America First?

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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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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早上好。梵蒂冈表示，教皇患有肺癌。琼妮·米切尔现已成为美国公民。下文还有更多新闻，包括香蕉是如何送到你手中的。不过，让我们先从俄罗斯对乌克兰的战争说起。

美国优先

随着冬季临近，俄罗斯正试图摧毁乌克兰的能源电网，想在经历了四年多的战争后迫使这个国家屈服。俄罗斯也在轰炸平民。乌克兰则以袭击俄罗斯炼油厂进行反击，近期还袭击了全国各地的电商仓库。乌克兰已收复部分领土，尽管其弹药正在告急。但随着柴油价格飙升，特朗普总统将美国视为乌克兰生存之战中的附带受害者。“他想给世界制造麻烦，”特朗普谈及volodymyr泽连斯基总统时说，“他想给我们的农民和牧场主制造麻烦。”

因此，特朗普周五宣布，美国将暂停对俄罗斯柴油的制裁。这一宣布令乌克兰和欧洲领导人震惊，他们多年来在美国的帮助下努力切断俄罗斯为其战争提供资金的渠道。（昨天，数名共和党国会议员也表示反对。他们中许多人刚刚支持一项新法律，以收紧对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京的经济约束。“这项协议是对我们对手的馈赠，也是对我们盟友的背叛，”他们与部分民主党同僚联合写道。）

但这无疑令普京感到高兴。如果该协议推进，可能会将约40亿美元的美国资金注入俄罗斯经济。作为回报，普京选择了更多战争，对乌克兰城市扎波罗热发动袭击，造成22人死亡，其中包括4名儿童。美国中期选举仅剩数周，高昂的燃油价格让共和党候选人处境艰难。特朗普暗示，购买俄罗斯柴油或许能压低价格。很难找到比这更能体现其外交政策“美国优先”立场的例子了。

战场局势

俄罗斯对乌克兰城市的不断升级的袭击造成了巨大伤亡。在袭击扎波罗热的同一周，一枚俄罗斯炸弹击中了克拉马托尔斯克的一辆通勤大巴，造成至少30人死亡。整个战争期间，俄罗斯军方一直以平民为目标。但随着莫斯科部署更多“精确武器”，伤亡人数不断上升，这些武器每天都在对乌克兰的防空系统形成持续打击。据一直报道这场战争的马克·桑托拉报道，俄罗斯九月在乌克兰各地发射了约3500架喷气式无人机，而六月这一数字为350架。乌克兰正试图研制能够拦截它们的拦截器。（目前，F-16战机负责将其击落。）

俄罗斯还使用较老式的武器，包括二战时期的“滑翔炸弹”，只有击落投放它们的战斗机才能阻止，而乌克兰军队缺乏这一能力。七月，俄罗斯投下了8300枚此类炸弹。

一位父亲的悲痛

西奥班·奥格雷迪和柳博夫·舒多尔科从乌克兰进行了报道，讲述了其中一枚炸弹的故事，该炸弹在该国东北部、靠近俄罗斯边境的苏梅市引爆。他们的叙述以一个令人震惊的场景开始：