Category: NYTimes

After almost a year of fighting, Russian forces have taken control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. The Kremlin has declared a ‘mission accomplished’, but the cost of the victory has been staggering. Thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have died, and the city is now mostly a pile of rubble.

Experts say that the victory is a ‘Pyrrhic one’, as it has not helped Russia achieve its strategic goal of taking all of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The Russian forces have limited options for going further, and the withdrawal of the Wagner private military company from the front line has caused tensions between them and the Russian military leadership.

Ukraine’s military has fallen back to more defensible lines outside the city, and is now preparing for a major counteroffensive. The battle for Bakhmut has been a costly one for both sides, and it appears that Russia’s ultimate goal of taking the whole of the Donbas is no closer than it was months ago.

Mykonos is one of the world’s hottest vacation destinations, drawing more than two million visitors a year. Since the end of Greece’s decade-long financial crisis in 2018, investors have come to the island in droves, eager to cash in on a gold mine of development for luxury properties, sprawling hotels and high-wattage nightclubs. However, a darker side of the island’s recovery has recently come to light with the attack on a state archaeologist who had been documenting building violations. The Greek government has responded with a swift crackdown, suspending most new building permits and ordering the closure of some beach clubs. Despite the controversy, Mykonos remains a popular destination for tourists from around the world, drawn to its Instagram glamour and cultural heritage.

On Sunday, the National Disaster Prevention Center of Mexico raised the alert level for the Popocatépetl volcano in Central Mexico to Phase 3, just shy of an evacuation order. The volcano has been spewing ash and smoke, prompting officials to close schools and public parks, and to prepare for the possibility of evacuations. The increased activity also temporarily shut down Mexico City’s two main airports.

Residents living near the volcano are urged to avoid going outdoors as much as possible and to wear a face mask or cover their nose and mouth with a handkerchief if they do. In areas where ash is accumulating, the center said residents should cover water containers to avoid contamination, and sweep the ash and collect it in bags.

The volcano alert level was raised a day after Popocatépetl caused ash to fall from the sky, prompting the temporary closure of the two main airports serving Mexico City. Volcanic ash is particularly dangerous to aircraft, according to the U.S.G.S. Falling ash can interfere with plane radio transmission and navigation systems, it can block fuel nozzles and it can create dangerous conditions on runways that can lead to braking issues.

At the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, President Biden and his allies announced new arms packages for Ukraine and discussed strategy with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Despite underlying tensions between the major powers, the leaders of the major industrial democracies lined up their approach to China in a way that Beijing clearly saw as potentially threatening. Biden predicted a coming “thaw” in relations with Beijing, as both sides move beyond recent incidents that have fueled what seems like a descent toward confrontation.

The consensus reached in Hiroshima came after what Michael J. Green, a former top Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, called “a string of diplomatic wins for the U.S. and losses for China.” The communiqué pressed China on the usual stress points, while seeking to reassure Beijing that they were not seeking confrontation. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, talks of “building a high fence around a small yard” to describe the protection of key technologies that could bolster China’s rapid military buildup.

China pushed back hard, accusing the G7 of “obstructing international peace” and “vilifying and attacking China.” Now the question is whether, quietly, Mr. Biden can rebuild a relationship with Mr. Xi that seemed to be turning around last fall, after their first face-to-face meeting. Administration officials hope to return to a more regular dialogue with China, perhaps sending Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to China, and eventually rescheduling a trip to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. There is talk of a meeting between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi in the fall.

The battle for Bakhmut, a small city in eastern Ukraine, has been raging for 10 months. It has become the focal point of the Russia-Ukraine War, with both sides determined to fight to the end. The city has been shelled to oblivion, and the pre-war population of 70,000 has dwindled to a few thousand. Despite the Ukrainian army’s successes elsewhere, the Russians and their Wagner mercenary forces never stopped attacking Bakhmut. The city has become a symbol of pride and defiance for the Ukrainian people, and a rallying cry of “Bakhmut Holds” has emerged. The battle for Bakhmut has been compared to Verdun in 1916, and the horrors of the war have been felt by all. Now, the Russians patrol the city, and the war continues to inch towards new places on the map. The strategic significance of Bakhmut remains in question, as the world awaits another bloody finale.

The term ‘de-risking’ has become popular among officials trying to loosen China’s grip on global supply chains. It reflects an evolution in the discussion over how to deal with a rising, assertive China, and is meant to sound more moderate and surgical than ‘decoupling’. The term caught on after a speech by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on March 30. German and French diplomats later pressed for the term in international settings, and it was adopted by the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar.

However, de-risking has a vexing history in financial policy, and is associated with overreaching. Human rights groups have condemned how banks de-risk by denying service to aid agencies that work in places like Syria, fearing fines if an organization strays into a gray zone of providing aid to nations under sanction.

De-risking requires tough, in-the-weeds decisions and solutions. The United States and its allies will need to do more thinking and regulation writing for some businesses, while allowing others to stay in China. Ultimately, de-risking is an imperfect, evolving challenge, and the world’s democracies must find a way to disconnect from China enough to reduce the threat of coercion, without encouraging paranoia or rogue behavior that causes unneeded harm.

The war in Ukraine has been raging for over a year, and the city of Bakhmut has been at the center of it. Drone footage taken by The New York Times shows the devastating destruction of the city, with scorched buildings, destroyed schools, and cratered parks. The Russians are declaring victory in this battle, but the Ukrainians are still fighting to drive the Russians from the ruins.

The city of nearly 80,000 has been reduced to ashes, with only a few remaining civilians trying to find a safe path. President Biden has estimated that around 100,000 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded in the battle for Bakhmut, and Ukraine has suffered grievous losses as well.

The New York Times visited Bakhmut in December and found that the few remaining residents mostly lived in basement bunkers. As the Russians advanced slowly, block by block, razing many buildings to their foundations, the Ukrainians were largely confined to a patch of land smaller than Central Park.

Two murals painted on the walls of high-rise buildings in 2020 offered the residents a sense of solace, but one of them is now gone along with the multistory building that served as its canvas. The other mural still stands, but the building is now empty, battered, and lifeless, like the city itself.

After years of drought, population growth, and climate change, the Colorado River is in danger of drying up. To prevent this, Arizona, California, and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the river, with the federal government providing $1.2 billion in payments to irrigation districts, cities, and Native American tribes. This agreement will reduce water use by 13%, and is expected to require significant water restrictions for residential and agricultural uses.

The agreement is only in place until 2026, and the seven states that rely on the river will need to come up with a long-term solution. The Biden administration is hopeful that the states can work together with the federal government to address the challenge of the Colorado’s decline.

The agreement is a victory for the Biden administration, and a relief for the states involved. It is a reminder that, with the right incentives, states can come together to protect a vital resource.

The European Commission has formally asked Greece to investigate a New York Times report based on exclusive footage showing the country’s Coast Guard abandoning migrants in the Aegean Sea last month. The Times verified the footage, taken on the Greek island of Lesbos on April 11, using a range of tools including metadata analysis and geolocation. The European Commission has the power to open a so-called “infringement procedure” against Greece, the formal process under which the E.U. punishes members that violate its rules. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently defended his migration policies as “tough but fair” and Greek voters appear to be largely unmoved by the alleged violations. The European Commission is relying on the Greek authorities to investigate and verify the Times findings before they can take action.

Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s under secretary for human rights, has been repeatedly targeted with Pegasus, the world’s most notorious spyware, while investigating abuses by the nation’s military. This is the first confirmed case of such a senior member of an administration – let alone someone so close to the president – being surveilled by Pegasus in more than a decade of the spy tool’s use in the country. The attacks on Mr. Encinas seriously undercut President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s pledge to end what he has called the “illegal” spying of the past. Pegasus is licensed only to government agencies, and while there’s no definitive proof which one carried out the hack of Mr. Encinas’s phone, the military is the only entity in Mexico that has access to the spyware. The Israeli manufacturer of Pegasus, NSO Group, has opened an investigation into cyberattacks on human rights defenders in Mexico and is looking into the attacks on Mr. Encinas and his two colleagues. If NSO confirms that Mr. Encinas and others were targeted for no legitimate reason by the Mexican military, the company could immediately shut down the institution’s access to Pegasus. The hacking has put Mr. Encinas and the president in a tough position, as the president has continued to deny that any spying is happening.