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      Lessons From Liz Truss’s Handling of U.K. Inflation

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      The sharp policy U-turn by Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, reveals the perils of taking the wrong path in the fight against scalding inflation.Government leaders in the West are struggling with rising inflation, slowing growth, and anxious electorates worried about winter and high energy bills. But Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, is the only one who devised an economic plan that unnerved financial markets, drew the ire of global leaders and the public and undermined her political standing.On Friday, battered by savage criticism, she retreated. Ms. Truss fired her top finance official, Kwasi Kwarteng, for creating precisely the package of unfunded tax cuts, billion-dollar spending programs and deregulation that she had asked for.She reinstated a scheduled increase in corporate taxes to 25 percent from 19 percent, a rise she had previously opposed. That announcement came on top of backtracking last week on her proposal to eliminate the top 45 percent income tax on the highest earners. The prime minister, in office a little over five weeks, also promised that spending would grow less rapidly than proposed, although no specifics were offered.The drama is still playing out, and it’s unclear if the Truss government will survive.In the United States, President Biden, while waging his own political battles over gas prices and inflation, has not proposed anything like the kind of policies that Ms. Truss’s government attempted, nor have any other leaders in Europe.Still, for European governments whose economies are suffering greatly from shocks and energy price surges caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are timely lessons from the debacle playing out in London.One of the strongest was delivered early on by the International Monetary Fund: Don’t undermine your own central bankers. The I.M.F., which usually reserves such scoldings for developing nations, on Thursday doubled down on its message. “Don’t prolong the pain,” Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director, admonished.How to blunt the impact of inflation on the most vulnerable without further stoking inflation is the dilemma that every government is confronting.The Bank of England in London has aggressively tried to slow the sharp rise in prices by slowing the British economy.Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press“That is the question of the hour,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University who was attending the annual meetings of the World Bank and I.M.F. in Washington this week.Tension between the fiscal spending policies proposed by a government and the monetary policies controlled by central banks is not unusual. At the moment, though, central bankers are engaged in delicate policy maneuvers in the fight against a level of inflation not seen in decades. With the rate in Britain nearing 10 percent, the Bank of England has moved aggressively to slow down climbing prices through a series of interest rate increases aimed at crimping consumer and business spending.Any expansion of government spending is going to interfere with that aim to some degree, but Ms. Truss’s plan was far too big and too ill defined, Mr. Prasad said.“Measures to help households hit hard by energy increases, by themselves, would not have created that much of a stir,” he said. Many other countries have proposed exactly that. And the European Union has proposed a windfall tax on energy profits to help finance those subsidies.Ms. Truss, instead of coming up with a way to pay for energy assistance, pushed to eliminate a corporate tax increase and cut income taxes for the wealthiest segment of the population. The result was a reduction in government revenue and a ballooning of Britain’s debt.“Overall, the package did not have much clarity in terms of how it would support the economy in the short run without raising inflation,” Mr. Prasad said.By contrast, Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, cited the way governments and central banks worked in tandem when the pandemic struck in 2020 to keep economies from collapsing, issuing vast amounts of public debt.“Central banks printed every single dollar, euro and pound that governments spent” to support households and businesses because of the Covid crisis, Mr. Vistesen said. But now the circumstances have changed, and inflation is setting economies aflame.The actions of the Federal Reserve in the United States illustrate the switch central banks have made: In the harrowing early weeks of the global outbreak of the coronavirus, the Fed embarked on an extraordinary program to stimulate the economy and stabilize markets. This year, the Fed has been swiftly raising interest rates in a bid to slow growth.Both the United States and eurozone countries have somewhat more wiggle room than Britain, because the dollar and the euro are much more widely used around the world as currencies held in reserve than the British pound.Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s former chancellor of the Exchequer, left 11 Downing Street after Ms. Truss fired him on Friday.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressEven so, European governments can help households and businesses get through an energy crisis, Mr. Vistesen said, but they can’t embark on an open-ended spending spree.They also need to take account of what is happening in other economies. The richest countries that make up the Group of 7 are essentially part of the same “monetary and fiscal convoy,” said Will Hutton, president of the Academy of Social Sciences. By championing a Thatcher-era blend of steep tax cuts and deregulation, he said, the Truss government strayed too far from the rest of the flotilla and the economic mainstream.The adherence to 1980s-era trickle-down verities also revealed the risks of sticking with outdated policies in the face of changing circumstances, said Diane Coyle, a ​​public policy professor at the University of Cambridge.“The situation in 1979 was very different,” Ms. Coyle said. “There were sclerotic high taxes and an overregulated economy, but not anymore.” Today, taxes in Britain are lower, and the economy is less regulated than the average member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of 38 major economies.“The character of the economy has changed,” she said. “Public investment in research and skills are more important.”In that sense, what was missing from Ms. Truss’s economic plan was as important as what was included. And what Britain is lacking, said Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College London, is a visionary public investment program like the trillion-dollar climate and digitalization plans adopted by the European Union or the climate and infrastructure program in the United States.A rate of Inflation nearing 10 percent in Britain has affected the price of groceries and how people spend their money.Alex Ingram for The New York Times“If you don’t have a growth plan, an industrial strategy innovation policy,” Ms. Mazzucato said, “then your economy won’t expand.”Both Ms. Mazzucato and Ms. Coyle emphasized that Britain had some specific economic handicaps that predated the Truss administration, including the 2016 vote to exit the European Union, a stubborn lack of productivity, anemic business investment, and lagging research and development.Still, Ms. Coyle offered some advice that referred pointedly to Ms. Truss. “I think the main lesson is: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.” More

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      Sources in Russian analyst’s Trump dossier fabricated, prosecutors argue

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      Sources in Russian analyst’s Trump dossier fabricated, prosecutors argueIgor Danchenko, who played a vital role in creating the Steele dossier, has been indicted on five counts of lying to the FBI A Russian analyst who played a major role in the creation of a flawed dossier about Donald Trump fabricated one of his own sources and concealed the identity of another when interviewed by the FBI, prosecutors said Tuesday.The allegations were aired during opening statements in the trial of Igor Danchenko, who is indicted on five counts of making false statements to the FBI.US justice department says Trump didn’t turn over all documents – reportRead moreThe FBI interviewed Danchenko on multiple occasions in 2017 as it tried to corroborate allegations in what became known as the “Steele dossier”.That dossier, by the British spy Christopher Steele – commissioned by Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign – included allegations of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, as well as allegations that the Russians may have held compromising information over Trump in the form of videos showing him engaged in salacious sexual activity in a Moscow hotel.Specifically, prosecutors say, Danchenko lied when he said he obtained some information in an anonymous phone call from a man he believed to be Sergei Millian, a former head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce.The prosecutor Michael Keilty told jurors in US district court in Alexandria that Danchenko had never spoken with Millian and that phone records showed he had never received an anonymous phone call at the time Danchenko claimed it occurred.Prosecutors also say Danchenko lied when he said he never “talked” with a man named Charles Dolan about the allegations contained in the dossier. Prosecutors say there is evidence that Danchenko “spoke with Mr Dolan over email” about very specific items that showed up in the dossier.The FBI needed to know that Dolan was an important source for Danchenko, Keilty said, because Dolan is a Democratic operative who has worked on the presidential campaign of every Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter, and thus would have had motivation to fabricate or embellish allegations against Trump.“Those lies mattered,” Keilty said.But Danchenko’s attorney, Danny Onorato, told jurors that his client had been completely truthful with the FBI.He pointed out that Danchenko had never said he was certain that Millian was the source of the anonymous call but that he had good reason to believe it. The government’s case required jurors to become “mind readers” to assess Danchenko’s subjective belief about the source of the phone call, Onorato said.And while phone records might not show a call, Onorato said, the government had no idea whether a call could have been placed with a mobile app rather than a traditional telephone provider. Indeed, Onorato said, it made more sense that such a call would have occurred using an internet app because so many of them conceal the source of the call, and the caller wanted to be anonymous.As for the allegations about his discussions with Dolan, Onorato said, Danchenko had answered the question truthfully because the two had not “talked” – but rather had conducted a written exchange. If the FBI had wanted to know about email exchanges, it should have asked a different question, Onorato said.“The law doesn’t let you rewrite the dictionary,” Onorato said.Keilty, in his opening, acknowledged to jurors that evidence would show the FBI made errors in conducting its investigations, but he said that shouldn’t exonerate Danchenko.“A bank robber doesn’t get a pass just because the security guard was asleep,” Keilty said.The first prosecution witness was the FBI analyst Brian Auten, who testified that information from the Steele dossier had been used to support a surveillance warrant against a Trump campaign official, Carter Page.Under questioning from Durham, Auten testified that the dossier had been used to bolster the surveillance application even though the FBI couldn’t corroborate its allegations.Auten said the FBI had checked with other government agencies to see if they had corroboration but nothing had come back. Auten and other FBI agents had even met with Steele in the United Kingdom in 2016 and offered him as much as $1m if he could supply corroboration for the allegations in the dossier, but none had been provided.Danchenko is the third person to be prosecuted by the special counsel John Durham, who was appointed to investigate the origins of “Crossfire Hurricane” – the designation given to the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Trump’s Russia connections. It is also the first of Durham’s cases that delves deeply into the origins of the dossier, which Trump derided as fake news and a political witch-hunt.TopicsFBIDonald TrumpDemocratsRussiaUS elections 2016US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Pentagon spokesperson tamps down concerns over nuclear ‘armageddon’

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      Pentagon spokesperson tamps down concerns over nuclear ‘armageddon’ John Kirby says Biden’s warning about threat of a nuclear attack from Russia were not based on specific new information The US military’s top spokesperson tamped down concerns of an imminent nuclear threat from Russia, days after Joe Biden warned of a potential nuclear “armageddon”.Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser this week, Biden talked bluntly about the threat of a nuclear attack from Russia. “We have not faced the prospect of armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” the president said. He added that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming” after invading Ukraine earlier this year.Echoing comments from the White House earlier this week, top Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said Biden’s comments were not based on specific new information.“His comments were not based on new or fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons,” Kirby told Martha Raddatz in an interview on ABC News’ This Week. “Quite frankly, we don’t have any information that he has made that kind of decision. Nor have we seen anything that would give us pause to reconsider our own strategic nuclear posture.”U.S. has not “seen anything that would give us pause to reconsider our own strategic nuclear posture” following Putin’s threats in Ukraine, NSC spokesman Kirby tells @MarthaRaddatz. “We don’t have any indication that he has made that kind of decision.” https://t.co/OpYwwOBhrk pic.twitter.com/RHNNlj06Ar— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 9, 2022
      Biden’s remarks invoking Armageddon drew a sharp rebuke from former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, a member of the Donald Trump White House’s cabinet who is mulling a 2024 presidential run.“Those comments were reckless” and “a terrible risk to the American people”, Pompeo said on the Republican-friendly Fox News network.Kirby on Sunday also declined to weigh on a recent explosion on the Kerch Bridge linking Russia and Crimea, the Ukrainian territory under Russian control.The explosion dealt a blow to Russian military logistics and embarrassed Putin, for whom the bridge had symbolic personal importance. Ukraine has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but it has been celebrated by senior leaders in the country.“We don’t really have anything more to add to the reports about the explosion on the bridge,” Kirby said. “I just don’t have anything more to contribute to that this morning.”Kirby also addressed Biden’s comments last week that the US was trying to find where Putin could get an “off ramp” to the war on Ukraine.“Mr Putin started this war and Mr Putin could end it today, simply by moving his troops out of the country,” Kirby said. “He’s the one who chose to start this conflict again and he can choose to end it.”Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February. But Ukraine’s defenders in recent weeks have taken back some of the territories it had lost control of during the invasion.With its hold on Ukraine weakening, Putin recently ordered the mobilization of reservists to reinforce the invasion, which ignited protests in dozens of cities across Russia and has led to long lines at its land borders with other countries.TopicsUkraineJoe BidenVladimir PutinRussiaUS politicsUS militaryEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Indonesia Investigates Its Soccer Tragedy

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      Plus Brazil’s elections move to a runoff and Ukraine surges forward in the Donbas.Relatives mourn victims killed at a soccer match in Malang, Indonesia.Mast Irham/EPA, via ShutterstockAnger mounts in IndonesiaAn independent commission in Indonesia will investigate the deaths of at least 125 people, including 33 children, who were killed at a soccer game on Saturday. After soccer fans at a stadium in Malang rushed onto the field following a 3-2 home-game defeat, the police fired tear gas into the stands. Panic ensued.The authorities have interviewed 18 officers who fired tear gas. Military personnel who were seen hitting fans would face punishment, according to the national police chief. The police chief in Malang was among nine local officers suspended yesterday.The deadly clash has inspired widespread accusations that the police helped turn minor unrest into one of the deadliest stadium catastrophes in history. Indonesia said that officers suspected of wrongful violence would face criminal charges.New details: Many people were trampled as they rushed for the exits, only two of which were open, according to a human rights official. Some victims died in the stadium’s changing rooms, where players tried to help them.Analysis: Members of Indonesia’s police system are almost never held accountable for their actions. Under the government of President Joko Widodo, officers have used brute force to suppress crowds, accepted bribes and largely operated with impunity.Background: At the stadium in Malang, tear gas fired by the police had also turned deadly in 2018.Brazilians use soccer jerseys as a show of support for Jair Bolsonaro, the president.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesA runoff in BrazilBrazil’s national elections went to a runoff after Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president, outperformed in the polls. He received 43.23 percent of the vote; his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former leftist president, received 48.4 percent.The two political titans will face off again on Oct. 30, for what is widely regarded as the most important vote in decades for the largest nation in Latin America. Over the next four weeks, Bolsonaro will have to make up ground on Lula.The election is considered across the world as a major test for democracy. For months, Bolsonaro has criticized, without any evidence, electronic voting machines as rife with fraud, suggesting that the only way he would lose is if the election were rigged.The State of the WarAnnexation Push: After Moscow’s proxies conducted a series of sham referendums in the Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk, President Vladimir V. Putin declared the four territories to be part of Russia. Western leaders, including President Biden in the United States, denounced the annexation as illegal.Retreat From Key City: Russian forces withdrew from the strategically important city of Lyman, in Donetsk Province, on Oct. 1. The retreat was a significant setback for Moscow, coming just a day after Mr. Putin declared the region to be Russian territory.Putin’s Nuclear Threats: For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, top Russian leaders are making explicit nuclear threats and officials in Washington are gaming out scenarios should Mr. Putin decide to use a tactical nuclear weapon.Russia’s Draft: The Kremlin has acknowledged that its new military draft is rife with problems, as protests have erupted across Russia, recruitment centers have been attacked and thousands of men have left the country.Issues: Brazil faces environmental threats, rising hunger, a sputtering economy and a deeply polarized population. The two candidates radically differ in their approaches to each issue.Region: A victory by Lula would extend a string of left-wing victories across Latin America, fueled by anti-incumbent backlash. Brazil could become the sixth of the region’s seven largest countries to elect a leftist leader since 2018.After capturing Lyman over the weekend, Ukrainian forces moved toward new positions.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesUkraine advances in the DonbasRussian forces in Ukraine were on the run across the frontline yesterday, as the Ukrainian military pressed toward the eastern Donbas region and made gains in the south.Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces captured Lyman, in the Donetsk region, before word of Vladimir Putin’s illegal annexation of the territory a day earlier could even reach its residents.With Russian troops in disarray on the battlefield, the Kremlin fared no better. It acknowledged that it does not even know the boundaries of two regions it recently declared to be part of Russia — a move that Kyiv and Western leaders said was illegal.“In terms of the borders, we’re going to continue to consult with the population of these regions,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, told reporters yesterday.Russia also continued to struggle with its military draft. Half of the several thousand residents who had been drafted in the far eastern region of Khabarovsk were returned home. The region’s governor, Mikhail Degtyarev, said they “did not meet the criteria for military service.”Background: Since Putin announced a “partial mobilization” last month, protests have erupted across Russia, recruitment centers have been attacked and thousands of men have fled the country.In other updates:Denmark said that the Nord Stream pipelines have stopped leaking. The cause remains unknown, but political leaders in Europe and the U.S. have speculated it was an act of sabotage by Russia.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificBrittany Higgins was 26 when she accused a colleague, Bruce Lehrmann, of rape.Jamila Toderas/Getty ImagesBrittany Higgins, a former employee of Australia’s government, said that a colleague raped her in the country’s Parliament in 2019. His trial begins today.The U.S. is preparing to announce new measures to try to cut China’s access to advanced semiconductor technology.Heavy rains are worsening floods in Thailand, The Associated Press reports.The Associated Press found that as many as 52 people died in a suicide bombing last week in Kabul, more than twice the Taliban’s official count of 25.World NewsThe last Supreme Court term ended with a bombshell decision that eliminated the right to abortion.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn the U.S., a new Supreme Court term began yesterday. The six-justice conservative supermajority is expected to continue steering the court right on issues including affirmative action and gay rights.Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, reversed plans to cut tax rates on high earners, after her proposal sent the British pound into a tailspin.Oil prices jumped yesterday after news that OPEC Plus may cut production. The move would reverse increases that had pushed prices down.What Else Is HappeningSvante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for sequencing the Neanderthal genome.Sacheen Littlefeather, the Apache activist and actress who declined Marlon Brando’s Academy Award on his behalf in 1973, has died at 75.Kim Kardashian will pay $1.26 million as part of a settlement for not disclosing that she had been paid to promote a crypto token.A Morning ReadFor Kana Komatsubara, 26, a nail stylist, a tiny apartment offered a gateway to long-deferred independence from her parents.Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesSome young people in Japan are choosing to live in teeny tiny apartments. They’re stylish and located in trendy neighborhoods near subway stations, perfect for those who work long hours and are rarely at home.“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” said Yugo Kinoshita, 19, who uses a lint roller to clean his floor.Lives lived: Antonio Inoki, a Japanese wrestler who faced Muhammad Ali in an anticlimactic stunt match in 1976, later became an unlikely diplomat. He died at 79.ARTS AND IDEASA rabbi for allRabbi Delphine Horvilleur is one of only five female rabbis in all of France. And she has a particular preoccupation with death — one she attributes to officiating at least two funerals a week and being a grandchild of Holocaust survivors.In 2020, when the coronavirus forced Paris to shut down, she found herself conducting funerals over Zoom, while her two youngest children watched cartoons in the next room. With Passover under lockdown, she decided to deliver weekly talks about Jewish texts. Her reflections on the Talmud, Jewish mysticism and death have since reached well beyond her congregation of 1,200 in the French capital, drawing thousands of Jews, Muslims, Christians, believers and nonbelievers.“She is my rabbi,” said Edith Gillet, 49, a French atheist with a Catholic grandmother and no plans to convert. “I got hooked on her because she’s so inspirational in such dark times,” Gillet, who watches Rabbi Horvilleur from her home in California, said. “I’m drawn more to her philosophy than to any notion of God.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookArmando Rafael for The New York TimesMake Yossy Arefi’s peanut-butter chocolate-chip cookies in just 30 minutes.What to WatchThe British filmmaker Peter Strickland crafts strange, unconventional cinematic universes. His latest, “Flux Gourmet,” reveals his affinity with sound in new ways.RomanceDating with chronic illness involves unique challenges.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Thai currency (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Jessica and AmeliaP.S. The Times won five Emmys, and three Gerald Loeb Awards for business journalism.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on Latino voters in the U.S.You can reach Jessica, Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Petraeus: US would destroy Russia’s troops if Putin uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine

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      Petraeus: US would destroy Russia’s troops if Putin uses nuclear weapons in UkraineFormer CIA director and retired army general says Moscow’s leader is ‘desperate’ and ‘battlefield reality he faces is irreversible’ The US and its allies would destroy Russia’s troops and equipment in Ukraine – as well as sink its Black sea fleet – if Russian president Vladimir Putin uses nuclear weapons in the country, former CIA director and retired four-star army general David Petraeus warned on Sunday. Petreaus said that he had not spoken to national security adviser Jake Sullivan on the likely US response to nuclear escalation from Russia, which administration officials have said has been repeatedly communicated to Moscow.He told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a Nato – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black sea.”The warning comes days after Putin expressed views that many have interpreted as a threat of a larger war between Russia and the west.Asked if the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine would bring America and Nato into the war, Petreaus said that it would not be a situation triggering the alliance’s Article 5, which calls for a collective defense. That is because Ukraine is not part of Nato – nonetheless, a “US and Nato response” would be in order, Petreaus said.Petreaus acknowledged that the likelihood that radiation would extend to Nato countries under the Article 5 umbrella could perhaps be construed as an attack on a Nato member.“Perhaps you can make that case,” he said. “The other case is that this is so horrific that there has to be a response – it cannot go unanswered.”Yet, Petreaus added, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way.”Nonetheless, with pressure mounting on Putin after Ukrainian gains in the east of the country under last week’s annexation declaration and resistance to mobilization efforts within Russia mounting, Petreaus said Moscow’s leader was “desperate”.“The battlefield reality he faces is, I think, irreversible,” he said. “No amount of shambolic mobilization, which is the only way to describe it; no amount of annexation; no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can actually get him out of this particular situation.“At some point there’s going to have to be recognition of that. At some point there’s going to have to be some kind of beginning of negotiations, as [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy has said, will be the ultimate end.”But, Petreaus warned, “It can still get worse for Putin and for Russia. And even the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield won’t change this at all.” Still, he added, “You have to take the threat seriously.”Senator Marco Rubio, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told CNN that Putin was down to two choices: established defensive lines or withdraw and lose territory.Rubio said he believed it “quite possible” that Putin could strike distribution points where US and allied supplies are entering Ukraine, including inside Poland. The senator acknowledged the nuclear threat, but he said most worries about “a Russian attack inside Nato territory, for example, aiming at the airport in Poland or some other distribution point”.“Nato will have to respond to it,” he said. “How it will respond, I think a lot of it will depend on the nature of the attack and the scale and scope of it.”But as a senator privy to Pentagon briefings, Rubio resisted being drawn on whether he’d seen evidence that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.“Certainly, the risk is probably higher today than it was a month ago,” Rubio said, predicting that Russia would probably take an intermediate step.“He may strike one of these logistical points. And that logistical point may not be inside … Ukraine. To me, that is the area that I focus on the most, because it has a tactical aspect to it. And I think he probably views it as less escalatory. Nato may not.”TopicsUkraineUS politicsRussiaEuropeVladimir PutinnewsReuse this content More

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      U.S. and Russia Duel Over Leadership of U.N. Tech Group

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      Member countries vote on Thursday for an American or a Russian to lead the International Telecommunication Union, which sets standards for new technologies.WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia are tussling over control of a United Nations organization that sets standards for new technologies, part of a global battle between democracies and authoritarian nations over the direction of the internet.American officials are pushing more than 190 other member countries of the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency that develops technical standards for technology like cellphone networks and video streaming, to vote on Thursday for Doreen Bogdan-Martin, a longtime American employee, to lead the organization. She is running against Rashid Ismailov, a former Russian government official.The American campaign has been especially intense. President Biden endorsed Ms. Bogdan-Martin last week, capping months of public and private lobbying on her behalf by top administration figures and major U.S. corporate groups.Whoever leads the I.T.U. will have power to influence the rules by which new technologies are developed around the world. While the organization is not well known, it has set key guidelines in recent years for how video streaming works and coordinates the global use of the radio frequencies that power cellphone networks.The election has become a symbol of the growing global fight between a democratic approach to the internet, which is lightly regulated and interconnected around the world, and authoritarian countries that want to control their citizens’ access to the web. Russia has built a system that allows it to do just that, monitoring what Russians say online about topics like the invasion of Ukraine, while the United States largely does not regulate the content on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.Some worry that Russia and China, which also has closed off its internet, could use the I.T.U. to reshape the web in their images. The two countries put out a joint statement last year calling for preserving “the sovereign right of states to regulate the national segment of the internet.” They said they were emphasizing “the need to enhance the role of the International Telecommunication Union and strengthen the representation of the two countries in its governing bodies.”Doreen Bogdan-Martin of the United States at the opening session of the International Telecommunication Union in Bucharest, Romania, on Monday.Andreea Alexandru/Associated PressErica Barks-Ruggles, a State Department official and former ambassador to Rwanda who is representing the United States at an I.T.U. conference this week, said the organization would help determine if people around the world could have affordable access to new technology and communicate across borders, and “whether their governments are able to disconnect them from the internet or not.”“That’s why we’re putting time, money, energy into this,” she said.The I.T.U. was founded in 1865 to tackle issues involving telegraph machines. It traditionally focused on physical networks rather than the internet, but has become involved in setting standards for everything from smart home devices to connected cars. The agency’s plenipotentiary conference, which takes place every four years, began on Monday in Bucharest, Romania.Last week, Mr. Biden said Ms. Bogdan-Martin “possesses the integrity, experience and vision necessary to transform the digital landscape.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other senior administration officials have also backed her candidacy.At a recent conference in Kigali, Rwanda, the United States hosted a reception at the city’s conference center where attendees heard a pitch from Ms. Bogdan-Martin, saw a video endorsement from Vice President Kamala Harris and listened to music from a local band.In response to emailed questions, Ms. Bogdan-Martin said she hoped her leadership of the I.T.U. could expand global access to the internet and improve transparency at the organization. She said she hoped to lead in “bringing an open, secure, reliable and interoperable internet to all people around the world.”Moscow is supporting Mr. Ismailov, a former deputy minister for telecom and mass communications for the Russian government and a former executive at Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company that American officials worry could leak data from its products to Beijing.The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.The proxy battle of the election may be the first of many more.“I see the U.S. really engaged in a new kind of foreign policy attack, where they see our adversaries and our competitors are wanting to change the rules of the game to shut off access,” said Karen Kornbluh, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. More

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      Jake Sullivan: US will act ‘decisively’ if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine

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      Jake Sullivan: US will act ‘decisively’ if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine US national security adviser says: ‘Any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia’ America and its allies will act “decisively” if Russia uses a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday, reaffirming the Joe Biden White House’s previous response to mounting concerns that Vladimir Putin’s threats are in increased danger of being realized.“We have communicated directly, privately and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia, that the US and our allies will respond decisively, and we have been clear and specific about what that will entail,” Sullivan told CBS’s Face The Nation.Sullivan said that the Russian leader Putin had been “waving around the nuclear card at various points through this conflict”, and it was a matter that Biden’s administration has “to take deadly seriously because it is a matter of paramount seriousness – the possible use of nuclear weapons for the first time since the second world war”.In a separate interview with CBS, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was not certain that Putin was bluffing with nuclear threats. “Maybe yesterday it was bluff. Now, it could be a reality,” he said. “He wants to scare the whole world.”The administration’s security chief said that Russia’s nuclear threat against Ukraine, including extending its nuclear umbrella over eastern parts of the country that are still being contested seven months after its invasion, would not deflect the US and its allies.“We will continue to support Ukraine in its efforts to defend its country and defend its democracy,” Sullivan said, pointing to more than $15bn in weapons, including air defense systems, hundreds of artillery pieces and rounds of artillery, that the US has supplied to Ukraine.He said that Moscow’s mobilization of troops was a “sham referenda in the occupied regions” that would not deter the US. “What Putin has done is not exactly a sign of strength or confidence – frankly, it’s a sign that they’re struggling badly on the Russian side,” Sullivan said.But, Sullivan added, it is “too soon to make comprehensive predictions” about a collapse of Russian forces.“I think what we are seeing are signs of unbelievable struggle among the Russians – you’ve got low morale, where the soldiers don’t want to fight. And who can blame them because they want no part of Putin’s war of conquest in their neighboring country?”Sullivan continued: “Russia is struggling, but Russia still remains a dangerous foe, and capable of great brutality.” He alluded to mass burial sites containing hundreds of graves that Ukrainian forces found after recapturing Izium from Russia and said, “We continue to take that threat seriously.”He added that the US, the International Atomic Agency and Ukraine nuclear regulators are working together to ensure there is no “melt-down” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in eastern Ukraine.The Russians, he said, had been “consistently implying that there may be some kind of accident at this plant”.Reactors at the plant, Sullivan said, had been put into “cold storage” to “try to make sure there is no threat posed by a melt-down or something else at the plant. But it’s something we all have to keep a close eye on.”Separately, Sullivan said US criticism of a crackdown on mounting protests in Iran after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini would not affect the administration’s offer to lift sanctions on Iran as part of the effort to reach a deal on nuclear enrichment.“The fact that we are in negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program is in no way impacting our willingness and our vehemence in speaking out about what has been happening on the streets of Iran,” he said.Last week, Biden told the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York that “we stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights”. The US president’s remarks came shortly after a defiant speech by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.In his remarks on Sunday, Sullivan said the US had taken “tangible steps” to sanction the morality police who caused the death of Mahsa Amini.“We’ve taken steps to make it easier for Iranians to be able to get access to the internet and communications technologies to talk to one another and talk to the world and we will do all that we can to support the brave people, the brave women, of Iran,” Sullivan said.But Sullivan refused to be drawn out on whether the US would change its policy on lifting sanctions in exchange for a nuclear deal in light of the protests.“We’re talking about diplomacy to prevent Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon,” he said. “If we … succeed …, the world, America and its allies will be safer.”But the pursuit of a nuclear deal, Sullivan said, “would not stop us in any way from pushing back and speaking out on Iran’s brutal repression of its citizens and its women. We can and will do both.”TopicsUS politicsJake SullivanUkraineRussiaIranBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      In Ukraine’s South, Fierce Fighting and Deadly Costs

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      AT THE KHERSON FRONT, Ukraine — The commander banged on the door furiously.“I need help!” he shouted.When Tetiana Kozyr opened up, the commander rushed in, carrying a young soldier on his shoulders. She said the young man was sunburned, thin and gravely wounded.The Ukrainians were trying to recapture her village, the smallest dot on the most detailed military maps. Russian forces had just blown up three Ukrainian tanks. Flames leaped off the roofs of neighboring houses.The commander laid the young man gently down on Ms. Kozyr’s kitchen floor and then ripped open a bandage pack and thrust it against his chest and neck, which were badly bleeding. Ms. Kozyr hovered over them, feeling helpless and terrified in her own kitchen, watching the commander try to save the young man’s life.“He looked so scared,” said Ms. Kozyr, who lived on a small farm and recounted this scene, which was corroborated by others from her village. “I had to turn away.”Outside her house, several other Ukrainian soldiers lay face down in the grass.Ukraine’s southern offensive was the most highly anticipated military action of the summer. Forecast by Ukrainian officials for weeks, its goal was to push the Russians back from a strategic region along the coast, bolster the confidence of a battered citizenry and prove to allies that Ukraine could make good use of Western-supplied weapons.That push forward has continued, even as Ukraine has made a more dramatic surge this month in the northeast, routing Russian forces. Ukraine is regaining territory in the south, though slowly, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is concerned enough about suffering an embarrassing setback that he has refused to let his commanders retreat from the city of Kherson, according to American officials.A Ukrainian tank this month in a village in southern Ukraine.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesIhor Kozub, the commander of a volunteer military unit near the southern city of Mykolaiv, said the Ukrainians were suffering “great losses” because “we don’t have ammunition.”Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesBut overall, the south remains a different story from the northeast. Interviews with dozens of commanders, ordinary soldiers, medics, village leaders and civilians who recently escaped the conflict zone portray a more difficult and costly campaign: The fighting is grinding, grueling and steep in casualties, perhaps the most heartbreaking battle in Ukraine right now.Russian forces are deeply dug in here, and this weekend, the Kremlin is trying to cement its gains by holding highly contentious referendums in occupied areas to annex them. Ukrainian officials say they have little choice but to attack.They are racing to recapture territory before the October rains turn the roads here into impassable sludge. And they need to keep showing to the world, especially before a nasty winter sets in and tests their allies’ resolve, that they can push the Russians out.The Ukrainian government does not usually disclose casualty figures, but the soldiers and commanders interviewed in the past week portrayed the battlefield losses as “high” and “massive.” They described large offensives in which columns of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles tried to cross open fields only to be pounded mercilessly by Russian artillery and blown up by Russian mines.One Ukrainian soldier, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to publicly discuss casualties, said that during a recent assault, “we lost 50 guys in two hours.” In another place, said the soldier, who works closely with different frontline units, “hundreds” of Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded while trying to take a single village, which is still in Russian hands.Across the occupied south — a wide crescent of fields, villages and cities along the Dnipro River and the Black Sea — the Russians have built formidable defenses: trenches zigzagging along irrigation canals; fortified bunkers; pillboxes; foxholes; even tank trenches carved out of the earth by bulldozers and covered with concrete slabs that enable the Russians to blast shells from positions that are very difficult for the Ukrainians to hit.Some people in southern villages have spent much of the past six months living in basement shelters like these.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesCountless homes have been damaged, including this one, where the remains of a rocket are still stuck in the fence.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesThe Russians are determined to keep this chunk of Ukraine because it guards the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. It also serves as a nexus of vital waterways and energy facilities, like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s biggest.Despite the high stakes, there is little face-to-face combat between the two sides, like there was in the early days of the war in the suburbs of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Each Ukrainian soldier along the southern front carries an assault rifle, but few have fired their weapon.In the south, death comes at long range. It is indiscriminate and total. When the artillery shells hit, young men press themselves to the earth, hands cupped over their ears, mouths open to let the blast wave ripple through their bodies.“This is a different kind of war,” said Iryna Vereshchagina, a volunteer doctor working near the front lines. “We’re attacking the Russians but there’s a big payment for this.”She said that of the hundreds of battlefield casualties she has treated, she has not seen a single gunshot wound.“So many people are getting blown up,” she said.She looked down at her boots.“Sometimes,” she said, “there are just pieces of people left.”Russian shelling has destroyed much of the landscape in southern Ukraine, gouging countless craters in the earth.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesIryna Vereshchagina, left, a volunteer doctor working near the front lines, with her colleagues in southern Ukraine.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesPart of the reason Ukraine is facing stiff resistance in the south is because of its highly effective information campaign about the counteroffensive. The signals it sent were so convincing that the Russians hastily redeployed tanks, artillery and thousands of troops, including some of their better trained units, from the northeast to the south.That left the Kharkiv region wide open for the taking, which is what happened two and a half weeks ago. But it also left the south defended by tens of thousands of well-equipped Russian soldiers. And going on the attack is always more perilous than defending an entrenched position, especially when the enemy knows the other side is coming.All of this has unsettled some Ukrainian soldiers fighting along the front line.“The problem is that we are advancing with no artillery preparation, without suppressing their firing positions,” said Ihor Kozub, the commander of a volunteer military unit near the southern city of Mykolaiv.He said the Ukrainian army was suffering “great losses” because “we don’t have ammunition,” and he begged for the United States to send more.“All these heroic attacks are made with so much blood,” he said. “It’s terrible.”A military spokeswoman defended the Ukrainian strategy.“The enemy’s superiority in artillery does not decide the outcome,” said Nataliia Humeniuk, the head of the communications division for Ukraine’s southern command. “History knows cases of unique battles where the quality of combat was decisive. Not the number of weapons.”She did not provide information about the number of casualties, but Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently said that Ukraine was losing 50 soldiers a day.At a shelter in Mykolaiv, a southern Ukrainian city, people who recently fled besieged villages gathered for lunch.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesCivilians lined up for fresh water in Mykolaiv.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesThe battle for the south is a lot different from Ukraine’s lightning offensive in the northeast, where the Russians troops were clearly not prepared. The Ukrainians have recaptured only a few hundred square miles in the south, less than 10 times what they recaptured in the northeast in a few days.But Ukrainian commanders in the south always knew it was going to be a grinding battle. The strategy has been to pinch off Russian supply lines by cutting roads and destroying bridges, slowly strangling the Russians’ ability to bring in food, fuel and ammunition.One American soldier serving with a Ukrainian unit in Mykolaiv said it was no small feat to take villages from the Russians when the Russians knew they were coming for months.“It might look like a slog,” he said, insisting on anonymity for security reasons. “But for us, it’s progress.”Weeks before the counteroffensive began, Ukrainian troops, including a sniper known as Pirate, started eyeing targets.Pirate is his code name — he did not want to divulge his real name. He is 29 years old with shining blue eyes, meaty shoulders and a skull-and-crossbones patch stuck on his chest plate. For three days, he said, he lay on his stomach squinting through a scope at a squad of Russian soldiers. They were digging fortifications in a village near Kherson. Pirate and another sniper hid in a tree line almost a mile away.At last, Pirate said, they identified the officer in charge, who was wearing a white T-shirt. Pirate and his partner calibrated their sights, gauged the wind — a soft, side wind — and counted: one, two, three. Then they squeezed their triggers.Their two bullets flew across the open fields, outracing the speed of sound. Before he even heard the crack of the rifles, the Russian officer crumpled to the ground.Ukrainian volunteer soldiers patrol in southern Ukraine. In a few weeks, the October rains will drench this area and turn the roads into impassable sludge.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesUkrainian soldiers in the trenches this month. Commanders say they always knew it would be a grinding battle in the south.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times“I try not to think about who he was,” Pirate said.He spoke from a demolished building near the front lines that has been turned into a base. This is the picture of many southern towns. They have been utterly destroyed: the schools, the homes with blown-out roofs, the power poles lying in the muddy roads, the pine trees split apart, their branches hanging down like broken arms.Even the earth itself has been gouged by missiles and rockets, leaving moonlike craters everywhere, some with steel fins still sticking out. The smell of dried sunflowers lingers in the air. So many sunflower farms, a major industry, lie burned and deserted.Ms. Kozyr, who had watched the wounded soldier lying on her kitchen floor, said her village had been destroyed, too. It used to be a hamlet of a few hundred people who tended small farms and raised livestock. Now no one is left. The Russians captured it in March and the Ukrainians fought hard to liberate it at the end of August, when they officially announced the beginning of the offensive. She fled a few days later and now lives in a displaced persons shelter in the city of Zaporizhzhia.She said that when the commander first arrived with the wounded soldier, she panicked.“I was yelling at him: ‘Why did you bring him here? The Russians will kill us all!’” she said.But the commander just stepped through the doorway, desperate to find shelter. The village was on fire, in the middle of two armies blasting each other.She shrunk back as her husband and the commander pressed bandages to the young man’s wounds. Shrapnel had sliced through his back and lungs. Her kitchen floor was soon covered in blood.That night, she and her husband slept in their cellar. The commander curled up next to the wounded soldier on the kitchen floor.When Ms. Kozyr stepped outside the next morning, to check on her calf and pigs, she passed by the kitchen and peered through the window.The soldier’s hands were curled, his body stiff. He was dead.She started crying at the memory of it, pulling a small rag out of her pocket and wiping her eyes. But she did not question the counteroffensive.“It needed to be done,” she said. And then she repeated herself, a little more softly. “It needed to be done.”Smoke and debris after what was likely an airstrike near a Ukrainian military position on Tuesday. The Russians have much more ammunition than the Ukrainians and pound their forces every day. Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesOleksandra Mykolyshyn More