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      How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step

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      Linda Sarsour awoke on Jan. 23, 2017, logged onto the internet, and felt sick.The weekend before, she had stood in Washington at the head of the Women’s March, a mobilization against President Donald J. Trump that surpassed all expectations. Crowds had begun forming before dawn, and by the time she climbed up onto the stage, they extended farther than the eye could see.More than four million people around the United States had taken part, experts later estimated, placing it among the largest single-day protests in the nation’s history.But then something shifted, seemingly overnight. What she saw on Twitter that Monday was a torrent of focused grievance that targeted her. In 15 years as an activist, largely advocating for the rights of Muslims, she had faced pushback, but this was of a different magnitude. A question began to form in her mind: Do they really hate me that much?That morning, there were things going on that Ms. Sarsour could not imagine.More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners. But one message performed better with audiences than any other.It singled out an element of the Women’s March that might, at first, have seemed like a detail: Among its four co-chairs was Ms. Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist whose hijab marked her as an observant Muslim.Linda Sarsour, a leader of the initial Women’s March in January 2017. Within days, Russian trolls were targeting her online.Theo Wargo/Getty ImagesOver the 18 months that followed, Russia’s troll factories and its military intelligence service put a sustained effort into discrediting the movement by circulating damning, often fabricated narratives around Ms. Sarsour, whose activism made her a lightning rod for Mr. Trump’s base and also for some of his most ardent opposition.One hundred and fifty-two different Russian accounts produced material about her. Public archives of Twitter accounts known to be Russian contain 2,642 tweets about Ms. Sarsour, many of which found large audiences, according to an analysis by Advance Democracy Inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts public-interest research and investigations.Many people know the story about how the Women’s March movement fractured, leaving lasting scars on the American left.A fragile coalition to begin with, it headed into crisis over its co-chairs’ association with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, who is widely condemned for his antisemitic statements. When this surfaced, progressive groups distanced themselves from Ms. Sarsour and her fellow march co-chairs, Carmen Perez, Tamika Mallory and Bob Bland, and some called for them to step down.But there is also a story that has not been told, one that only emerged years later in academic research, of how Russia inserted itself into this moment.For more than a century, Russia and the Soviet Union sought to weaken their adversaries in the West by inflaming racial and ethnic tensions. In the 1960s, K.G.B. officers based in the United States paid agents to paint swastikas on synagogues and desecrate Jewish cemeteries. They forged racist letters, supposedly from white supremacists, to African diplomats.They did not invent these social divisions; America already had them. Ladislav Bittman, who worked for the secret police in Czechoslovakia before defecting to the United States, compared Soviet disinformation programs to an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”A decade ago, Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, oversaw a revival of these tactics, seeking to undermine democracies around the world from the shadows.Social media now provided an easy way to feed ideas into American discourse, something that, for half a century, the K.G.B. had struggled to do. And the Russian government secretly funneled more than $300 million to political parties in more than two dozen countries in an effort to sway their policies in Moscow’s favor since 2014, according to a U.S. intelligence review made public last week.What effect these intrusions had on American democracy is a question that will be with us for years. It may be unanswerable. Already, social media was amplifying Americans’ political impulses, leaving behind a trail of damaged communities. Already, trust in institutions was declining, and rage was flaring up in public life. These things would have been true without Russian interference.But to trace the Russian intrusions over the months that followed that first Women’s March is to witness a persistent effort to make all of them worse.After the 2016 election, the Russian disinformation operation at the Internet Research Agency shifted focus from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to broader U.S. targets.James Hill for The New York Times‘Refrigerators and Nails’In early 2017, the trolling operation was in its imperial phase, swelling with confidence.Accounts at the Internet Research Agency, an organization based in St. Petersburg and controlled by a Putin ally, had boasted of propelling Mr. Trump to victory. That year, the group’s budget nearly doubled, according to internal communications made public by U.S. prosecutors. More than a year would pass before social media platforms executed sweeping purges of Russian-backed sock-puppet accounts.For the trolls, it was a golden hour.Under these auspicious conditions, their goals shifted from electoral politics to something more general — the goal of deepening rifts in American society, said Alex Iftimie, a former federal prosecutor who worked on a 2018 case against an administrator at Project Lakhta, which oversaw the Internet Research Agency and other Russian trolling operations.“It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore,” said Mr. Iftimie, now a partner at Morrison Foerster. “It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.”There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.Artyom Baranov, who worked at one of Project Lakhta’s affiliates from 2018 to 2020, concluded that his co-workers were, for the most part, people who needed the money, indifferent to the themes they were asked to write on.“If they were assigned to write text about refrigerators, they would write about refrigerators, or, say, nails, they would write about nails,” said Mr. Baranov, one of a handful of former trolls who have spoken on the record about their activities. But instead of refrigerators and nails, it was “Putin, Putin, then Putin, and then about Navalny,” referring to Aleksei Navalny, the jailed opposition leader.The job was not to put forward arguments, but to prompt a visceral, emotional reaction, ideally one of “indignation,” said Mr. Baranov, a psychoanalyst by training, who was assigned to write posts on Russian politics. “The task is to make a kind of explosion, to cause controversy,” he said.When a post succeeded at enraging a reader, he said, a co-worker would sometimes remark, with satisfaction, Liberala razorvala. A liberal was torn apart. “It wasn’t on the level of discussing facts or giving new arguments,” he said. “It’s always a way of digging into dirty laundry.”Feminism was an obvious target, because it was viewed as a “Western agenda,” and hostile to the traditional values that Russia represented, said Mr. Baranov, who spoke about his work in hopes of warning the public to be more skeptical of material online. Already, for months, Russian accounts purporting to belong to Black women had been drilling down on racial rifts within American feminism:“White feminism seems to be the most stupid 2k16 trend”“Watch Muhammad Ali shut down a white feminist criticizing his arrogance”“Aint got time for your white feminist bullshit”“Why black feminists don’t owe Hillary Clinton their support”“A LIL LOUDER FOR THE WHITE FEMINISTS IN THE BACK”In January 2017, as the Women’s March drew nearer, they tested different approaches on different audiences, as they had during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. They posed as resentful trans women, poor women and anti-abortion women. They dismissed the marchers as pawns of the Jewish billionaire George Soros.And they derided the women who planned to participate, often in crudely sexual terms. In coordination, beginning on Jan. 19, 46 Russian accounts pumped out 459 original suggestions for #RenameMillionWomenMarch, a hashtag created by a right-wing podcaster from Indiana:The Why Doesn’t Anybody Love Me MarchThe Strong Women Constantly Playing the Victim MarchThe Lonely Cat Lady MarchThe Cramp CampThe Bearded Women ConventionBroken Broads BloviatingThe Liberal Trail of TearsCoyote Ugly BitchfestIn the meantime, another, far more effective line of messaging was developing.Ms. Sarsour recalled the overwhelming torrent of attacks. “I mean, just imagine,” she said, “every day that you woke up, you were a monster.”Brad Ogbonna/Redux‘It Was Like an Avalanche’As one of the four co-chairs of the Women’s March, Ms. Sarsour came with a track record — and with baggage.The daughter of a Palestinian American shopkeeper in Crown Heights, she had risen to prominence as a voice for the rights of Muslims after 9/11. In 2015, when she was 35, a New York Times profile anointed her — a “Brooklyn Homegirl in a Hijab” — as something rare, a potential Arab American candidate for elected office.In 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders featured her at a campaign event, a stamp of approval from one of the country’s most influential progressives. That troubled pro-Israel politicians in New York, who pointed to her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to secure Palestinian rights by isolating Israel. Critics of the movement contend that it threatens Israel’s existence.Rory Lancman, then a city councilman from Queens, recalls his growing alarm as she began to appear regularly at events for left-wing causes unrelated to Israel, like fair wages, where, he felt, “her real agenda was trying to marry an anti-Israel agenda with different progressive causes.”The news that Ms. Sarsour was among the leaders of the Women’s March, said Mr. Lancman, a Democrat, struck him as “heartbreaking — that’s the word — that antisemitism is tolerated and rationalized in progressive spaces.”That was politics as usual, and Ms. Sarsour was accustomed to it: the long-running feud among Democrats over the implications of criticizing Israel.But forty-eight hours after the march, a shift of tone occurred online, with a surge of posts describing Ms. Sarsour as a radical jihadi who had infiltrated American feminism. Ms. Sarsour recalls this vividly, because she woke to a worried text message from a friend and glanced at Twitter to find that she was trending.Not all of this backlash was organic. That week, Russian amplifier accounts began circulating posts that focused on Ms. Sarsour, many of them inflammatory and based on falsehoods, claiming she was a radical Islamist, “a pro-ISIS Anti USA Jew Hating Muslim” who “was seen flashing the ISIS sign.”Some of these posts found a large audience. At 7 p.m. on Jan. 21, an Internet Research Agency account posing as @TEN_GOP, a fictional right-wing American from the South, tweeted that Ms. Sarsour favored imposing Shariah law in the United States, playing into a popular anti-Muslim conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had helped to popularize on the campaign trail.This message took hold, racking up 1,686 replies, 8,046 retweets and 6,256 likes. An hour later, @PrisonPlanet, an influential right-wing account, posted a tweet on the same theme. The following day, nearly simultaneously, a small army of 1,157 right-wing accounts picked up the narrative, publishing 1,659 posts on the subject, according to a reconstruction by Graphika, a social media monitoring company.Things were changing on the ground in New York. At the Arab American Association of New York, the nonprofit immigrant advocacy organization Ms. Sarsour ran in Bay Ridge, hate mail began to pour in — postcards, handwritten screeds on notebook paper, her photo printed out and defaced with red X’s.“This was an entirely new level, and it felt weird, because it was coming from all over the country,” said Kayla Santosuosso, then the nonprofit’s deputy director, who remembers bringing the mail to Ms. Sarsour in shoe boxes. Ms. Sarsour, worried that she had become “a liability,” stepped down from her position there that February.By the spring, the backlash against Ms. Sarsour had developed into a divisive political sideshow, one that easily drowned out the ideas behind the Women’s March. Every time she thought the attacks were quieting, they surged back. “It was like an avalanche,” she said. “Like I was swimming in it every day. It was like I never got out of it.”When she was invited to appear as a graduation speaker at the City University of New York’s graduate school of public health, the furor began weeks in advance. It caught the attention of the far-right polemicist Milo Yiannopoulos, who traveled to New York for a protest that attracted, as a Times reporter wrote, “a strange mix, including right-leaning Jews and Zionists, commentators like Pamela Geller, and some members of the alt-right.”“Linda Sarsour is a Shariah-loving, terrorist-embracing, Jew-hating, ticking time bomb of progressive horror,” Mr. Yiannopoulos told the crowd.Ms. Sarsour recalls the period leading up to the graduation speech as particularly stressful. As it approached, she had visions of a figure coming out of the shadows to kill her, “some poor, like, deranged person who was consumed by the dark corners of the internet, who would be fueled by hate.”Russian troll accounts were part of that clamor; beginning more than a month before her speech, a handful of amplifier accounts managed by Russia’s largest military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., circulated expressions of outrage at her being selected, often hashtagged #CancelSarsour.When Mr. Yiannopoulos spoke, @TEN_GOP tweeted the juiciest phrases — the “ticking time bomb of progressive horror” line — and racked up 3,954 retweets and 5,967 likes.Her graduation speech passed without incident. Then the trolls waited, it seems, for her to say or do something divisive. And that happened in early July, when, emboldened after her C.U.N.Y. appearance, she urged a Muslim audience outside Chicago to push back against unjust government policies, calling it “the best form of jihad.”In Islam, the word “jihad” can denote any virtuous struggle, but in the American political context it is inextricable from the concept of holy war. A more pragmatic politician might have avoided using it, but Ms. Sarsour was feeling like her old self. “That’s who I am in real life,” she said. “I’m from Brooklyn, and I’m Palestinian. It’s my personality.”To the Russian trolls, it was an opportunity.The following week, Russian accounts dramatically increased their volume of messaging about Ms. Sarsour, producing 184 posts on a single day, according to Advance Democracy Inc.Once again, the audience responded: When @TEN_GOP tweeted, “linda sarsour openly calls for muslims to wage jihad against trump, please look into this matter,” it received 6,222 retweets and 6,549 likes. The accounts sustained an intense focus on her through July, producing 894 posts over the next month and continuing into the autumn, the group found.And once again, the backlash spilled out from social media. Protesters camped outside the kosher barbecue restaurant where her brother, Mohammed, worked as a manager, demanding that he be fired. He left the job, and, eventually, New York.Her mother opened a package that arrived in the mail and screamed: It was a bizarre self-published book, titled “A Jihad Grows in Brooklyn,” that purported to be Ms. Sarsour’s autobiography and was illustrated with family photographs.“I mean, just imagine,” Ms. Sarsour said, “every day that you woke up, you were a monster.”Progressive groups distanced themselves from Ms. Sarsour, left, and her fellow march co-chairs Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez.Erin Scott/ReutersChasing GhostsIt is maddeningly difficult to say with any certainty what effect Russian influence operations have had on the United States, because when they took hold they piggybacked on real social divisions. Once pumped into American discourse, the Russian trace vanishes, like water that has been added to a swimming pool.This creates a conundrum for disinformation specialists, many of whom say the impact of Russian interventions has been overblown. After the 2016 presidential election, blaming unwelcome outcomes on Russia became “the emotional way out,” said Thomas Rid, author of “Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare.”“It’s playing a trick on you,” said Dr. Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “You become a useful idiot if you ignore effective info ops. But also if you talk it up by telling a story, if you make it more powerful than it is. It’s a trick.”The divisions within the Women’s March existed already.Internal disputes about identity and antisemitism had strained the group from its early days, when one of its organizers, Vanessa Wruble, who is Jewish, was pushed out after what she described as tense conversations with Ms. Perez and Ms. Mallory about the role of Jews in structural racism. Ms. Perez and Ms. Mallory have disputed that account.And discomfort with Ms. Sarsour had dampened enthusiasm among some Jewish progressives, said Rachel Timoner, the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn.She recalled stepping up to defend Ms. Sarsour against “racist and Islamophobic” attacks, only to find, each time, that a new firestorm would arise, often resulting from something inflammatory and “ultimately indefensible” Ms. Sarsour had said.As the months wore on, Rabbi Timoner said, Jews began asking themselves whether they were being excluded from progressive movements.In 2018, a new internal crisis was triggered by Ms. Mallory’s attendance at Saviours’ Day, an annual gathering of the Nation of Islam led by Mr. Farrakhan.Ms. Mallory grew up in Harlem, where many viewed the Nation of Islam and its founder positively, as crusaders against urban violence. Pressured to disavow Mr. Farrakhan, she refused, though she said she did not share his antisemitic views. After her son’s father was murdered, she explained, “it was the women of the Nation of Islam who supported me.”“I have always held them close to my heart for that reason,” she said.After that, the fabric of the coalition tore, slowly and painfully. Ms. Sarsour and Ms. Perez stuck by Ms. Mallory, and before long, progressive groups began distancing themselves from all three. Under intense pressure to step down as the leaders, Ms. Sarsour, Ms. Perez, and a third co-chair, Bob Bland, did so in 2019, a move they say was long planned.Russian accounts boosted their output around Mr. Farrakhan and the Women’s March leaders that spring, posting 10 or 20 times a day, but there is no evidence that they were a primary driver of the conversation.Around this time, we largely lose our view into Russian messaging. In the summer of 2018, Twitter suspended 3,841 accounts traced to the Internet Research Agency, preserving 10 million of their tweets so they could be studied by researchers. A few months later, the platform suspended and preserved the work of 414 accounts produced by the G.R.U., the military intelligence agency.With that, a chorus of voices went silent — accounts that, for years, had helped shape American conversations about Black Lives Matter, the Mueller investigation and NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. The record of the messaging around the Women’s March breaks off there, too, frozen in time.Russia’s exploitation of Ms. Sarsour as a wedge figure should be understood as part of the history of the Women’s March, said Shireen Mitchell, a technology analyst who has studied Russian interference in Black online discourse.Russian campaigns, she said, were adept at seeding ideas that flowed into mainstream discourse, after which, as she put it, they could “just sit and wait.”“It’s the priming of all that, starting from the beginning,” said Ms. Mitchell, the founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women. “If those thousand tweets hit a division between the groups that matter, if they open and allow that division, it’s no longer a crack. It becomes a valley.”Others saw Russia’s role as marginal, tinkering around the edges of a necessary American discussion.“It’s a shame that Linda Sarsour damaged that movement by trying to inject into it noxious ideas that had no reason to be part of the Women’s March,” said Mr. Lancman, the former city councilman. “Unfortunately,” he added, Russians “seem very adept at exploiting these fissures.”Rabbi Timoner sounded sad, recalling all that had happened. The wounds that opened up between progressives that year have never quite healed, she said.“There is so much Jewish pain here,” she said. “Those Russian bots were poking at that pain.”The Women’s March continued under new leadership, but during the months of controversy, many women who had been galvanized by the first march drifted away.“I can’t remember all the negative stories, I just remember that there were so many of them,” said Jennifer Taylor-Skinner, a Seattle woman who, after the 2017 march, quit her job at Microsoft and founded “The Electorette,” a podcast geared toward progressive women. She hasn’t ever recaptured that feeling of unity.“Just thinking about it, I still feel a bit unmoored from any central movement,” she said. “There was a coalition possibly forming here that has been broken up.”An AftershockMs. Sarsour, 42, was back in her old office in Bay Ridge this past spring, five years after the first Women’s March, when she learned, from a reporter, that the Russian government had targeted her.She is seldom invited to national platforms these days, and when she is, protests often follow. Whatever buzz there was around her as a future political candidate has quieted. She knows how she is seen, as a polarizing figure. She has adjusted to this reality, and sees herself more as an activist, in the mold of Angela Davis.“I’m never going to get a real job,” at a major nonprofit or a corporation, she said. “That’s the kind of impact that these things have on our lives.”Data on Russian messaging around the Women’s March first appeared late last year in an academic journal, where Samantha R. Bradshaw, a disinformation expert at American University, reviewed state interference in feminist movements.She and her co-author, Amélie Henle, found a pattern of messaging by influential amplifier accounts that sought to demobilize civil society activism, by pumping up intersectional critiques of feminism and attacking organizers.Movements, Dr. Bradshaw argues, are fragile structures, often unprepared to weather well-resourced state-backed sabotage campaigns, especially when combined with algorithms that promote negative content. But healthy social movements are essential to democracies, she said.“We’re not going to have a robust public sphere if nobody wants to organize protests,” she said.Ms. Sarsour isn’t an academic, but she understood it well enough.“Lord have mercy,” she said, glancing over Dr. Bradshaw’s findings.Ms. Sarsour tried to get her head around it: All that time, the Russian government had been thinking about her. She had long had a sense of where her critics came from: the American right wing, and supporters of Israel. A foreign government — that was something that had never occurred to her.“To think that Russia is going to use me, it’s much more dangerous and sinister,” she said. “What does Russia get out of leveraging my identity, you know, to undermine movements that were anti-Trump in America — I guess —” she paused. “It’s just, wow.”Understanding what Russian trolls did would not change her position.Still, it helped her understand that time in her life, when she had been at the center of a storm. It wasn’t just her fellow countrymen hating her. It wasn’t just her allies disavowing her. That had happened. But it wasn’t the whole story.She placed a call to Ms. Mallory.“We weren’t crazy,” she said.Aaron Krolik More

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      Why Queen Elizabeth’s Strength Is Putin’s Weakness

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      Why is Vladimir Putin failing to win his war in Ukraine? The answers multiply: hubris, corruption and incompetence on the Russian side; military valor, canny leadership and American munitions on the Ukrainian side.But the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the wave of antique pageantry help illuminate one of the Russian president’s important weaknesses. He has been hobbled in his fight because his regime lacks the mystical quality we call legitimacy.Legitimacy is not the same thing as power. It’s what enables power to be exercised effectively amid trials and transitions, setbacks and successions. It’s what grounds political authority even when that authority isn’t delivering prosperity and peace. It’s what rulers reach for when they call their societies to sacrifice.In most of the world today there are only two solid foundations for legitimacy: the demos and the nation, democracy and national self-determination. The legitimacy that once attached to imperial rule has washed away, and likewise, outside of the Middle East and a few other places here and there, the legitimacy of hereditary monarchy. Alternative claims to legitimacy exist — the ideological authority invoked by the Beijing Politburo, the religious authority invoked by the mullahs in Tehran — but those claimants rely more on repression for power and survival.The Elizabethan pageantry emphasizes this global reality because the House of Windsor is an exception that proves the rule. Like almost no other institution in the West outside the Vatican, the British monarchy has retained a pre-modern, pre-democratic legitimacy; in the outpouring of secular grief there was still a sense that the queen was somehow God-ordained to sit on the throne. But the royal family has kept that legitimacy by giving up all but a fraction of its personal power; it has legitimacy and little else.In Moscow you have the contrast: personal political power, far greater than the power of King Charles III, that lacks deep legitimating structures. Putin is a pseudo-czar but not a real one, with no divine anointing or ancient oath. He claims some Russian-nationalist legitimacy, but his system is actually a polyglot imperium. He claims some democratic legitimacy by holding regular elections, but their results are neither fair nor free.So all he has to really justify his power is success. Which he has delivered for most of his career — a Russia richer and more stable than in the years before he took the presidency, and a series of successful foreign policy gambits.But now comes the test, the gambit that hasn’t delivered, the specter of defeat, and what does he have to fall back upon? Not the authority of a czar: He cannot mobilize the Russian people as feudal subjects, calling on them to treat imperial Russia’s grand projects as their own. Not the authority of a national leader in a struggle for self-determination: He is the invader; it’s Ukraine that’s fighting for a nation. And not the authority of a democratic leader: He cannot have his war policy vindicated in an election, as Abraham Lincoln did in 1864, because any election would be a masquerade.In recent years, as authoritarian leaders have gained ground around the world and democracy has decayed, there’s been a fear that these figures have a stronger hand to play than the dictators of the past, because their authoritarianism is gentler and subtler, and also wrapped in the legitimating structures of elections.But Putin’s predicament suggests that this subtler authoritarianism is weaker than its predecessors in a crisis. The 20th century’s totalitarian regimes often co-opted the rhetoric of democracy and nationalism, but at bottom they made their own unique (and dreadful) claims to legitimacy — the people’s republic, the rule of the master race. Putin, lacking any such foundation, cannot just be a proud imperialist or autocrat or revolutionary: He has to legitimize his ambitions in the frameworks of his Western enemies, with absurd results (Ukraine isn’t a real nation, Russia is liberating Ukraine from Nazis, the Russians are fighting for human rights).There are parallels to the internal politics of the United States, where movements tempted toward authoritarianism nevertheless legitimate themselves in the familiar language of democracy. Thus Donald Trump has to claim that the will of the people was thwarted in 2020, not that he had a right to autocratic rule. Likewise, the push from the left to cancel or de-platform, to steer public opinion via censorship, tends to be justified in the name of “safeguarding democracy.”This pattern doesn’t mean there aren’t authoritarian perils in our politics, anymore than Putin’s legitimacy problems make his invasion any less destructive. But it helps to see our crises clearly if you recognize that they’re still happening inside the lines of late modernity — that as Elizabeth II is laid to rest, nothing like her radically un-democratic legitimacy seems ready for rebirth.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Russian Military Rout in Ukraine has Major Implications for the MENA Region

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      Your Friday Briefing: The Putin-Xi Summit

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      Plus Europe’s tilt to the right continues, and Roger Federer is retiring.Vladimir Putin met with Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan yesterday.Pool photo by Alexandr Demyanchuk/SputnikPutin said Xi has concerns over warBeijing’s support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine looks shakier after Xi Jinping, China’s leader, met with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, at an in-person summit in Uzbekistan yesterday.In remarks after the meeting, Putin said Moscow understood that China had “questions and concerns” about the war. It was a notable, if cryptic, admission that Beijing may not fully approve of the invasion. Xi also steered clear of any mention of Ukraine in public remarks.Taken together, it was a sign that Russia lacked the full backing of its most powerful international partner. It also comes at a time when the Russian military is trying to recover from a humiliating rout in northeastern Ukraine in recent days. Putin is also facing growing criticism inside Russia. Here are live updates.Context: The two authoritarian leaders met during a summit meant to signal the strength of their partnership. The meeting was particularly important to Putin, whom the U.S. and its allies have further isolated since the war.China: In February, before the invasion and the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, the two countries issued a joint statement describing their partnership as having “no limits.” Yesterday, Xi struck a more subdued tone, carefully avoiding any endorsement of specific Russian policies and instead offering generalities about China’s and Russia’s views of the world.Ulf Kristersson, the head of the center-right Moderate Party, is expected to lead Sweden’s new government.Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEurope tilts right, againIn Sweden, right-wing parties combined to win a remarkable, if slim, election victory in Parliamentary elections on Wednesday, as European politics shifted again.The Swedish Social Democratic Party, a center-left party and the main party in the current governing coalition, grabbed the highest percentage of votes as an individual party, but not enough to stay in power. The most stunning development was that the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, took second place. The party will not be part of the governing coalition, but it is expected to have a powerful influence on it.“This would grab attention in any country, but especially in Sweden, a country that is known for egalitarian social democracy,” Amanda Taub writes in our sister newsletter “The Interpreter.”The State of the WarDramatic Gains for Ukraine: After Ukraine’s offensive in its northeast drove Russian forces into a chaotic retreat, Ukrainian leaders face critical choices on how far to press the attack.Southern Counteroffensive: Military operations in the south have been a painstaking battle of river crossings, with pontoon bridges as prime targets for both sides. So far, it is Ukraine that has advanced.In the East: Ukraine’s recent victories have galvanized its military, but civilians in the Donbas region, still trapped in the middle of the conflict, remain wary about what might come next for them.Putin’s Struggles at Home: Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine have left President Vladimir V. Putin’s image weakened, his critics emboldened and his supporters looking for someone else to blame.It’s also part of a pattern. Sweden is just the latest European democracy — joining France, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Estonia and others — whose far-right parties are regularly able to command electoral support.Italy: Giorgia Meloni, a hard-right politician whose party descended from post-Fascist roots, is the favorite to become the next prime minister in this month’s election.The bodies of two children were discovered in suitcases in Auckland last month.Dean Purcell/New Zealand Herald, via Associated PressArrest in a New Zealand murder caseA 42-year-old woman was arrested in South Korea yesterday in connection with the unsolved murders of two children in New Zealand.It was the latest development in an investigation that began in New Zealand last month, after the children’s remains were found in two suitcases that had been purchased in an online auction, along with other unclaimed household items from an Auckland storage facility.The police in South Korea said that the woman, who is a New Zealand citizen born in South Korea, was believed to be the children’s mother. The New Zealand authorities are now seeking her extradition on murder charges.Investigation: The New Zealand police said the bodies could have been in the storage facility for four years. They added that the children, whose names have not been released, were between 5 and 10 years old at the time of their deaths, but they did not say how they died.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaThe floods in Pakistan are the deadliest in a recent string of eye-popping weather extremes across the Northern Hemisphere.Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNew research suggests that climate change has worsened Pakistan’s deadly floods.Six men were arrested yesterday for raping and killing two teenage sisters in India, The Guardian reports. The girls were Dalit, considered the lowest caste, who often suffer sexual violence.Thirty-seven activists and opposition leaders stood trial yesterday in Cambodia on treason charges for attempting to help an exiled political candidate return home, The Associated Press reports.An English translation of “The Backstreets,” a Uyghur novel of one man’s struggle within an oppressive environment in China, was published in the U.S. this week. Its author and a translator have been detained since 2018.U.S. NewsRailroad companies and workers’ unions reached a tentative deal, brokered by President Biden, to avoid a national strike.President Biden will sign an executive order designed to block Chinese investment in U.S. technology.Florida flew about 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, a Massachusetts island, escalating a tactic by Republican-led states to send migrants to liberal areas to protest a rise in illegal immigration.Republican lawmakers are pushing for a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks.World News“We’re not here for the monarchy — we are here for her,” one woman said, of Queen Elizabeth II.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesQueen Elizabeth II’s funeral will be on Monday. Mourners are waiting in line for hours to pay their respects as her body lies in state in London. Germany agreed to one of its largest ever Holocaust reparations packages: $1.2 billion. About $12 million will go to about 8,500 survivors who remain in Ukraine.Marvel has cast an Israeli actress to play a mutant Mossad agent in the next “Captain America” film, sparking outrage among Palestinians and their supporters.Mexico arrested a top military officer suspected of ordering the killing of at least six of the 43 students who disappeared in 2014.Many Argentines now believe the recent assassination attempt against the vice president was a hoax, even though many of the claims being floated are baseless. A Morning ReadNina Riggio for The New York TimesThe ebb and flow of San Francisco’s fog has long defined life along California’s coast. Now, some scientists fear that climate change is making it disappear.ARTS AND IDEASBen Solomon for The New York TimesRoger Federer’s last lapRoger Federer is retiring. The Swiss star, who won 20 Grand Slam singles titles, dominated men’s tennis for two decades.“I am 41 years old, I have played more than 1,500 matches over 24 years,” Federer said on social media. “Tennis has treated me more generously than I ever would have dreamed and now I must recognize when it is time to end my competitive career.”Federer said injuries and surgeries had taken their toll on his body. He said he would continue to play but that he would no longer compete on the ATP Tour or in Grand Slam tournaments, like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. His final competitive matches will be next week in London. Here are photos from his career.For more: “His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game,” David Foster Wallace wrote an appraisal of Federer’s game in 2006. “All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York TimesChickpeas add a garlicky crunch to this stew, laden with greens, feta and lemon.What to ReadRead your way through Helsinki, Finland.DestinationTinos, a Greek island, is beautiful — and extraordinarily windy. Just ask Jason Horowitz, our Rome bureau chief.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Chompers” (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Michael Slackman, who has led the International desk since 2016, will take on a new leadership role overseeing the daily news report.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on abortion in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      US hid fears of radiation in Moscow embassy in 70s from staff, documents reveal

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      US hid fears of radiation in Moscow embassy in 70s from staff, documents revealPresident Ford and state secretaries complained to Soviet Union about health concerns over ‘Moscow signal’ The US complained to the Soviet Union for more than a decade about microwave radiation directed at its embassy in Moscow, but kept concerns secret from embassy staff for nine years, according to newly declassified documents.The reported microwave radiation came to be known as the “Moscow signal” and was the source of frequent complaints from Washington. US officials were unsure of either the purpose of the signal or the potential health effects of long-term exposure to low-level microwave radiation.The declassified documents, obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, provide a historical perspective on current anxiety about “Havana syndrome”, a cluster of mysterious neurological symptoms afflicting scores of US diplomats and spies, which the US believes may have been caused deliberately by some form of directed energy weapon.The first reference to the Moscow signal was in a June 1967 state department memo recording a conversation between the then US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and the Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, in which Rusk raised the matter of the “electro-magnetic signal” aimed at the embassy in Moscow. Gromyko expressed scepticism about the claim, but Rusk insisted there was “no doubt whatever about it” and sketched a rough diagram to illustrate his point. Gromyko said he would “look into the matter” but no change in the level of radiation was detected.Over the years that followed, the microwave signals multiplied and intensified.President Gerald Ford wrote to the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in December 1975: “These transmissions have created levels of radiation within the embassy which may, in the opinion of our medical authorities, represent a hazard to the health of the American families living and working in that building. Indeed, in one particular case, they may already have caused a serious health problem for one member of our embassy staff.”Ford was almost certainly referring to the ambassador Walter Stoessel, who became ill with leukaemia at that time, and died of the disease a decade later.In his reply to the president, Brezhnev insisted the electromagnetic field around the US embassy was “of industrial origin”.Despite US fears about the health effects, embassy staff were not informed, apparently because of concerns the story would leak to the media and upset arms control negotiations with Moscow. Stoessel’s illness was kept secret.In a 1975 conversation with the then Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, asked for the signal to be turned off before he made a planned visit to Moscow or, he joked, “You could give me a radiation treatment”.“We really are sitting on it here, but too many people know about it,” Kissinger told the ambassador. If it was discovered that the Nixon and Ford administrations had known about the problem and done nothing to stop it, he said, “we will catch hell”.The embassy staff were finally informed in 1976. A state department telegram from February of that year said employees should be briefed in small groups but they should not pass on the details to their dependants. However, the telegram recommended that pregnant staff or family members be medically evacuated immediately for tests.The Soviet leadership took no heed of the US complaints and it is unclear when the Moscow signal was turned off, if it ever existed. US experts were mystified over the purpose of the microwave radiation, with the two leading theories being that it was intended to neutralise electronic intelligence gathering by the embassy, or to activate listening devices built into the structure of the embassy.When the previous embassy building was demolished in 1964, dozens of microphones had been found embedded in its walls.TopicsUS foreign policyUS politicsRussianewsReuse this content More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Ukraine’s Advance Continues

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      Plus former British colonies weigh their relationship with the monarchy and Lebanon faces blackouts.Russia launched multiple missile strikes yesterday at a Ukrainian police station in Kharkiv.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesUkraine’s advance continuesUkraine reclaimed more ground yesterday and redoubled its calls for Russia to surrender in the south. In the northeast, Moscow acknowledged the loss of almost all of the Kharkiv region. Here’s a map of Russian losses.Russian officials described the retreat as a planned “regrouping operation,” and Moscow does still hold large areas of eastern and southern Ukraine. In apparent retaliation, Russian cruise missiles knocked out power to regions in the east and northeast as forces retreated, but Ukrainians in Kharkiv worked quickly to repair damaged infrastructure.Moscow’s stunning setback calls into question how much territory its once-daunting military can retain, especially amid a growing domestic backlash, which has made its way onto state television. Yesterday, municipal deputies from 18 councils in Moscow and St. Petersburg signed a petition calling on Vladimir Putin to resign. Here are live updates.Details: Ukraine has advanced faster than expected and is moving to consolidate control over the recaptured territory. Ukraine’s military said it pushed into an additional 20 towns and villages in 24 hours and claimed to have recaptured nearly 200 square miles in the southern region of Kherson.What’s next: The prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine is investigating possible war crimes in a recently liberated village near Kharkiv.Allies: Ukraine’s success has encouraged European allies ahead of what is expected to be a hard winter of rising fuel costs. It will most likely increase pressure on NATO members to supply Ukraine with heavier weaponry.In 1982, Queen Elizabeth II visited Tuvalu on a tour of the South Pacific.Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty ImagesFormer colonies mull their futureFrom the Caribbean to the Pacific, the death of Queen Elizabeth II accelerated a push to address the past in several former British colonies.Some countries are holding to the status quo. Yesterday, Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, said that she thought her country would most likely become a republic in her lifetime. “But I don’t see it as a short-term measure or anything that is on the agenda anytime soon,” Ardern said.The State of the WarDramatic Gains for Ukraine: Ukraine’s lightning offensive in the country’s northeast has allowed Kyiv’s forces to score large battlefield gains against Russia and shift what had become a grinding war.Putin’s Struggles: Russia’s retreat in Ukraine may be weakening President Vladimir V. Putin’s reputation at home, and pro-war bloggers who cheered on the invasion are now openly criticizing him.Southern Counteroffensive: Military operations in the south have been a painstaking battle of river crossings, with pontoon bridges as prime targets for both sides. So far, it is Ukraine that has advanced.Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant: After United Nations inspectors visited the Russian-controlled facility last week amid shelling and fears of a looming nuclear disaster, the organization released a report calling for Russia and Ukraine to halt all military activity around the complex.Republicanism is more entrenched in Australia, which has a larger population of Irish descent. There, the queen’s death has created a political maelstrom.Australia’s government suspended Parliament for two weeks to commemorate her death, the BBC reports, a historic protocol. The move prompted blowback, The Sydney Morning Herald reports, among politicians who feared the suspension would delay or weaken integrity reforms promised by Anthony Albanese, the prime minister. Here are live updates about the queen’s death.Context: Fourteen former colonies retain the British sovereign as their head of state.Caribbean: On Saturday, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda announced plans to hold a referendum on becoming a republic within three years. Barbados voted to remove the queen as head of state last year.Scotland: New debates arose about the future of the independence movement.England: Anti-monarchists are treading lightly. They see King Charles III as an easier target than his revered mother — but are aware that they risk alienating people during the period of official mourning.“Sometimes I tell myself I’m not going to get sad, but I can’t help it,” said Hasmik Tutunjian, 66. “At night, I get into bed angry, I cry.”Lebanon’s grinding electricity crisisOppressive blackouts have drastically changed the rhythm of life in Lebanon.State-supplied power comes at random times, and for only an hour or two a day. Many residents have had to find coping strategies, my colleague Raja Abdulrahim reports from Beirut. Often, people do laundry and charge devices in the hours after midnight.This profound electricity crisis is a subset of Lebanon’s worst economic crisis in decades, which the World Bank said could rank among the world’s three worst since the mid-1800s in terms of its effect on living standards.The blackouts also underscore the country’s sharp socioeconomic inequalities. Lebanese inflation rose to 168 percent in the year that ended in July, and unemployment is skyrocketing. Now, only a few people can afford diesel-powered backup generators to combat the heat and darkness.Context: Lebanon has long had a dysfunctional electricity sector. But over the past year, acute fuel shortages have worsened power cuts.THE LATEST NEWSAsia and the PacificJacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, said it was time to “turn the page” on Covid.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNew Zealand has removed most of its Covid restrictions, The Guardian reports.Japan may remove some pandemic border controls, the BBC reports.Pakistan is trying to protect a critical power station from floodwaters, Reuters reports. Millions rely on it for electricity.In Thailand, a 25-year-old activist who was said to have dressed up as Queen Suthida was sentenced to two years in prison for insulting the monarchy, Reuters reports.Around the WorldSweden is still counting votes from its Sunday elections. A coalition of right-wing parties narrowly leads the governing center-left bloc.A new analysis showed that child poverty in the U.S. fell by 59 percent from 1993 to 2019, highlighting the role of increased government aid.Wealthy countries snapped up monkeypox vaccines and treatments, leaving few for the rest of the world.What Else Is HappeningCarlos Alcaraz is the youngest man to win a Grand Slam title since Rafael Nadal in 2005.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesCarlos Alcaraz, a 19-year-old from Spain, won the U.S. Open men’s title.The Emmy Awards begin at 8 a.m. Hong Kong time, 10 a.m. Sydney time. Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” is hosting. Here’s how to watch.Scientists have sequenced complete fern genomes for the first time, to learn why the plants have twice as much DNA as humans.A Morning ReadSulfur-crested cockatoos, native to Australia, teach each other to open the bins. Ken Griffiths/AlamyThere’s an innovation arms race raging in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The front line: Garbage bins. The factions: humans and sulfur-crested cockatoos.ARTS AND IDEASStudent debt: No longer tabooIn the U.S., federal student loans are a legacy of the Cold War: They were first issued in 1958 in response to the Soviets’ launch of Sputnik. (The government was worried that Americans were falling behind in science.)Now, Americans collectively owe $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, and the cost of college has nearly tripled since 1980, even when adjusted for inflation. Last month, President Biden announced a student debt forgiveness program that could cost taxpayers $300 billion or more.Student debt has become a national dialogue, as more Americans have come to see it as a structural problem, rather than a result of poor personal decisions, and its stigma slips away.It’s even cropping up as a narrative device in contemporary fiction. In The Times, Jennifer Wilson describes the typical loan-crisis novel as “a stymied bildungsroman for a generation who have been robbed of the possibility of becoming, sold a story that would cost them everything.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChristopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.Serve herb-marinated seared tofu over grains.What to WatchIn “The Fabelmans,” the director, Steven Spielberg, is the star. But Michelle Williams steals the show.What to Read“Like a Rolling Stone” is a new memoir from Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword. And here’s a clue: Unattractive (four letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The U.S. midterm elections are sure to get confusing. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, will parse polling and politics in “The Tilt,” a new newsletter. Subscribe here.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on Serena Williams.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      NSA analyst jailed for life for selling US secrets to Soviets dies aged 80

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      NSA analyst jailed for life for selling US secrets to Soviets dies aged 80Ronald Pelton, convicted of espionage in 1986, said he accepted money from America’s cold war enemy because he was desperate A former National Security Agency analyst who was arguably its most damaging traitor and became famous for aiding the Soviets during the cold war died last week, according to an obituary posted on the website of a Maryland funeral home.Ronald William Pelton was 80.Pelton was an NSA intelligence communications specialist who, in November 1985, was arrested for selling government secrets to the Soviet Union. He spent about three decades in prison before he completed serving his sentence in 2015.Pelton’s crimes included selling defense and communication secrets for upwards of $35,000. His most notable breach of trust was informing Soviet intelligence of “Operation Ivy Bells”, a plan put forward by the NSA and the US navy to tap the Soviets’ underwater communication cables.He worked for the NSA for 14 years and retired in 1979, after which he approached the Soviet embassy in Washington to sell government secrets. Pelton’s lawyer said he had betrayed the US because he had fallen on hard financial times and was desperate.At the time, Peloton was making $24,500 a year, which – accounting for inflation – is an estimated $100,000 today.A Soviet KGB agent who had defected reported Pelton to investigators, setting the stage for his prosecution.Despite asking for leniency, Pelton was given three life sentences, plus another 10 years to be served at the same time.“I could at least make the rest of my life count,” Pelton pleaded. His pleas were denied.He was freed from his sentence after stints at a halfway house and then under home confinement.A federal judge said Pelton committed “one of the most serious offenses in the US criminal code”.Pelton’s lawyer in the case, Fred Warren Bennett, called his client’s act of espionage “the biggest mistake of his life”.On his obituary page, Pelton’s daughter Pamela Wright commented: “When I was 19, he left and didn’t return until I was nearly 50. During that span of time there was almost no communication. I grew up. Had a family. Went to college and gained a professional career. Had grandchildren. I lived my life without him.“When he came back, he was quieter. More mellow. With many regrets.”TopicsNSAUS politicsRussianewsReuse this content More

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      Pro-Putin Candidates Sweep Russia’s Local Elections

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      Against a backdrop of tightening press freedom and repression amid the war in Ukraine, Russians voted overwhelmingly for pro-Kremlin candidates in regional and municipal elections over the weekend, according to results published on Monday.Candidates nominated by the ruling United Russia Party or those loyal to the Kremlin won races for heads of all of the 14 Russian regions where elections were held, according to Russia’s Central Electoral Commission. United Russia, the party of President Vladimir V. Putin, also won a majority in six regional legislatures where voting occurred, the commission said.In the city of Moscow, where lawmakers were up for election in most municipalities, more than 77 percent of seats went to pro-Kremlin candidates, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency.Many anti-government politicians have fled the country. Some have been sentenced to prison terms for publicly criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Although Mr. Putin has dominated Russian politics for more than two decades, he has long used elections that carry a veneer of competitiveness to try to legitimize his rule. And while the elections are often rife with fraud, they typically offer an opening for the political opposition to express discontent.In some instances, especially at the relatively low level of municipal councils, candidates who have been critical of the Kremlin were able to get elected. And on Monday, already-serving municipal deputies from 18 councils in Moscow and St. Petersburg signed a petition calling on Mr. Putin to resign. The petition came after a municipal council in St. Petersburg last week called on the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, to investigate Mr. Putin for treason over his decision to invade Ukraine. Those deputies have been charged by police with discrediting the Russian army, an administrative offense.Mr. Putin’s grip on Russia’s political system has held largely because of his policymakers’ ability to maintain relative economic stability. The elections this weekend were an early test of whether the economic upheaval caused by Western sanctions stemming from Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has had an effect on voters.They took place in the climate of almost total censorship of the mainstream press, making it hard to gauge people’s true attitudes toward the government. Following the invasion in February, Mr. Putin tightened media laws, forcing the few remaining liberal news outlets to shut down.The campaigning and voting periods were marred by multiple violations, according to a report by Golos, a Russian elections watchdog, which cited official intimidation of election observers and unequal access to state media for opposition candidates.The report called the elections “unfree and unequal,” saying that “it is impossible to determine the real will of the voters under these conditions.”The elections were held over three days, which made them more vulnerable to fraud because election observers could not ensure the security of ballots overnight. Critics also said that online voting made it easier to falsify the results.Still, some voters appeared to use their ballots to criticize the Kremlin or its war in Ukraine. Messages including “Russia without Putin!” or “For peace” were scrawled on some ballots, according to photographs posted on social media. The photos could not be independently verified. More