Good morning. The pope has lung cancer, the Vatican said. Joni Mitchell is now an American citizen.
And there’s more news below, including an accounting of how you get your bananas. Let’s start, though, with Russia’s war on Ukraine. America first With winter bearing down, Russia is trying to destroy Ukraine’s energy grid and freeze the country into submission after more than four years of war.
It’s also bombing civilians. Ukraine has struck back with attacks on Russian oil refineries and, recently, e-commerce warehouses across the nation. It has clawed back some territory, even though it’s running low on munitions.
But as the price of diesel fuel soars, President Trump sees the United States as collateral damage in Ukraine’s fight for survival. “He wants to make problems for the world,” Trump said of President Volodymyr Zelensky. “He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers.”Accordingly, Trump announced on Friday that the United States would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel. The announcement shocked Ukrainian and European leaders who have worked for years, with the help of the United States, to cut Russia off from the money that fuels its war. (Several Republican members of Congress objected yesterday, too. Many of them had just backed a new law to tighten the economic noose on Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. “This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our allies,” they and some Democratic colleagues wrote.)But it surely pleased Putin.
If the agreement moves ahead, it could put some $4 billion of American money into the Russian economy. In return, Putin offered more war, launching an attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia that killed 22 people, including four children. The U.S. midterm elections are only weeks away, and high fuel prices imperil Republican candidates.
Buying Russian diesel might bring those prices down, Trump suggests. It would be hard to find a clearer example of his “America first” posture toward foreign policy. On the ground Russia’s escalating assaults on Ukrainian cities are taking an enormous toll.
The same week as the strike on Zaporizhzhia, a Russian bomb hit a commuter bus in Kramatorsk, killing at least 30 people. The Russian military has targeted civilians throughout the war. But the death toll is rising as Moscow deploys more “precision weapons” that have stretched Ukraine’s air defenses with a daily shower of attacks.
Russia launched about 3,500 jet-powered drones against targets across Ukraine in September, reports Marc Santora, who has been covering the war since its start. In June, that number was 350. Ukraine is trying to engineer an interceptor that can stop them. (For now, F-16s try to shoot them down.)The Russians use older weapons, too, including World War II-era “glide bombs” that can be stopped only by shooting down the fighter jets that deliver them, something the Ukrainian military lacks the ability to do.
In July, the Russians dropped 8,300 of those. A father’s grief Siobhán O’Grady and Liubov Sholudko, reporting from Ukraine, told the story of one of those bombs, which detonated in the city of Sumy, in the country’s northeast, not far from the Russian border. Their account opens with a horrifying scene: MORNING READSAnchors up: In a bay near San Francisco, people have lived rent free on boats for decades.
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Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about Kelly Clarkson’s feud with a Brooklyn novelty shop. Cartoon hero: P. C.
Vey, “one of the faces on the Mount Rushmore of Cartooning,” has died at 70. Read about his life, and see some of his hilarious work for The New Yorker. THE LATEST NEWSPope Leo Politics Cornell Rape Investigation Artificial Intelligence Around the World Other Big Stories THE MORNING QUIZThis question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter.
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Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing