| |  | | with Anika Arora Seth |
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| Ukrainian soldiers pose for a picture as they repair a military vehicle near the Russian border on Sunday. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters) |
Russia’s Kursk oblast is no stranger to war. In medieval times, the district was overrun by the Mongol horde, and was claimed and ceded down the centuries by Eurasian empires. During World War II, the environs of the city of Kursk became the site of the greatest tank battle in history, as Nazi Germany suffered a grievous strategic defeat at the hands of the bloodied yet unbowed Soviet Union. This past week, Kursk has been the site of the first major invasion of Russian territory since then. This time, it’s not the Nazi war machine rolling in — no matter what Kremlin propagandists insist — but a bold Ukrainian operation that has humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and upended some of the logic of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Kyiv’s foray into Kursk began Aug. 6. Tanks and other armored vehicles surged into Russia; Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes struck at Russian positions. Six days later, Ukrainian officials said they were in control of some 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory. Tens of thousands of Russian residents have evacuated amid growing fears that Ukraine would consolidate its presence and press its advantage. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on social media that Ukrainian forces had seized some 74 settlements in Kursk and were treating civilians there humanely. He nodded to reports of hundreds of Russian soldiers who had surrendered to the advancing Ukrainians, describing them as part of the “exchange fund” that would enable the return of myriad Ukrainian soldiers in Russian captivity. Ukrainian officials were guarded about their plans for the region. “Unlike Russia, Ukraine does not need other people’s property,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told reporters in Kyiv. “Ukraine is not interested in taking the territory of the Kursk region, but we want to protect the lives of our people.” |
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For the Kremlin, the developments are a stinging blow. Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in a fit of neo-imperialist revanchism, dismissing Ukraine’s sovereignty and independent identity and casting the country as part of a greater Russia that would naturally return to the bosom of its compatriots next door. Those delusions were dispelled by Ukraine’s dogged resistance and the surge of Ukrainian nationalism that has accompanied its war effort. And now, rather than having redeemed Russia’s vanished imperium, Putin finds his country’s own vulnerabilities more exposed. By one estimate, Ukraine has seized more Russian territory in a week than Russia has captured in Ukraine in this whole calendar year. Russian military bloggers speculated over which officials would lose their jobs over the debacle, while furious residents have complained about the lack of coordination and information during evacuations, according to my colleagues. Officials in Moscow cast the incursion as an act of “terrorism” and vowed swift retaliation. The operation has led Russia’s forces to carry out bombing raids on its own territory — after months of pummeling Ukraine. “The incursion clearly has achieved at least one Ukrainian objective: breaking through the haze of Russian complacency about the war — which has had limited impact on the lives of most ordinary Russians,” my colleagues wrote earlier this week. “Since last week, Russians, rather than Ukrainians, have taken to social media and blogs to wonder whether the nuclear plant nearest the combat area is safe, to watch videos of their young conscript soldiers taken prisoner and civilians stripped of shelter as the Kursk region disappears behind an active front line,” wrote Anna Nemstova in the Atlantic. What Ukraine’s end goal in the current campaign may be is not totally clear. The incursion has been a significant morale boost at a time when Kyiv has struggled to break through Russia’s fortifications and make much progress in reclaiming lost territory. It creates a greater buffer zone that diverts, at least temporarily, Russian airstrikes and artillery bombardments away from Ukrainian cities and territory. And it may potentially see Russia pull some of its troops out of Ukraine to fight battles in Kursk and other endangered border regions. “Russia has relocated some of its units from both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine’s south,” Dmytro Lykhoviy, a Ukrainian army spokesman, told Politico on Tuesday. Given the possibility of Western support for Kyiv waning in the coming months — not least if the U.S. election returns former president Donald Trump to power — the raid into Kursk gives Ukraine a bit more leverage for any future peace talks. “With the growing uncertainty of the political landscape in the West and increased pressure to enter peace negotiations with Russia, Ukraine may seek to establish control over Russian territory, which it will use as a bargaining chip in exchange for land now occupied by Russia,” wrote Mark Temnycky, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. Substantive diplomacy is not on the horizon, though. As Russia plots a crushing response, Western commentators point to Ukraine’s Kursk success as proof that Kyiv should be allowed to use more long-range Western weapons to hit targets across the border. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s forces, outmanned and outgunned, are still battling against the odds on other fronts. “I’m glad our boys are having success in Kursk,” a senior Ukrainian officer on the front line in Donetsk region told the Financial Times. “We still have a hot fight here. I hope [Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr] Syrsky remembers this.” The Kursk incursion is the latest blow to Putin’s prestige since the short-lived 2023 insurrection of Wagner mercenary company chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who rampaged his way through the heart of Russia before camping out 100 miles outside Moscow. The mutiny was dispelled — and Prigozhin later died in murky circumstances — but it represented a shock to the system and illustrated the inherent weakness of the Kremlin’s security apparatus. “Whether Ukrainian forces remain in Russia or pull back, they have demonstrated the fragility of the entire Putin system — not just its intelligence and military capabilities but the viability of top-down dictation,” noted Harvard academic Walter Clemens. Ukraine may not achieve much more on the Kursk front, but even now, the operation marks a grim inflection point. “In the end, it has become just another flashpoint in a long, drawn-out struggle that has already devastated Ukraine, and is now coming back home to Russia to claim a bloody dividend,” wrote Johns Hopkins scholar Sergey Radchenko. “Putin wanted to beat the living hell out of Ukraine. Well, now, he too has learned that what goes around, comes around.” |
| (Luigi Avantaggiato for the Washington Post) |
Unexpected Atlantic stowaways are overtaking Italy’s marine ecosystem and culinary traditions. The culprits? Blue crabs. The crabs probably crossed the ocean as stowaways in the ballast water on barge ships, our colleague Jenn Rice reports. Their excessive increase is a direct result of climate-change-induced sea-level rise and extreme heat in the summer. The crabs prey on young clams, mussels and oysters, and have destroyed up to 90 percent of the area’s young clams. The damage is extraordinary, not only to the environment but to small fisherman families whose livelihood depends on providing local shellfish to markets and restaurants. |
| • Polio is probably spreading in Gaza, the World Health Organization warned, after a vaccine-derived variant of the virus was detected last month in six sewage samples in the southern and central regions. Gaza’s polio vaccination rate was 99 percent before the war but has now dropped to 86 percent, according to the WHO. Other communicable diseases such as hepatitis A are also on the rise, and doctors have recorded likely cases of scabies, mumps, measles and meningitis. • The United States has deployed more vessels to the eastern Mediterranean Sea as concerns grow in the region about a potential Iranian attack on Israel. The increased resources include a Navy submarine and several destroyers. • Riots led by far-right protesters in Britain have led many Muslims and people of color to worry for their safety in a country that is home. Though anti-racist counterprotests last week offered a partial reprieve, the violent protests over recent weeks included bricks and gasoline bombs launched at mosques, an attack on a hotel housing asylum seekers and assaults of police officers and first responders. Some elected officials are among those who have voiced personal safety concerns. • Two polar bears killed a worker at a remote radar site in Canada’s Arctic region last week. Nasittuq Corp., which operates and maintains radar sites for Canada’s government, confirmed the death in a statement and promised a thorough investigation into the circumstances of the exceedingly rare fatal attack. Other workers responded to the scene and killed one of the bears, the company added. |
| By David L. Stern and Robyn Dixon | | |
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| By Leana S. Wen | The Washington Post | | |
By Anchal Vohra | Foreign Policy | | |
By Gal Beckerman | The Atlantic | | |
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| Lawyers and students demand the resignation of Bangladeshi Chief Justice Obaidul Hasan in a protest outside the high court in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Saturday. (Fabeha Monir for The Washington Post) |
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Students in Bangladesh again prevailed as they demanded the resignation of the country’s chief justice, fearing that he might overturn the selection of the country’s new, temporary leader after student protesters chased Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from power a week ago. The repeated success of the students over the past week has fueled hope across the capital, Dhaka, that the tremendous violence that culminated in Hasina’s overthrow will yield dramatic political and social changes, including in how Bangladesh elects its leaders and how its government, courts and police operate. “We will keep hitting the streets if we have to,” said Shima Akhtar, a protester who said several of her friends had been killed by police during the demonstrations. “This is a time for real change.” But expressions of hope were mixed with fears that the old guard would hijack the revolution by undermining the transitional government, headed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus. There are also concerns about the prospect of ethnic violence or a breakdown of law and order after the departure of Hasina, who had ruled with an increasingly iron fist over the past 15 years, and anxiety over the country’s deepening economic crisis. Since the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh has cycled through repeated military coups, dictatorships and alternating civilian rule by the old guard parties, Hasina’s Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), both led by dynastic figures. This latest change of power was the bloodiest, with hundreds killed, most of them students. “This is the last chance for us,” said Mohammad Tanzimuddin Khan, a Dhaka University international studies professor who mentored the student protest leaders. Hasina’s rule left the country’s institutions deeply politicized and corrupted, political analysts say. The country’s constitution is riddled with amendments that have allowed elected leaders to abuse their powers. The Yunus-led temporary government is focused first on restoring law and order and eventually on overseeing fresh elections. But many critics of the old guard are asking for a more fundamental break with the two political parties that have long ruled the country. Demonstrators, who have continued to protest peacefully, are offering a variety of proposals such as a new, bicameral parliament; a two-term limit for lawmakers; and a new system to nominate judges. Leaders in the traditional political parties, however, retort that the members of the transitional government are unelected and have no standing to undertake such major changes. – Karishma Mehrotra and Anant Gupta Read on: Bangladeshis applaud leader’s ouster but fear old guard will strike back |
|  (Parco Archeologico di Pompei HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
By Adela Suliman |
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