Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

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      Bob Woodward to Publish ‘War’ This Fall

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      Woodward, an author and journalist, has written more than 20 best selling books. His latest will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East, and the battle for the U.S. presidency.The author and journalist Bob Woodward will publish a new book this fall called “War,” his publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced on Wednesday. The book, which will be released on Oct. 15, will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East and the “raw cage-fight of politics” of the 2024 election.“For more than 50 years, Woodward has done groundbreaking reporting on every president, starting with Richard Nixon,” Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster and Woodward’s editor, said in a statement. “His work on the power of the presidency is unrivaled. With ‘War,’ Woodward illustrates the dramatic contrast he sees between Donald Trump and his opponents for the presidency — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, making this a must-read before heading to the polls.”Simon & Schuster said Woodward’s new book would offer a behind the scenes look at President Biden’s efforts to manage the war in Ukraine and contain the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, trying to deter the use of nuclear weapons and avoid “a rapid slide into World War III.”Woodward, an associate editor at The Washington Post, has been part of that newsroom for more than 50 years. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, the first for his coverage of Watergate and the second for coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Woodward has written more than 20 best selling books, according to the publisher; 15 of them have been No. 1 New York Times best sellers. More

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      In Prisoner Swap, Echoes of Putin’s K.G.B. Past

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      A sprawling exchange with the West underscored the Russian president’s loyalty to his intelligence services. It also showed his continued interest in making deals.As he sat in a Russian jail for five months, the human rights champion Oleg Orlov sometimes grew wistful: What if he walked free someday as part of a deal between Russia and the West?The chances that President Vladimir V. Putin would make a prisoner swap like that seemed as remote as a “star twinkling far, far, far away on the horizon,” Mr. Orlov, 71, said this week. The dire state of the relationship between Moscow and the West, and their diverging interests, appeared to rule out the kind of detailed negotiation necessary for such a complicated deal.But last week, it happened, in the most far-reaching prisoner swap with Moscow since the Cold War: Mr. Putin and his ally Belarus freed Mr. Orlov and 15 other Russians, Germans and Americans in exchange for a convicted assassin and seven other Russians released by the West. It was a moment when Mr. Orlov saw anew how core Mr. Putin’s past with the K.G.B., the Soviet spy agency, was to the Russian president’s identity — and to the sort of country he’s trying to shape Russia into.The swap happened because “Putin is a K.G.B. man, an F.S.B. man,” Mr. Orlov said in a phone interview four days after two private jets carrying him and other released prisoners landed in Cologne, Germany. Espionage is a subject Mr. Orlov knows well, having spent decades studying the crimes of the Soviet secret police as a co-founder of the Memorial human rights group, which was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.The Russian human rights champion Oleg Orlov, shown in court in Moscow in February, was freed in the exchange last week.Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Putin served as a K.G.B. agent in Dresden, East Germany, in the 1980s and ran the F.S.B., its domestic intelligence successor agency, in the 1990s. To the Russian leader, Mr. Orlov said, showing loyalty to the F.S.B. and other Russian intelligence services by winning their agents’ freedom trumped the political risk of releasing opposition figures whom the Kremlin had branded as traitors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can Freed Russian Dissidents Help Energize Opposition Movement?

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      The release of activists like Ilya Yashin gives new hope to an movement in which various groups are often at war with each other. But many have doubts.Among Russians who oppose Vladimir V. Putin and his brutal Ukraine invasion, hopes are high that the Russian dissidents freed last week as part of a prisoner exchange with the West will breathe new life into a fragmented opposition force.But if it promises an injection of energy into a movement struggling to effect change inside of Russia, it reignites a question older than the Russian Revolution — where is the more effective place to advocate for democratic change: from a prison cell inside of Russia, or in exile?Either way, the challenge is daunting. For years, decades even, Russia’s opposition has been divided and beset with infighting; the Ukraine invasion has only exacerbated the grievances. And that was before the most influential opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony in February.The most prominent dissidents who remained — Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, both freed last week — were serving long sentences, but they gained credibility from their willingness to forego the comforts of exile to speak their minds as inmates in Russia’s harsh prison system.They were exchanged along with Andrei S. Pivovarov, who ran Open Russia, an organization founded by the exiled former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and three regional politicians with ties to Mr. Navalny. Its mission is to support Russian civil society.In an interview over the weekend, Mr. Yashin lamented that he had not wanted to leave Russia, and that his release, which he called an “illegal expulsion,” deprived his words of the moral authority they carried from prison. But his supporters expressed cautious optimism in the days after the exchange, because of his unifying power and that of Mr. Kara-Murza, who won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for columns he had written in prison for The Washington Post.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukraine Has Received F-16 Fighter Jets, Zelensky Says

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky did not say whether the jets had already flown combat missions. A shortage of trained pilots and a limited number of jets will constrain their immediate impact.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Sunday that his army had received a first batch of F-16 fighter jets. The long-awaited arrival of the Western-supplied jets should bolster the country’s defenses, although Kyiv appears to have received too few of them so far to have an immediate impact on the battlefield.“F-16s are in Ukraine. We did it,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video posted on social media networks showing him at an air base addressing and meeting Ukrainian pilots. He was standing in front of two F-16s, and two more flew overhead as he spoke.At the very least, the arrival of the jets will boost Ukrainians’ morale, which has been dampened by months of slow but steady Russian advances on the battlefield and devastating attacks on the country’s power grid.Mr. Zelensky said Ukrainian pilots “have already started using them for our country,” but he did not say whether they had already flown combat missions in Ukraine. Nor did he say how many jets had arrived in the country.Ukraine hopes the F-16s, highly versatile aircraft equipped with advanced radar systems and a variety of weapons, will help turn the tide on the battlefield, where Russia has held the upper hand for much of the past year.The presence of the jets will pose a new threat to Russian pilots and help deter them from entering Ukrainian airspace to attack troops on the front line and in cities. The F-16s are also expected to improve Ukraine’s ability to shoot down Russian missiles, easing the pressure on its weakened air defense systems.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Long Johns, Forensics and a Bound Russian Killer: Inside the Big Prisoner Swap

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      The complex choreography caught some prisoners being freed in their robes and slippers, unaware of their fates, and required forensic experts to make positive identifications. The private jet that took off from southwest Germany on Thursday afternoon was carrying a group that may have never expected to be confined together: police officers, doctors, intelligence agents, a senior aide to Germany’s chancellor — and a convicted Russian assassin.In the back of the plane, the assassin, Vadim Krasikov, sat with his hands and feet bound and wearing a helmet that covered his face; he was not heard uttering a word on the entire flight.At the same time, a Russian government jet was also headed for Ankara, Turkey’s capital, carrying officers from the F.S.B. intelligence agency and 16 prisoners being released by Russia and Belarus. At one point, one of the F.S.B. escorts made what seemed like a bad joke to the two best-known Russian dissidents on board: “Don’t have too much fun out there, because Krasikov could come back for you.”This account of the tense hours surrounding the exchange — the biggest between Moscow and the West since the Cold War — is based on new details revealed by Western government officials involved in the process, and on early testimony from the Russian political prisoners released as part of the deal. The swap freed Mr. Krasikov, the American journalist Evan Gershkovich and 22 others in a complex seven-country deal that required intricate planning and timing. The successful transfer highlighted the ability of some of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies to cooperate on a distinct operation of shared interest, even as Russia and the West engage in a tense standoff over the war in Ukraine.A photograph released by the Russian state news media showing the convicted killer Vadim Krasikov, center right in hat, at a Moscow airport on Thursday.Mikhail Voskresensky/Sputnik, via ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fencing Feud Highlights Ukrainian-Russian Animosity at Olympics

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      The war has torn apart old alliances and heightened the acrimony. A Ukrainian fencer is competing after her refusal to shake hands with a Russian rival got her barred from the world championships.Olha Kharlan of Ukraine shouted in celebration under the vaulted glass dome of the Grand Palais on Monday, after an early round victory in her pursuit of a fifth career Olympic medal in saber fencing.She had reached the semifinals by late afternoon. But just her mere presence confirmed that this niche sport, perhaps more than any other, illustrates the acrimony and caustic feuding that have resulted from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Kharlan, 33, was disqualified from the world fencing championships last summer for refusing to shake hands with her Russian opponent. But Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee and himself a 1976 Olympic fencing champion, gave Kharlan an exemption to participate in the Paris Games, citing her “unique situation.”There she was on Monday, competing in the Olympics, while Russia was absent from the biggest international event in fencing, a sport in which it has long been a power athletically and administratively.Ohla Kharlan, right, competing against Shihomi Fukushima of Japan in the Grand Palais on Monday.Andrew Medichini/Associated PressWith Russia banned from these Games because of its invasion, only 15 of its athletes are competing in Paris, all designated as neutral, without the accompaniment of the country’s flag or national anthem. There are none in fencing, a huge blow to the country’s Olympic prestige given that Russia and the former Soviet Union rank behind only Italy, France and Hungary in fencing’s overall medal count.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As F-16s Arrive, Ukraine Still Faces Steep Challenges in the Skies

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      Ukraine wants to deploy its first F-16 jets this summer, hoping to counter Russia’s dominance in the air. But stepped-up Russian bombing attacks on air bases complicate the effort.The surveillance drone appeared high above the Ukrainian air base without warning in early July. Minutes after it relayed targeting data back to a Russian base, a barrage of ballistic missiles struck the airfield, Ukrainian officials said, recounting the episode.“That first hit was so powerful that even our windows were trembling,” said Valeria Minenko, 21, who lives near the air base in Myrhorod, central Ukraine, one of many targeted in relentless attacks by Russia in recent months.“Now they’re hitting the air base with the rockets all the time,” Ms. Minenko said.Russia has been saturating the skies over Ukraine with surveillance drones, exploiting gaps in air-defense systems, to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks on Ukrainian positions. Its dominance in the air along parts of the front has allowed it to bombard Ukrainian positions with hundreds of powerful guided bombs every day, helping its ground forces to make slow and costly gains.Ukraine’s strategy was to counter Russia in the air war with the aid of long-coveted F-16 fighter jets from the West that it says it will deploy this summer.But the assaults on Ukrainian air bases underscore Russia’s determination to limit the impact of the planes even before they enter the fight. They also highlight the challenges Ukraine faces as it prepares to deploy the sophisticated aircraft for the first time.Ukraine is hoping the F-16s, which come with powerful electronic warfare systems and an array of other weapons, can be used in coordination with other Western weapons like Patriot air-defense systems to expand the area deemed too dangerous for Russian pilots to fly. They also hope the jets will add another layer of protection for Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure from relentless missile and drone attacks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Blinken and a Top Chinese Official in Talks on U.S.-China Tensions

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      The U.S. secretary of state pressed China’s top foreign policy official on Beijing’s support for Russia’s efforts to rebuild its military industries during the Ukraine war.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken pressed his Chinese counterpart Saturday on areas of sharp disagreement between the two nations, including China’s support of Russia’s military industrial sector, the State Department said in a statement. Mr. Blinken met with the Chinese official, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of an annual international conference of Southeast Asian nations in the Laotian capital of Vientiane. Also in attendance was Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who at one group session blamed the United States for provoking Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Mr. Blinken.In their meeting, Mr. Wang listened to Mr. Blinken’s criticisms, but pointed out that China has not sent weapons to Russia, said the State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe diplomatic talks.President Biden and his aides have recently accused China of helping Russia rebuild its defense industrial sector, mainly through the export to Russia by Chinese companies of machine tools and microelectronics that have helped the Russian army persist in its war in Ukraine.Mr. Blinken told Mr. Wang that defending Ukraine against Russia’s aggression was a “core interest” of the United States, using a term that Chinese officials often deploy to signal their own national priorities, the State Department official said. The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on more than 300 Chinese entities as a result, but the Chinese government still has not curbed the exports, the official said. He added that Mr. Blinken presented specific examples of the exports, though the official declined to go into detail on that part of the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More