Scenes from the Russian Embassy in Washington
Every few weeks, a light show featuring the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag — and occasionally a Ukrainian-language profanity about the Russian president, Vladimir Putin — is beamed onto the white facade of the Russian Embassy in Washington. Russia has fought back with a big spotlight, umbrellas to obstruct the projections and illuminations of its own, such as two giant white Z’s, a nationalist Russian symbol of the war effort.
This is the strange new normal around Russia’s main diplomatic outpost in the U.S., a scene of protests, spy games and general weirdness amid the most hostile relations between the U.S. and Russia in decades. The Russian ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, has called the embassy compound, where in recent years as many as 1,2000 Russians have worked, “a besieged fortress.”
The embassy’s personnel may be among Washington’s least welcome residents, but Biden administration officials are glad they are there to maintain diplomatic ties, they say. Kicking out the Russians entirely would mean an end to America’s diplomatic presence in Moscow, which, among other things, works to assist U.S. citizens imprisoned in Russia.
In Russia: The country is incubating a new cottage industry of digital surveillance tools to track its citizens and suppress domestic opposition to the war in Ukraine. Some of the companies are trying to expand operations overseas, raising the risk that the technologies do not remain inside Russia.
In Ukraine: People who live near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have grown largely complacent about its dangers, despite warnings that the complex has a bull’s-eye on it.
Israel strikes a West Bank refugee camp
Israel launched its most intense airstrikes on the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades early yesterday and sent hundreds of ground troops into the crowded Jenin refugee camp, saying it was trying to root out armed militants. At least eight Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian authorities, and local media reported that hundreds or thousands of people had fled the camp.
Israeli military officials said a drone attack struck a joint operations center used by militants of a group known as the Jenin Brigade in the refugee camp, and that Israeli forces also targeted a weapons production site and a storage place for explosive devices. The military said it located and confiscated weapons, explosives and an improvised rocket launcher.
Gunfire echoed through the camp as Israeli troops and armored vehicles went in. Residents had feared a large-scale incursion by the Israeli military but had not expected something so violent, said Muhammad Sbaghi, a member of the committee that helps administer the camp. “The occupation army is vindictively targeting us,” he said. “People are terrified,” he added.
Context: The current Israeli government is the most right-wing in the country’s history, with ultranationalist ministers who…
2023-07-03 23:58:31
Post from www.nytimes.com
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