “deberíamos ser más propensos a ver el tipo de revisionismo histórico” impulsado por estos líderes, señaló Erica Frantz, politóloga de la Universidad Estatal de Michigan.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?En algunos lugares, los objetivos son ambiciosos: rediseñar una sociedad, empezando por su comprensión más básica de su patrimonio colectivo. Para subrayar la importancia de este proceso, el líder de China, Xi Jinping, repite la frase de un erudito confuciano del siglo XIX: “Para destruir un país, primero hay que erradicar su historia”.Victoria Park en Hong Kong el 4 de junio de 2020Lam Yik Fei para The New York TimesEl lugar estaba vacío el 4 de junio de 2021Lam Yik Fei para The New York TimesPero, a menudo y al parecer, el objetivo es más a corto plazo: provocar la rabia o el orgullo de manera que los ciudadanos se unan a la agenda del líder.Las mentiras electorales de Trump parecen ser un ejemplo de éxito. Han escindido el sentido compartido de la realidad de los estadounidenses de manera que podrían fortalecer a los aliados de Trump y justificar los esfuerzos para controlar la maquinaria de futuras elecciones. Si las tendencias globales que permiten tales tácticas continúan, puede que vengan más casos parecidos.Integrantes del Ejército Juvenil de Rusia practicaban el montaje de rifles, técnicas de primeros auxilios y artes marciales el mes pasado en Noginsk, cerca de Moscú.Sergey Ponomarev para The New York TimesUn mundo cambianteLa manera en que los gobiernos tienden a gobernar es uno de los cambios más importantes de esta tendencia.Un reciente artículo académico afirma que el autoritarismo “está sufriendo una transformación”, con lo que resume la opinión cada vez más extendida entre los académicos.Desde la Primavera Árabe y los levantamientos de la “revolución de colores” de hace una década, los dictadores han dejado de hacer hincapié en la represión por la fuerza bruta (aunque esto también sigue ocurriendo) y han adoptado técnicas más sutiles, como la manipulación de la información o la generación de divisiones, con el objetivo de prevenir la disidencia en lugar de suprimirla.Entre otros cambios, se sustituye la estruendosa prensa estatal por una serie de llamativos medios de comunicación alineados con el Estado y bots en las redes sociales, lo que crea la falsa sensación de que la narrativa oficial no se impone desde lo alto, sino que surge de forma orgánica.La propaganda más sofisticada, cuyo objetivo es la persuasión en lugar de la coerción, se manifiesta a menudo como un tipo particular de reescritura histórica. En lugar de limitarse a eliminar a los funcionarios desfavorecidos o los errores del gobierno, cultiva el orgullo nacional y el agravio colectivo con el fin de congregar a los ciudadanos.Por ejemplo, el Kremlin ha manipulado los recuerdos de la Unión Soviética y de su caída para convertirlos en una memoria de grandeza y asedio de la herencia rusa, justificando la necesidad de un líder más fuerte como Vladimir Putin y alentando a los rusos a apoyarlo con gratitud.Esto también se manifiesta en pequeñas formas. Putin ha insistido, falsamente, en que la OTAN prometió nunca extenderse al este de Alemania, justificando así la reciente agresión a Ucrania como una necesidad defensiva.Las democracias cambian también de modos dramáticos y los líderes se vuelven cada vez menos liberales y emplean más mano dura.Las crecientes divisiones sociales, junto con la creciente desconfianza popular hacia los expertos y las instituciones, a menudo contribuyen a encumbrar a esos líderes en primer lugar.Esto puede ser una fuente de apoyo para un líder dispuesto a desechar la historia oficial y sustituirla por algo más cercano a lo que sus partidarios quieren oír. Y da a esos líderes otro incentivo: justificar la toma de poder como algo esencial para derrotar a los enemigos externos o internos.Por ejemplo, Viktor Orbán, el primer ministro húngaro, hizo una revisión de la historia de Hungría para convertirla en una víctima inocente de los nazis y los comunistas, que logró salvarse gracias a su guía patriótica. De este modo, defiende el escepticismo hacia la inmigración como la continuación de una gran batalla nacional, que también le exige suprimir a los rivales, a los críticos y a las instituciones independientes.El presidente Donald J. Trump dijo en 2020 que promovería un nuevo plan de estudios escolar “pro estadounidense”.Oliver Contreras para The New York TimesPor qué funciona el revisionismo históricoSegún las investigaciones, la propaganda más eficaz de cualquier tipo, suele centrarse en una apelación a la identidad de algún grupo, como la raza o la religión.Hay un experimento famoso: a la gente se le da un examen, se le dice su puntuación y luego se le pide que califique la objetividad del examen. Las personas a las que se les dice que han obtenido una buena puntuación tienden a calificar la prueba de justa y rigurosa. Las personas a las que se les dice que han obtenido una mala puntuación son más propensas a considerar que el examen es tendencioso o inexacto.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      In a Race to Shape the Future, History Is Under New Pressure

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      A wave of misleading revisionism has become epidemic in both autocracies and democracies. It has been notably effective — and contagious.In Russia, an organization dedicated to remembering Soviet-era abuses faces state-ordered liquidation as the Kremlin imposes a sanitized national history in its place.In Hungary, the government has ejected or assumed control of educational and cultural institutions, using them to manufacture a xenophobic national heritage aligned with its ethnonationalist politics.In China, the ruling Communist Party is openly wielding schoolbooks, films, television shows and social media to write a new version of Chinese history better suited to the party’s needs.And in the United States, Donald J. Trump and his allies continue to push a false retelling of the 2020 election, in which Democrats stole the vote and the Jan. 6 riot to disrupt President Biden’s certification was largely peaceful or staged by Mr. Trump’s opponents.Rioters confronting law enforcement inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesHistory is continuously rewritten, whether by scholars updating their assumptions, activists reframing the record, or politicians massaging collective memory for their own ends.But a wave of brazenly false or misleading historical revision, from democratic and authoritarian governments alike, may be threatening an already-weakened sense of a shared, accepted narrative about the world.The trend, scholars believe, reflects some of the century’s defining forces. Polarized societies receptive to identity-affirming falsehoods. Collapsing faith in central institutions or arbiters of truth. Rising nationalism. Despots growing savvier. Elected leaders turning increasingly toward illiberalism.As a result, “we should be more likely to see the sort of historical revisionism” pushed by these leaders, said Erica Frantz, a Michigan State University political scientist.In some places, the goals are sweeping: to re-engineer a society, starting at its most basic understanding of its collective heritage. Emphasizing the importance of that process, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has repeated a 19th century Confucian scholar’s saying: “To destroy a country, you must first eradicate its history.”Victoria Park in Hong Kong on June 4, 2020.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesOn June 4, 2021, it was empty.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesBut often, the goal is seemingly more short-term: to provoke rage or pride in ways that will rally citizens behind the leader’s agenda.Mr. Trump’s election lies appear to be a successful example. They have splintered Americans’ shared sense of reality in ways that could strengthen Mr. Trump’s allies, justifying efforts to control the machinery of future elections. If global trends that enable such tactics continue, there may be more like this to come.Members of  Russia’s Youth Army  practiced assembling rifles, first aid skills and martial arts last month in Noginsk, near Moscow.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesA Changing WorldOne set of changes may be particularly important in driving this trend: how governments tend to govern.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Authoritarianism “is undergoing a transformation,” one recent academic paper said, summarizing the growing view among scholars.Since the Arab Spring and “color revolution” uprisings of a decade ago, dictators have shifted emphasis from blunt-force repression (although this still happens, too) to subtler methods like manipulating information or sowing division, aimed at preventing dissent over suppressing it.Among other changes, the blaring state newspaper has been replaced with arrays of flashy, state-aligned outlets and social media bots, creating a false sense that the official narrative is not imposed from on high but emerging organically.More sophisticated propaganda, aimed at persuasion over coercion, often manifests as a particular sort of historical rewriting. Rather than simply excising disfavored officials or government blunders, it cultivates national pride and collective grievance meant to rally citizens.The Kremlin, for instance, has massaged memories of the Soviet Union and its fall into a heritage of Russian greatness and besiegement, justifying the need for a strong leader like Vladimir V. Putin and encouraging Russians to gratefully embrace him.This manifests in smaller ways, too. Mr. Putin has falsely insisted that NATO pledged never to extend east of Germany, justifying his recent aggression toward Ukraine as defensive and necessary.Democracies are changing just as dramatically, with leaders growing more illiberal and strong-fisted.The widening social divides, along with the growing popular distrust of experts and institutions, often help elevate those leaders in the first place.This can be a source of support for a leader willing to throw out the official history and replace it with something closer to what his or her supporters want to hear. And it gives such leaders another incentive: to justify power grabs as essential to defeating enemies abroad or within.Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, for instance, has revised Hungary’s history to that of an innocent victim of Nazis and Communists that was finally made safe by his patriotic guidance. In this way, he champions skepticism toward immigration as a continuation of a great national battle — one that also requires him to suppress rivals, critics and independent institutions.President Donald J. Trump said in 2020 that he would promote a new “pro-American” school curriculum.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesWhy Revision WorksThe most effective propaganda of any sort, research finds, often focuses on an appeal to some group identity like race or religion.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      After Time in U.S. Prisons, Maria Butina Now Sits in Russia's Parliament

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      Maria Butina, convicted of serving as an unregistered foreign agent before and after the 2016 election, insists she “wasn’t a spy” and that her Duma seat is “not a reward.” Her critics call her a Kremlin “trophy.”MOSCOW — When Russia’s lower house of Parliament, or Duma, assembled last month for the first time following elections in September, one of its newest members was a name more familiar in the United States than in her home country.Maria V. Butina made headlines across America when she was convicted three years ago of operating as an unregistered foreign agent trying to infiltrate influential conservative political circles before and after the 2016 election.She is now focused on playing a prominent role in Russia’s political system — through legal means this time, and with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin’s United Russia party.Ms. Butina, 33, who returned to Russia in October 2019 after spending 15 months in several U.S. penitentiaries, including four months in solitary confinement, now represents the impoverished Kirov region in the Duma.Her critics have characterized her rapid political rise as a thank you from the Kremlin, a claim she rejects.“It’s not a reward,” Ms. Butina said in an interview at a cafe in central Moscow near where she lives. “I wasn’t a spy. I wasn’t working for the government. I was just a civilian.”But in December 2018, Ms. Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring, under the direction of a Russian official, to “establish unofficial lines of communication” with high-level Republicans on behalf of Russia’s government from 2015 to 2017.Prosecutors said she had tried to broker a meeting between then-candidate Donald J. Trump and Mr. Putin during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the judge at her sentencing hearing noted she had been sending political reports to Russia at the same time Russian intelligence operatives were trying to sway the election.Since coming home, Ms. Butina has used her experiences with Washington insiders — and the time she spent in prison — to cast herself as an expert on both America and penal systems.That was evident in April when she ambushed Russia’s most famous political prisoner, the opposition politician Aleksei A. Navalny, on a surprise visit to the penal colony where he is held and which is notorious for harsh treatment.Granted access as part of a civilian monitoring program, Ms. Butina favorably compared Mr. Navalny’s conditions to the U.S. prisons where she had served time.In a widely seen video broadcast by the state-owned Rossiya-24 television network, she said she was impressed by the facility’s food and medical services. Then she confronted Mr. Navalny, who at the time of her visit was one week into a 24-day hunger strike declared because he had been denied medical treatment for severe pain in his back and right leg.“You can walk normally,” Ms. Butina tells Mr. Navalny, who did not consent to be filmed.Mr. Navalny repeated to her that he was being denied access to his doctor, and walked off.“I don’t judge Navalny. I said in that video what I saw,” Ms. Butina said in her interview.Since coming home, Ms. Butina has used her experiences with Washington insiders — and the time she spent in prison — to cast herself as an expert on both America and penal system.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMaria Pevchikh, who heads the investigative unit of Mr. Navalny’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, said she believed Ms. Butina’s Duma seat was a gift not for her activities in the United States, but for her harassment of Mr. Navalny. He had embarrassed Mr. Putin by exposing the government’s plot to kill him, and revealing the luxurious nature of a Black Sea palace believed to be purpose built for the Russian president.“If anything, this was a reward for what she did by visiting Navalny in prison, and that TV episode, which was highly embarrassing and disgusting,” Ms. Pevchikh said. “Not many people would agree to do that. And she did.”In the United States, Ms. Butina’s case was treated like the plot of a Cold War thriller, and her love life — including a relationship with a Republican operative, Paul Erickson, whom she met in Russia in 2013 and who would later be convicted of financial crimes and pardoned by Mr. Trump — was dissected in lurid detail on cable news.In Russia, however, the pro-government media portrayed her story as a miscarriage of justice. Ms. Butina was seen as a scapegoat for Democrats’ failure to come to grips with Mr. Trump’s victory. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it exemplified America’s rampant “Russophobia.” Over a caviar-laden meal at a restaurant featuring cuisine from her native Siberia, Ms. Butina insisted that she wanted to use her new status as a national lawmaker to improve relations between Washington and Moscow.“I believed in the friendship between the two nations, and I still do believe in it,” said Ms Butina. “We can be friends, we must be.”Yet in her frequent TV appearances and on social media, she has been outspoken in her criticisms of America, especially when it comes to meddling in the affairs of other countries and race relations.“She is quite a good trophy” for the ruling party, Ms. Pevchikh said. “Just talking nonstop about how bad things in America are.”Ahead of the recent Duma elections, she published a post about U.S. interference in foreign elections during the Cold War on Telegram, the social-media platform. “Their logic is that the U.S. can intervene in the elections of other countries, but Russia cannot,” she wrote.Ms. Butina, who worked before joining the Duma for RT, a government-backed television channel, frequently comments on systemic racism in America, as pro-Kremlin figures have done for decades.In October 2020, Ms. Butina published a memoir, “Prison Diaries,” which discusses how her imprisonment affected her political views.While her time in prison did not make her any less of a gun-rights advocate — she said losing her lifetime N.R.A. membership particularly stung — it did diminish her affinity for the Republican Party, she said, as she witnessed America’s structural inequality first hand.Much of the book explores her experiences with Black inmates, and she said her time in prison had broken down a lot of stereotypes she had once held — and showed her how racist the views were of many of those American influencers she had been close to.Ms. Butina wants to use her new Duma platform to help Russians imprisoned abroad, saying she was eager to campaign against solitary confinement and torture. But when she was asked about a recent leaked cache of graphic videos that purported to show torture and rape in Russian prisons, Ms. Butina hesitated to comment, saying they needed to be verified.Some of the Russian figures she has publicly supported include the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death.”In October 2020, Ms. Butina published a memoir, “Prison Diaries,” in which she detailed her four months in solitary confinement.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMs. Butina, who during her time in the United States earned a master’s degree in international relations, with a focus on cybersecurity, from American University in Washington, continues to be highly active on social media. That was certainly the case in the United States, too, before she attracted the attention of F.B.I. investigators with her photographs with prominent Republicans like Donald Trump Jr., Rick Santorum and Scott Walker, as well as the N.R.A.’s leader, Wayne LaPierre.Her connection to Russian government figures predates both her time in the Duma, and the United States. She arrived in Moscow from her native Siberian city of Barnaul in 2011 and soon after was hired as special assistant by a Russian senator, Aleksandr P. Torshin, an influential member of United Russia who later would become deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank.Still, in Russia, she is not a well-known personality, said Andrei Pertsev, a political journalist with the independent news outlet Meduza.“The broad masses do not know her,” he said.Ms. Butina was now just one among many “propagandists” in the 450-member Duma, Mr. Pertsev said, adding that in his view her elevation to the body — her seat was given to her by the governor of the Kirov region — was a way for the government to imbue her statements against America with more heft.With her new job, “it is as if the speaker’s status rises, and these things, they sound more weighty,” said Mr. Pertsev, who shares something unwelcome in common with Ms. Butina.His media outlet, Meduza, was designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities earlier this year, a charge that echoes the one against Ms. Butina, who failed to register her activities with the Justice Department as required by U.S. law.But in Russia, the foreign agent label is primarily wielded against Russian citizens engaged in independent journalism or human rights work, and it has been increasingly applied to organizations and individuals whose work displeases the Kremlin.“Don’t compare our law with your law,” Ms. Butina said, adding that she found the Russian law less onerous in its requirements than the American one.As part of her U.S. plea deal, Ms. Butina had to admit to being part of an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to persuade powerful conservatives that Russia should be counted as friend, not foe.During her defense, her American lawyers argued in court that Ms. Butina’s efforts had been well-intentioned and stressed that she had never tried to hide what she called her “diplomacy project.” Back in Russia, she denies ever having been part of a broader plot and insists she acted on her own.“If I had known that I have to register to build peace between the two nations by my own initiative,” she said, “I would have loved to.”Alina Lobzina contributed reporting. More

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      Democracy, or Something Like It

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      No one is fooled when authoritarian leaders carry out fake elections. So why do they bother?This is an article from World Review: The State of Democracy, a special section that examines global policy and affairs, and is published in conjunction with the annual Athens Democracy Forum.The Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, who has most recently been in power since 2007, is running for a fourth consecutive term this year. Virtually all of his potential challengers have disappeared, been detained, or pushed into exile, while the independent media has been silenced and the main opposition party has been formally disqualified from running.Yet Mr. Ortega continues to keep up the illusion of holding free elections, imitating the tactics of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. Last year, Mr. Maduro’s administration cracked down on dissident leaders, journalists and activists in Venezuela ahead of December’s parliamentary elections, which were eventually boycotted by the opposition. Mr. Maduro’s governing majority and allies won 91 percent of the seats in the National Assembly.Nicaragua is not alone in constructing a democratic facade, but Mr. Ortega’s methods have been exceptionally striking. “This is a dramatic escalation of systemic repression which we haven’t seen in Latin America since the 1980s,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.“There is still a desire on the part of regimes to have a fig leaf of democracy, however not credible that is,” Mr. Shifter said. He noted that the pretense might have been the excuse Mexico and Argentina needed to avoid joining in a recent Organization of American States vote denouncing the crackdown against Mr. Ortega’s political rivals in Nicaragua.These days, governments like those in Nicaragua, Venezuela and elsewhere that reject political pluralism are ready to go to great lengths to pretend to embrace democracy — primarily by imitating the crucial rituals of periodic elections.When election time comes around, authoritarians allow a certain amount of political campaigning, vet candidates (barring or even arresting those deemed too critical of the government), then make a show of counting ballots, all the while intending to hold on to power.A polling agent with ballot boxes in Lusaka, Zambia, in August. A challenger managed to win the presidency in Zambia by more than a million votes despite the incumbent’s attempts at voter intimidation.Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/Associated PressBut faking elections can be a tricky business. Too big a victory can draw suspicion and encourage an angry populace to gather on the streets, as happened after the 2020 presidential election in Belarus. Too big a loss can be difficult to falsify, as was the case in Zambia in August when, despite the incumbent’s overt attempts at voter intimidation, the challenger, Hakainde Hichilema, managed to win the presidency by more than a million votes.Authoritarians have learned that they must carefully weigh how and when to interfere. Too much pre-election excitement can encourage too big a turnout, drawing more votes for the opposition. A low turnout is safer, because authoritarians have ways of making sure their voters get to the polls.Such intrigues require preparation, skill and money, all for an exercise that most citizens know is a sham.So why bother to pretend?Elections, even flawed ones, serve a purpose. The goal for autocrat and democrat alike is legitimacy — a right to rule that, in the views of most citizens in the 21st century, can be bestowed only by a popular vote, or at least the semblance of one.In other eras, and even now in some parts of the world, the right to rule could be inherited by a monarch, blessed by religious faith or sustained by an iron-fisted ideology like Communism. But where those options have been exhausted, democracy — or something resembling it — seems to be the best, and maybe the only, option for maintaining a monopoly on power short of outright dictatorship.“In the contemporary world, there are, practically speaking, no alternative ideologies,” Dmitri Furman, a Russian political scientist, wrote in New Left Review in 2008. He used the term “imitation democracy” to describe the combination of democratic forms and authoritarian reality then in place across most of the former Soviet Union.This formula was recently perfected in Russia, 20 years into Vladimir V. Putin’s rule, ahead of parliamentary elections last month.A woman voting in Moscow during elections last month. President Vladimir V. Putin and his allies deployed heavy-handed measures to keep critics off the ballot and to sway apathetic voters.Maxim Shipenkov/EPA, via ShutterstockThere never was any doubt that United Russia, the party backed by Mr. Putin, would come out on top. And indeed, the final vote gave the party 324 of the Duma’s 450 seats, more than enough to guarantee a constitutional, or two-thirds, majority (but fewer than the 343 seats United Russia took in 2016).Still, Mr. Putin and his allies took no chances, deploying heavy-handed measures to keep his critics off the ballot, while giving generous handouts to sway apathetic voters. Pensioners and military personnel, two crucial constituencies, received one-off pre-election bonuses, at an estimated cost of $6.7 billion to the federal government.Followers of the jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny, now legally labeled “extremists,” were barred from running, and some were put in jail or forced to flee the country. Popular candidates from Russia’s legal parliamentary parties — including the liberal centrist party Yabloko and the Communist Party — were pushed off the ballot under thinly veiled pretenses, ranging from faulty paperwork to allegations of criminal offenses. In St. Petersburg, a well-known Yabloko candidate found himself running against two people who had recently adopted not only his name but also his appearance.The Kremlin also took on independent media outlets, declaring that many journalists were foreign agents. And yet news still leaked about local officials who went to great lengths to gin up the vote for United Russia. Election officials were reportedly caught on tape discussing vote targets of 42 percent to 45 percent, presumably for United Russia, and government officials complained of being pressured by their employers to vote. In today’s Russia, these advantages are called “administrative resources,” all of which tipped the scales in United Russia’s favor.Similar tactics have worked in the past. In Russia’s 2016 parliamentary elections, officials in the city of Saratov did not take any risks. In about 100 of the city’s 373 electoral districts, the results were exactly the same: 62.2 percent for United Russia, 11.8 percent for the Communist Party, and on down the list. A local electoral commission official dismissed the suspicious results as a mere coincidence.Much has changed in the last five years. Unpopular pension reforms in 2018 have hurt both Mr. Putin and United Russia in opinion polls. Ahead of the September elections, the party’s popularity hit a record low, falling below 30 percent nationally, and even lower in the big cities.“United Russia’s polling is bad, but it doesn’t really matter,” Aleksei Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information, a Moscow think tank, told The Moscow Times in an interview in early September. A recycled Soviet-era joke made the rounds after the elections: “You pretend to hold elections, and we pretend to vote,” a retooled version of the old quip “You pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”But elections benefit the Putin government, according to an analysis by the political scientists Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes in their book “The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy,” published last year. Elections have been turned into national rituals, spectacles that create the illusion that Russian voters can play a role in politics. They can also test the national mood, district by district, and allow the Kremlin to measure the loyalty and competence of their local officials.“You had a hard time in post-Communist Russia finding out how local officials were behaving, figuring out who was reliable, who could turn out the vote,” Mr. Holmes said in an interview. “It is not just about loyalty, but also about who is effective. Elections give you new tools to measure performance.”Paradoxically, “a managed democracy,” a term often used to describe the Putin system of government, is not so much about pretending to be democratic, but rather about pretending to manage, Mr. Holmes and Mr. Krastev said in their book. “Rigging an election also allowed the government to mimic the authoritarian power that it did not actually possess,” they wrote. “In Putin’s first decade in power, organizing a pseudo-election was like wearing sheep’s clothing to prove that you are a wolf.”But most pseudo-democrats these days are reluctant to assume their inner autocratic selves: They are not sure how to be wolves. In Nicaragua, where Mr. Ortega lost an election in 1990 after five years in power, today’s government seems to have gone further than others toward becoming a police state, but most other authoritarian rulers are careful not to cross the line, at times at the risk of seeming ineffective.Typically, they promote their hold on power as a guarantee of stability, and a protection of the nation in a hostile, unstable world. And in some cases, such leaders do in fact enjoy broad support: Mr. Putin’s popularity rating in Russia is down from a high point of 88 percent after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but it still hovers above 60 percent, well above the ratings of leaders in Western democracies.These days, elections may be a necessary tool for authoritarian systems to hold power, but they remain risky, as was the case in Zambia, where the opposition managed against all odds to score a victory that was too big to deny, and in Belarus where the falsification of the results was so obvious that protesters came out to the streets.“Politics is about promising and disappointing and managing the disappointment,” Mr. Holmes said. “The special magic of democracy is that, although a lot of people may be disappointed, they have a hope that at the next election, they can bring in another group. By giving up the idea that another group can come to power, a lot of pressure builds up.”Celestine Bohlen is a former New York Times Moscow correspondent who covered the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. More