Connect with us

News

An illustrated diary from Kyiv: ‘I do not draw the houses, but the force of death’

Published

on

An illustrated diary from Kyiv: ‘I do not draw the houses, but the force of death’

Sergiy Maidukov is a Kyiv-based illustrator whose work has appeared on this journal, in addition to The New Yorker, The New York Occasions and The Wall Road Journal. He was born in Donetsk, jap Ukraine, which is now occupied by Russia and its militant proxies. Maidukov has been working with journalists protecting the battle. His footage, offered right here together with his feedback, seize the dread and hazard of the warfare because it rolled in direction of the capital.


February 25
The automobiles stand empty. They seem freshly broken from gunfire after a skirmish with the Russians who infiltrated the town’s Obolon district. Troopers mill about, tinkering with their tools.

© Sergiy Maidukov

February 25
On day two of the warfare, all I can assume to do this is for certain to assist Ukraine is give blood. So 4 of my pals and I queued for a number of hours, the road behind us rising ever longer as we waited. It was the primary time in my grownup life I overcame my concern of needles and donated blood.

© Sergiy Maidukov

February 26
A curfew was declared for tomorrow. Nobody shall be allowed to go exterior, because the army plans to conduct sweeps for Russian saboteurs. Anyone discovered on the streets shall be, we’re advised, assumed to be an enemy with each consequence that suggests.

February 27
The warfare is just three days previous. I rushed to evacuate my daughter, have barely slept and overdosed on information. Regardless of the curfew, I resolve to exit to assist neighbours put together Molotov cocktails. The journey is lower than 100 metres door-to-door however, inside sixty seconds, I’m thrown to the bottom and handcuffed at gunpoint. At the very least I’m not shot.

When I’m delivered to the police station, the temper is lighter. The officers Google me and let me go, joking about how fortunate I’m and that I ought to run house quick.

Advertisement

These are our luggage, packed and able to go away if we get the prospect.

© Sergiy Maidukov

March 2
I’m serving to two journalists who’re in search of feminine troopers in our Territorial Defence forces to interview. Whereas they do, I sit and draw this soldier guarding their headquarters. His identify is Oleh. He was a programmer, earlier than he volunteered to battle.

© Sergiy Maidukov

March 3
Two Russian missiles hit right here in Dorohozhychy two days in the past. All the things that was right here has been turned to black rubble. This was an assault on a broadcast tower close to the Babyn Yar, the place the place Jews, Roma, prisoners and tens of 1000’s of individuals had been killed between 1941 and 1943.

© Sergiy Maidukov

March 4
Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kyiv’s important sq., morning. I used to be allowed by troopers to attract for 20 minutes.

© Sergiy Maidukov

March 6
Two days in the past, within the village of Markhalivka, a Russian aircraft was shot down. When it began to fall out of the sky, the pilot discharged his rockets into the city to keep away from exploding on affect. Just a few homes had been broken; certainly one of them is only a gap within the floor surrounded by wreckage. Six individuals died, together with two kids, burnt in a automobile.

Behind the buildings, there’s an open subject and, within the far distance, I can see items of particles which were blown clear by the blasts. The form of energy that might do that is surprising to think about. So I don’t draw the homes, however the drive of loss of life.

© Sergiy Maidukov

Comply with @FTMag on Twitter to search out out about our newest tales first

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

News

Trump says he will ‘most likely’ give TikTok extension to avoid ban

Published

on

Trump says he will ‘most likely’ give TikTok extension to avoid ban

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

President-elect Donald Trump said he would “most likely” extend the deadline for ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to divest the video app which faces a nationwide ban that is set to come into effect on Sunday.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump said he was considering issuing a 90-day extension to the deadline. His comments come one day after TikTok warned that its 170mn users would face an imminent blackout after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the divest-or-ban law that Congress passed last year to address China-related national security concerns.

“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation . . . If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday.”

Advertisement

On Friday, Trump said he had spoken to President Xi Jinping and discussed TikTok with the Chinese leader. Chinese state media said the two leaders had spoken but did not specify if TikTok was part of the conversation.

The Biden administration on Friday said it would leave decisions about enforcement of the law, which comes into effect at midnight on Saturday eastern time, to the incoming Trump administration.

That means the companies that provide the video platform — including Apple, Google and Oracle — have to decide whether to risk violating the law between the midnight deadline and Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Apple and Oracle declined to comment, while Google did not immediately respond.

TikTok said statements from the Biden administration “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans”.

Advertisement

It also warned that the video app would “go dark” on January 19 unless the Biden administration “immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement”.

In an overwhelming bipartisan vote last March, Congress passed a law that required ByteDance to divest TikTok to avoid a nationwide ban on the app.

Lawmakers and US security officials believe that Chinese ownership of the app poses a national security risk because it could be used for espionage and disinformation by the Chinese Communist party. TikTok has denied that the Chinese government has any influence over the app.

In his first term, Trump issued an executive order to block TikTok from operating in the US, but it was stymied by the courts at the last minute. In early 2024, he came out in opposition to the congressional divest-or-ban measure on the grounds that it would help Facebook, which banned him from its social media platform for two years.

Trump has appointed several China hawks who oppose Chinese ownership of TikTok to his administration, including Mike Waltz, a former green beret and Florida congressman, who will serve as national security adviser.

Advertisement

Earlier this week, Waltz said the incoming administration would put “measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark”, saying the legislation allowed for an extension as long as a “viable deal” was on the table.

Following the TikTok statement on Friday, Rush Doshi, a former senior Biden administration China official, wrote on X that the company only had itself to blame.

“TikTok had 268 days to sell itself so it wasn’t operated by China. That would have solved everything. But they didn’t even try. China wouldn’t let them,” Doshi said.

“Now, with time short, they want Biden to ignore a bipartisan law SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) upheld 9-0. If they shut down, it’s on them.”

Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy and Michael Acton

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Biden Proclaims That The Equal Rights Amendment Is The Law Of The Land—But What Does That Mean?

Published

on

Biden Proclaims That The Equal Rights Amendment Is The Law Of The Land—But What Does That Mean?

President Joe Biden announced on Friday that, as far as he’s concerned, the Equal Rights Amendment is the “law of the land,” a somewhat symbolic move that is poised to allow more women across the country to sue their states for gender discrimination—including challenges to abortion bans.

The ERA, originally drafted over a century ago and passed by Congress in 1972, has faced a long and hard-fought journey toward ratification and implementation as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. If formally recognized, the ERA would constitutionalize gender equality.

“The Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land—now!” Biden said in a speech to the United States Conference of Mayors. “It’s the 28th amendment to the Constitution—now.”

While Biden’s declaration is expected to spur legal and political repercussions nationwide, the president’s announcement isn’t so simple.

Immediately following Biden’s announcement on Friday, the National Archives, which publishes constitutional amendments, stated it had no plans to formally add the ERA to the Constitution. When Congress passed the ERA over 50 years ago, the initial preamble required that 38 states move to ratify within seven years (that deadline was extended to 1982). By that year, the amendment was three states short of implementation.

Advertisement

View of Pro-Choice supporters, including several people with ‘Honored Guest’ sashes, as they take part in a March for Women’s Equality, Washington DC, April 9, 1989. Among the visible signs as ones supporting NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) and Physicians For Choice. (Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images)

Barbara Alper/Getty Images

Thanks to anti-abortion, anti-feminist activists like Phyllis Schlafly, the ERA was squashed. It wasn’t until 2020 that Virginia became the crucial 38th state to ratify the ERA. Yet, because the deadline had long passed and thanks to Donald Trump’s Justice Department saying at the time that ratification took too long, the ERA has remained outside of the founding text—even as about eight in ten US adults, including majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike, say they at least somewhat favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, according to Pew.

United States Archivist Colleen Shogan, a Biden appointee and the first woman archivist, has repeatedly stated that the ERA’s eligibility has expired and could not be added to the Constitution now unless Congress acts. Last month, Shogan and the deputy archivist released a statement saying they could not certify the ERA “due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.” On Friday, the Archives reiterated its position. “The underlying legal and procedural issues have not changed,” they said in a statement. Biden is also not going to order the archivist to certify and publish the ERA, the White House told reporters.

Biden’s Friday announcement about the ERA comes as the president has filled his last moments in office with sweeping executive measures, including designating national monuments in California, removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, blocking a Japanese company’s takeover of United States Steel, extending protected status to nearly 1 million immigrants, and commuting the sentences of almost everyone on federal death row, as detailed by The Washington Post this week.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Under Trump’s Big Tent, Republicans Are Starting to Clash

Published

on

Under Trump’s Big Tent, Republicans Are Starting to Clash

Democrats have long been viewed as the big-tent party — a proudly noisy collection of differing views and competing interests, often prompting headlines describing them as “in disarray.”

Now, Donald J. Trump’s commanding victory may be ushering in a big-tent era for Republicans.

Even before he takes the oath of office on Monday, cracks in his freshly expanded coalition have emerged. With their divides, the incoming president and his party are being forced to confront a reality that has often tripped up Democrats: A bigger tent means more room for fighting underneath it.

In recent weeks, some congressional Republicans have dismissed Mr. Trump’s threats of military force against Greenland. Republicans from farm states have squirmed at his plans to impose new tariffs on all goods entering the United States. Opponents of abortion have grumbled about his selection of an abortion rights supporter for his cabinet. Mr. Trump’s embrace of tech billionaires has troubled conservatives who blame their companies for censoring Republican views and corrupting children.

And last week, a fight over the direction of immigration policy prompted Stephen K. Bannon, an architect of Mr. Trump’s political movement, to attack Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key Trump adviser, as a “truly evil person.”

Advertisement

“The big battles are all on our side of the football — meaningful, tough,” Mr. Bannon told The New York Times.

This wide range of internal fights over policy and power may be run-of-the-mill in politics, but they are somewhat extraordinary for the Trump-era Republican Party. Since Mr. Trump, a former Democrat unbound by strict ideology, effectively hijacked the party in 2016, the internal clashes have largely been between two clear factions: the traditional Republicans and the Republicans who embraced Mr. Trump.

But eight years later, most of the old guard has been thoroughly conquered or converted. Mr. Trump is entering a Washington where nearly all Republicans consider themselves part of his movement. They just don’t all agree on what, exactly, that means.

Inauguration Day will offer a vivid display of the new crosscurrents in the party. When he takes the oath of office, Mr. Trump will be joined not only by Vice President JD Vance, who spent years railing against big tech, but by at least four technology executives who are part of a crop of industry moguls who warmed to Mr. Trump in recent months, pouring money into his inauguration committee.

For most of his political career, Mr. Trump has been laser-focused on pleasing the voters who elected him. In his first term, Mr. Trump largely worried about holding on to his core group of supporters: white, working-class voters.

Advertisement

But with a bigger, more diverse coalition, that task has grown more complicated and far less clear. Mr. Trump’s victory in November was marked by notable gains in traditionally liberal cities and suburbs and among the Black, Latino, female and younger voters who have long been central to the Democratic Party’s base.

While those voters largely supported Mr. Trump’s goals of lowering prices and curbing illegal immigration, it’s unclear whether they also support the full scope of conservative policies — like ending automatic citizenship at birth and banning abortion nationwide — that some of his hard-right supporters are eager to implement.

“This is the most racially diverse incoming governing coalition for a G.O.P. since at least 1956, and that has the potential to change things,” said Ralph Reed, a Republican strategist and founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who said he had attended every Republican inauguration over the past four decades. “But they’re good challenges to have.”

Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, pointed to two policy debates that will help show whether the party is ready to cater to its new voters.

One is whether Republicans support a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, a cohort of immigrants who were brought to the country as children. Stripping them of their legal status comes with the political risk of alienating moderate voters, Mr. Gingrich said.

Advertisement

A second test, he said, would be whether Republicans can muscle through a tax bill before July 4 in order to stimulate the economy and help the party keep control of the House through the 2026 midterms.

“There will be mistakes and confusion and tension, but there will also be enormous changes,” he said.

Mr. Trump doesn’t have much wiggle room in Congress, where even slight ideological differences could have an outsize impact on his ability to enact his agenda. The party’s slim, three-vote margin in the House means that any Republican lawmaker has the power to slow down legislation, if not scuttle it entirely. In the Senate, Republicans have 53 votes, leaving little room for dissent on a majority vote.

During his first term, Trump’s grip on his voters — backed up by frequent political threats — stifled most opposition within the party. Whether his political hold remains as strong in his second — and final — term remains to be seen.

Republican strategists say there are plenty of issues where there is broad agreement across the party, including expanding the tax cuts passed during the first Trump administration and curbing illegal immigration.

Advertisement

Even within those issues, the challenge may be in the details. Already, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Musk have tangled over H-1B visas, a skilled-worker immigration program that has long been a key source of labor for Silicon Valley. Mr. Trump suspended H-1B visas during his first term, but last month seemed to indicate support for keeping the program.

The debt ceiling has created distance between Mr. Trump and deficit hawks in his party, including members of the House Freedom Caucus who last month refused to free him of the spending constraint.

Republicans also disagree over setting a new corporate tax rate and how much of the new tax cuts should be paid for by slashing spending.

A group of Republicans from swing districts in New Jersey, New York and California have vowed to block the tax bill unless a cap on a state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, is raised significantly. Many other Republicans oppose the measure, which would largely benefit wealthier families in blue states.

Foreign policy is another area with considerable intraparty divides, particularly over ending the war in Ukraine and over the role Russia should play in the region. Whether Republicans follow Mr. Trump’s lead and take a softer position toward Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, may offer hints of the party’s direction on America’s traditional alliances abroad.

Advertisement

Still, Brad Todd, a Republican strategist, said no one understood the temperature of the Republican Party quite like Mr. Trump, who spends hours calling different lawmakers, donors and activists to get their views.

“Trump is not ideological,” Mr. Todd said. “He’s a pragmatic, practical person. He is a populist in that he wants to do popular things.”

Continue Reading

Trending