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"The Morning Newsletter:  What Ukraine lost, immigration, and India's election."

Views expressed in this U.S., World, and Geopolitical News update are those of the reporters and correspondents.  Accessed on 04 June 2024, 1322 UTC.

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Russ Roberts (https://trendsingeopolitics.blogspot.com).

June 4, 2024

Good morning. Today, my colleagues Jeffrey Gettleman and Marco Hernandez help you understand the reality inside Ukraine. We’re also covering immigration, India’s election and photos that defined the modern age. —David Leonhardt.

Source: Analysis by Jamon Van Den Hoek, Corey Scher and The New York Times | By Marco Hernandez

Measuring what Ukraine lost

By Jeffrey Gettleman

Graphics by Marco Hernandez

Imagine your hometown being wiped off the map.

Imagine a city where no one lives.

Imagine the landmarks in your life — where you went to school, where you were married, where you worked and played and loved and prayed — erased.

This is what happened to Marinka, a small town in Ukraine’s east with nearly 200 years of history. Photos of it look like those of Hiroshima. Its destruction has become a symbol of Ukraine’s war.

Destroyed buildings in Zavodskaya Street in Marinka. Photo by Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

It’s hardly the only Ukrainian town like this. The Times worked with researchers to measure every town, street and building in Ukraine blown apart since the Russians invaded in 2022. In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain how we did it — and what we found.

Source: Analysis by Jamon Van Den Hoek, Corey Scher and The New York Times | By Marco Hernandez

Measuring a nation’s destruction wasn’t an easy thing to do. It was possible only by viewing Ukraine from space. Radar-equipped satellites took frequent images of the country during the war. Then, researchers from the City University of New York Graduate Center and Oregon State University analyzed years of data — more than 10,000 images of Ukraine in total — to track small changes in blocks or even discrete buildings. The project took more than a year.

More buildings have been wrecked in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan were leveled four times over. In some places, like Marinka, not a single resident is left.

Pre-war Wikimedia via Ліонкінг; Serhii Nuzhnenko, Reuters; Gleb Garanich, Reuters; Leonid ХВ Ragozin via social media | By The New York Times

Beyond the debris, what interested us most was the impact on people. So many Ukrainians have lost not just their homes but their entire communities. Marinka represents this loss. I walked its streets while it was under siege in July 2022. Not many people still lived there; I didn’t see how any could. But I stepped into an apartment building and found, in light so dim that it was hard to see, a mom, her 13-year-old daughter and their cat sitting in a quiet, half-destroyed room. The front line between Russia and Ukraine was on their doorstep.

Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

They eventually left, along with everyone else. The Russians took control of the city last year. But there wasn’t much left. As one soldier put it, “Whatever could burn, burned.”

Our story, published today, visualizes the scope of Ukraine’s annihilation.

Sources: Jamon Van Den Hoek and Corey Scher (InSar data); OpenStreetMap (building street maps); Maxar Technologies via Google (satellite images from June 2023) | By Marco Hernandez

For more

Can Ukraine find new soldiers without decimating a whole generation? Volodymyr Zelensky has pressed the Biden administration to let Ukraine strike deep inside Russia with American-made weapons. So far, the White House has refused.

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THE LATEST NEWS

Immigration

Along the banks of the Rio Grande. Christopher Lee for The New York Times

President Biden plans to sign an executive order today that would temporarily seal the southern border to most migrants. Donald Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. About half of Americans support his plan, polls suggest. Arizona Republicans are pushing for a ballot measure that would make it a state crime for migrants to enter Arizona from Mexico and allow state judges to deport them.

2024 Elections

At a fund-raiser, Biden described Trump as a felon and accused him of responding to his conviction with an “all-out assault” on the American justice system. Trump and the Republicans said they had raised $141 million in May, about half of it in the two days after the conviction. Trump almost certainly won’t face trial before November over the effort to reverse Georgia’s 2020 election results. In October, an appeals court there will hear his effort to disqualify the prosecutor over a secret relationship with a subordinate. The Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who is on trial on bribery charges, filed to run for re-election as an independent.

Israel-Hamas War

Israel said that four more hostages who were abducted in the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 died months ago, and that the circumstances of their deaths were still being examined. Israeli airstrikes in Syria killed an Iranian general who was there as an adviser, the Iranian media said. Two far-right lawmakers threatened to collapse Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if Israel agreed to the cease-fire proposal that Biden outlined last week. Netanyahu claimed Biden hadn’t given the “whole picture” in describing the proposal, which the war cabinet approved but his right-wing allies did not. But Netanyahu also expressed openness to at least a 42-day pause in the fighting in Gaza.

Mexican Election

Claudia Sheinbaum with supporters.  Fred Ramos for The New York Times

“I do not arrive alone,” Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president-elect, said. “We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors.” Women also lead both houses of Mexico’s Congress, its Supreme Court and its central bank. Sheinbaum won by more than any Mexican presidential candidate in decades and her party won supermajorities in most state legislatures. With his handpicked successor’s victory, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has reshaped Mexican politics. He says he will retire to his family’s ranch when his term ends.

More International News

In New Delhi. Atul Loke for The New York Times

India is releasing results from its general election. Early returns showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead by a narrower margin than expected. See images from the campaign.

“We lose parts of our collective memory”: In China, websites are disappearing. The reasons are both technical and political. Nigel Farage, a prominent Brexit campaigner, will run in Britain’s general election. He could siphon votes from the governing Conservatives.

Covid

Dr. Anthony Fauci Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci, in congressional testimony, denied Republican claims that he had helped fund research that sparked the pandemic or had covered up indications that it might have originated in a lab. The hearing was testy at times, with Democrats praising Fauci and Republicans criticizing him. “You belong in prison,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said. New strains of Covid, known as the “FLiRT” variants, are circulating, but there’s been little rise in emergency room visits or positive tests.

Other Big Stories

Harvard’s largest faculty division will no longer require job applicants to submit diversity statements. Opening arguments begin today in Hunter Biden’s federal trial on charges of lying about his drug use on a gun application. The president said he wouldn’t comment on the trial but was proud of his son for overcoming addiction. Climate change worsened flooding in the south of Brazil, scientists said. Downpours there killed at least 172 people and displaced more than half a million.

Opinions

Antihero or felon? Eleven undecided voters struggle with how they see Trump after his criminal conviction in Manhattan.

Growing evidence suggests that Covid came from a lab leak, argues Alina Chan, a molecular biologist. Maps and charts help make the case.

Here are columns by Paul Krugman on Biden’s economy and Maureen Dowd on Justice Samuel Alito.

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MORNING READS

Gordon Parks, “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama” (1956). © The Gordon Parks Foundation

The experts speak: 25 photos define the modern age. See them here.

His own reckoning: Ibram X. Kendi galvanized readers with his doctrine of antiracism. The last four years have tested him and his ideas.

Right after the Big Bang: A new observatory in Chile investigates a mystery from the beginning of time.

Ask Climate: Looking for an eco-friendly way to control backyard bugs? Meet the “bucket of doom.”

Lives Lived: Sam Butcher’s doe-eyed, pastel-hued porcelain figurines ignited a global collecting frenzy, made him a wealthy man and inspired him to build his own version of the Sistine Chapel in Carthage, Mo. He died at 85.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Vikings agreed to a four-year, $140 million contract extension with the wide receiver Justin Jefferson, making the highest paid non-quarterback in the league’s history.

M.L.B.: The former Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Tucupita Marcano faces a possible lifetime ban over accusations that he bet on the team while he was on the injured list for them.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

In Paris.  Joann Pai for The New York Times

If you’ve visited Paris in August, you’ve probably noticed the word “fermé” — that is, “closed” — on many boutiques and bistros whose owners have left town for vacation. Not so this year: With the Olympics expected to draw nearly 15 million visitors, businesses say they’re planning to stay open for the summer. “It’s one of the biggest events in the history of Paris,” said Etheliya Hananova, an owner of the restaurant Comice. “We’re here to be part of the welcoming committee.”

More on culture

At The Museum of Modern Art.  Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York Times

Oluremi Onabanjo is a curator in the Museum of Modern Art’s photography department. Read about a week in her life. Demand for “dad sneakers” is up and so are shares in Asics, a Japanese running-shoe maker, The Wall Street Journal reports. Jon Stewart discussed Trump’s conviction on “The Daily Show.”

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

David Malosh for The New York Times.

Combine shrimp with tomatoes and corn for a summery shrimp scampi.

Submit your advice about fatherhood.

Avoid ingesting microplastics.

Hand wash clothes with a good detergent.

GAMES

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was doughnut.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. Nate Cohn, who oversees The Times’s political polling with Siena College, spoke to New York magazine about the state of the presidential election.

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Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

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