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      The Fall of Avdiivka: What to Know

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      Russia’s capture of a city that had been a stronghold of Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk region is a strategic and symbolic blow.Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the eastern frontline city of Avdiivka, Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Saturday, allowing Moscow to score its largest territorial advance in months and dealing a blow to Ukraine’s stretched and outgunned forces as the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches.General Syrsky said he had ordered the retreat “in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen.” Avdiivka — once a city of 30,000 people before being reduced to ruins — sat in a pocket surrounded by Russian troops to the north, east and south. In recent months, they had been slowly advancing through relentless assaults, in a pincer movement.“The ability to save our people is the most important task for us,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. He added that Ukrainian troops had been hindered by a shortage of ammunition because of declining Western military assistance.Here’s what to know about the fall of Avdiivka.How did the battle unfold?Avdiivka is a suburb of the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk, which has been on a front line since a Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The city held through eight years of often low-intensity war in the east and then nearly two years of full-scale assaults by the Russian Army after it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.The big offensive against Avdiivka began in October, with Russia launching several battalions against the edges of the city and shelling the area day and night. After being held on the outskirts of the city for months, Russian troops broke into residential areas in late January, bypassing Ukrainian fortifications by crawling through tunnels under the streets of the southeastern part of Avdiivka. Earlier this week, they cut off Ukraine’s main supply road into the city and then advanced near a coke plant that had been a bastion of resistance.In keeping with Russia’s scorched-earth tactics in Ukraine, Moscow bombed the place to ruins and then sent in wave after wave of troops in assaults that left thousands of dead and wounded, according to military experts. Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday that for every Ukrainian soldier killed, seven Russian soldiers had been killed. His assertion could not be confirmed independently.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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      in US Politics

      FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business

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      An FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.Alexander Smirnov falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.Smirnov told the FBI that a Burisma executive had claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, prosecutors said in a statement.The allegations became a flashpoint in Congress over the summer as Republicans demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations as they pursued investigations of Biden and his family. They acknowledged at the time that it was unclear if the allegations were true.The new development sharply undermines the thrust of congressional Republicans’ corruption accusations that the US president was making money from his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.Smirnov, 43, was charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. No attorney was immediately listed for him in court records.Smirnov appeared in court in Las Vegas briefly on Thursday after being charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. He did not enter a plea. The judge ordered the courtroom cleared after federal public defender Margaret Wightman Lambrose requested a closed hearing for arguments about sealing court documents. She declined to comment on the case.The charges were filed by the justice department special counsel David Weiss, who has separately charged Hunter with firearm and tax violations.Hunter’s legal team did not immediately return a message seeking comment.The informant’s claims have been central to the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden.Prosecutors say Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives, but it was routine and actually took place in 2017, after Barack Obama, the US president, and Biden, his vice-president, had left office – when Biden would have had no ability to influence US policy.Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against public official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for president, after expressing bias against public official 1 and his candidacy,” the indictment said.He repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September last year and changed his story about others and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials”, prosecutors said.If convicted, Smirnov faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.The House oversight committee chairman James Comer, a Republican representing Kentucky, had subpoenaed the FBI last year for the so-called FD-1023 document as Republicans deepened their inquiries into the US president and Hunter ahead of the 2024 presidential election.Working alongside Comer, the Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa released an unclassified document that Republicans at the time claimed was significant in their investigation of Hunter.It added to information that had been widely aired during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial involving Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. The White House said at the time that the claims had been debunked for years.The impeachment inquiry into Biden over his son’s business dealings has lagged in the House, but the panel is pushing ahead with its work. Hunter is expected to appear before the committee later this month for an interview.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Ukraine, Struggling on Land, Claims to Deal Blow to Russia at Sea

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      The Ukrainian military says it has sunk a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea, although Ukrainian troops inland find themselves in a precarious position.As outgunned Ukrainian soldiers struggle to hold back bloody Russian assaults on land, Ukraine said on Wednesday that its forces had struck yet another powerful blow against the Russians at sea, sinking a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea before dawn.The Ukrainian military released footage of the strike, which it said had resulted in the sinking of the 360-foot-long landing ship Caesar Kunikov, its fourth-largest landing ship taken out of action in the war, possibly complicating Russia’s logistical efforts in southern Ukraine.The Ukrainian claims could not be immediately confirmed, but when NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was asked about the attack, he called Ukraine’s campaign on the Black Sea a “great achievement.”“The Ukrainians have been able to inflict heavy losses on the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” he said at a news conference in Brussels. Russia has lost more than a third of its fleet since the war began, according to Ukrainian officials and military analysts.Russia declined to comment on the attack.At the same time, however, Ukrainian ground forces find themselves in perhaps their most precarious position since the opening months of the Russian invasion.“The enemy is now advancing along almost the entire front line, and we have moved from offensive operations to conducting a defensive operation,” Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the German outlet, ZDF, in his first interview since being promoted to the post last week.The epicenter of the current fighting is around the battered city of Avdiivka, a longtime Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have broken through Ukraine’s defenses to enter the city in multiple locations and are threatening to cut off the main supply line for Ukrainian defenders.Kyiv has dispatched reinforcements, but soldiers fighting there have said it is unclear how long they can hold out. A growing shortage of ammunition has forced local commanders to ration their fires, making it more difficult to push back the Russian advance. More

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      Republicans’ topsy-turvy take on aid for Ukraine reveals party in thrall to Trump

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      Nearly a decade ago, as Russian troops entered the Crimean peninsula, congressional Republicans were in uproar, blaming Moscow’s land grab on what they claimed was a retreat from American leadership by then president Barack Obama. Loudest among the Republican critics was the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who assailed Obama as a “weak, indecisive leader”.In a pre-dawn vote on Tuesday, Graham joined the majority of Senate Republicans in opposing a foreign aid package that would rush wartime assistance to Ukraine as it approaches the second anniversary of Russia’s full invasion.It was a shocking – if not entirely surprising – turn for one of the chamber’s leading defense hawks and a steadfast Russia critic. But these days Graham has another distinction: he is one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, where the former president – and likely Republican nominee – has been whipping up opposition to Ukraine’s war effort.Just 22 Republican senators broke with Trump to approve the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies – yet another sign of how thoroughly the former president’s America First vision has supplanted the party’s consensus toward internationalism and interventionism.There has long been an isolationist strain among hardline Republicans who contend that investment in foreign entanglements risks bringing the US closer to war and diverts money away from domestic challenges. But then Trump came to power and sidelined the defense hawks, ushering in a dramatic shift in Republican sentiment toward America’s allies and adversaries.Nearly half of Republicans and right-leaning independents said the US was providing too much aid to Ukraine, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted late last year. This share rose sharply from the early stages of the war following Russia’s invasion in February 2022.In his statement on Monday night, Graham insisted that he still supported Ukraine but said unless and until lawmakers turn the $95bn military assistance package into a “loan instead of a grant”, he would oppose it.It echoed comments Trump made over the weekend, in an all-caps social media post addressed to the US Senate, in which he said foreign aid should be structured as a loan, not a “giveaway”. Later in a campaign speech, Trump rattled American allies in Europe when he claimed that he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies who did not pay enough to maintain the security alliance.But in Washington, most Republicans dismissed or downplayed the remark.“I was here when he was president. He didn’t undermine or destroy Nato,” senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who sponsored legislation to block a US president from unilaterally withdrawing from Nato, told reporters. The senator, who built a reputation as a defense hawk, voted against the military assistance measure on Tuesday.The bill, which includes $60bn for Ukraine, divided the Senate Republican leadership. From the Senate floor, Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican, delivered increasingly urgent pleas for his conference to rise to the occasion and support America’s allies, even after his plan to tie border security to foreign aid collapsed, torpedoed by Trump’s opposition.“This is about rebuilding the arsenal of democracy and demonstrating to our allies and adversaries alike that we’re serious about exercising American strength,” McConnell said. “American assistance with these efforts is not charity. It’s an investment in cold, hard US interests.”McConnell’s deputy, John Thune of South Dakota, voted for the measure, while John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No 3 Senate Republican, opposed it. Barrasso has endorsed Trump for president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a floor speech, Senator Rand Paul, who led the effort to delay the measure, accused McConnell, a fellow Republican from Kentucky, of collaborating with Democrats to “loot the Treasury”. He panned McConnell’s argument that bolstering Ukraine’s defense was critical to American national security as “ludicrous”.The Ohio senator JD Vance, another Trump loyalist, claimed the effort to replenish Ukraine’s war chest was a “plot” by the Republican establishment to “stop the election of Donald Trump”. Meanwhile, some arch-conservatives suggested it was time for McConnell to step down.Now the bill goes to the House, where the speaker, Mike Johnson, must tread carefully not to meet the same fate as his prematurely deposed predecessor. Johnson indicated that he was unlikely to bring the measure to the floor for a vote because it lacks border enforcement measures. But just last week he announced that he would refuse to bring a version of the bill that included a border security deal because the Trump-allied hardliners who hold outsized power over his thin majority were wary of handing Joe Biden anything that resembled a political victory.House Democrats and the remaining pro-Ukraine House Republicans are casting about behind the scenes for a solution. But there are many political and logistical hurdles to overcome before a majority bloc not accustomed to working together in the tribal House comes together to circumvent Johnson – and by extension Trump.“If it were to get to the floor, it would pass,” congressman Andy Biggs, a member of the hardline House Freedom caucus and a staunch opponent of the aid package, told a conservative radio host on Tuesday morning. “Let’s just be frank about that.”But until the bill reaches Biden’s desk, Biggs’s admission is cold comfort to American allies waiting for Congress to act. More

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      Joe Biden calls Trump’s Nato remarks ‘dumb’, ‘shameful’ and ‘dangerous’

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      Joe Biden has attacked Donald Trump’s comments on the US pulling out of the Nato military alliance as “dumb”, “shameful” and “dangerous” in a blistering speech attacking Republican opposition to legislation partly aimed at providing support for Ukraine in its stand against a Russian invasion.Trump’s remarks about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who did not contribute what Trump called their fair share of Nato funding have set off alarm bells across Europe among leaders who eye the prospect of a second Trump presidency with growing disquiet.In a speech after the foreign aid bill – which also includes aid to Israel and Taiwan – passed the Senate, Biden urged reluctant Republicans to pass the legislation in the Republican-controlled House.“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin,” Biden said. “Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”Biden then attacked Trump for his encouraging of Republicans in the House to refuse to support the bill and for his comments about Russia and Nato.“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it,” he said. “The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will.“For God’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.”The passage of the bill through the House, however, looks far from assured despite the president’s urging and its hard-won success in the Senate. Mike Johnson, the hard-right Republican House speaker, in effect rejected the aid package because it lacked border enforcement provisions.“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” he said, adding: “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”Many see such sentiments as richly ironic given it was Johnson and his House Republicans who – under pressure from Trump and his allies – tanked an earlier version of the aid legislation which included a bipartisan immigration deal intended to tackle the US-Mexico border crisis.Conservatives had insisted recently that the foreign aid package must be tied to border security measures but with immigration poised to play a critical role in the November elections and Trump increasingly certain to be the Republican nominee, the party was suddenly scared of handing Biden a domestic policy victory by trying to solve the issue.But the crises being tackled by the legislation are not just limited to the border, Ukraine and Russia – or just Republicans.Biden also stressed the part of the package passed by the Senate that he said “provides Israel with what it needs to protect his people against the terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and others, and it will provide life-saving humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people desperately need food, water and shelter. They need help.”That was a message to Biden’s own party: three senators (two Democrats and the Democratic-aligned Bernie Sanders) also voted no on the bill, citing Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s military strikes in the Palestinian territories. More

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      Biden and Germany’s Scholz Meet at White House and Push for Ukraine Aid

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      The message came as congressional lawmakers were working on a package with billions in assistance but an uncertain fate.President Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany used a meeting at the Oval Office on Friday to pressure Congress to pass billions more in aid for Ukraine, as legislative dysfunction and opposition among some Republicans have left the critical package in limbo.“Hopefully Congress, the House, will follow you and make a decision on giving the necessary support because without the support of the United States and without the support of European states, Ukraine will not have a chance to defend its own country,” Mr. Scholz said in opening remarks before their meeting.Mr. Biden had a more blunt assessment of the congressional gridlock.“The failure of the United States Congress, if it occurs, not to support Ukraine is close to criminal neglect,” Mr. Biden said. “It is outrageous.”The joint pressure amounted to another maneuver in the high-stakes battle over funding for Ukraine as it tries to fight off Russia’s invasion, a debate that could ultimately help determine the course of the war and, much of Europe worries, security across the continent.The message comes after Senate Republicans blocked a broad bipartisan deal this week that would have provided billions in funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as stringent restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border. Senators are now inching ahead with legislation would provide $60.1 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel and $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in global conflicts.Senators were planning to work into the weekend on the bill, and it appeared to be on track for passage in the Senate within days. But it faces stiff opposition from many Republicans in the G.O.P.-led House.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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      Senators Work Into Weekend on Ukraine and Israel Bill as G.O.P. Slows Progress

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      The $95 billion package appeared on track for eventual passage, but Republicans who killed a bipartisan version were still trying to make changes.The long-stalled emergency national security package to send aid to Ukraine and Israel is back on track in the Senate and headed toward passage within days — but not before Republican senators try to take a few partisan shots at the legislation.The senators are slowing progress on the $95 billion measure as they seek votes on proposed revisions, particularly concerning border security — despite having voted this week to kill a version of the bill that included a bipartisan deal to crack down on immigration.The demands amount to an exercise in political face-saving. Republicans said for months that they would never approve funds to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion without simultaneously taking significant steps to secure the U.S. border with Mexico. But their decision to kill a proposal to do just that means the aid will move forward without immigration restrictions.Now, they are settling for staging a series of votes that aim to show the right-wing Republican base, the G.O.P.-led House and former President Donald J. Trump that they tried to muscle through tough new border policies — and blame Democrats for blocking them.Senators planned a rare weekend session to work through the bill, with a critical vote on the legislation expected Sunday.“Democrats are willing to consider reasonable and fair amendments here on the floor,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Friday.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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      Putin Calls on U.S. to ‘Negotiate’ on Ukraine in Tucker Carlson Interview

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      In a two-hour interview, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but a deal with the West.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has worked for decades to win allies in the West, using his spy agencies to interfere in elections and deploying diplomats to build links with Kremlin-friendly politicians.On Thursday, the world witnessed a new, verbose chapter in those efforts: Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview, taped in a gilded hall at the Kremlin, with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, Mr. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war. He sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, echoing the talking points of politicians like former President Donald J. Trump who say that the United States has more pressing priorities than a war thousands of miles away.“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr. Putin said in response to Mr. Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”He went on: “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr. Putin made little effort to distill for American ears. He opined on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against Russia.But Mr. Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West. At the interview’s end, Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realize” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.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