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☆ Five Takeaways From Turkey’s Presidential Election
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Ben Hubbard | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election grants him five more years to deepen his conservative imprint on Turkish society and to realize his ambition of increasing the country’s economic and geopolitical power. Turkey’s Supreme Election Council named Mr. Erdogan the victor after a runoff election on Sunday. He won 52.1 percent of the vote against the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had 47.9 percent with almost all votes counted, the council said. The election was closely followed by Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, who have often seen Mr. Erdogan as a frustrating partner because of his anti-Western rhetoric and close ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Erdogan has given no indication that he plans to change his policies abroad, where he has sought to use Turkey’s place at the juncture of Europe, Asia and the Middle East to expand its influence, or at home, where has consolidated power in his hands and responded to an inflation crisis with unconventional measures that economists said exacerbated the problem.

☆ Barely Noting War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-27 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Paul Sonne | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Pro-Ukrainian fighters stormed across the border into southwestern Russia this past week, prompting two days of the heaviest fighting on Russian territory in 15 months of war. Yet President Vladimir V. Putin, in public, ignored the matter entirely. He handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country. In managing Russia’s biggest war in generations, Mr. Putin increasingly looks like a commander in chief in absentia: In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks. Instead, he is telegraphing more clearly than ever that his strategy is to wait out Ukraine and the West — and that he thinks he can win by exhausting his foes.

☆ Russia’s Latest Sanctions on U.S. Officials Turn to Trump Enemies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Peter Baker | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Russia has expanded its list of sanctioned Americans in a tit-for-tat retaliation for the latest curbs imposed by the United States. But what is particularly striking is how much President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is adopting perceived enemies of former President Donald J. Trump as his own. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, also made the list. None of those three has anything to do with Russia policy and the only reason they would have come to Moscow’s attention is because Mr. Trump has publicly assailed them. He also refused to commit to supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia if he is elected president again, saying instead he would seek to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

HIROSHIMA, Japan — President Biden and other leaders of the world’s major industrial democracies rallied around Ukraine on Sunday with vows of resolute support and promises of further weapons shipments even as Russian forces claimed to have seized full control of a bitterly contested city. Mr. Biden and his counterparts figuratively and, in some cases, literally wrapped their arms around President Volodomyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who made an audacious journey halfway around the world from his ravaged homeland to Hiroshima, Japan, to solicit aid for the first time in person from the Group of 7 powers at their annual summit. “Together with the entire G7, we have Ukraine’s back, and I promise we’re not going anywhere,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Zelensky while announcing another $375 million in artillery, ammunition and other arms for Ukraine. At a later news conference, Mr. Biden voiced defiance of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “I once more shared and assured President Zelensky, together with all G7 members and our allies and partners around the world, that we will not waver,” he said.

☆ Biden Pays Silent Tribute to Victims of Hiroshima Bomb
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Peter Baker | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Biden was 2 years old when the nuclear era opened with a blast of devastation unlike any the world had ever seen. Seventy-eight years later, he came on Friday to ground zero of the first atomic bomb used in warfare to pay tribute to the dead. Mr. Biden and other world leaders met privately with a survivor, toured a museum, laid wreaths at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and planted a tree. The president stared solemnly at the Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb Victims as the city’s mayor described the monument. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has hinted ominously that he may yet unleash nuclear weapons to salvage his flailing invasion of Ukraine.

☆ Jailed Russian opposition figure Kara-Murza faces 'psychological torture', wife says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of jailed Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, addresses the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy in Geneva, Switzerland May 17, 2023. Vladimir Kara-Murza, who holds Russian and British passports, was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition figure assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015. "Had I tried to convince him to give up his fight, I would have betrayed him," Evgenia Kara-Murza said. Despite not being able to speak to him, his children have grown up being acutely aware of the perils of being an opposition figure in Russia. "Their father was first poisoned when our oldest was nine," Evgenia Kara-Murza said.

☆ How doctors create a penis from a vagina and why one trans man changed his mind about which surgery to get
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Kelly Burch | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Creating a penis from a vagina is more complicated than turning a penis into a vagina. Then, they must define their priorities for their penis, Horwitz said. Then, during a meta, doctors cut ligaments around the newly enlarged clitoris, allowing it to extend away from the body. Phalloplasty creates a penis from a skin graftScar left over from a skin graft taken for a phalloplasty surgery. Once they've formed the neo-phallus (new penis), doctors surgically connect it to the genitals' nerve and vascular system.

☆ As Ukrainian Attack Looms, Putin Faces Setbacks and Disunity in Russian Forces
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Paul Sonne | Anton Troianovski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Russian military aircraft are crashing before they even reach Ukrainian airspace. A Russian mercenary boss is releasing one profanity-laced tirade after another, claiming that corrupt Russian generals who “all reek of expensive perfume” are sending soldiers to their deaths. These would seem to be bad weeks for President Vladimir V. Putin, a time when the problems that have plagued his 15-month war since its beginning are only worsening: stretched resources, disorganized defenses and disunity in the ranks. Those problems are now threatening to derail what just weeks ago had seemed finally to be a rare military success in Russia’s grasp: victory in the long-running, bloody battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Russian forces, while still fighting fiercely within the city limits, have retreated from positions on the edges of Bakhmut and according to the Russian Defense Ministry lost two colonels to combat there.

He represents a coalition of six opposition parties that have come together to challenge Mr. Erdogan. Recent polls showed Mr. Kilicdaroglu holding a slight lead, despite Mr. Erdogan’s tapping of state resources in an effort to tilt the contest. Mr. Erdogan, 69, is viewed as a problematic and often unpredictable partner of the West. Mr. Erdogan has also vexed fellow NATO leaders by hampering the alliance’s efforts to expand, stalling Finland’s membership and still refusing to endorse Sweden’s inclusion. Mr. Kilicdaroglu, 74, has vowed to improve relations with the West if he is elected and make policy more institutional and less personal.

☆ An Erdogan Loss in Turkey Would Stir Relief in the West and Anxiety in Moscow
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-13 | by ( Steven Erlanger | Anatoly Kurmanaev | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

More broadly, for the European Union and Washington there is the strong feeling that Turkey under Mr. Erdogan has moved farther away from European values and norms like the rule of law and freedom of the press. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, said in an interview that NATO and the European Union viewed the election differently. It is a defense alliance, she said, and “Turkey is one of the allies that has great military capacities” to help NATO in a key part of the world. In Washington, Mr. Erdogan’s drift toward authoritarianism, his ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his disputes with NATO have exasperated officials — and even led some members of Congress to suggest that Turkey should be banished from the NATO alliance. While the United States, the European Union and, to a lesser extent, NATO stand to gain from an opposition victory, Mr. Putin almost certainly will be seen as the loser if Mr. Erdogan is ousted.

☆ On Muted War Holiday, Putin Tries to Justify Invasion of Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Anatoly Kurmanaev | Ivan Nechepurenko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

President Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday used a scaled-down commemoration of triumph in World War II as a platform to denounce the West and make fictitious claims about Ukraine, equating his war of choice against that country with the Soviet Union’s fight for survival against Nazi Germany. With Russia struggling on the battlefield, the annual celebration of Victory Day, Russia’s most important and deeply emotional secular holiday, was far more muted than in the past. But Mr. Putin tried to seize on his nation’s proud memory of what it calls the Great Patriotic War to rally support for the war he launched against Ukraine last year, explicitly comparing the two. “A real war has been unleashed against our motherland again,” Mr. Putin said in a 10-minute speech in Moscow’s Red Square, whose themes were quickly repeated by state media. But his rhetoric has shifted from talk of a limited war — in his telling, one of self-defense — to drawing direct parallels to the colossal fight against Nazism.

Victory Day, celebrating the Soviet Union’s vanquishing of Nazi Germany in 1945, is Russia’s most important secular holiday, although it is toned down this year as the war in Ukraine drags on. More than 20 cities, some thousands of miles from the battle lines, said they would forgo military parades, and organizers canceled a popular nationwide march honoring veterans. Here’s a look at the significance the holiday has taken on during President Vladimir V. Putin’s two decades in power. Why does Victory Day matter so much? Mr. Putin has helped transform Victory Day — meant to honor the 27 million Soviets who died in World War II — into one of the most important holidays on the Russian calendar, a nostalgic ritual that buttresses national pride and unifies a sometimes divided society.

Russian service members rehearsing last week for the military parade in Moscow on Tuesday, when Russia celebrates the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. More recently, he has tried to wrap Ukraine into that narrative, falsely depicting it as a Nazi redoubt. The parade is likely to be subjected to closer scrutiny than usual, both inside Russia and beyond its borders. This year, the jets have skipped their usual practice runs over Moscow, raising questions about whether they will participate. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the march was canceled as a “precautionary measure” against possible attacks.

More recently, he has tried to wrap Ukraine into that narrative, falsely depicting it as a Nazi redoubt. Image Smoke rising above a fuel depot in the Russian village of Volna, near the bridge linking Crimea to Russia, last Wednesday. In Russia, various regional governors have cited security concerns in canceling Victory Day events. “No neo-Nazi scum will be able to mar the great Victory Day. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said the march was canceled as a “precautionary measure” against possible attacks.

☆ Fearing Attacks and Perhaps Unrest, Russia Plans Muted Victory Day
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Neil Macfarquhar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The war in Ukraine has prompted officials across Russia to scale back annual celebrations of Victory Day, the country’s most important national holiday, with more than 20 cities forgoing military parades and organizers calling off a popular nationwide march to honor veterans. Security concerns were most often cited for the rash of cancellations of Tuesday’s events, but some analysts suggested that the unease had as much to do with fears about domestic disturbances. It is an unprecedented step in a country where the parades, which commemorate the triumph of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in World War II, have become a signature event for President Vladimir V. Putin. Over the years, he has cast the day not just as celebration of a historic victory but also of Russia’s present-day need to thwart the Western forces he says are still trying to destroy it. More recently, he has tried to wrap Ukraine into that narrative, falsely depicting it as a Nazi redoubt.

More recently, he has tried to wrap Ukraine into that narrative, falsely depicting it as a Nazi redoubt. Credit... ReutersUkraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, staked his nation’s own claim to the holiday, with an address on Monday drawing a parallel between World War II and the current war against Russian invaders. In Russia, various regional governors have cited security concerns in canceling Victory Day events. Igor Artamonov, the governor of the Lipetsk region, which is also near Ukraine, said his decision should not be misinterpreted. “No neo-Nazi scum will be able to mar the great Victory Day.

☆ After Years in the Shadows, Prigozhin Becomes a Player in Russia
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Ben Shpigel | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin quietly profited from his personal ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, winning lucrative catering and construction contracts with the Russian government while building a mercenary force known as Wagner. After throwing his fighters into Ukraine, their ranks swelled with prisoner recruits, Mr. Prigozhin emerged as a public power player, using social media to turn tough talk and brutality into his personal brand. In a scorching video posted Friday on social media, Mr. Prigozhin threatened to pull his fighters next week out of Bakhmut, the embattled city where he has thrown thousands of convicts into the maw of Ukraine’s defenses, taking extraordinary casualties in a stubborn effort to wear down the other side. Citing a lack of ammunition, Mr. Prigozhin delivered the ultimatum after walking among rows of bodies that he claimed were Wagner fighters killed in the battle for Bakhmut. He called out Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the military general staff, as responsible for their deaths.

☆ Russian Mercenary Leader Threatens to Pull Forces From Bakhmut Next Week
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Neil Macfarquhar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

“These are Wagner guys who died today; the blood is still fresh,” Mr. Prigozhin said, in a speech marked by frequent bleeped-out expletives. The Wagner chief has long criticized Russian military leadership openly, with some analysts attributing the tensions to rivalries for President Vladimir V. Putin’s favor. Mr. Prigozhin has never pointed a finger directly at Mr. Putin over Russia’s setbacks in the war. In February, Mr. Prigozhin accused Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov of treason, claiming they were starving Wagner of ammunition. The problem for Wagner was not a lack of ammunition, Mr. Cherevaty said, but a shortage of people to fight and die.

☆ Wagner Leader Threatens to Pull Out of Bakhmut: Russia-Ukraine War Live News
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Matt Surman | Ivan Nechepurenko | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Whatever the provenance of the two drones that approached the Kremlin early Wednesday morning, one thing was clear: The Russian government wanted the world to know about them. The Kremlin made a deliberate choice to quickly make public what it claimed was a drone attack aimed at assassinating President Vladimir V. Putin. It published an unusual, five-paragraph statement on its website that named the Ukrainian government as the perpetrator and asserted the right to retaliate against Kyiv. The Kremlin’s messaging diverged significantly from its response to previous episodes involving attacks on Russia or Russian-occupied territory. Now the question is whether Russia will use the incident to justify more and even deadlier strikes against Ukraine.

☆ Kremlin Blasts Were Real. The Rest Is Hazy, Maybe Intentionally.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Michael Schwirtz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But whose outrage was real and whose was feigned? In this war, the battle over the narrative is as important as the battle in the field. While the Kremlin frequently lies and uses its powerful government-controlled media to craft alternative realities, Ukraine, too, has proved adept at bending the truth to serve its wartime agenda. Cutting through the competing narratives to get to the truth can prove to be a tricky thing, and that perhaps is the point. Was it a staged Russian provocation meant to justify still harsher attacks on the Ukrainian population, or perhaps against Ukraine’s leadership?

☆ Blinken says the U.S. is ‘intensely engaged’ in efforts to free Evan Gershkovich.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Edward Wong | Daniel Victor | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Wednesday that the U.S. government remained “intensely engaged” in efforts to get Moscow to free Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been held for more than a month on espionage charges that his employer and American officials vehemently deny. Speaking at a World Press Freedom Day event at The Washington Post, Mr. Blinken reiterated that President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had a “special channel” for discussing prisoners. “I wish I could say in this moment there was a clear way forward,” he said. “I don’t have that in this moment.”“We have a country in the case of Russia that like a handful of other countries around the world is wrongfully detaining people, using them as political pawns, using them as leverage in a practice that is absolutely unacceptable and that we’re working both broadly to try to deter — but also at the same time to try to secure the release of those who are being unjustly detained,” Mr. Blinken said.

☆ Moscow Claims Explosions Above the Kremlin Were an Attempt to Kill Putin
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Anton Troianovski | Haley Willis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

After a pair of explosions above the Kremlin early Wednesday, Russia accused Ukraine of trying to assassinate President Vladimir V. Putin with a drone attack, but Kyiv denied any involvement in an incident that could raise the already-high stakes in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. Video footage verified by The New York Times showed what appeared to be two drones detonating over the Kremlin 15 minutes apart, the first shortly before 2:30 a.m. Russia called it an unsuccessful “attempt on the life of the president” by Ukraine that was foiled by Russian “electronic warfare systems,” but did not release any evidence of a Ukrainian link. The Ukrainian government asserted that Russia had manufactured the incident to distract attention from Ukraine’s expected imminent counteroffensive and possibly justify escalation by Moscow. A drone attack at the deeply symbolic heart of Russian power would be an audacious move by Kyiv, with the potential for serious repercussions. There were no reports of serious damage, and the Russian government said that during the predawn incident, Mr. Putin was not in the Kremlin, where he is not thought to spend many nights.

☆ Ukraine War News: Top Official Urges Russian Weapons Makers to Speed Production
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Neil Macfarquhar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Mr. Shoigu singled out the arms manufacturers as crucial to the success of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, which Russia avoids calling a war. Western military analysts and Ukrainian officials have been suggesting for months that production bottlenecks were among the problems plaguing the Russian military, caused partially by the need to substitute parts sanctioned by the West. Some military analysts have suggested that Russian missile barrages against Ukraine’s cities have been only intermittent because Russia’s forces lack sufficient weapons stockpiles. Mr. Putin made critical remarks at various times this year about the pace of manufacturing. In March, Mr. Putin signed a decree allowing the central government, in the event of martial law, to take over the management of defense manufacturers who fail to meet state contracts.

☆ U.S. Wires Ukraine With Radiation Sensors to Detect Nuclear Blasts
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( William J. Broad | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect‌‌ bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker. In part, the goal is to make sure that if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil, its atomic signature and Moscow’s culpability could be verified. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago, experts have worried about whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would use nuclear arms in combat for the first time since the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The preparations, mentioned last month in a House hearing and detailed Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a federal agency that is part of the Energy Department, seem to constitute the hardest evidence to date that Washington is taking concrete steps to prepare for the worst possible outcomes of the invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s second largest nation. The Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST, a shadowy unit of atomic experts run by the security agency, is working with Ukraine to deploy the radiation sensors, train personnel, monitor data and warn of deadly radiation.

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