How Far Trump Would Go

TIME

How Far Trump Would Go

By Eric Cortellessa, Palm Beach FLA. – April 30 2024

The former President, at Mar-a-Lago on April 12, is rallying the right at home and seeking common cause with autocratic leaders abroad.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.

We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?

As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”

Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.

Donald Trump Time Magazine cover — Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

The crowd at a Trump campaign rally in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME

The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

Trump steps onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago near dusk. The well-heeled crowd eating Wagyu steaks and grilled branzino pauses to applaud as he takes his seat. On this gorgeous evening, the club is a MAGA mecca. Billionaire donor Steve Wynn is here. So is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is dining with the former President after a joint press conference proposing legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. Their voting in federal elections is already illegal, and extremely rare, but remains a Trumpian fixation that the embattled Speaker appeared happy to co-sign in exchange for the political cover that standing with Trump provides.

At the moment, though, Trump’s attention is elsewhere. With an index finger, he swipes through an iPad on the table to curate the restaurant’s soundtrack. The playlist veers from Sinead O’Connor to James Brown to The Phantom of the Opera. And there’s a uniquely Trump choice: a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This has become a staple of his rallies, converting the ultimate symbol of national unity into a weapon of factional devotion.

The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor.

Jan. 6th 2021 — The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is a profound stain on Trump’s legacy, one that he has sought to recast as an act of patriotism.Victor J. Blue

In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.

Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.

In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”

Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)

Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.

The U.S. border fence in Sunland Park, N.M..Victor J. Blue

Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”

For an operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country. “If they weren’t able to, then I’d use [other parts of] the military,” he says. When I ask if that means he would override the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 law that prohibits the use of military force on civilians—Trump seems unmoved by the weight of the statute. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he says. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country.” He would also seek help from local police and says he would deny funding for jurisdictions that decline to adopt his policies. “There’s a possibility that some won’t want to participate,” Trump says, “and they won’t partake in the riches.”

As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.

Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”

Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices.

Since leaving office, Trump has tried to engineer a caucus of the compliant, clearing primary fields in Senate and House races. His hope is that GOP majorities replete with MAGA diehards could rubber-stamp his legislative agenda and nominees. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a former RSC chairman and the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, recalls an August 2022 RSC planning meeting with Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J. As the group arrived, Banks recalls, news broke that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI. Banks was sure the meeting would be canceled. Moments later, Trump walked through the doors, defiant and pledging to run again. “I need allies there when I’m elected,” Banks recalls Trump saying. The difference in a second Trump term, Banks says now, “is he’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before.”

Haley, Scavino, Wiles: AP (3); Bannon, Conway, Homan, LaCivita, Lighthizer, J. Miller, S. Miller, Trump, Vought: Getty Images (9)

Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.

But an insecure NATO is as likely to accrue to Russia’s benefit as it is to America’s. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks to many in Europe and the U.S. like a test of his broader vision to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Under Biden and a bipartisan Congress, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine to defend itself. It’s unlikely Trump would extend the same support to Kyiv. After Orban visited Mar-a-Lago in March, he said Trump “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine. “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump hedges in our interview. “If Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay? They’re much more greatly affected. We have an ocean in between us. They don’t.” (E.U. nations have given more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine as well.)

Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.”

America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense.

Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”

Transactional isolationism may be the main strain of Trump’s foreign policy, but there are limits. Trump says he would join Israel’s side in a confrontation with Iran. “If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” he tells me. He says he has come around to the now widespread belief in Israel that a Palestinian state existing side by side in peace is increasingly unlikely. “There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he says. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”

Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.

On the second day of Trump’s New York trial on April 17, I stand behind the packed counter of the Sanaa Convenience Store on 139th Street and Broadway, waiting for Trump to drop in for a postcourt campaign stop. He chose the bodega for its history. In 2022, one of the store’s clerks fatally stabbed a customer who attacked him. Bragg, the Manhattan DA, charged the clerk with second-degree murder. (The charges were later dropped amid public outrage over video footage that appeared to show the clerk acting in self-defense.) A baseball bat behind the counter alludes to lingering security concerns. When Trump arrives, he asks the store’s co-owner, Maad Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, about safety. “You should be allowed to have a gun,” Trump tells Ahmed. “If you had a gun, you’d never get robbed.”

On the campaign trail, Trump uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI. When I point this out, Trump tells me he thinks the data, which is collected by state and local police departments, is rigged. “It’s a lie,” he says. He has pledged to send the National Guard into cities struggling with crime in a second term—possibly without the request of governors—and plans to approve Justice Department grants only to cities that adopt his preferred policing methods like stop-and-frisk.

To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.

A protester confronts members of the Minnesota National Guard after the murder of George Floyd.Victor J. Blue

Trump’s ability to campaign for the White House in the midst of an unprecedented criminal trial is the product of a more professional campaign operation that has avoided the infighting that plagued past versions. “He has a very disciplined team around him,” says Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. “That is an indicator of how disciplined and focused a second term will be.” That control now extends to the party writ large. In 2016, the GOP establishment, having failed to derail Trump’s campaign, surrounded him with staff who sought to temper him. Today the party’s permanent class have either devoted themselves to the gospel of MAGA or given up. Trump has cleaned house at the Republican National Committee, installing handpicked leaders—including his daughter-in-law—who have reportedly imposed loyalty tests on prospective job applicants, asking whether they believe the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. (The RNC has denied there is a litmus test.) Trump tells me he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits Biden won: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”

Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration.

The goal of these groups is to put Trump’s vision into action on day one. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” says Vought. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.” That includes a litany of boundary-pushing right-wing policies, including slashing Department of Justice funding and cutting climate and environmental regulations.

Trump’s campaign says he would be the final decision-maker on which policies suggested by these organizations would get implemented. But at the least, these advisers could form the front lines of a planned march against what Trump dubs the Deep State, marrying bureaucratic savvy to their leader’s anti-bureaucratic zeal. One weapon in Trump’s second-term “War on Washington” is a wonky one: restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. Impoundment was a favorite maneuver of Nixon, who used his authority to freeze funding for subsidized housing and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and his allies plan to challenge a 1974 law that prohibits use of the measure, according to campaign policy advisers.

Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”

It can be hard at times to discern Trump’s true intentions. In his interviews with TIME, he often sidestepped questions or answered them in contradictory ways. There’s no telling how his ego and self-destructive behavior might hinder his objectives. And for all his norm-breaking, there are lines he says he won’t cross. When asked if he would comply with all orders upheld by the Supreme Court, Trump says he would.

But his policy preoccupations are clear and consistent. If Trump is able to carry out a fraction of his goals, the impact could prove as transformative as any presidency in more than a century. “He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic,” Bannon says. “That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”

Trump speaks at his last rally ahead of his criminal trial in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME

These obsessions could once again push the nation to the brink of crisis. Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.

Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.

Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian

Trump Reveals Exactly Who He’d Go After in a Second Term

The New Republic – Opinion

Trump Reveals Exactly Who He’d Go After in a Second Term

Hafiz Rashid – April 30, 2024

Donald Trump has made no secret of his plans to take revenge if he makes his way back to the White House.

In a new interview with Time magazine, Trump said he would consider firing U.S. attorneys who refuse to follow his orders on prosecution of others.

“It depends on the situation, honestly,” he said, undermining the idea of independent law enforcement.

When asked if he would prosecute Fani Willis or Alvin Bragg, the Atlanta-area and Manhattan district attorneys who are currently prosecuting him, he also wouldn’t outright reject the idea.

Well you said Alvin Bragg should be prosecuted. Would you instruct your attorney general to prosecute him?
Trump: When did I say Alvin Bragg should be prosecuted?
It was at a rally.
Trump: I don’t think I said that, no.
I can pull it up.
Trump: No.

And when it came to Biden, Trump again made clear he’s open to the idea of prosecution.

After initially saying he “wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” Trump seconds later said it all depends on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. “If they said that a president doesn’t get immunity,” said Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.”

Trump also revived the idea of enforcing Schedule F, which allows the president to fire nonpolitical government officials. This would allow him to fire civil servants who refuse to carry out his orders.

“You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he said.

It’s no secret that Trump and many of his far-right allies want to purge the government of civil servants who aren’t loyal to their agenda. Famously, Trump adviser Steven Bannon said he wanted to dismantle the administrative state. President Biden has taken steps to bolster and strengthen the administrative state, which would be in clear jeopardy if Trump is reelected.

In the rest of the Time interview, Trump was at times contradictory but also said that he would consider pardoning every single one of the January 6 rioters and take steps to deport millions of undocumented immigrants via detention camps and the U.S. military. In any case, if he wins reelection, it’s safe to say that the U.S. government would be upended, with Trump using all of the legal means at his disposal. Those who want to preserve democracy as we know it would have a tall order on their hands.

Trump on political violence in 2024: ‘If we don’t win, you know, it depends’

NBC News

Trump on political violence in 2024: ‘If we don’t win, you know, it depends’

Jake Traylor and Scott Bland – April 30, 2024

Former President Donald Trump said in a new interview with Time m agazine that he doesn’t think there will be political violence around the 2024 election because he believes he’ll win — but that it “always depends on the fairness of an election.”

The comments came along with a statement that Trump would “consider” pardoning every person who has been charged or convicted for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the then-president rallied his followers against what he has repeatedly and baselessly called a “rigged” election.

Trump also answered questions digging into his campaign position on abortion policy being left up to the states — and deflecting questions pressing him on any potential federal action, including his position on whether abortion medication should be available. And Trump reinforced past statements he has made on Russia doing “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who don’t pay their “fair share” and the extent of a military crackdown he plans to order on illegal immigration.

When Trump was asked in an initial interview about the prospect of more political violence in 2024, after the events following the 2020 election, he said no. “I think we’re gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence,” Trump said.

But asked in a follow-up conversation about what will happen if he doesn’t win, Trump was equivocal.

“Well, I do think we’re gonna win,” Trump answered. “We’re way ahead. I don’t think they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”

Trump also said that he’d be reluctant to hire people for a second administration who thought President Joe Biden won the 2020 election: “I wouldn’t feel good about it,” he said.

On the people charged and convicted of violent acts as Congress was preparing to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump complained that they’ve faced a “two-tier system” but, when pressed, said, “I would consider that, yes,” when asked if he’d consider pardoning every single person prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6.

‘The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me’

Trump’s rare long-form interview included him talking through his position on leaving abortion policy up to states. When asked directly if he was comfortable with states deciding to punish women who access abortions after the designated state-specific ban, Trump said: “I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision. The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”

Then, asked if women’s pregnancies should be monitored by state governments to ensure they don’t get abortions after a certain timeline ban, Trump said: “I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”

Trump also dodged on the question of whether women should have access to abortion pills. As the interviewer noted that Republican allies of Trump have called “for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail,” Trump said he will be making a statement later but declined to outline his position.

“I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days,” Trump said. In the follow-up interview on April 27, Time noted that Trump had not yet made the statement even though two weeks had passed.

“I’ll be doing it over the next week or two,” Trump said. “But I don’t think it will be shocking, frankly. But I’ll be doing it over the next week or two.”

Trump recently said that it should also be up to individual states to determine any penalty for doctors who perform abortions outside state law. He labeled a question about what he’d do on potential federal legislation on abortion a hypothetical “because it won’t happen. You’re never going to have 60 votes.”

‘I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further’

When asked about immigration, Trump reiterated a consistent campaign promise to use the U.S. military to remove undocumented immigrants from the country.

And Trump said he’d be willing to use other parts of the U.S. military besides the National Guard to address issues inland as well as the border, saying, “I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further.” When the interviewer noted the law preventing the deployment of the military against civilians, Trump claimed undocumented immigrants weren’t civilians and said: “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”

Trump has previously vowed to relocate thousands of overseas U.S troops to the southern border to crack down on border security as well as promising to terminate “every open border policy of the Biden administration.”

Trump also floated the idea of migrant detention camps, calling it a “possibility” but something he hopes “we shouldn’t have to do very much of.”

At the core of Trump’s immigration promises over the last year is the use of local law enforcement, though policy specifics surrounding the idea have been scarce.

When asked to clarify, Trump proposed “police immunity from prosecution” and left the door open to possible incentives from the federal government for state and local police departments.

‘If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own’

On international affairs, Trump again dug in on recent comments that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who do not “pay up” what he deems are appropriate military expenses.

Trump told Time, “Yeah, when I said that, I said it with great meaning, because I want them to pay. I want them to pay up. That was said as a point of negotiation. I said, Look, if you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own. And I mean that.”

Trump also backed up comments that he wouldn’t “give a penny” to Ukraine unless other European countries started supporting Ukraine in “equalizing” amounts.

“I said I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump said. “They have to come. Europe has to pay. We are in for so much more than the European nations. It’s very unfair to us. And I said if Europe isn’t going to pay, who are gravely more affected than we are, if Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay?”

Trump also conceded that a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine looks “very, very tough,” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “rightfully” been criticized for the fact that Hamas was able to attack Israel on Oct. 7.

Many Ukrainian Prisoners of War Show Signs of Trauma and Sexual Violence

The New York Times

Many Ukrainian Prisoners of War Show Signs of Trauma and Sexual Violence

Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko – April 28, 2024

Family members of Ukrainian soldiers who are prisoners of war meet with Lyudmila Denisova, left, the country’s former human rights ombudsman, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 16, 2023. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)

KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian marine infantryman endured nine months of physical and psychological torture as a Russian prisoner of war, but was allotted only three months of rest and rehabilitation before being ordered back to his unit.

The infantryman, who asked to be identified only by his call sign, Smiley, returned to duty willingly. But it was only when he underwent intensive combat training in the weeks after that the depth and range of his injuries, both psychological and physical, began to surface.

“I started having flashbacks, and nightmares,” he said. “I would only sleep for two hours and wake up with my sleeping bag soaking wet.” He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and referred for psychological care, and is still receiving treatment.

Ukraine is just beginning to understand the lasting effects of the traumas its prisoners of war experienced in Russian captivity, but it has been failing to treat them properly and returning them to duty too early, say former prisoners, officials and psychologists familiar with individual cases.

Nearly 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been released from Russia in prisoner exchanges since the 2022 invasion began. More than 10,000 remain in Russian custody, some of whom have endured two years of conditions that a United Nations expert described as horrific.

The Ukrainian government’s rehabilitation program, which has usually involved two months in a sanitarium and a month at home, is inadequate, critics say, and the traumas suffered by Ukrainian prisoners are growing with the length and severity of the abuse they are being subjected to as the war drags on.

Russia’s torture of prisoners of war has been well documented by the United Nations, with former inmates speaking of relentless beatings, electric shocks, rape, sexual violence and mock executions, so much so that one expert described it as a systematic, state-endorsed policy. Many detainees have also reported lingering symptoms such as blackouts and fainting spells stemming from repeated blows to the head that were severe enough to cause concussions.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said in September that “about 90% of Ukrainian prisoners of war have been subjected to torture, rape, threats of sexual violence or other forms of ill-treatment.”

The Russian military did not answer a request for comment on the allegations of mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Most of the released prisoners have returned to active duty after about three months of rest and rehabilitation, as the Ukrainian military, short of troops on the front line, has given relatively few medical exemptions to former prisoners of war.

A law passed this month will allow former prisoners of war the choice of returning to service or being discharged from the military, recognition that many have been subjected to severe mental and physical torture and need prolonged rehabilitation. Ukrainian officials acknowledged that there have been problems in providing sufficient care for former prisoners, but said they had now developed special centers for them using best international practices.

Ukrainian prosecutors have identified 3,000 former military and civilian prisoners who can serve as witnesses for a case they are building for the Ukrainian courts to charge Russian individuals and officials with mistreatment of prisoners. The prosecutors encouraged two of the former prisoners to speak to The New York Times.

One of them was Smiley, 22, who was captured at the beginning of the war when the Russian navy seized Ukrainian positions on Snake Island in the Black Sea. He spoke a year after his release, saying he hoped that shedding light on the conditions of Russian prisons would help not only his own rehabilitation, but also the thousands of prisoners of war still in captivity.

“My sister persuaded me to give my first interview,” he said. “‘You need to tell,’ she said. Maybe if we speak, it will help the treatment of our guys.”

A second Ukrainian serviceman made available by the prosecutors gave a lengthy interview but declined to give his name or call sign, because of the stigma surrounding the abuses he suffered.

The serviceman, 36, said he was taken prisoner along with several thousand soldiers and marines after a long siege at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol in May 2022. He spent nine months in Russian captivity before being released in a prisoner exchange in early 2023.

He spent most of his time in three detention facilities in the Russian towns of Taganrog, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and Kursk. He returned critically underweight and suffering from an injured spine and, like many others, blackouts, dizziness and ringing in the ears from frequent beatings on the head.

“I am not fainting any longer,” the serviceman said, “but I have difficulties with my back and concussion, and a squeezing all the time of the area around my heart.” Despite his injuries, he was ordered to return to light duty as a guard after only two months’ rest in a sanitarium.

“I don’t know if I could run a kilometer,” he said.

Prisoners were subjected to brutal daily beatings on their legs, backs and fingers, and mental and physical torture during interrogations, as well as hunger, cold and a lack of medical care, he said. Three men died in custody during his imprisonment, including one who died in the communal cell they shared, he said.

Some of the Russian units guarding or interrogating the prisoners were worse than others, the two former prisoners said, but there were consistent beatings every morning at roll call and torture at most detention facilities. Interrogations would last 40 minutes and often consisted of electric shocks, blows to the head and sexual abuse, real or threatened.

“They start with maximum violence,” the serviceman said. “They say ‘You are lying, you are not telling us everything.’ They put a knife to your ear or offer to cut off one of your fingers.”

Others would beat them on the back of the head so regularly that they lost consciousness, he said.

“If one gets tired, another takes over,” he recalled. “When you fall, they make you stand again. It can last 30 to 40 minutes. At the end they say, ‘Why did you not tell us everything immediately?’”

Smiley said much of the violence was of a sexual nature. One prison unit repeatedly struck the prisoners all over their bodies, including on the genitals, with batons that gave electric shocks, he said. On another occasion, he said, a cellmate was repeatedly kicked in the genitals during roll call, where the prisoners were lined up with their legs spread, facing a wall in a corridor. Smiley suffered permanent injury from an untreated broken pelvis from a truncheon blow and could not bend or lie down without assistance for two weeks.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has very limited access to prisoners of war held in Russia, was not permitted to visit him during his nine months of imprisonment, he added.

The second serviceman said he was forced to strip and place his genitals on a stool as his interrogators hit them with a ruler and lay a knife on them, threatening to castrate him.

Interrogators put him through a mock execution, firing a volley of gunfire beside him while he was blindfolded. They threatened him with rape, the serviceman said, making him choose what they should use — a mop handle or the leg of a chair. “Do you want to do it yourself or do you want us to help you?” they taunted him.

He said he was never actually penetrated, but others were raped. “After that you cannot walk normally,” he said. “You suffer for weeks. Other guys had the same treatment.”

“I think they had such an order to break us psychologically and physically so that we would not want anything else in life,” he said, adding that there were suicides in the Taganrog jail.

“You could hear the screams all day,” the serviceman said. “Impossible screams.” Sometimes during a lull, the prisoners could hear the voices of children playing outside, he said.

The ordeal for the former prisoners is by no means over once back home.

“The most difficult thing is having too many people around,” the serviceman said. “Everyone is peacefully walking in the park and you are still afraid that someone is listening, or that you might get shoved or say the wrong thing.”

Maj. Valeria Subotina, a military press officer and a former journalist who was also taken prisoner at Azovstal and who spent a year in women’s prisons in Russia, recently opened a meeting space in Kyiv called YOUkraine, for former prisoners.

“There are many triggers and people do not realize they still need care,” she said.

She returned to service three months after her release in April 2023, but found it hard to sit in an office. “I cannot bear someone approaching me from behind or standing behind me,” she said.

The government psychologists were not of much use, she said. “They often don’t know how to help us,” she said, and civilians often ask careless questions.

As a result, many former prisoners find returning to the front line easier than rejoining civilian life, she said, and only fellow survivors really understand what they are going through.

“We don’t want to feel pity,” she said, “because we are proud that we survived and we overcame this.”

Farmers warn food aisles will soon be empty because of crushing conditions: ‘We are not in a good position’

The Cool Down

Farmers warn food aisles will soon be empty because of crushing conditions: ‘We are not in a good position’

Nick Paschal – April 28, 2024

The United Kingdom is facing dire food shortages, forcing prices to skyrocket, and experts predict this is only the beginning.

What’s happening?

According to a report by The Guardian, extreme weather is wreaking havoc on crops across the region. England experienced more rainfall during the past 18 months than it has over any 18-month period since record-keeping began in 1836.

Because the rain hasn’t stopped, many farmers have been unable to get crops such as potatoes, carrots, and wheat into the ground. “Usually, you get rain but there will be pockets of dry weather for two or three weeks at a time to do the planting. That simply hasn’t happened,” farmer Tom Allen-Stevens told The Guardian.

Farmers have also planted fewer potatoes, opting for less weather-dependent and financially secure crops. At the same time, many of the potatoes that have been planted are rotting in the ground.

“There is a concern that we won’t ever have the volumes [of potatoes] we had in the past in the future,” British Growers Association CEO Jack Ward told The Guardian. “We are not in a good position and it is 100% not sustainable,” Ward added.

Why is it important?

English farmers aren’t alone — people are struggling to grow crops worldwide because of extreme weather.

Dry weather in Brazil and heavy rain in Vietnam have farmers concerned about pepper production. Severe drought in Spain and record-breaking rain and snowfall in California have made it difficult for farmers to cultivate olives for olive oil. El Niño and rising temperatures cut Peru’s blueberry yield in half last year. Everyone’s favorite drinks — coffee, beer, and wine — have all been impacted by extreme weather.

According to an ABC News report, the strain on the agriculture industry will likely continue to cause food prices to soar.

If these were just isolated events, farmers could more easily adapt — bad growing seasons are nothing new. The problem is that rising temperatures are directly linked to the increasing amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned dirty energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas, which release a significant amount of those gases. Our climate is changing so drastically that the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the last decade.

“As climate change worsens, the threat to our food supply chains — both at home and overseas — will grow,” Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit analyst Amber Sawyer told The Guardian.

What can we do about it?

“Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets,” said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

If we replace a quarter of our meat consumption with vegetables, we could cut around 100 million tons of air pollution yearly. It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply.

Growing our own food is also a great way to reduce our reliance on store-bought produce, and it can save you hundreds of dollars a year at the grocery store.

In Ukraine’s old imperial city, pastel palaces are in jeopardy, but black humor survives

Los Angeles Times

In Ukraine’s old imperial city, pastel palaces are in jeopardy, but black humor survives

Laura King – April 21, 2024

Church personnel inspect damages inside the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine, Sunday, July 23, 2023, following Russian missile attacks. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) — Church personnel inspect damage from Russian missile attacks at the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine. The cathedral is in the historic city center, a UNESCO-designated site. (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

On a cool spring morning, as water-washed light bathed pastel palaces in the old imperial city of Odesa, the thunder of yet another Russian missile strike filled the air.

That March 6 blast came within a few hundred yards of a convoy carrying Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was touring the country’s principal shipyard with the visiting Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotaki.

It was a close call, but Ukrainian officials said that in all likelihood the two leaders were not the target. Like so many other strikes during what Ukrainians call the “big war” — ignited by Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022 — the attack was aimed at Odesa’s port, a strategic prize of centuries’ standing.

The Black Sea harbor and its docklands — Ukraine’s commercial lifeline and a prime military asset — have been the object of intensifying Russian drone and missile attacks in recent weeks, as Ukraine’s dwindling air defenses leave critical infrastructure vulnerable across the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis walk near trees in Odesa, Ukraine. — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, center left, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, center right, walk in Odesa, Ukraine, on March 6. The sound of a Russian airstrike a few hundred yards away reverberated around the port city as they ended their tour. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

In Odesa, the deadly campaign of airstrikes has brought sharply renewed peril to nearly a million inhabitants of one of Ukraine’s most eclectic and cosmopolitan cities, known in equal measures for its people’s mordancy and joie de vivre. And it poses a heightened threat to a world-renowned cultural treasure: the jewel-box grid of streets making up Odesa’s UNESCO-designated historic center, which abuts the port.

After a string of attacks on Odesa and its environs, those who watch over the city’s landmark structures are braced for the worst. On many ornate facades in the city center, full-length windows topped with curlicued pediments are boarded over. Inside, as periodic power cuts permit, workers sweep up shattered masonry and painstakingly restore ruined grand staircases.

“It’s very, very difficult work to safeguard these beautiful old buildings,” said Oleksei Duryagin, who heads a firefighting team that works out of a headquarters dating back to the city’s days of horse-drawn fire wagons. “Whenever they try to hit the port, which is what they try to hit, everything here is in danger.”

Because of the building materials used — wood, flammable insulation within the walls — the 19th century buildings that line Odesa’s cobblestone, tree-lined central streets are especially susceptible to fire or collapse. First responders undergo special training in how to fight blazes in structures like Odesa’s sumptuous opera house, perched on a promontory above the seafront.

“From basement to ceiling, I know these buildings like my old friends,” said Duryagin, 52, who has more than three decades of firefighting experience. “I know their mysteries.”

Falling debris from airborne interceptions, rather than direct drone or missile strikes, has caused some of the most serious destruction. Some sites, like the city’s Fine Arts Museum, which is housed in a reconstructed palace, were hit again before they could be cleaned up after an initial attack.

The boarded-up windows on Odesa's Museum of Western and Eastern Art. — The windows on Odesa’s Museum of Western and Eastern Art are boarded up as Russian forces continue to target the port city. (Laura King / Los Angeles Times)

Early in the war, the museum whisked most of its art treasures into hiding. Some display areas are closed off for repairs, and big niches that once held priceless artworks are starkly blank. But the museum remains open to culture-hungry visitors, who must periodically be hustled into its underground shelter when air alerts sound.

Most of the exhibits now have a somber martial theme, including a striking collection of botanical watercolors by a 48-year-old Ukrainian army captain, Borys Eisenberg, an artist and landscape architect who volunteered on the first day of Russia’s invasion and was killed last year on the front lines. His delicate, violet-veined works on paper are mounted on the wooden lids of ammunition boxes.

“You can see that even looking out from the trenches, he found beauty,” said Irina Kulabina, 66, a retired engineer who helps out at the museum. “It’s really important. We should believe in life more than death.”

At Odesa’s Transfiguration Cathedral, the city’s largest Orthodox Christian church, a young priest named Father Alexei gazed out at blue sky through a gaping hole punched in an outer wall during a missile attack last July. He wondered aloud if fresh attacks would outpace rebuilding.

Rubble lies on the floor and walls are charred and blackened inside Odesa's Transfiguration Cathedral. — The blackened interior of the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa. (Laura King / Los Angeles Times)

“We just don’t know what else is to come,” said the 28-year-old cleric, who came to Odesa as a refugee from a front-line town in the eastern province of Luhansk.

While repairs slowly progress, services are held in a cavernous, basement-level secondary space, lighted only by flickering candles and lanterns whenever the electricity goes out. After the July strike, congregants converged on the landmark church, helping to gather artifacts scattered by the blast.

“It was really shocking for everyone,” said Father Alexei. Zelensky said at the time that hitting the cathedral amounted to targeting “the foundations of our entire European culture.”

Last month was a particularly deadly one for the city and its outskirts.

A March 2 drone attack wrecked a nine-story building, killing a dozen people. Five more perished in the strike four days later that narrowly missed Zelensky and the Greek leader. A missile and drone barrage on March 15 left 21 dead, including a paramedic killed in a dreaded “double tap,” in which first responders are targeted, seemingly deliberately, by strikes aimed at the same site a few moments apart to give rescuers time to arrive.

Buildings are seen through a damaged greenhouse roof. — The roof of a greenhouse damaged by a Russian missile attack in the botanical garden of Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University. (Future Publishing via Getty Images)

More recently, on April 10, six people, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed in a strike on an outlying district of Odesa. That attack came on the 80th anniversary of Odesa’s liberation from Nazi forces during World War II.

The Odesa port and two others on the nearby seacoast have been a particular target of Russian wrath for the last eight months, since Ukraine managed to open a coast-hugging 350-mile Black Sea grain corridor to the Bosporus strait.

At the war’s outset, world grain prices jumped as Ukraine exports slumped, causing hardship in some of the world’s most impoverished countries. Now, though, almost 40 million tons of cargo have been shipped since August 2023, port officials said.

“Sometimes we spend all night in a shelter, then take a coffee and go straight to work — this is our reality,” said Dmytro Barinov, the deputy head of the state-owned Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority. “We feel responsibility not only for the Ukraine economy, to our farmers, but to the whole world that relies on our grain exports.”

As attacks continue and the overall war outlook grows grimmer, the city veers between a sense of relative safety and an acute awareness of peril.

Central cafes are full, and people linger at ice cream stands on the promenade. In flat green fields less than half an hour to the east, though, crews scatter pyramid-shaped reinforced cement antitank obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth.”

An ice cream stand on a public promenade — An ice cream stand on the promenade near the Potemkin Stairs, Odesa’s most famous landmark. Disused “tank traps” on the corner of a main boulevard in Odesa’s center. Laura King / Los Angeles Times

Odessa’s most famous landmark, the Potemkin Stairs — best known for the harrowing tumbling-baby-carriage scene in the 1925 film “Battleship Potemkin” — are topped with a roll of barbed wire. But a military checkpoint a few blocks away has been removed, and pedestrians can draw close enough to gaze down the 192 steps leading to the seafront.

The source of the city’s splendor is now the principal cause of its jeopardy. Odesa’s free port status financed its extraordinary architectural flowering in the 1800s and helped build its vibrant multiethnic society.

Russian warships have been driven back from Ukraine’s Black Sea coast — “when the big war started, we could see them from our palaces,” said naval spokesman Dytro Pletenchuk — but only 150 nautical miles to the east-southeast lies the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, from which many strikes are launched.

At that range, there is little time for people in Odesa to get to shelter once missiles are in the air.

Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and its fomenting of a separatist conflict in Ukraine’s east were a precursor to the current invasion. Many here harbor ardent hopes of someday recapturing the peninsula, and are heartened by Ukrainian strikes on Russian forces there, including a damaging attack Wednesday on a large Russian airfield.

At the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater — where April offerings include the ballet “Giselle” and Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” — the show goes on, as it has almost continuously since the start of the conflict. The neo-Baroque opera house is no longer sandbagged, but the war still feels ever present.

Odesa's opera house, formerly protected with sandbags. — Odesa’s opera house, formerly protected with sandbags. Performances and rehearsals are often interrupted by air alerts. (Laura King / Los Angeles Times)

“After night bombings come the most difficult days: Actors, singers and dancers are just physically tired, and it’s hard to deliver the emotional spectrum in their performances,” said Oksana Ternenko, 50, a stage director.

“Sometimes it’s like a theater of the absurd,” she said. “We are starting to rehearse, and a singer is showing photos on the phone: ‘Look, here’s a piece of my house that fell on my car.’ ”

Despite all, Odesa maintains an irrepressible offbeat humor.

A man dances on a brick path as musicians play. — A man dances during the Festival of Humor, which has been taking place in Odesa on and around April Fools’ Day since 1973. (Nina Liashonok / Getty Images)

“My parents and I, we’re very happy that Granny is deaf, so the explosions don’t scare her,” said 14-year-old Alina Kulik, who lives in an outlying district that has been hit repeatedly.

“Right now, we’re in a place that’s a little dangerous,” said her 15-year-old friend Anastasia Jelonkina, as the two girls perched on a promenade bench overlooking the seaport. “We know that. But here we are!”

Odesa’s beaches, beloved by tourists before the war and by locals all along, are full again as spring temperatures rise. During much of the last two years, danger from mines and debris from destruction of a massive dam on the Dnipro River kept the shoreline largely closed.

Sunbathers flock to an Odesa city beach. De-mining efforts allowed the reopening of the seashore. (Laura King / Los Angeles Times)

But intensive de-mining efforts have rendered the sea off Odesa relatively safe for swimming again, and a tousle-haired Irina Khosovana, a 62-year-old doctor who is a fifth-generation Odesan, said nothing — not even periodic air alerts — could keep her away.

“The sea is our comfort,” she said, gesturing toward the blue expanse. “Coming here is as important as life.”

A largely Russian-speaking city at the start of the war, Odesa still has deep cultural roots in common with the enemy now battering its shores. The poet Pushkin is still revered, with a grand boulevard named for him and a big statue taking pride of place in front of the city council building.

But another prominent piece of statuary near the opera house was deemed a symbol of colonialist oppression — that of the Russian empress known as Catherine the Great. Her likeness, hauled down in the war’s first year, is now boxed up in a black lean-to outside the damaged art museum.

Atop the empty plinth where the statue once stood flies a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.

Has Russian Propaganda “Infected” Republicans? The Truth Is More Sinister.

Slate

Has Russian Propaganda “Infected” Republicans? The Truth Is More Sinister.

Molly Olmstead – April 20, 2024

Earlier this month, Republican Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” Several days later, another Republican, Rep. Michael Turner of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he agreed. “Anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner told CNN, are “directly coming from Russia.”

It was a notable moment—and a telling one, as the House gets ready for a contentious vote on aid to Ukraine. The vote is being loudly protested by far-right politicians including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is pushing to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson from his role over the issue.

It’s not the first time Republican lawmakers have accused their colleagues of essentially being Russian pawns. But as far-right rabble-rousers in the Republican Party have increasingly advocated against continued support of Ukraine—and even some mainstream Republicans no longer interpret Russian aggression as a ruthless threat to democracy and the international order—the most extreme lawmakers appear to be mirroring the Kremlin’s own propaganda.

Last Monday, Greene told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast that Ukraine was waging a “war against Christianity” and Russians “seem to be protecting” the religion. The idea of Russia as a great (white) Christian nation has been percolating in right-wing thinking for more than a decade, despite Russia’s history of suppressing non-Orthodox Christianity and exerting power over the Russian Orthodox Church.

But Greene didn’t limit herself to praising Russia’s religious nationalism on Bannon’s show: She cited, as fact, anti-Ukraine disinformation that “the Ukrainian government is attacking Christians” and “executing priests.” This prompted former Rep. Ken Buck, another Republican, to call Greene “Moscow Marjorie” on CNN.

And indeed, this assertion does mirror Russia’s own talking points about Ukraine. (In actuality, the crimes Greene accused Ukraine of committing are crimes Russian forces have perpetrated.) But whether the Kremlin’s own talking points are being piped into the brains of right-wing American politicians—or just bear a striking similarity to the new isolationist rhetoric of the far right—is a matter of interesting debate.

Russian propaganda operations have evolved somewhat from the infamous social media campaigns that influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Take the case of a false narrative about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky using U.S. aid money to buy himself two yachts. This rumor—which is demonstrably false, given that the ownership of ships can be easily tracked—has been swirling in right-wing social media circles for months and popping up in American politicians’ talking points. It’s such an effective fabrication that North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN in December that the debate over aid to Ukraine had been halted on the Hill in part because some lawmakers were concerned that “people will buy yachts with this money.”

But where did that idea come from? According to the BBC, the assertion that Zelensky had purchased two luxury yachts with U.S. aid money originated in November on a YouTube channel with just a handful of followers. The day after the video was posted, a site called DC Weekly published the claim as news, and that report was then picked up by other websites.

DC Weekly is not some kind of alternative newspaper or community blog; Clemson University researchers Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren argued in a report in December that the website was likely created to share fake news created by Russian state actors. The site is populated with A.I. content, has clearly fake authors, and has been partially hosted on a server in Moscow.

Russian disinformation that is packaged as news, Linvill said in a phone interview, often follows a similar pattern of dissemination. “I would bet my retirement on the fact that the Russians create the videos, plant the videos, write the stories, plant the stories, and distribute the stories,” Linvill wrote in an email.

“It’s the logic of the thing,” he said, “but also the fact that it happens repeatedly.” He pointed to a dozen other instances of disinformation narratives that started as assertions in obscure YouTube videos and were then picked up by publications with similarly legitimate-sounding names.

From 2016 through 2020, Linvill said, Russian propagandists focused on creating social media accounts to promote divisive ideas within the existing American discourse. That is still happening. But today, Linvill said, resources are more likely to be directed toward creating entire fake platforms, including websites that look like news sites. The stories tend to be sensationalized in a way that encourages organic sharing.

According to the Washington Post, Kremlin materials “obtained by a European intelligence service” show Moscow-linked strategists also stoke division in the U.S. by amplifying stories based in reality—including about migrants overwhelming the border, poverty and inflation, and reasons not to trust mainstream media.

But the story of the yacht shows how a fabricated rumor, likely originating in Russia, can start circulating in American politics. On Bannon’s War Room in December, Sen. J.D. Vance said, of his fellow politicians, “there are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty, why? So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”

The yacht story had a specific origin, but the growing anti-Ukraine sentiment among right-wing circles is harder to trace. After years of warfare and many millions of dollars in American aid, it makes sense that American enthusiasm for the Ukrainian cause might organically ebb.

And there is one man whose personal grudge against Ukraine could also cause Republicans to sour on a U.S. ally: Donald Trump.

“When American journalists and congresspeople use Russian talking points, they’re quoting Trump,” said Sarah Oates, a professor who studies disinformation and propaganda at the University of Maryland. “They are broadcasting Russian propaganda, but the conduit is Trump.”

Trump has several reasons to dismiss Russia’s threat to the international order. For starters, he openly admires authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and has shown an interest in modeling himself after them. More importantly, the association of his 2016 election with Russian election-meddling caused some on the left to question the legitimacy of his victory.

For legitimacy reasons, then, Republicans have an incentive to downplay the potency of Russian propaganda. Not to mention: The basis of much of the Republican Party’s attacks on President Biden relies on a misleading assertion that his son Hunter Biden colluded with corrupt Ukrainian officials. Portraying Ukraine as a corruption-riddled country bolsters right-wing conspiracy theories about Biden’s family.

In other words, shared talking points between Republicans and the Russian propaganda machine don’t necessarily mean Russia is effective in seeding its influence; it’s a mutually beneficial swirl of conspiracy theories. “I think this is just a highly useful convergence of goals for Putin and Trump,” Oates said.

“Trump does not care; he literally is not thinking about it,” Oates said, referring to the possibility that many of Trump’s talking points could come from Russia. “His calculus is, ‘How can I win?’ ”

Because it’s quite possible that Americans who want the U.S. to abandon Ukraine may have arrived at that opinion on their own, Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins, has warned against giving the Russians too much credit for swaying American public opinion.

Rid’s argument is: We shouldn’t help Russian strategists by assuming they’ve succeeded. Russia wants to undermine Americans’ trust in our systems and in our democracy. Believing that another country has the capability to, say, sway an election, serves that goal. “If we exaggerate the impact, we make the operations more successful than they would be otherwise,” he said, “and undermine trust in our own democracy, which is the goal of this game.”

It’s important, he argued, not to blame misinformation, isolationism, and other factors that led to changing views of the war on external actors alone. Americans, Rid said, are “perfectly capable of coming up with crazy ideas.”

Take Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s claim about why Putin needed to invade Ukraine. Speaking to a right-wing Alabama website, Tuberville said: “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.”

The claim—coming from a man who couldn’t name the three branches of American government and who thought World War II was fought over socialism—seems to be pure, homegrown nonsense.

“It’s blaming our own problems on others,” Rid said. “That’s the problem I find worrying.”

To be clear, Russian propaganda should be taken seriously: The country’s plans for deepening existing societal conflicts in the U.S. are not a secret. Given the various motivations at play and the inherent vagaries of how information and belief travel, though, it’s hard to know just how much the Republican Party has been “infected” by Russian propaganda, as Rep. McCaul put it.

What we can say with certainty is that there’s an alliance of interests. In his bizarre interview with Tucker Carlson in February, Putin laid out his several invented justifications for the invasion and said that he was interested in “peace.” The next day, Tuberville said he opposed sending aid to Ukraine because the Carlson interview “shows that Russia is open to a peace agreement.”

In her work, Oates found that researchers often couldn’t tell the difference between media pulled from Fox News and Russia Today, a Russian news network and propaganda arm; “identical” talking points don’t mean Russia is pulling the strings.

But there is still something to be gleaned from the coherence between Republicans and Russian strategists—and it’s probably a warning about our own news-media ecosystems. Rep. McCaul seemed to note this, telling Puck News that he saw “nighttime entertainment shows” in the U.S airing content that was “almost identical” to what was playing on Russian state TV.

MAGA Republican’s in congress are to blame: Russia pummels exhausted Ukrainian forces with smaller attacks ahead of a springtime advance

Associated Press

Russia pummels exhausted Ukrainian forces with smaller attacks ahead of a springtime advance

The Associated Press – April 19, 2024

FILE – A Su-25 plane is seen firing rockets over Ukraine in a video frame grab. The video was taken from inside another Su-25 plane and released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Jan. 22, 2024. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File) — A Su-25 plane is seen firing rockets over Ukraine in a video frame grab. The video was taken from inside another Su-25 plane and released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Jan. 22, 2024. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

FILE - A Ukrainian officer with the 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Mariupol Brigade fires rockets from a pickup truck at Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on March 5, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File) — A Ukrainian officer with the 56th Separate Motorized Infantry Mariupol Brigade fires rockets from a pickup truck at Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on March 5, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE – This frame grab from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Feb. 20, 2024, shows one of its Su-25 ground attack jets firing rockets during a mission over Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File) — This frame grab from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on Feb. 20, 2024, shows one of its Su-25 ground attack jets firing rockets during a mission over Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

FILE - Ukrainian servicemen with the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade fire a mortar at Russian forces on the front line near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on March 3, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File) — Ukrainian servicemen with the 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade fire a mortar at Russian forces on the front line near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on March 3, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE - Ukrainian soldiers carry shells to fire at Russian positions on the front line, near the city of Bakhmut, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, on March 25, 2024. The outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian troops are struggling to halt Russian advances as a new U.S. aid package is stuck in Congress. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File) — Ukrainian soldiers carry shells to fire at Russian positions on the front line, near the city of Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on March 25, 2024.

FILE - Ukrainian soldiers with the 22nd Mechanized Brigade prepare to launch the Poseidon H10 Middle-range drone near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File) — Ukrainian soldiers with the 22nd Mechanized Brigade prepare to launch the Poseidon H10 Middle-range drone near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on March 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

Russian troops are ramping up presure on exhausted Ukrainian forces to prepare to seize more land this spring and summer as muddy fields dry out and allow tanks, armored vehicles and other heavy equipment to roll to key positions across the countryside.

With the war in Ukraine now in its third year and a vital U.S. aid package for Kyiv slowed down in Congress, Russia has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs — which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance — to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.

Despite Moscow’s advantage in firepower and personnel, a massive ground offensive would be risky and — Russian military bloggers other experts say — unnecessary if Russia can stick to smaller attacks across the front line to further drain the Ukraine military.

“It’s potentially a slippery slope where you get like a death by a thousand cuts or essentially death by a thousand localized offensives,” Michael Kofman, a military expert with the Carnegie Endowment, said in a recent podcast to describe the Russian tactic. If the Russians stick to their multiple pushes across the front, he said, “eventually they may find more and more open terrain.”

Last summer’s counteroffensive by Ukraine was doomed when advancing Ukrainian units got trapped on vast Russian minefields and massacred by artillery and drones. The Russians have no reason to make that same mistake.

UKRAINIAN FORCES EXPOSED

Last November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered his forces to build trenches, fortifications and bunkers behind the more than 1,000-kilometer front line, but analysts say construction work moved slowly, leaving areas unprotected.

“If the defensive lines had been built in advance, the Ukrainians wouldn’t have retreated in such a way,” Ukrainian military expert Oleh Zhdanov said. “We should have been digging trenches through the fall and it would have stemmed Russian advances. Now everything is exposed, making it very dangerous.”

In a recent podcast, Kofman also said that Kyiv is “quite behind on effectively entrenching across the front” and “Ukraine does not have good secondary lines.”

After capturing the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka, Russian troops are zeroing in on the hill town of Chasiv Yar, which would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities in the Kyiv-controlled part of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions in 2022, and the Kremlin sees fully controlling that region as a priority.

Zhdanov said Ukraine doesn’t have the firepower to repel Russian attacks.

“They promised to have a defensive line 10 kilometers (6 miles) behind Avdiivka where our troops could get and dig in, but there is none,” he said.

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command, sounded the alarm before Congress last week, warning that Ukraine will be outgunned 10 to one by Russia in a matter of weeks if Congress does not approve more military aid.

IN RUSSIA’S SIGHTS

After securing another term in a preordained election in March, President Vladimir Putin vowed to carve out a “sanitary zone” to protect Russia’s border regions from Ukrainian shelling and incursions.

Putin didn’t give any specifics, but Russian military bloggers and security analysts said that along with a slow push across the Donetsk region, Moscow could also try to capture Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, which Russia tried and failed to take in the opening days of the war.

In a possible sign of a looming attack on Kharkiv, a city of 1.1 million about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) south of the border, Russia has ramped up strikes on power plants in the area, inflicting significant damage and causing blackouts.

Ukraine doesn’t have enough air defense to protect Kharkiv and other cities, and the constant Russian strikes are part of Moscow’s strategy to “suffocate” it by destroying its infrastructure and forcing its residents to leave, Zhdanov said.

Retired Lt. Gen. Andrei Gurulev, now on the defense committee of Russia’s lower chamber of parliament, acknowledged that capturing Kharkiv is a major challenge, and he predicted the military would try to surround it.

“It can be enveloped and blockaded,” he said, adding that taking Kharkiv would open the way for a push deep into Ukraine and require more Russian troops.

After Putin’s order for “partial mobilization” of 300,000 reservists last fall proved so unpopular that hundreds of thousands fled abroad to avoid being drafted, the Kremlin tried a different approach: It promised relatively high wages and other benefits to beef up its forces with volunteer soldiers. The move appears to have paid off as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the military recruited 540,000 volunteers in 2023.

“There are no plans for a new wave of mobilization,” Viktor Bondarev, deputy head of defense affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, said in remarks carried by state RIA Novosti news agency. “We are doing well with the combat capability that we have.”

Ukraine downs Russian strategic bomber after airstrike kills eight, Kyiv says

Reuters

Ukraine downs Russian strategic bomber after airstrike kills eight, Kyiv says

Tom Balmforth and Anastasiia Malenko – April 19, 2024

Russian attack on Dnipro kills at least two - officials

KYIV/DNIPRO, Ukraine (Reuters) -Ukraine shot down a Russian strategic bomber on Friday after the warplane took part in a long-range airstrike that killed eight people including two children in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Kyiv said.

Missiles rained down on the city of Dnipro and the surrounding region in the early hours, damaging residential buildings and the main train station.

Regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said three people died in Dnipro, including a man whose body was pulled from the rubble of a five-storey building, while five others were killed in nearby areas of Dnipropetrovsk region.

A 14-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy were among the dead, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

Russia has stepped up its long-range aerial assaults on Ukraine’s energy system and other targets in recent weeks, ratcheting up the pressure on Kyiv behind the front lines where Russian forces have been slowly advancing in the east.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says the energy system is a legitimate target, but hundreds of civilians have been killed during airstrikes.

In a wartime first for Ukraine, Kyiv’s top military spy said Ukrainian forces had shot down a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber from a distance of just over 300 km (180 miles) after the plane fired missiles in the overnight attack.

“I can only say the plane was hit at a distance of 308 km, quite far away,” Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), said in a BBC-Ukraine interview, parts of which were posted by the agency on the Telegram messaging app.

He said they downed the warplane in the same way Kyiv shot down Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft earlier this year.

An intelligence source told Reuters the plane had been hit using a modified S-200, a Soviet-era long-range surface-to-air missile system.

Unconfirmed social media footage showed a warplane with its tail on fire spiralling towards the ground.

The Russian defence ministry confirmed a bomber had crashed in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, hundreds of kilometres from Ukrainian-controlled territory, as it returned to base after carrying out a combat mission.

But it said the crash appeared to have been caused by a technical malfunction.

Of the four Russian air force crew members ejected from the warplane, two were rescued, one died and a rescue operation was under way for the fourth, the Russian regional governor said.

ZELENSKIY SAYS DECISIONS NEEDED NOW

Civilians in a five-storey residential building hit in Dnipro said they were shaken up. The building’s top floor was partially destroyed and firefighters battled to put out a fire early in the morning.

“My wife and daughter are in shock. They say they won’t go back to the apartment and asked me to evacuate them somewhere because they won’t be able to stay here anymore,” said Serhii, a resident.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the site of the strike and called on Ukraine’s allies to rush in supplies of air defences as Ukraine’s stocks dwindle due to a slowdown in vital Western military aid.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 15 incoming missiles, including two Kh-22 cruise missiles and 14 drones overnight.

Air defences shot down 11 of 16 missiles and nine of 10 drones targeting the Dnipropetrovsk region, governor Lysak said.

Zelenskiy said more Russian missiles had struck the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi in the southern Odesa region on Friday afternoon, destroying grain storage facilities and foodstuffs they contained.

(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko, Yuliia Dysa and Mykhailo Moskalenko; Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Philippa Fletcher, Alex Richardson and Richard Chang)

Ukraine’s growing arms sector thwarted by cash shortages and attacks

Reuters

Ukraine’s growing arms sector thwarted by cash shortages and attacks

Max Hunder – April 19, 2024

Employee prepares to place a mortar into a box at a production facility of the 'Ukrainian Armor' company in Ukraine — Employee prepares to place a mortar into a box at a production facility of the ‘Ukrainian Armor’ company in Ukraine

Employee tests a Novator armoured personnel carrier at a testing facility of the 'Ukrainian Armor' company in Ukraine — Employee tests a Novator armoured personnel carrier at a testing facility of the ‘Ukrainian Armor’ company in Ukraine

KYIV (Reuters) -Hundreds of Ukrainian businesses making weapons and military equipment have sprung up since Russia’s full-scale invasion, but some are struggling to fund production and all are afraid of being targeted in intensifying Russian missile strikes.

Owners say they have pumped in their own cash to survive and moved locations at their own expense to stay ahead of Russian intelligence. They are now urging the government to cut what they describe as excessive red tape around its arms purchases.

Several also want to be allowed to export, arguing that the government is unable to buy all of their output.

According to Ukraine’s strategic industries minister Oleksandr Kamyshin, the potential annual output of the military-industrial complex now stands at $18-20 billion.

Ukraine’s cash-strapped government can only fund about a third of that, the minister told Reuters in an interview. That compares with $120 billion of military aid received from allies throughout the war, most of it in equipment rather than cash.

“We have the biggest fight in a generation … If you look, for example, at NATO-calibre artillery shells, the production capacity of the U.S. and EU put together is lower than our needs,” said Kamyshin.

Many of Ukraine’s large, state-owned defence enterprises fell on hard times after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now the war has triggered a resurgence in the private arms sector.

According to his ministry, the number of defence manufacturers has more than doubled since the invasion. Private enterprises now number about 400 to the 100 state-owned ones, although the latter still provide the most production capacity.

To resolve cash shortages, Ukraine is asking foreign partners to fund its defence production. On Tuesday, Denmark made the first such pledge of $28.5 million.

RED TAPE

Some manufacturers say they are struggling to raise funds, a problem compounded by a government procurement process that they complain is slow and cumbersome.

“The first threat that makers come up against when they start working is the bureaucracy of the military sphere and of purchases,” said Vladyslav Belbas, CEO of Ukrainska Bronetekhnika (Ukrainian Armor), one of the few Ukrainian manufacturers making armoured vehicles and artillery shells, among other products.

Belbas cited the fact that the defence ministry only places orders for the current year, hampering makers’ ability to plan for the long term.

Four manufacturers making various weapons highlighted a range of issues: waiting for months to find out if the state was interested in buying, being bounced between departments in the defence ministry and armed forces, and having no assurances of future sales to help them plan production.

The defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaints. It has previously said it is building “a new architecture” for defence procurement, and appointed a new chief for the agency responsible for weapons purchases earlier this year.

Private investment has primarily been driven by domestic entrepreneurs, who often say they are driven by patriotism rather than profit.

A source in Ukraine’s government, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said private investment was not evenly spread.

“Everyone wants to invest in sexy stories like drones, but nobody wants to go into something difficult like (artillery) shells.”

One way to raise money is to grant licences for companies to export products that would otherwise go unbought by Ukraine due to the lack of financing.

Three manufacturers told Reuters they would like to see export licences being granted, provided the manufacturer had unused capacity not covered by orders from Ukraine.

Kamyshin said that was not feasible: “It’s fair for manufacturers to demand to either contract their capacity to the full or give them the possibility to export … but this position does not have political support, so we are looking for financing for our enterprises so that all production remains in Ukraine,” he said.

DANGEROUS BUSINESS

Aside from financial difficulties, making weapons in Ukraine during a full-scale war is fraught with risk.

When Reuters visited a factory of Ukrainian Armor, the head of the plant, who gave his name as Ruslan, agreed to speak only if his face was not shown to protect him from becoming a target of Russia’s intelligence services.

The factory, which employs around 100 people and makes armoured vehicles and mortars, was in the process of being wound down and moved to another location.

Ruslan said this was because a bigger premises was needed to accommodate more staff, as well as to make it harder for the Russians to find the factory. Some arms manufacturers move locations as often as every three months for security.

“From the (manufacturers) I speak to, not one private company received (state) compensation for relocation,” said Ukrainian Armor’s Belbas.

Another problem faced by manufacturers is the threat of power cuts, as Russia pounds energy infrastructure while Ukraine is running out of air defence munitions to protect its skies.

“In 2022-2023, we did not have electricity for two-thirds of our working hours – of course, under such conditions it is very difficult to manufacture anything,” Belbas said.

The government source said that manufacturers currently had no issues with power supply, and that if mass power cuts did have to be implemented then they “will be switched off last”.

(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Philippa Fletcher)