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    Blinken Visits NATO Headquarters

    The U.S. secretary of state met with European allies rattled by the American election results at a critical moment for Ukraine and the alliance.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday at what he called a “critical moment” for Ukraine and the U.S.-led military alliance, as Europe braces for the anticipated upheaval of a new Trump era in Washington.In a trip organized only after last week’s presidential election results made clear that U.S. policy will likely swing dramatically away from President Biden’s lock step support for NATO and Ukraine, Mr. Blinken met with alliance and European officials to help plan for a post-Biden future.Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House in January has deeply shaken Europe’s mainstream political leaders, thanks to his skepticism about the value of NATO, the cost of defending Ukraine, and the wisdom of isolating Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin.Once in office, Mr. Trump could move quickly to change U.S. policy on all three fronts — a shift that European leaders fear might leave their countries both less secure from Russian aggression and at an economic disadvantage.Mr. Blinken did not explicitly mention Mr. Trump or last week’s election in his public remarks after meetings at NATO headquarters. But an American leadership change with huge global import was the obvious subtext, as Mr. Blinken stressed the intrinsic value of the alliance.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, addressed the elephant in the room before sitting down with Mr. Blinken at a Brussels hotel. He said that their meeting offered “an opportunity to coordinate steps” after the U.S. election, noting that Ukraine’s government was speaking “both with the president-elect and his team and also with the outgoing administration.”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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    Once They Were Neocons. Now Trump’s Foreign Policy Picks Are All ‘America First.’

    The Republican Party used to have a label for the kind of foreign policy hawk that President-elect Donald J. Trump named on Tuesday as his national security adviser and is considering as his secretary of state: neocons.But while they once were neoconservatives, over the past few years Representative Michael Waltz and Senator Marco Rubio, both of Florida, have gradually shifted their positions. Sounding less like former Vice President Dick Cheney or John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser, they no longer talk about foreign interventions or the prospects of regime change. Instead, they speak the language of the “America First” movement, and fit more comfortably within Mr. Trump’s often erratic worldview, in which deal-making reigns over ideology.The result is that Mr. Trump may end up with a foreign policy team composed of deep loyalists, but with roots in familiar Republican approaches. The shift that the two men have made reflects the broader marginalization of neocons throughout the Republican Party after the disaster in Iraq and the rise of America First.Mr. Trump’s loyalists, and much of the party, have now made a full conversion to that worldview, few more enthusiastically than Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who was chosen as defense secretary on Tuesday.Mr. Hegseth channels both Mr. Trump’s avowed isolationism and his impulsive interventionism. He has also backed Mr. Trump’s occasional use of force, notably the order to killing a senior Iranian general in January 2020. Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, described his own conversion to America First to The New York Times four years ago.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 Heads to NATO as Alliance Prepares for Trump’s Return

    Officials meeting in Brussels will discuss Ukraine’s war against Russia amid concerns that the new administration will slash U.S. support for Kyiv.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to depart on Tuesday for Brussels, where he will attend meetings with NATO and European officials to discuss Ukraine’s war against Russia, the State Department announced.Mr. Blinken’s trip, a late addition to his schedule before a trip to Latin America, comes amid grave concern among Ukraine’s supporters that the new Trump administration will slash U.S. support for Kyiv.The Biden administration and NATO officials also fear that President-elect Donald J. Trump may try to undermine the military alliance and even seek to withdraw the United States from it.The State Department said Mr. Blinken would meet NATO and E.U. counterparts “to discuss support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s aggression.”Mr. Blinken plans to travel on to Peru and Brazil, where he will join President Biden for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and the Group of 20 Leaders’ Summit. More

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    Russia Says It Shot Down Waves of Drones Above Moscow

    Officials said that more than 30 drones had been intercepted over suburban areas of the Russian capital in what was the biggest such attack since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Russia said its air defenses had shot down waves of Ukrainian drones over Moscow’s suburbs on Sunday morning, responding to what it called a “massive” attack that wounded at least one person and temporarily halted flights at three regional airports.Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Telegram that 32 drones had been shot down over the suburbs of Domodedovo, Ramenskoye and Kolomna in the largest such attack on the capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian Defense Ministry said 34 drones were shot down above Moscow in the attack.The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, described the attack as “massive” and said that a 52-year-old woman was hospitalized with “burns to her face, neck and hands.”Flights at three regional airports, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky, were halted on Sunday morning for several hours because of the drone attack, which was also directed at other regions in western Russia.In total, the Defense Ministry said it had shot down 70 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions on Sunday, including the ones in Moscow. The Ukrainian military did not immediately make any announcements on the attacks reported by Russia.Also in the attacks early Sunday, local officials said a total of 23 drones had been shot down in the Russian border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, where drone strikes occur more regularly. Drones also struck the western Kaluga and Tula regions.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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    50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says

    Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously.Russian troops have been clawing back some of the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk this year. They have been attacking Ukrainian positions with missile strikes and artillery fire, but they have not yet begun a major assault there, U.S. officials said.Ukrainian officials say they expect such an attack involving the North Korean troops in the coming days.For now, the North Koreans are training with Russian forces in the far western part of Kursk.The Russian-North Korean offensive looms as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of ending the war quickly. Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.Some U.S. military and intelligence officials have grown more pessimistic about Ukraine’s overall prospects, noting that Russia has steadily gained ground, both in Kursk and in eastern Ukraine. Officials say the setbacks are partly a result of Ukraine’s failure to solve critical shortfalls in troop strength.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Should Not Let Putin Claim Victory in Ukraine, Says NATO Official

    Adm. Rob Bauer warned against any peace deal that was too favorable to Russia, arguing that it could undermine American interests.A senior NATO military official suggested on Saturday that any peace deal negotiated by President-elect Donald J. Trump that allowed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to claim victory in Ukraine would undermine the interests of the United States.In a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of a European defense summit in Prague, Adm. Rob Bauer, the Dutch chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said: “If you allow a nation like Russia to win, to come out of this as the victor, then what does it mean for other autocratic states in the world where the U.S. has also interests?”He added: “It’s important enough to talk about Ukraine on its own, but there is more at stake than just Ukraine.”Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that he could end the war in Ukraine in a day, without saying how. A settlement outlined by Vice President-elect JD Vance in September echoes what people close to the Kremlin say Mr. Putin wants: allowing Russia to keep the territory it has captured and guaranteeing that Ukraine will not join NATO.A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, Karoline Leavitt, said he was re-elected because the American people “trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world.”“When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary actions to do just that,” Ms. Leavitt said on Saturday.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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    Pro-West Leader Wins High-Stakes Vote in Former Soviet Republic

    The president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”The pro-Western president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday in a high-stakes runoff vote in the former Soviet republic against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”The vote — held a week after a contested election in Georgia, another former Soviet territory, handed victory to the Moscow-leaning governing party — has been closely watched by the United States, the European Union and Russia as a critical test of Moldova’s direction.With more than 98 percent of ballots counted, official results gave Ms. Sandu 54.9 percent of the vote, an unassailable lead on her Moscow-friendly rival, who had 45.3 percent.In a televised address early Monday, she thanked Moldovans living abroad, whose vote tipped the result in her favor, but said the election was a victory for the whole country. “Today you saved Moldova,” she said. “In our choice for a dignified future, no one lost.”In an apparent reference to Russia, Ms. Sandu assailed “hostile forces from outside the country and criminal groups” for mounting a campaign to sway the result, which she said, citing “dirty money and illegal vote buying,” had been an “attack unprecedented in the whole of Europe’s history.”European leaders celebrated the election as a victory against what Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, described as “Russia’s aggressive and massive interference.” He expressed hope “that this trend will continue in the coming days and months in other countries as well.”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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    Photographing Every President Since Reagan

    Doug Mills reflects on nearly 40 years of taking photos of presidents.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Through his camera lens, Doug Mills has seen it all: George H.W. Bush playing horseshoes. An emotional Barack Obama. A shirtless Bill Clinton. And he’s shared what he’s seen with the world.Mr. Mills, a veteran photographer, has captured pictures of every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. His portfolio includes images of intimate conversations, powerful podium moments and scenes now seared into the American consciousness — like the face of President George W. Bush, realizing that America was under attack while he was reading to schoolchildren.Mr. Mills began his photography career at United Press International before joining The Associated Press. Then, in 2002, he was hired at The New York Times, where his latest assignment has been trailing former President Donald J. Trump. In July, Mr. Mills captured the moment a bullet flew past Mr. Trump’s head at a rally in Butler, Pa., and then a photo of Mr. Trump, ear bloodied, raising his fist.Over the past four decades, cameras and other tools have changed the job considerably, he said. While he once used 35mm SLR film cameras (what photographers used for decades), he now travels with multiple Sony mirrorless digital cameras, which are silent and can shoot at least 20 frames per second. He used to lug around portable dark rooms; now he can transmit images to anywhere in the world directly from his camera, via Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable, in a matter of seconds.But it’s not just the technology that has changed. Campaigns are more image-driven than ever before, he said, thanks to social media, TV ads and coverage that spans multiple platforms. Not to mention, it’s a nonstop, 24-hour news cycle. He likens covering an election year to a monthslong Super Bowl.“It consumes your life, but I love it,” Mr. Mills said. “I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”Mr. Mills, who on election night will be with Mr. Trump at a watch party in Palm Beach, Fla., shared how one image of each president he’s photographed throughout his career came together. — Megan DiTrolioWe 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