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      Russian strike on crowded Ukraine market leaves at least 17 dead

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      A Russian strike has hit a crowded market in the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, killing at least 17 people, as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, his first for a year to the Ukrainian capital.Ukrainian officials said a further 32 people were wounded in the attack, one of Russia’s deadliest attacks in months, 12 miles (20km) from the frontlines in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.Video of the aftermath showed fires raging in destroyed buildings and soldiers carrying body bags away from the scene. The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said a child was among those killed.“A regular market. Shops. A pharmacy. People who did nothing wrong. Many wounded,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote in a post on Telegram.He called the strike “a terrorist attack” and said in a later press conference that it reflected the situation on the battlefield. “Whenever there are any positive advances by Ukrainian defence forces in that direction, Russians always target civilian people and civilian objects.”Russia also targeted Kyiv with ballistic missiles in the hours prior to Blinken’s arrival, with loud booms audible in the Ukrainian capital shortly before 6am, as his train was approaching.“It was clearly meant as a greeting to Blinken,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Zelenskiy, told the Guardian. “Russia is constantly showing that it will not abide by any rules,” Podolyak added.He said Russia had used Iskander missiles in the Kyiv attack, which was thwarted by Ukrainian air defences. Falling debris damaged building but there were no casualties, officials said.Blinken met his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in Kyiv and held discussions with Zelenskiy. The two-day visit will include an overnight stay in the Ukrainian capital.While Blinken was in Kyiv, the US announced a new package of military assistance, including $100m (£80m) in financing for Ukraine’s long-term requirements and $175m in arms and ammunition drawn from US stockpiles, which included depleted uranium shells for the US M1 Abrams tanks that are due to be delivered by the end of this year.Depleted uranium shells are effective in piercing armour, but concerns have been raised over the incidence of cancer and birth defects in areas where they have been used. Because they have not definitively been identified as the cause, they are not banned under international law.The arms package also included components for air defence systems, guided multiple launch rocket systems, 155mm artillery and 105mm artillery ammunition.“I’m here in large part at the behest of President Biden to reaffirm our commitment to stand with you – to stand with you to help ensure that you succeed militarily in dealing with the aggression, but also to stand with you to make sure that your efforts to build a strong economy and a strong democracy succeed,” Blinken said, in remarks before a meeting with Shmyhal.The visit comes shortly after Zelenskiy fired his defence minister, and as Ukraine’s military counteroffensive grinds on in the south-east of the country. On Wednesday Ukraine’s parliament approved the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the new defence minister. He replaces Oleksii Reznikov, who was sacked after a number of corruption scandals linked to the defence ministry. Reznikov is tipped to become ambassador to Britain.Umerov was tasked with negotiations with Russia in the early stages of the war, before heading the state property fund, Ukraine’s main privatisation agency. “He has an impeccable reputation, and all political circles respect him,” said Podolyak. “He’s a consensus candidate, which is important.”In a statement posted to Facebook, Umerov promised to do “everything possible and impossible” to bring about Ukraine’s victory, saying: “42 million Ukrainians stand behind every solider. Behind every soldier is a ministry that will do everything to protect and provide for all our people.”Unnamed western officials have criticised the speed and tactics of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which has irritated Ukrainian officials. The offensive has proceeded more slowly than expected, partly due to the extensive fortifications and minefields that Russian forces have built to defend their lines.“I understand that the further away you are from the war, sitting in your office, the better you understand the war, and if you’re 10,000km away then it’s the best place to understand what is happening,” said Podolyak, in a sarcastic aside.He criticised western officials who saw the war as “arrows on a map” rather than in terms of human lives, but said in recent months there had been an increased understanding of the task Ukraine faced in pushing through Russian lines.One senior western official said in a briefing to journalists on Wednesday that Ukraine was making “incremental but methodical progress” on parts of the southern and eastern fronts but accepted it was “slower than expected a couple of months ago”.This was due to the heavier than expected minefield belt laid by the Russians on the frontline, at times forcing Ukrainian soldiers to dismount and “crawl on their bellies to get through”, meaning that the pace of advance has been at best a few hundred metres a day.An unnamed US official told Reuters that Blinken wanted to get a first-hand assessment of the counteroffensive during the trip.“What’s most important is that we get a real assessment from the Ukrainians themselves,” the official said. “We want to see, hear how they intend to push forward in the coming weeks.” More

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      Slovakia Election Could Shift Sentiment in a Fierce Ukraine Ally

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      The vote in Slovakia this month will be a test of European unity on Ukraine, and of Russia’s efforts to undermine it. The front-runner wants to halt arms shipments to Kyiv.When Ukraine discovered civilian mass graves in an area recaptured from Russian troops, Russia’s ambassador in neighboring Slovakia countered with his own discovery.The mayor of a remote Slovak village, as the ambassador announced last September, had bulldozed Russian graves from World War I. Ambassador Igor Bratchikov demanded that the Slovak government, a robust supporter of Ukraine, take action to punish the “blasphemous act.”The Slovak police responded swiftly, dismissing the ambassador’s claims as a “hoax,” but his fabrication took flight, amplified by vociferous pro-Russian groups in Slovakia and news outlets notorious for recycling Russian propaganda.A month later, the mayor of the village, Vladislav Cuper, lost an election to a rival candidate from a populist party opposed to helping Ukraine.Today, the same forces that helped unseat Mr. Cuper have mobilized for a general election in Slovakia on Sept. 30 with much bigger stakes.The vote will not only decide who governs a small Central European nation with fewer than six million people, but will also indicate whether opposition to helping Ukraine, a position now mostly confined to the political fringes across Europe, could take hold in the mainstream.Vladislav Cuper, the former mayor of Ladomirova, Slovakia, at his home in the village. Mr. Cuper says he was smeared by pro-Russian forces in Slovakia.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThe front-runner, according to opinion polls, is a party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister who has vowed to halt Slovak arms deliveries to Ukraine, denounced sanctions against Russia and railed against NATO, despite his country’s membership in the alliance.A strong showing in the election by Mr. Fico and far-right parties hostile to the government in Kyiv would likely turn one of Ukraine’s most stalwart backers — Slovakia was the first country to send it air-defense missiles and fighter jets — into a neutral bystander more sympathetic to Moscow. It would also end the isolation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as the only leader in the European Union and NATO speaking out strongly against helping Ukraine.“Russia is rejoicing,” Rastislav Kacer, a former foreign minister and outspoken supporter of Ukraine, said in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. “Slovakia is a great success story for its propaganda. It has worked hard and very successfully to exploit my country as a wedge to divide Europe.”Thanks to widespread public discontent with the infighting between pro-Western Slovak politicians who came to power in 2020, and deep pools of genuine pro-Russian sentiment dating back to the 19th century, Russia has been pushing on an open door.A survey of public opinion across Eastern and Central Europe in March by Globsec, a Bratislava-based research group, found that only 40 percent of Slovaks blame Russia for the war in Ukraine, while 51 percent believe that either Ukraine or the West is “primarily responsible.” In Poland, 85 percent blame Russia. In the Czech Republic, 71 percent think Russia is responsible.The World War I cemetery in Ladomirova that the Russian ambassador to Slovakia falsely said had been destroyed.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDaniel Milo, director of an Interior Ministry department aimed at countering disinformation and other nonmilitary threats, acknowledged that “there is fertile ground here for pro-Russian sentiment.” But he added that genuine sympathy rooted in history had been exploited by Russia and its local helpers to sow division and sour public opinion on Ukraine.Those helpers include Hlavne Spravy, a popular anti-American news site, and a bikers group called Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, which is affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves motorcycle gang in Russia.A freelance writer for Hlavne Spravy, Bohus Garbar, was convicted of espionage this year after being caught on camera taking money from Russia’s military attaché, who has since been expelled.Brat za Brata, which has a large following on social media and close ties to the Russian embassy, has meanwhile worked to intimidate Russia’s critics.Peter Kalmus, a 70-year-old Slovak artist, said he was beaten up by members of the biker group last month after he defaced a Soviet war memorial in the eastern city of Kosice to protest Russian atrocities in Ukraine. In March, the bikers reduced to pandemonium a government-sponsored public debate about the war in a town near the Ukrainian border attended by Mr. Kacer, who was then still a minister. Fiercely pro-Russian protesters bused in by the bikers, recalled Mr. Kacer, “jumped on the stage screaming and spitting at us.”Many Slovaks, said Grigorij Meseznikov, the Russian-born president of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Bratislava research group, “have an invented romantic vision of Russia in their heads that does not really exist” and are easily swayed by “lies and propaganda” about the West.The Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Ladomirova. The former mayor said that in his view, Russia did not care who won the election in the village, but had spotted a good opportunity to “present itself as a victim.”Akos Stiller for The New York TimesThat, he added, has made the country vulnerable to efforts by Moscow to rally pro-Russian sentiment in the hope of undermining European unity over Ukraine. Slovakia is a small country, Mr. Meseznikov said, but “if you take even a small brick out of a wall it can crumble.”That is certainly the hope of Lubos Blaha, a former member of a heavy metal band and the author of books on Lenin and Che Guevara who is now the deputy leader of Mr. Fico’s surging political party, SMER. He is also one of Slovakia’s loudest and most influential Kremlin-friendly voices on social media and regularly denounces his country’s liberal woman president, Zuzana Caputova, as a “fascist” and pro-Ukrainian ministers as “American puppets.”“The mood in Europe is changing,” Mr. Blaha said in an interview, describing the conflict in Ukraine as “a war of the American empire against the Russian empire” that cannot be won because Russia is a nuclear power.Insisting he was “not pro-Russia, just pro my country’s national interests,” Mr. Blaha predicted that countries hostile to arming Ukraine would soon “be in the majority while supporters of Ukraine will be in a small minority,” especially if Donald J. Trump wins the next presidential election in the United States.In the run-up to Slovakia’s own election, the usually placid country has been swamped by heated accusations on all sides of foreign interference. Mr. Fico has accused NATO of meddling in the campaign, while his foes have pointed a finger at Russia.Describing Mr. Fico’s SMER party as a “Trojan horse” for Russia, Jaroslav Nad, a former defense minister who led a push to send arms to Ukraine, claimed this summer that, according to intelligence reports, a Slovak citizen he didn’t identify had visited Russia “to receive financial resources to benefit SMER.” But, citing confidentiality, he produced no evidence, and his claim has been widely dismissed as a pre-election smear.Still, the Russian ambassador’s fabricated story of desecrated war graves highlighted Russia’s skill at fishing in Slovakia’s troubled waters. It also provided what Mr. Milo, the interior ministry official, called “a very rare smoking gun” directly implicating Moscow in scripting a fake scandal. “They usually act more cleverly and try not to get caught red-handed,” he said.Children climbing on Soviet and German tanks at a World War II monument outside Ladomirova. In the run-up to a general election, Slovakia has been swamped by heated accusations of foreign interference.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesDuring a visit last week to the still-intact graveyard in Ladomirova, Mr. Cuper said that in his view Russia did not care who won the mayoral vote there, but had spotted a good opportunity “to distract attention from mass graves in Ukraine” and “present itself as a victim.”When the ambassador visited Ladomirova, he met with Mr. Cuper’s bitter rival, a former mayor whom Mr. Cuper had accused of embezzling village funds and who was convicted of fraud in 2019. The former mayor’s wife, Olga Bojcikova, who declined to be interviewed, was at the time running against Mr. Cuper, who was backed by pro-Ukrainian parties, in the local election last October. She won.The ambassador’s story of “razed” Russian graves, though debunked by the police, was, Mr. Cuper recalled, “blown out of all proportion” by Kremlin-friendly Slovaks, particularly the Brat za Brata bikers.The bikers posted incendiary statements on Facebook denouncing the mayor’s “blasphemous act” and rallied its members to respond. This set off calls for Mr. Cuper to be “executed,” “buried alive” and “flogged like a dog.”Slovakia’s prosecutor general, Maros Zilinka, who has a long history of sympathy for Russia and hostility to the United States, added fuel to the fire by announcing that the mayor could be liable for criminal prosecution for a “morally reprehensible act” that needed to be investigated.Mr. Cuper said he never touched the graves but had removed stone border markers because they were falling apart. Nor did he touch a notice board put up as part of renovation work financed by Russia in 2014: It falsely described the cemetery as the resting place of 270 Russian war dead. The cemetery contains the unidentified bodies of soldiers from various countries, including Russia, killed in a World War I battle.The ambassador’s story, he said, was “entirely untrue” but still “created a national uproar.” More

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      Republicans Agree on Foreign Policy — When It Comes to China

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      At first glance, last week’s Republican presidential debate revealed a party fractured over America’s role in the world. Ron DeSantis said he wouldn’t support additional aid to Ukraine unless Europe does more. Vivek Ramaswamy said he wouldn’t arm Ukraine no matter what. Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, all staunch defenders of Kyiv, pounced. Within minutes, the altercations were so intense that the moderators struggled to regain control.But amid the discord, one note of agreement kept rising to the surface: that the true threat to America comes from Beijing. In justifying his reluctance to send more aid to Ukraine, Mr. DeSantis said he’d ensure that the United States does “what we need to do with China.” Mr. Ramaswamy denounced aiding Ukraine because the “real threat we face is communist China.” Ms. Haley defended such aid because “a win for Russia is a win for China.” Mr. Pence said Mr. Ramaswamy’s weakness on Ukraine would tempt Beijing to attack Taiwan.Regardless of their views on Ukraine, Republicans are united in focusing on China. They are returning to the principle that many championed at the beginning of the last Cold War. It’s neither internationalism nor isolationism. It’s Asia First.When Americans remember the early Cold War years, they often think of Europe: NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, which justified aiding Greece and Turkey. But for many leading Republicans at the time, those commitments were a distraction: The real menace lay on the other side of the globe.Senator Robert Taft, nicknamed “Mr. Republican” because of his stature in the party, opposed America’s entrance into NATO and declared in 1948 that “the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace and safety than is Europe.” The following year, Senator H. Alexander Smith, a Republican on the Foreign Policy and Armed Services Committee, warned that while the Truman administration was “preoccupied with Europe the real threat of World War III may be approaching us from the Asiatic side.” William Knowland, the Senate Republican leader from 1953 to 1958, was so devoted to supporting the Nationalist exiles who left the mainland after losing China’s civil war that he was called the “senator from Formosa,” as Taiwan was known at the time.Understanding why Republicans prioritized China then helps explain why they’re prioritizing it now. In her book “Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism,” the historian Joyce Mao argues that Cold War era Republicans’ focus on China stemmed in part from a “spiritual paternalism that arguably carried over from the previous century.” In the late 19th century, when the United States was carving out a sphere of influence in the Pacific, China, with its vast population, held special allure for Americans interested in winning souls for Christ. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, who were Christians themselves, used this religious connection to drum up American support — first for their war against Communist rivals on the Chinese mainland and then, after they fled to the island of Taiwan, for their regime there.Many of America’s most influential Asia Firsters — like the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce — were either the children of American missionaries in China or had served as missionaries there themselves. The John Birch Society, whose fervent and conspiratorial brand of anti-Communism foreshadowed the right-wing populism of today, took its name from an Army captain and former missionary killed by Chinese communists at the end of World War II.Today, of course, Americans don’t need religious reasons to put Asia first. It boasts much of the world’s economic, political and military power, which is why the Biden administration focuses on the region, too. In Washington, getting tough on China is now a bipartisan affair. Still, the conservative tradition that Ms. Mao describes — which views China as a civilizational pupil turned civilizational threat — is critical to grasping why rank-and-file Republicans, far more than Democrats, fixate on the danger from Beijing.In March, a Gallup poll found that while Democrats were 23 points more likely to consider Russia a greater enemy than China, Republicans were a whopping 64 points more likely to say the reverse. There is evidence that this discrepancy stems in part from the fact that while President Vladimir Putin of Russia casts himself as a defender of conservative Christian values, President Xi Jinping leads a nonwhite superpower whose regime has spurned the Christian destiny many Americans once envisioned for it.In a 2021 study, the University of Delaware political scientists David Ebner and Vladimir Medenica found that white Americans who expressed higher degrees of racial resentment were more likely to perceive China as a military threat. And it is white evangelicals today — like the conservative Christians who anchored support for Chiang in the late 1940s and 1950s — who express the greatest animosity toward China’s government. At my request, the Pew Research Center crunched data gathered this spring comparing American views of China by religion and race. It found that white non-Hispanic evangelicals were 25 points more likely to hold a “very unfavorable” view of China than Americans who were religiously unaffiliated, 26 points more likely than Black Protestants and 33 points more likely than Hispanic Catholics.This is the Republican base. And its antipathy to China helps explain why many of the right-wing pundits and politicians often described as isolationists aren’t isolationists at all. They’re Asia Firsters. Tucker Carlson, who said last week that American policymakers hate Russia because it’s a “Christian country,” insisted in 2019 that America’s “main enemy, of course, is China, and the United States ought to be in a relationship with Russia aligned against China.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is challenging Mr. DeSantis for second place in national polls, wants the United States to team up with Moscow against Beijing, too.And of course, the Republican front-runner for 2024, former President Donald Trump — deeply in tune with conservative voters — has obsessed over China since he exploded onto the national political stage eight years ago. Mr. Trump is often derided as an isolationist because of his hostility to NATO and his disdain for international treaties. But on China his rhetoric has been fierce. In 2016, he even said Beijing had been allowed to “rape our country.”Republicans may disagree on the best way forward in Ukraine. But overwhelmingly, they agree that China is the ultimate danger. And whether it’s Mr. Trump’s reference earlier this year to his former secretary of transportation as “Coco Chow” or House Republicans implying that Asian Americans in the Biden administration and Congress aren’t loyal to the United States, there’s mounting evidence that prominent figures on the American right see that danger in racial terms.That’s the problem with Republicans’ return to Asia First. Many in the party don’t only see China’s rise as a threat to American power. They see it as a threat to white Christian power, too.Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Is It Time to Negotiate With Putin?

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      Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIt’s been 18 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. No true negotiations have happened. As the stalemate continues, what role should the United States play in the fight?This week on “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss how the war is playing out at home and why the G.O.P. seems more interested in invading Mexico than defending Ukraine.Plus, a trip back in time to a magical land of sorcerers and “Yo! MTV Raps.”(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)A photo illustration of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, as if printed in a newspaper, with one edge folded over, showing print on the other side.Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Nils Petter Nilsson/GettyMentioned in this episode:“An Unwinnable War,” by Samuel Charap in Foreign Affairs“The Runaway General,” by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone“First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin,” by Vladimir PutinThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      The Object of Ukraine’s Desire: F-16s From the West. But It’s Tricky.

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      Ukraine’s sense of urgency in obtaining the fighter jet reflects concerns about the war against Russia, but also the political calendar in the West. But training pilots and support crew is a lengthy process.The F-16 fighter jets would not be delivered to Ukraine until next year, but that did not dissuade President Volodymyr Zelensky from hopping into one last week in the Netherlands — one stop on a European tour to collect commitments to donate the warplane as quickly as possible.There he was in Denmark, praising the government for “helping Ukraine to become invincible” with its pledge to send 19 jets. In Athens, he said Greece’s offer to train Ukrainian pilots would “help us fight for our freedom.” Within days of returning to Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky had secured promises from a half-dozen countries to either donate the jets — potentially more than 60 — or provide training for pilots and support crew.“It is important and necessary,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway told Mr. Zelensky in Kyiv, announcing that his government would provide an undetermined number of the jets — probably 10 or fewer — in the future.It was a remarkable victory lap for a sophisticated attack aircraft that even Ukraine’s defense minister has acknowledged is unlikely to perform in combat until next spring — and then only for the few pilots who can understand English well enough to fly it. With Ukraine’s counteroffensive grinding ahead slowly this summer, Mr. Zelensky’s airy announcements of securing the F-16s signal a tacit acknowledgment that the 18-month war in Ukraine will likely endure for years to come.They were also a palpable signal of Mr. Zelensky’s fixation on a fighter jet that is faster, more powerful and more versatile than existing Ukrainian aircraft, but that has spurred debate over how substantially it can advance Kyiv’s immediate war effort. The F-16 has both offensive and defensive capabilities — it can be launched within minutes and is equipped to shoot down incoming missiles and enemy aircraft.People gathered outside the Danish Parliament during a visit by Mr. Zelensky. Mads Claus Rasmussen/EPA, via ShutterstockUkraine has adamantly insisted the planes would make a significant difference, though American officials have long maintained that tanks, ammunition and most of all, well trained ground troops are far more important in what is, right now, primarily a ground war. The Western warplanes are costly and it could take years to train and field enough pilots to provide sufficient air cover.As it presses for the fighter jets, Ukraine also senses a ticking political clock, current and former officials in Kyiv and Washington said. Mr. Zelensky appears driven to get as many of the F-16s as possible delivered before elections in Europe and the United States, which could bring a change of heart in the governments that have promised the planes.The Netherlands, for example, has pledged to give Ukraine as many as 42 F-16s it is phasing out of its air force; it will hold parliamentary elections this November. The larger concern, though, is the United States, where Republican support for sending tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine is dropping. Former President Donald J. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, said in July he would push Mr. Zelensky into peace agreements by telling him “no more — you got to make a deal.”“The American political uncertainties are very much on the minds of Ukrainians, and all of Europe,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who met with Mr. Zelensky in Kyiv just as the Ukrainian president was returning from his F-16 tour last week. “One of the objectives here, clearly, is to lock in commitments as clearly and unequivocally as possible.”Mr. Zelensky, left, met with Senators (from left) Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham in Kyiv earlier this month. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/via ReutersHe said Mr. Zelensky did not directly discuss next year’s U.S. elections during their meeting, which also included Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and was held in an underground room at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kyiv immediately after an air raid alarm. But, he said in a telephone interview, the more that can be delivered before November 2024, “the more that air support is not threatened by the vagaries of American politics.”So far, the Biden administration has not committed to sending Ukraine any F-16s from its own fleet, although it announced last week that it would train pilots at air bases in Texas and Arizona starting in September.It is expected to take at least four months to train Ukraine’s pilots on aircraft more advanced than what they are used to flying, and on tactics and weapons they are not used to employing. It could take even longer to teach them enough English to understand training manuals and to communicate with air traffic controllers and instructors. The avionics on the planes, including the buttons, are in English.There is another wrinkle in plans to deliver the planes. The United States must give approval before other countries can send American-made jets to Ukraine. The Biden administration has signaled to Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands that it will allow the transfers, but a new president could reverse those case-by-case agreements if delivery has not yet been completed, according to a U.S. official.Several officials cited in this article spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.A former senior Biden administration official said that Mr. Zelensky’s spate of F-16 announcements was also likely intended to lock in Western commitments in the event that a sluggish counteroffensive erodes political support among allies.Ukrainians firing on Russian positions from an infantry fighting vehicle. Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Zelensky’s sense of urgency has been unmistakable. In addition to his diplomatic forays, he mentioned the F-16s at least eight times during his nightly addresses in August, predicting that their presence in Ukrainian skies will vanquish Russian forces. Officials in Kyiv have even used the death last week of one of their famed pilots in a training accident to underscore that Ukraine needs the jets to win. Part of the jets’ appeal is that they are in plentiful supply. Many European air forces have F-16s and are getting rid of them to transition to the even more advanced F-35. So they exist in ample numbers with a built-in Western repair and supply chain, and training programs that can support them years into the future.However, the immediate hurdle to fielding the F-16s that have been pledged is not the actual jets, but the shortage of trained English-speaking Ukrainian pilots and support crew to fly and maintain them.A former senior U.S. Air Force officer said it takes between 8 to 14 support personnel to maintain, fuel and support each F-16, depending on how many bases the jets operate from. It will take roughly as long to train the support crews as the pilots, the officer said.So far, American officials have said, only eight Ukrainian pilots are sufficiently fluent in English and experienced in flying combat aircraft to have started training on the F-16s in Denmark. At least 20 other pilots are starting English-language instruction in Britain. Even Ukrainian pilots skilled at flying the Soviet-era MiG-29 jets that make up much of Kyiv’s current fleet would have to learn to navigate the F-16s’ “hands-on throttle and stick” or “HOTAS” technology; that’s a system that would let them shift from bombing targets on the ground to engaging in air-to-air combat without taking their hands off the controls.The system makes it easier to navigate between the two targets than on a MiG-29, but it still takes time to learn.“That all is going to take time and that probably is not going to happen before the end of the year,” Gen. James B. Hecker, the top U.S. air commander in Europe, told reporters at George Washington University’s Defense Writers Group on Aug. 18.One U.S. adviser said Ukraine will probably deploy the initial F-16s as soon as the pilots are certified to fly, in a range of defensive and offensive combat missions. Given the advanced weapons the F-16s will carry, just having them deployed, even in a niche capacity, could force Russia to dedicate valuable resources to monitor and counter them, the adviser said.Pro-Ukraine demonstrators called on President Joe Biden to send F-16 jets to Ukraine in a protest outside the hotel where he stayed in Warsaw in February. Aleksandra Szmigiel/ReutersStill, their effectiveness would still be limited by Russian air defenses and advanced fighters developed to specifically combat NATO aircraft such as the F-16.“In the short term they’ll help a little bit, but it’s not the silver bullet,” General Hecker said.U.S. officials say the F-16s are important for other reasons. Their arrival will boost Ukrainian morale and signal the shift of Ukraine’s air force to a NATO-caliber fleet. That sends an important deterrent message to Russia, to stave off future attacks from Moscow once this war is over, U.S. officials say.U.S. officials have repeatedly stated that providing Ukraine with F-16s is more about the future than the present.“Putin’s strategy is clearly to outlast, or out-wait, America and count on it lacking the will or the arms to continue,” Mr. Blumenthal said.He added: “There is a kind of gap, so to speak, between the victory lap of accepting the planes and the actual delivery. But the goal is to close that gap as quickly as possible and get F-16s on the battlefield.” More

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      A Former French President Gives a Voice to Obstinate Russian Sympathies

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      Remarks by Nicolas Sarkozy have raised fears that Europe’s pro-Putin chorus may grow louder as Ukraine’s plodding counteroffensive puts pressure on Western resolve.PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was once known as “Sarko the American” for his love of free markets, freewheeling debate and Elvis. Of late, however, he has appeared more like “Sarko the Russian,” even as President Vladimir V. Putin’s ruthlessness appears more evident than ever.In interviews coinciding with the publication of a memoir, Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, said that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” ruled out Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO because it must remain “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”“People tell me Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man that I met. I don’t find that convincing. I’ve had tens of conversations with him. He is not irrational,” he told Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.His statements, to the newspaper as well as the TF1 television network, were unusual for a former president in that they are profoundly at odds with official French policy. They provoked outrage from the Ukrainian ambassador to France and condemnation from several French politicians, including President Emmanuel Macron.The remarks also underscored the strength of the lingering pockets of pro-Putin sympathy that persist in Europe. Those voices have been muffled since Europe forged a unified stand against Russia, through successive rounds of economic sanctions against Moscow and military aid to Kyiv.The possibility they may grow louder appears to have risen as Ukraine’s counteroffensive has proved underwhelming so far. “The fact the counteroffensive has not worked up to now means a very long war of uncertain outcome,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a university in Paris. “There is the risk of political and financial weariness among Western powers that would weaken Ukraine.”A destroyed bridge in Bohorodychne, Ukraine. It is now used as a foot crossing for residents.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesIn France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, not even the evident atrocities of the Russian onslaught against Ukraine have stripped away the affinity for Russia traditionally found on the far right and far left. This also extends at times to establishment politicians like Mr. Sarkozy, who feel some ideological kinship with Moscow, blame NATO expansion eastward for the war, or eye monetary gain.From Germany, where former Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is the most prominent Putin supporter, to Italy where a former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement has spoken out against arms shipments to Ukraine, some politicians seem unswerving in their support for Mr. Putin.France, like Germany, has always had a significant number of Russophiles and admirers of Mr. Putin, whatever his amply illustrated readiness to eliminate opponents — most recently, it seems, his sometime sidekick turned upstart rival, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who led a brief mutiny two months ago.The sympathizers range from Mr. Sarkozy’s Gaullist center right, with its simmering resentment of American power in Europe and admiration for strong leaders, to Marine Le Pen’s far right, enamored of Mr. Putin’s stand for family, faith and fatherland against a supposedly decadent West. The extreme left, in a hangover from Soviet times, also has a lingering sympathy for Russia that the 18-month-long war has not eradicated.Still Mr. Sarkozy’s outspokenness was striking, as was his unequivocal pro-Russian tone and provocative timing.“Gaullist equidistance between the United States and Russia is an old story, but what Sarkozy said was shocking,” Ms. Bacharan said. “We are at war and democracies stand with Ukraine, while the autocracies of the world are with Mr. Putin.”The obstinacy of the French right’s emotional bond with Russia owes much to a recurrent Gallic great-power itch and to the resentment of the extent of American postwar dominance, evident in the current French-led quest for European “strategic autonomy.” Even President Macron, a centrist, said as recently as 2019 that “Russia is European, very profoundly so, and we believe in this Europe that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, during a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France in Moscow in February 2022.Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith Mr. Putin, Russian rapprochement has also been about money. Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party took a Russian loan; former Prime Minister François Fillon joined the boards of two Russian firms (before quitting last year in protest at the war); and Mr. Sarkozy himself has been under investigation since 2021 over a €3 million, or about $3.2 million, contract with a Russian insurance company.This financial connection with Moscow has undermined Mr. Sarkozy’s credibility, but not made him less vocal.He urged Mr. Macron, with whom he regularly confers, to “renew dialogue” with Mr. Putin, called for the “ratification” of Crimea’s annexation through an internationally supervised referendum, and said referendums should also be organized in the eastern Donbas region to settle how land there is divided between Ukraine and Russia.Rather than occupied territory, the Donbas is clearly negotiable territory to Mr. Sarkozy; as for Crimea, it’s part of Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president and now virulent assailant of the West, hailed Mr. Sarkozy’s “good sense” in opposing those who provide missiles “to the Nazis of Kyiv.”Commenting on Mr. Sarkozy in the daily Libération, the journalist Serge July wrote: “Realism suggests that the meager results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive have suddenly redrawn the Russia map. Supporters who had remained discreet are finding their way back to the microphones. One recalls the words of Edgar Faure, a star of the Fourth Republic: ‘It’s not the weather vane that turns but the wind.’”If the West’s goal was to leverage major military gains through the Ukrainian counteroffensive into a favorable Ukrainian negotiating position with Moscow — as suggested earlier this year by senior officials in Washington and Europe — then that scenario looks distant for the moment.A member of the Ukrainian Marine Brigade getting into position on the southern front this month.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesThis, in turn, may place greater pressure over time on Western unity and resolve as the U.S. presidential election looms next year.Mr. Putin, having apparently shored up his 23-year-old rule through the killing of Mr. Prigozhin, may be playing for time. It was not for nothing that Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who clashed with Donald J. Trump over the former president’s demands that Mr. Raffensperger change the results of the 2020 election, was bizarrely included in a list of people banned from Russia that was published in May.As nods and winks to Mr. Trump go, this was pretty conspicuous.Mr. Macron responded to Mr. Sarkozy by saying their positions were different and that France “recognizes neither the annexation by Russian of Ukrainian territory, nor the results of parodies of elections that were organized.” Several French politicians expressed outrage at Mr. Sarkozy’s views.Over the course of the war, Mr. Macron’s position itself has evolved from outreach to Putin, in the form of numerous phone calls with him and a statement that Russia should not be “humiliated,” toward strong support of the Ukrainian cause and of President Volodymyr Zelensky.There have been echoes of Mr. Sarkozy’s stance elsewhere in Europe, even if Western resolve in standing with Ukraine does not appear to have fundamentally shifted.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in 2007 in Moscow.ReutersMr. Schröder, Germany’s former chancellor and, in retirement, a Russian gas lobbyist close to Mr. Putin, attended a Victory Day celebration at the Russian embassy in Berlin in May. Tino Chrupalla, the co-chairman of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, or AfD, as it is known in Germany, was also present.A significant minority in Germany’s Social Democratic party retains some sympathy for Moscow. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has overseen military aid to Ukraine worth billions of dollars and views the Russian invasion a historical “turning point” that obliges German to wean itself of its post-Nazi hesitation over the use of force, faced heckles of “warmonger” as he gave a speech to the party.This month, in a reversal, Mr. Scholz’s government retreated from making a legal commitment to spending two percent of GDP on defense annually, a NATO target it had previously embraced, Reuters reported. Disquiet over military rather than social spending is rising in Europe as the war in Ukraine grinds on.Many people in what was formerly East Germany, part of the Soviet imperium until shortly before German unification in 1990, look favorably on Moscow. A poll conducted in May found that 73 percent of West Germans backed sanctions against Russia, compared with 56 percent of those living in the East. The AfD has successfully exploited this division by calling itself the peace party.“I could not have imagined that German tanks would once again head in the direction of Russia,” said Karsten Hilse, one of the more voluble Russia sympathizers within the AfD, alluding to tanks provided to Ukraine.In Italy, the most vocal supporter of Mr. Putin was Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister who died a few months ago. Giorgia Meloni, who as prime minister leads a far-right government, has held to a pro-Ukrainian line, despite the sympathies of far-right movements throughout Europe for Mr. Putin.Mr. Conte, the former Italian prime minister, declared recently that “the military strategy is not working,” even as it takes a devastating financial toll.In France, Ségolène Royal, a prominent former socialist candidate for the presidency who has denounced Ukrainian claims of Russian atrocities as “propaganda,” announced this week that she intended to lead a united left-wing group in European Parliament elections next year. It was another small sign of a potential resurgence of pro-Russian sentiment.Mr. Putin has used frozen conflicts to his advantage in Georgia and elsewhere. If there is no victory for either side in Ukraine before the U.S. election in November 2024, “the outcome of the war will be decided in the United States,” Ms. Bacharan said.Reporting was contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin, Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle in Paris and Gaia Pianigiani in Rome. More

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      Can Liberalism Save Itself?

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      Liberalism is under siege. It is not just a problem for America’s Democratic Party, which once again may face either losing an election to Donald Trump or claiming victory with a bare majority. Around the world, the entire outlook of political liberalism — with its commitments to limited government, personal freedom and the rule of law — is widely seen to be in trouble.It wasn’t long ago that liberals were proclaiming the “end of history” after their Cold War victory. But for years liberalism has felt perpetually on the brink: challenged by the rise of an authoritarian China, the success of far-right populists and a sense of blockage and stagnation.Why do liberals find themselves in this position so routinely? Because they haven’t left the Cold War behind. It was in that era when liberals reinvented their ideology, which traces its roots to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — and reinvented it for the worse. Cold War liberalism was preoccupied by the continuity of liberal government and the management of threats that might disrupt it, the same preoccupations liberals have today. To save themselves, they need to undo the Cold War mistakes that led them to their current impasse and rediscover the emancipatory potential in their creed.Before the Cold War, President Franklin Roosevelt had demanded the renovation of liberalism in response to the Great Depression, emphasizing that economic turmoil was at the root of tyranny’s appeal. His administration capped more than a century in which liberalism had been promising to unshackle humanity after millenniums of hierarchy — dismantling feudal structures, creating greater opportunities for economic and social mobility (at least for men) and breaking down barriers based on religion and tradition, even if all of these achievements were haunted by racial disparities. At its most visionary, liberalism implied that government’s duty was to help people overcome oppression for the sake of a better future.Yet just a few years later, Cold War liberalism emerged as a rejection of the optimism that flourished before the mid-20th century’s crises. Having witnessed the agonizing destruction of Germany’s brief interwar experiment with democracy, liberals saw their Communist ally in that battle against fascism converted into a fearful enemy. They responded by reconceptualizing liberalism. Philosophers like the Oxford don Isaiah Berlin emphasized the concept of individual liberty, which was defined as the absence of interference, especially from the state. Gone was the belief that freedom is guaranteed by institutions that empower humanity. Instead of committing to make freedom more credible to more people — for example, by promising a bright future of their own — these liberals prioritized a fight against mortal enemies who might crash the system.This was a liberalism of fear, as another Cold War liberal intellectual, the Harvard professor Judith Shklar, said. In a way, fear was understandable: Liberalism had enemies. In the late 1940s, the Communists took over China, while Eastern Europe fell behind an Iron Curtain. But reorienting liberalism toward the preservation of liberty incurred its own risks. Anyone hostage to fear is likely to exaggerate how dangerous his foes actually are, to overreact to the looming threat they pose and to forsake better choices than fighting. (Ask Robert Oppenheimer, who signed up to beat the Nazis only to see paranoia spoil the country he volunteered to save.)During the Cold War, concern for liberty from tyranny and self-defense against enemies sometimes led not just to the loss of the very freedom liberals were supposed to care about at home, it also prompted violent reigns of terror abroad as liberals backed authoritarians or went to war in the name of fighting Communism. Millions died in the killing fields of this brutal global conflict, many of them at the hands of America and its proxies fighting in the name of “freedom.”Frustratingly, the Soviet Union was making the kinds of promises about freedom and progress that liberals once thought belonged to them. After all, in the 19th century liberals had overthrown aristocrats and kings and promised a world of freedom and equality in their stead. Liberals like the French politician and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, though concerned about possible excesses of government, imagined democracy as a form of politics that offered startling new opportunities for equal citizenship. And while such liberals placed too much faith in markets both to emancipate and to equalize, they eventually struggled to correct this mistake. Liberals like the English philosopher John Stuart Mill helped invent socialism, too.The Cold War changed all that. It wasn’t just that socialism became a liberal swear word for decades (at least before Senator Bernie Sanders helped revive it). Liberals concluded that the ideological passions that led millions around the world to Communism meant that they should refrain from promising emancipation themselves. “We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes,” the Columbia professor and Cold War liberal Lionel Trilling explained.The Cold War transformation of liberalism wouldn’t matter so profoundly now if liberals had seized the opportunity to rethink their creed in 1989. The haze of their geopolitical triumph made it easy to disregard their own mistakes, in spite of the long-run consequences in our time. Instead, liberals doubled down. After several decades of endless wars against successor enemies and an increasingly “free” economy at home and around the world, American liberals have been shocked by blowback. History didn’t end; in fact, many of liberalism’s beneficiaries in backsliding new democracies and in the United States now find it wanting.A great referendum on liberalism kicked off in 2016, after Mr. Trump’s blindsiding election victory. In books like Patrick Deneen’s best-selling “Why Liberalism Failed,” there was an up-or-down vote on the liberalism of the entire modern age, which Mr. Deneen traced back centuries. In frantic self-defense, liberals responded by invoking abstractions: “freedom,” “democracy” and “truth,” to which the sole alternative is tyranny, while distracting from their own errors and what it would take to correct them. Both sides failed to recognize that, like all traditions, liberalism is not take it or leave it. The very fact that liberals transformed it so radically during the Cold War means that it can be transformed again; liberals can revive their philosophy’s promises only by recommitting to its earlier impulses.Is that likely? Under President Biden’s watch, China and Eastern Europe — the same places where events shocked Cold War liberals into their stance in the first place — have attracted a Cold War posture. Under Mr. Biden, as under Mr. Trump before him, the rhetoric out of Washington increasingly treats China as a civilizational threat. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has once again made Eastern Europe a site of struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of repression. Some like to claim that the war in Ukraine has reminded liberals of their true purpose.But look closer to home and that seems more dubious. Mr. Trump is the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee (if not the potential winner of the election). Yet liberals seem to be betting their success less on a positive vision for America’s future and more on the ability of courts to protect the nation. Even if one of Mr. Trump’s many prosecutors manages to convict him, this will not rescue American liberalism. The challenge cuts deeper than eliminating the current enemy in the name of our democracy if it is not reimagined.Since his election in 2020, Mr. Biden has been championed by some pundits — and by his administration itself — as the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. But Roosevelt warned that “too many of those who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they ought to be.”Mr. Biden, despite an ambitious agenda of so-called supply-side liberalism, doesn’t seem to have internalized the message. And for their part, voters do not yet seem fully convinced. A liberalism that survives must resonate with voters who want something to believe in. And liberalism once had it, revolving not around fear of enemies but hope in institutions that lead to what Mill called “experiments in living.” He meant that people everywhere would get the chance from society to choose something new to try in their short time. If their hands are forced — especially by a coercive and unequal economic system — they will lose what is most important, which is the chance to make themselves and the world more interesting.If there is any silver lining in the next phase of American politics, which Mr. Trump continues to define, it is that it provides yet another opportunity for liberals to reinvent themselves. If they double down instead on a stale Cold War ideology, as they did after 1989 and 2016, they will miss it. Only a liberalism that finally makes good on some of its promises of freedom and equality is likely to survive and thrive.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.Samuel Moyn is a professor at Yale and the author of the forthcoming book “Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times.” More

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      Ukraine Is Still Grappling With the Battlefield Prigozhin Left Behind

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      He shored up Russian forces at their most vulnerable and drew Ukraine into a costly fight for Bakhmut, giving Moscow time to build defenses that are slowing Ukraine’s counteroffensive.As the Russian military reeled on the battlefield in Ukraine last autumn, a foul-mouthed, ex-convict with a personal connection to President Vladimir V. Putin stepped out of the shadows to help.Yevgeny V. Prigozhin for years had denied any connection to the Wagner mercenary group and operated discreetly on the margins of Russian power, trading in political skulduggery, cafeteria meals and lethal force.Now, he was front and center, touting the Wagner brand known for its savagery and personally recruiting an army of convicts to aid a flailing Russian war operation starved for personnel.The efforts that Mr. Prigozhin and a top Russian general seen as close to him, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would undertake in the subsequent months would alter the course of the war.Both men have since been taken out of action.Mr. Prigozhin is presumed to have died in a plane crash on Wednesday, an incident that came two months after he launched a failed mutiny, and which U.S. and Western officials believe was the result of an explosion on board. Several said they thought Mr. Putin ordered the plane destroyed, suggestions the Kremlin on Friday dismissed as an “absolute lie.”A military column of the Wagner group drives along the highway linking Russia’s southern cities with Moscow during the rebellion on June 24.ReutersGeneral Surovikin, who U.S. officials have said had advance knowledge of the mutiny, hasn’t been seen in public since the day of the revolt, and according to Russian state news media was formally dismissed from his post leading Russia’s aerospace forces this week.On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are still grappling with their impact.Mr. Prigozhin led the brutal fight in Bakhmut through the winter and into the spring, relying on unorthodox recruitment of prison inmates to quickly bolster Russia’s badly depleted frontline forces. The battle, one of the bloodiest of the war, sapped Kyiv of trained soldiers ahead of the counteroffensive, while Russia lost personnel Moscow saw as largely expendable.“When the Russian military was at its most vulnerable, he provided an important reserve force to buy time for them,” Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, said of Mr. Prigozhin.And Wagner, she added, was “taking the most casualties and losses at a time when the Russian military was still reeling and trying to cope with mobilization.”An Orthodox priest gave funeral rites for Wagner group mercenaries in February on the outskirts of Bakinskaya, a village in Russia’s Krasnodar region.Nanna Heitmann for The New York TimesHe effectively helped turn Bakhmut into a symbol beyond its strategic importance, one where Kyiv continues to devote extensive resources. And Russia is now building out its own army with convicts, adopting his strategy.The long-fought battle for Bakhmut also gave the Russian military, initially under the leadership of General Surovikin, a chance to flow in newly mobilized personnel and establish what became known as the “Surovikin line” of defense. The wall of mines, trenches and other fortifications has proved difficult for Ukrainian forces to penetrate in the counteroffensive.Mr. Prigozhin’s forces eventually took a devastated Bakhmut. And his contribution to the Russian war effort at an important moment, coupled with a newfound public stature owing to scores of expletive-laden comments and videos on social media, fed his ego.“Prigozhin would have you believe they were the only thing saving the Russian military. In reality they were out front, but they couldn’t do what they did without the Russian Ministry of Defense,” said Ms. Massicot.The grisly battle stoked his hatred of the Russian military to such a degree that he ultimately mounted a shocking uprising to eliminate its leadership, running gravely afoul of the unspoken rules of Mr. Putin’s system in the process.“Prigozhin over time developed a kind of main character syndrome,” Ms. Massicot said. “And in Russia, there is only one main character. He sits in the Kremlin.”The mutiny came after Mr. Prigozhin’s usefulness on the battlefield had faded.Mr. Prigozhin in an image taken from video posted on the Telegram account of his company, Concord, with Wagner mercenaries in Bakhmut, Ukraine, in May.Concord, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRussia’s shift to defense had stabilized the lines. The personnel crisis became less acute. In late May, Wagner left the battlefield.“Wagner’s strategic utility likely peaked during the winter and spring,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “After that, it is difficult to see how Wagner would have proven decisive in this war. Their greatest utility was not in defending but in fighting for cities.”Mr. Prigozhin’s presumed death at the age of 62 capped the life of a man who rose from a Soviet prison to Moscow’s most elite circles of power, ultimately erecting a private empire that fed off Mr. Putin’s increased appetite for confrontation and desire to reassert Russia on the world stage.While amassing a personal fortune from government catering and construction contracts, Mr. Prigozhin crafted a role for himself at the tip of Russia’s geopolitical spear, his stature growing alongside Mr. Putin’s willingness to take risks.He thrived in the secretive space between formal Russian power and its targets. Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 popularized the concept of “hybrid warfare” and “gray zone tactics,” which Mr. Prigozhin adopted as his freewheeling outfit’s specialties.“With the creation of Wagner in 2014 and all of the deployments we have seen since, he established a way to really revolutionize how a private military company could be used in this targeted, coordinated way to advance Russian geopolitical interests,” said Catrina Doxsee, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Wagner assault teams helped Moscow execute a final land grab in eastern Ukraine in 2015. For years, the mercenary group carried out select missions in Syria, relieving the Russian military of the need to deploy large numbers of ground troops so it could achieve its goals with air power and a limited footprint.Mr. Prigozhin attracted global renown when his St. Petersburg troll factory intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and helped stir up right-wing populism in Europe. Later, he expanded his security services into Africa, all the while finding business opportunities, from mining to oil, that came easily to a person operating a private army with the Kremlin’s imprimatur.A Russian gold processing plant in the desert outside al-Ibediyya, Sudan. Wagner commanders often extracted lucrative mining concessions from African leaders in exchange for providing security. Abdumonam Eassa for The New York Times“The opportunity grew from a more interventionist policy by Russia,” Mr. Kofman said. “If Russia and Putin weren’t interested in a revived Russian role in the Middle East, if they weren’t interested in prospecting in Africa for influence and resources, those opportunities wouldn’t have been there.”“The Kremlin was interested in those who could deliver on that expanded vision,” Mr. Kofman added. “And Prigozhin, ever an opportunist, sensed those prospects.”Mr. Putin’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine would become as existential for the Kremlin as it would for Mr. Prigozhin, bringing the risk-taking to extremes that tested the system and the individuals within it.At first, Mr. Prigozhin seemed to thrive. But as his ego grew, his usefulness to the Russian military waned, an unstable blend that exploded in the June mutiny, rupturing a relationship with Mr. Putin that went back to the 1990s in their mutual hometown, St. Petersburg.The tycoon had spent nearly a decade behind bars in the 1980s, having been found guilty by a Soviet court of robbery and other crimes, including one incident in which prosecutors alleged he choked a woman into unconsciousness before making off with her gold earrings.While he made inroads with Mr. Putin after the Soviet Union’s collapse, he didn’t come from the world of former KGB associates who would rise along with the Russian leader to dominate the country’s levers of power. Mr. Putin seemed to emphasize that on Thursday when he noted that Mr. Prigozhin was a “talented person” who in life made many mistakes.“I think some of these miscalculations came from believing that he was part of the system,” Ms. Doxsee said. “But I don’t think Putin ever stopped believing that he was anything other than a useful outsider.”Part of the crashed private jet that reportedly carried Mr. Prigozhin, near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, on Thursday.Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press More