Katja Garmasch EUROZONE

A new start that's full of contradictions

The situation in Ukraine is complicated. Between war, nationalism and rapprochement with the West, women are changing society.

Nothing new in the East: the weather on the front is hot. In the summer, the war gets worse. The war, officially called an Anti-Terrorist Operation or simply ATO in Ukraine, began in spring 2014, when Russian-backed separatist groups in the Donbas region demanded that Ukraine be split up. The Minsk agreement of 2015, which was supposed to end the fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels, did not ease the tensions, on the contrary. For Ukrainian soldiers, the situation even intensified, because many commanding officers would not allow them to return fire until the last moment, if the separatists opened fire. So if the agreement is to be observed, one is dependent on the West for assistance. Right now, it is very quiet here in Popasna, near the city of Sloviansk. The first shots are fired around midnight, when the OSCE observers go home. 

The soldiers listen to bad patriotic Ukrainian rock, clean their weapons, play with the camp dog, smoke. Roksovana is the only woman among 20 men in this Intelligence Brigade, and one of 50,000 soldiers currently serving in the Ukrainian army or in volunteer battalions. 

Roksovana is her nickname, she doesn't want to reveal her real name or show her face. She comes from Crimea, where her family lives and could get into trouble if her identity is made public. "It's better like this", she laughs, "I don't have to put on makeup." A few cosmetics utensils stand tidily arranged next to her bunk bed, above which there hangs a little guardian angel made of wood, a present from her niece. Roksovana is 45 and has no children. That's rare in Ukraine. Why did she become a soldier? Because, she says, it is her civic duty. Because she doesn't want to live in Russia. After Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula, Roksovana resigned from her position as a lawyer at the Economic Court and then worked for an army unit as a volunteer. She has now been on the front for six months, where she spends most of her time in a dark, dirty barrack that she shares with the men. While in western European countries, the – albeit hesitant – admission of women to the military is perceived as a "breakthrough", a traditional image of the woman remains current in post-communist Ukraine, as in many other post-communist states: the woman as custodian and protector of the nation. It is not for nothing that the tallest and most famous Ukrainian monument, the "Motherland Monument" in Kyiv, depicts a woman with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, both held up toward the sky. 

Here, on the front, one meets very different women soldiers: those who, like Roksovana, did not want to stay at home. Those who follow their husbands, but travel home every three weeks to redo their Shellac manicure. Those who need the money because they're single mothers and can't find work. There are also those, who simply want to play war – "asocial scum", as Roksovana says. And those who hope to find the right man in the army, one who earns money, for there are not very many such men in Ukraine at the moment. 

In contrast to the volunteer battalions, not every women soldier enters the theatre of war in the regular army. A department will select her according to her skills or specialization. For a long time, many commanding officers didn't want to have any women at all, claiming that their effect on the social fabric would be "hard to calculate" –at best, they would strengthen a brigade's moral, at worst however, they would be a risk factor. For Roksovana, this is completely understandable: "If it's a man, it's a fact, but if something happens to a woman on the front, everyone feels obliged to rescue her and risk their lives for her." 

***

On the periphery of the capital Kyiv – nothing new here either. Once again, there is currently no hot water in the block of flats where former soldiers Belka and Julia live. "At least two more weeks to go", visitors are informed, without having to ask, by the babushka at the main entrance, who traditionally works here as concierge, guard and upholder of moral standards. That there is no warm water is not something that would have occurred to Julia as a matter of course: since the war begun, she showers for only 30 seconds – a habit from the front. Personal hygiene has to be quick in war. 

Belka puts out her cigarette and tucks her T-shirt with the blue-yellow Ukrainian coat of arms into her army trousers, which are far too big and keep slipping down. "Many men think that women only go to the front to provide sexual services, so I have to persuade them otherwise. How? With violence of course! What works really well is the butt of a gun! But most are real gentlemen. They've protected me and dug a toilet for me. One's own toilet is the greatest!" – "No, a shower!", counters Julia. "Even if I'm always afraid of a grenade striking while I shower. That would be the worst: to die so senselessly and naked!" Both burst out laughing and light up their third cigarette in five minutes – a habit from the front. Smoking too must be done quickly in war. 

Belka is soft, warm-hearted, out of it. The 21-year-old Julia is by contrast energetic, anarchic, impulsive. At first glance, Belka and Julia don't have much in common, except for their many tattoos. "Heroes never die!" it says in old Slavic script on their upper arms; "All are equal", in Hebrew on Belka's hand. Belka, a Ukrainian Jew from the eastern metropolis of Dnipropetrovsk, was a fashion designer before the war. Julia comes from the small, southern Russian city of Pyatigorsk and was an ardent Russian nationalist before the war. Just a couple of years ago, she still attended marches for an "ethnically pure Russia". And then? "It was Euromaidan in Kyiv. I watched TV in Russia and heard that Ukrainian fascists were drinking the blood of Russian infants. I wanted to see that for myself. But then I got to the Maidan and found friends there, Belka was also present. When the Russians took Sloviansk, it was finally clear to me: my country is in the wrong, they are instigating a war!" 

Julia joined the Aidar Battalion, a volunteer battalion with Ukrainian nationalist convictions, Belka followed her some months later. Julia dissociated herself from her Russian family and is considered a "traitor to the fatherland". Belka and Julia have been demobilized, though they would have gladly stayed at the front. Julia has given birth to Miroslava ("the peaceful one"), who is now one year old and a "war souvenir" of sorts. Belka's war souvenir is "diagnosis number 17". She no longer knows exactly what this means since, after six injuries (including traumatic brain injury), her memory is impaired. The worst thing about her condition is the way her hands tremble – bad for shooting a gun. Previously, Belka was a markswoman with Aidar. She was officially registered as a telephonist because, in Ukraine, there are no markswomen. Neither are there female tank commanders like Julia. Up until just one month ago, women were banned in Ukraine from entering the theatre of war as soldiers. 

All women were therefore registered as cooks, medics, pool attendants or, of course, telephonists. This is why Belka received only 7000 hryvni, or about 250 euros, instead of the usual salary for marksmen of 12,000 hryvni, plus extra combat pay. This is why she cannot now receive a pension or invalidity allowance. Julia and Belka live on Miroslava's child allowance, a couple of hryvni in unemployment benefit and donations from friends and volunteers. "Of course we are bitter: because it's the lads who get the prizes now. Lads who have done nothing receive money, real estate, flats. And we get nothing. Apart from some volunteers, no one cares about us", says Julia. 

Maria Berlinska says: "I didn't come to the front for the money, I didn't want prizes or perks!" Therefore, it didn't matter to her that she was not registered as an intelligence officer. It first occurred to her much later that this was in fact a problem, after she realized that other women in the army had the same experience. Together with Tamara Martsenyuk and Anna Kvit, both sociologists and gender researchers, Berlinska examined the social, financial and legal position of Ukrainian women soldiers. Her interviews confirmed that the situation of women in almost all areas is poor, and in some areas catastrophic: they receive neither uniforms in women's sizes nor a reasonable salary, nor social services; and they receive hardly any recognition from male colleagues. Maria Berlinska had not expected to create a huge stir – there were demonstrations and rallies. But at least the law was changed as a result of her study: 25 combat occupations in the army have since been opened up to women. 

"Ukraine is now changing at a furious pace", says Berlinska. The country has long since grown out of Stalin's laws and everywhere, reform is on the agenda; however, neither the lethargic and corrupt administration, nor the mentality that still hides in the old Soviet garb of a chauvinistic cut, can be changed so quickly. The same goes for the dominant image of the woman. The war, though abnormal and terrible, is in this sense a blessing too, says Berlinska. "What other countries only achieved after many years is happening to us in Ukraine during the course of a few months. We have in fact changed something through our study within just six months – this would not have been possible before, in peace time." 

This article is part of the media exchange project Beyond conflict stories, which links Ukrainian independent media with "alternative" media in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Greece. Follow the critical, informed and nuanced voices that counter the dominant discourse of crisis concerning Ukraine. Feminists like Berlinska feel connected to the long tradition of the Ukrainian women's movement: here, earlier than in many other countries, the ideal of equality was taken up and, from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, articulated in the context of the women's movement. Ukrainian women poets and journalists such as the national heroine Lesya Ukrainka publicly broke with conventional role assignments and belonged to the feminist avant-garde in Europe. Thus, as a result of the discourse on independence and an emerging national consciousness, the Ukrainian women's movement always had a strongly patriotic focus. Under Stalin, the "woman question" was declared to have been solved – and the women's movement supposedly dissolved. On the one hand, there was good state support: crèches, nursery schools, canteens, so that women could build communism together with men. On the other, Stalin prescribed women the mother role. It was no longer the collective, but the family that was now the "cell of communism". That is: communism was built during the day, potatoes were peeled in the evening. 

After the Soviet Union's dissolution, prescribed emancipation was revoked and the image of the woman swung like a pendulum from one extreme to the other: the desire for an exaggerated femininity took root, accompanied by the longing for a role for the middle class woman. Social status was once again secured through a lucrative marriage and that was secured, in turn, through an emphatically feminine appearance, crudely summed up in the clichéd image of an eastern European woman: high heels, low-cut neckline. At the same time, there are still more women than men in the colleges and unis, many women who look after themselves and invest their efforts in a professional career. "As for feminism, most women here have mush in their heads", says Anna Dovgopol with reference to these inconsistencies. Dovgopol, who focuses on gender issues at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Kyiv, continues: "And the situation in the country is just as confused: on the one hand, the war, with its neo-nationalistic and neo-patriarchal discourse. On the other, a peaceful, developing civil society that is adopting western standards. And which recognizes: now is the time in which one can change something. Because now, everything is unhinged!" 

Due to the war, patriotic slogans and nationalistic symbols are omnipresent in Ukraine: "Long live Ukraine, all hail the heroes!" Everywhere, Ukrainian flags are flying and, at the same time, people are demonstrating on a daily basis for democracy. A confusing sight. "It was a much-discussed topic in feminist circles, as to whether it was right for feminists to have taken part in Euromaidan, because there was so much rightwing rhetoric there", explains Dovgopol. "But if they hadn't done so, their voice would have been missing from the Revolution. The question is: To which values can we commit collectively? Or do we allow ourselves to become divided? This is very difficult to answer at the moment. But there is also another development: people who've returned from the front go to Gay Pride because they want their country to make progress". Yet the nationalists are traditionally the archenemies of the queer community. Appealing to received national values such as morality and a sense of family, they discriminate against lesbians, gays and transgender people. 

Julia too attended Gay Pride in Kyiv this year. She is currently in a relationship with a woman, but would have attended the parade anyway. When her friends from the front found out, they were taken aback: "What's the matter with you and your Pride? As if there were no other problems in the country!" – "Then I asked them: if there are so many problems, why is nothing more important to you than criticizing Pride? Everyone should be able to fight for their rights!" 6500 police were present at this year's Gay Pride, in order to protect around 2000 participants. "This meant that hardly anyone saw us, so the LGBT Parade didn't really achieve its purpose. But at least no one was attacked and no one injured like last year, which is a massive improvement", says Anna Dovgopol. 

Today's Ukraine is shaped by a strong civil society that, since the protests on the Maidan, has taken over the real power, but has also taken responsibility too. It comprises thousands of volunteers who supply the army with everything – aside from weapons and war technology –, organize rehabilitation and treatment for the wounded, provide for refugees from Donbas. It comprises NGOs financed by the West that take care of social problems and provide education and enlightenment. It comprises "normal" people: not a week passes without demonstrations before the Rada, the parliament in Kyiv. After two Maidan Revolutions, hundreds of empty promises and ruined hopes and a century of foreign rule, people no longer trust state power. 

Also in terms of equal rights, civil society is gaining momentum, prompting debate. Only without Femen, a well-known group in western Europe, which Ukrainian feminists do not view as political actors but as a marketing gimmick. The most recent example is the Twitter hashtag that the Ukrainian journalist Anastasia Melnichenko started, #IAmNotAfraidToSay, which thousands of Ukrainian and later Russian women too have used in posts on social networks about their experiences of sexual violence. The response triggered by this hashtag carried the topic straight to the centre of Ukrainian society. 

And that too is a revolution: a personal revolution, because those afflicted are at last receiving solidarity and support. A social revolution, because the way that sexual violence is handled is changing. And these revolutions show: Ukraine has changed. The inconvenient truth can no longer be swept under the carpet. For so much has accumulated there that it has gone through the floor, ten stories have fallen and taken everything down with them: chauvinism, stereotypes, angst and inaction. And, for a long time now, the point at which things hit rock bottom has yet to be reached.

Page’s Page

with Clarence Page Chicago Tribune

John McLaughlin's final 'Bye-bye'

John McLaughlin, host of "The McLaughlin Group," arrives at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington in 2012. (Kevin Wolf / AP)

Back in the early 1990s, when our son was 4 years old and accustomed to seeing his dad on a certain Washington-based public television talk show, he'd annoy us by skipping through the house singing, "Bye-bye! Bye-bye!"

John McLaughlin, creator and host of "The McLaughlin Group," was delighted to hear that news. "Watch out, Clarence," he said in his professorial bellow. "I'm subverting a new generation."

"Father John," as a few of us regulars on his news panel sometimes called him backstage, has uttered his last "bye-bye." The former Roman Catholic priest who became an aide to President Richard Nixon and later pioneered a pugilistic style of political punditry, died Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 89.

I was fortunate enough to be part of the "Group" for 28 of its 34 years on the air.

McLaughlin invited me to join the panel, he told me later, on the recommendation of another visionary broadcaster, William McCarter, the Chicago public TV and radio chief who brought the show to PBS in 1982. McCarter died in 2011.

My biggest regret when I heard of McLaughlin's death was my own failure to thank him for the changes his program has brought to my life, let alone his influence on the way politics are discussed on television.

Before the Group came along, political talk shows tended to be polite interrogations of politicians, authors and other newsmakers. McLaughlin changed that. He bypassed the newsmakers to let us commentators argue about the newsmakers.

He further enlivened the conversation by giving his panelists too many topics and too little time to make our points without raising our voices and talking over one another.

And there were his unique McLaughlin-isms. He opened the show by plunging directly into "Issue one!"

He headlined topics with festive labels like "Political Potpourri!" and halted responses in midsentence with a resounding "Wrong!"

He forced us to compress complexities into a tidy scale of zero-to-10, "zero being absolute impossibility and 10 being metaphysical certitude."

And he branded his distinguished panel with such nicknames as Freddy "the Beadle" Barnes, now at The Weekly Standard; Jack "Germondo" Germond, the late Baltimore Sun columnist; and Eleanor "You're Swell-a-nor" Clift, now with The Daily Beast.

We knew we had entered pop culture when the show was lampooned on "Saturday Night Live," once with Dana Carvey playing a spot-on McLaughlin and another with McLaughlin playing himself — "almost as well as Carvey did," I later joked.

I missed out on the "SNL" spoof, but I was included in one of Mad magazine's cartoon depictions of the Group in a late-1990s edition, enabling me to score some rare cool points with my son's fifth-grade classmates. Priceless.

The show did have its critics. Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, another master of nicknames, called it "the McGoofy Group." Germond called it "TV at its worst" and insisted he was only sticking around to pay for his daughter's medical school tuition. My grandmother simply called it "the shouting show." Sounds about right.

A more scholarly critic is best-selling author Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor. In her 1998 book "The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words," she includes "The McLaughlin Group" among media that have promoted "agonism," forms of ritualized fighting that use words instead of fists or weapons.

When the belief that "watching fights can be fun" enters our public discourse, she said in an email exchange, there is a "degradation of information." Landing "a good — and entertaining — blow" becomes more important than getting the facts right, she said, or getting useful information across.

Donald Trump used that aesthetic in his TV show, "The Apprentice," with his "belligerent, entertaining, 'You're fired!'" Tannen said, and in his Republican presidential candidacy that represents "the inevitable result — of the merging and confusing of information and entertainment."

Could the Group have played a role in the rise of Trump? That should give all of us pause.Yet the worst sin in our business, besides plagiarism and inaccuracies, is to be boring. If McLaughlin's Group helped to make today's complicated news and issues a little easier for the public to digest, I hear it encouraged quite a few to read newspapers, too.

For all that and more, I'll miss you, John. Bye-bye!

John McLaughlin, TV Host Who Made Combat of Punditry, Dies at 89

By ELIZABETH JENSEN NY Times

John McLaughlin began his television show, “The McLaughlin Group,” in 1982.

John McLaughlin, a former Roman Catholic priest who became an aide to Richard M. Nixon in the White House and parlayed his fierce defense of the president into a television career as host of “The McLaughlin Group,” the long-running Sunday morning program of combative political punditry, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 89.

His death was announced on the program’s Facebook page. The columnist Eleanor Clift, a longtime panelist on the show, wrote in The Daily Beast that he had been treated for prostate cancer for some time and that it had spread.

Mr. McLaughlin had been absent from the show this last weekend for the first time in more than 34 years. “I am under the weather,” he wrote to viewers in a note that began the broadcast, adding that his voice was “weaker than usual” but that his “spirit is strong.”

As creator, executive producer and host of “The McLaughlin Group,” which began in 1982, Mr. McLaughlin helped reinvent the political talk-show format by injecting unabashed partisanship and a dash of entertainment.

His program, broadcast on select CBS and PBS stations, inspired a generation of pundits, although few quite adopted his self-exaggerated, blustery persona. His penchant for giving nicknames to his panelists, his riffling through the week’s topics and his prosecutorial questioning became fodder for comedians, notably Dana Carvey on “Saturday Night Live,” even while policy makers tuned in for the political observations.

The show always ended with a prediction by each of the panelists, with Mr. McLaughlin getting the final word, even if seemingly with tongue in cheek. In 1989, for example, he predicted, “Within weeks, Delaware will authorize public flogging for drug trafficking.’’ (It did not.) His trademark signoff was a robust “Bye-bye!”

Mr. McLaughlin, who left the priesthood in 1975, “proved that you could be provocative and an advocate and entertaining, and bring a larger audience to public affairs programming,” said Tammy Haddad, a former vice president of political coverage for MSNBC. Ms. Haddad was also an executive producer of “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” whose host got ample exposure on Mr. McLaughlin’s weekly round table earlier in his career.

“The early success of CNN,” Ms. Haddad noted, was based on its “political food fights” by the likes of Robert Novak and Patrick J. Buchanan, both of whom were founding “McLaughlin Group” panelists.

While in the White House, Mr. McLaughlin, well-informed but prone to tirades, would “sometimes almost become a cartoon of himself” when reporters called, said Bob Schieffer, the CBS News Washington reporter who became host of the CBS Sunday show “Face the Nation.” But as a talk-show host, Mr. Schieffer said, Mr. McLaughlin changed the industry with his shouting.

Combativeness was part of Mr. McLaughlin’s style from the beginning. As a Jesuit priest, he had been in frequent conflict with his superiors, who disapproved of his 1970 run for the United States Senate in Rhode Island as a Republican calling for a rapid end to the Vietnam War. Father McLaughlin, who had resigned as an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and switched his party affiliation, was believed to be the first active Roman Catholic priest to run for the Senate.

He stood in sharp contrast to his fellow Jesuit Robert Drinan of Massachusetts, who was given permission to run for the House that same year as an antiwar Democrat. Father McLaughlin, who was chastised by the bishop of Providence, R.I., for his Senate run, lost by a wide margin to the incumbent Democrat, John O. Pastore.

Father McLaughlin went to Washington anyway, joining President Nixon’s speechwriting team in 1971. Nicknamed Nixon’s Priest, he gave frequent speeches in defense of the president’s conduct of the Vietnam War, including bombing missions into Cambodia.

As the Watergate crisis deepened, Father McLaughlin became one of the president’s most visible supporters. At one news conference, he dismissed Nixon’s use of profanity as “emotional drainage.” Less than two weeks before the president resigned, Father McLaughlin warned in a speech at the National Press Club that the nation would face a “parade of horrors” should Nixon be impeached. (On July 31, 1973, Father Drinan became the first congressman to call for impeachment in a House resolution.)

After Vice President Gerald R. Ford succeeded Nixon in August 1974, Father McLaughlin’s speechwriting position was abolished.

Father McLaughlin had maintained a high profile in Washington, living at the tony Watergate complex rather than in the austere Jesuit residence at Georgetown University where Father Drinan lived. This led his church superiors to rebuke him in May 1974, summoning him to a period of “reflection.”

Instead, in 1975, Mr. McLaughlin successfully petitioned Pope Paul VI and was released from his vows.

That same year he married Ann Dore, his former Senate campaign manager. She later served as secretary of labor under President Ronald Reagan. The couple divorced in 1992. In 1997 he married Cristina Vidal, the vice president for operations of Oliver Productions, the company that produces “The McLaughlin Report.” That marriage also ended in divorce. There was no immediate word on survivors.

John Joseph McLaughlin was born in Providence on March 29, 1927, to the former Eva Turcotte and Augustus H. McLaughlin, a regional salesman for a furniture company. After graduating from LaSalle Academy in Providence and studying for the priesthood in Massachusetts, he was ordained a priest in 1959.

He earned master’s degrees in philosophy and English literature from Boston College, and a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. He then taught at the Jesuit-run Fairfield College Preparatory School in Connecticut.

After leaving the White House, he and his wife at the time, Ms. Dore, founded a media relations and public affairs consulting company. In the early 1980s, Mr. McLaughlin hosted a weekend talk program on the Washington radio station WRC. After joining the magazine National Review as the Washington editor and a columnist, he founded a television production concern with the backing of former Nixon allies and persuaded NBC’s Washington television affiliate, WRC-TV, to broadcast a new type of weekend political talk show and to let him host it.

At the time, TV round tables of journalists like “Agronsky & Company” and “Washington Week in Review” dissected the week’s developments in a sober, nonpartisan style. Mr. McLaughlin envisioned a more animated, argumentative format including a panel reflecting conservative, moderate and liberal views, with him as moderator.

From its debut in 1982 “The McLaughlin Group” took on the flavor of a barroom debate, pitting a largely white, male cadre of columnists and political insiders against one another as they gave vent to views from the hard right (Mr. Novak and Mr. Buchanan) to the center-left (Morton Kondracke of The New Republic and Jack Germond of The Baltimore Sun). Ms. Clift, a Newsweek correspondent at the time, and the Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who is black, later joined the group as more liberal regulars.

Regardless of the panelists’ political persuasions, Mr. McLaughlin, whose own politics leaned decidedly right, would often fire off questions and cut them off, shouting “Wronnnng!”

When the cameras were off, the panelists often feuded. Mr. Novak left after a falling out in 1988 and founded a similar program on CNN, “Capital Gang.” In an interview on PBS in June 2007, Mr. Novak said of Mr. McLaughlin, “He may not be pure evil, but he’s close to it.” Mr. Germond, another of the original panelists, called the show “really bad TV,” and said he had stayed on only because he needed the money to pay his daughter’s medical school tuition.

Mr. McLaughlin was also the executive producer and host of “John McLaughlin’s One on One,” a weekly interview program that was broadcast on NBC and PBS stations. From 1989 to 1994 he hosted a daily interview show on CNBC.

In a 1992 profile in The Times, Mr. McLaughlin defended his style. “Does this depreciate journalism?” he asked. “Not one damned bit. Journalists can get very pompous, especially in the formalized days of ‘Meet the Press,’ when they took themselves so damned seriously. This show de-mythologizes the press, and I think people like that.”

Putin raises stakes over alleged Ukrainian terror plot in Crimea

Russian president says Moscow will not ignore incidents in which two soldiers were killed, but which Kiev denies took place

Shaun Walker in Moscow London Times

Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea and claimed two Russian servicemen were killed in clashes this week, as tensions over the peninsula rise to their highest level since Russia annexed it in 2014.

Ukraine denied the alleged incidents had taken place and dismissed the claims as Russian provocation.

In characteristically bellicose language, Putin accused Ukraine of playing a dangerous game.”We obviously will not let such things slide by,” the Russian president said on Wednesday. Ukraine had “resorted to the practice of terror”, he said.

Putin’s warning that Russia would not ignore the incidents will worry observers. The increased tension in Crimea comes at a time when the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine appears to be heating up. There are almost daily casualties on the frontline between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebel military formations, and little sign of a resolution to the conflict, in which more than 9,000 people have been killed over the past two years.

The Crimea crisis has come from nowhere, but the Russian president has form for military adventures in Olympic years

Russia’s security service, the FSB, said in a statement that one of its officers had been killed during a shootout with a “group of diversionaries” on Saturday night, when they were supposedly discovered just inside Crimea’s border with mainland Ukraine. It said the group had 20 homemade devices with a total of 40kg of explosives in their possession.

The FSB said there had been a further incident on Monday involving “massive firing” from the Ukrainian side of the border and attempts to enter the region by force, during which another Russian soldier died.

“On the night of 8 August 2016, special operations forces from the Ukrainian defence ministry carried out two more attempts to make a breakthrough by sabotage-terrorist groups,” it said.

The FSB said it had arrested a man named Evgeny Panov, allegedly a Ukrainian military intelligence operative born in 1977, and said he had made a confession. It gave no further information.

“This is a very dangerous game,” said Putin. “We will of course do everything to assure the security of infrastructure, citizens and will take additional measures to provide security, including serious additional measures.”

The FSB said Kiev’s aim was the “destabilisation of the socio-political situation in the region during preparation for elections”. Russia will hold nationwide parliamentary elections on 18 September, with Crimea taking part for the first time since its annexation.

Locals in Crimea have noted a large amount of Russian military hardware on the move in recent days, and the de facto borders between Crimea and Ukraine were closed over the weekend and subject to increased security checks when they reopened.

Ukraine’s defence ministry said: “This kind of FSB statement is nothing more than an attempt to justify the relocation and aggressive actions of Russian military units on the temporarily occupied peninsula.

“Russian security services are trying to distract the population of Crimea and the international community from its criminal actions, turning the peninsula into an isolated military base.”

 Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of resorting to terror instead of seeking peaceful solutions. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Oleskandr Turchynov, the head of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, also dismissed the claims. “The hysterical and false statement by Russia’s FSB has no purpose other than an attempt by occupiers to inflame the situation on temporarily occupied Ukrainian lands,” he said.

Russia annexed Crimea in a swift military operation following the February 2014 revolution in Kiev that deposed the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Armed men in unmarked uniforms fanned out across the peninsula and seized Ukrainian army bases and other key infrastructure. At the time Putin vehemently denied the men were Russian soldiers,but he later admitted they were.

Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in a referendum that the international community dismissed as flawed and illegitimate and which led to western sanctions against Russia that are still in place.

Ukraine has said it will never give up its claim to the peninsula, but it has acknowledged in the past that it does not have the military capability to regain control. Ukrainian authorities have tacitly supported a blockade of Crimea by a group of Crimean Tatars, an indigenous ethnic group largely opposed the annexation. Crimean Tatars blocked trucks from entering Crimea from mainland Ukraine for several months last year and even blew up electricity pipelines, leading to blackouts on the peninsula. 

Putin has promised infrastructure will be built in the next few years to make Crimea self-sufficient in energy. Moscow is also building a bridge to link the peninsula with the Russian mainland across the Kerch Strait. It is due to open in 2018.

Crimea’s governor, Sergey Aksyonov, who was appointed by Moscow, said attempts to destabilise the peninsula during the summer tourist season would be prevented “in the harshest possible way”, promising that the region was safe for residents and tourists.

Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, was admitted to hospital after an assassination attempt this month. He blamed Ukrainian authorities and the CIA, but other analysts suggested infighting or falling out with his Russian handlers was a more likely cause.

Responding to the alleged incidents in Crimea, Putin also said it made no sense to have a “Normandy four” meeting in the current circumstances. The quartet of leaders from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany have met periodically to discuss the conflict in eastern Ukraine. A meeting had been mooted for the G20 summit in China next month.

What is Happening in Ukraine?

Luke Harding London Guardian

All of this leads to the suspicion, voiced by Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former prime minister and others, that Russia may be about to invade again.

When it comes to the month of August, Putin has form. His previous invasions have coincided with Olympic Games, a time when the international community is distracted or on holiday - Georgia in 2008 after Beijing, and Ukraine in 2014 (after the Winter Games in Sochi.

There are other propitious circumstances this summer. The presidential election is paralysing the US, and the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has hinted that as president he might recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He seems uncertain as to where Ukraine actually is. Europe meanwhile is in disarray in the wake of the Brexit vote and an ongoing migration crisis.

Seizing Crimea seemed a good idea in 2014, and it was achieved with remarkable ease. As the Russian writer Leonid Kaganov put it, however, it was a bit like stealing an expensive phone without its charger. Once a peninsula, the region is now effectively an island. Putin has announced plans to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait, connecting it to the Russian mainland, but he has entrusted the job to a childhood friend, Arkady Rotenburg, and it is unlikely to be finished any time soon.

In the meantime, Crimeans, most of whom still support Russia, have suffered a series of electricity blackouts and other indignities. Last November Ukrainian activists blew up energy pipelines to Crimea, plunging homes into darkness. People ate dinner by candlelight, factories shut down and for the first few days even traffic lights stopped working. The peninsula’s water supply is also vulnerable. It gets all of its water via the north Crimean canal, currently in Ukraine.

At this point there seem to be three possible scenarios. One is that Putin will try to leverage this latest crisis to persuade EU countries to drop the sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict. Another is that he is preparing a limited military incursion, possibly to set up a security corridor, which doubtless would include the electricity station in the nearby Ukrainian city of Kherson. A third is that he is planning something bigger.

Yulia Efimova hits back at critics: ‘I thought cold war was long in the past’

In spring 2014 there was speculation that he would seek to carve out a land corridor connecting separatist Donetsk and Luhansk with Crimea. That would involve over-running Ukrainian forces in the port city of Mariupol and advancing along the coast. The Kremlin also floated the idea of Novorossiya, a historical pseudo-entity encompassing Ukraine’s southern and south-eastern Russian-speaking regions.

None of this happened, but a land corridor would certainly be an attractive solution to Crimea’s current woes, and would at a stroke solve Russia’s short and long-term infrastructure problems. There would be political dividends too. From the Kremlin’s point of view, a further Ukraine adventure would conclusively demonstrate the west’s weakness and incapacity.

At a time when US swimmers are openly taunting their Russian rivals in the pool, it would also be payback for the doping scandal and international attempts to ban Russian athletes from the Olympics. Putin cares deeply about sport. The Wada report on Russian state-sponsored doping has been presented inside Russia as a western conspiracy. Putin may be showing who is boss. 

Donald Trump and a C.I.A. Officer Walk Into a Room

Nicholas Kristof NY TIMES

The government is arranging classified intelligence briefings for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to prepare them for the White House. This longstanding practice of briefing nominees is controversial this year: Senator Harry Reid has urged the C.I.A. to give Trump a “fake” briefing, while House Speaker Paul Ryan has said Clinton can’t handle classified material. But what would a Trump briefing look like, anyway?

“Mr. Trump, I’m Gene Smith from the C.I.A.”

“Smith, huh? Is that your code name? You know, I know a huge amount about the C.I.A., more than most C.I.A. directors. A terrific, beautiful, very good organization.”

“Actually, Smith is my real name. Anyway, let’s get started with China and our assessment that Xi is much more aggressive than Hu.”

“She is more aggressive than who?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I’d like to meet her. I like aggressive women. She sounds like a 10.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. That aggressive woman.”

“I’m not sure I understand. Anyway, in China we assess with high confidence that Xi will continue this aggressive nationalistic ——”

“She sounds hot. No, I’m just joking. But, seriously, women love me.”

“Mr. Trump, Xi is a man, president of China.”

“She is a man? China’s president is trans? Boy, they’re more modern than I realized — I mean, I knew that. I know so much about China. You should see me use chopsticks! Did I ever tell you about this hot Chinese girl I once dated? She was so modern, and built like ——

“Mr. Trump! We expect China will maintain its nationalistic claims in the South China Sea ——”

“Oh, don’t worry. I have lots of Chinese friends. I love Chinese food. Best pad Thai in the world at Trump Tower. So what’s your take, what do the Chinese think of me?”

“We assess with high confidence that the Chinese leadership wants you to win the election.”

“I’m not surprised. There are very, very bad reporters at completely and totally failing newspapers that nobody reads who say I might start a trade war. But China wants me to win the election! Amazing! So why does she want me to win, that transsexual president of theirs?”

“Xi is not trans! Xi would like you to win because alliance management is not your priority, and your presidency could lead to an unprecedented decline in U.S. influence.”

“Unprecedented! Amazing! So the Chinese think that I’d be unprecedented? Who else likes me?”

“Well, North Korea has already officially endorsed you, Mr. Trump. It called you ‘prescient’ and ‘wise.’”

“‘Present and wise!’ They love me! And Russia loves me, too. Putin and I go way back. We’re like this” — Trump knits his fingers together — “and after I’m elected I hope to finally meet him.”

“Yes, we believe that President Putin is backing you.”

“Putin the Pro. Not like Little Ukraine. Sad!”

“Well, Putin believes that NATO might collapse in your presidency and that he would have a freer hand in Ukraine and the Baltics.”

“The Baltics, I know them better than anybody! Melania is from Slovenia. Some people say I leaked those amazing pictures of her to The New York Post. Why would I do that? Did you see them? Here ——”

“Mr. Trump! And you mean the Balkans, even though Slovenia isn’t ——”

“Balkans, Baltics — I don’t get bogged down in details. I’m a strategy guy. Now what about ISIS? I know more about ISIS than the generals do. But I’d like to hear your take. Are they supporters?”

“We assess that they are supporting you in the belief that you help recruitment. Indeed, we fear that they may conduct a terror strike in hopes of helping you get elected.”

“Everybody’s supporting me! What about the Middle East? I’ll probably do a peace deal — I’m a terrific deal maker, you know that? I’ll probably get a Nobel Peace Prize to go with my new Purple Heart.”

“Well, sir, the Middle East is complicated ——”

“The Middle East is a complete and total disaster. They don’t respect us. What about nuclear weapons? If we have nukes, why not use ’em?”

“Sir, we only offer intel, not policy advice. But ——”

“Shouldn’t we just drop a few nukes on those Kurds?”

“The Kurds? In Syria, they’re our only effective ally.”

“They’re doing bad things. Very bad things. I saw it on a Sunday show.”

“Oh, you mean … the Quds Force?”

“Kurds, Quds, what’s the difference? If I give the order to bomb ’em, you guys can sweat the details. Call Mike Pence.”

“But you’re running to be ——”

“Anyway, tell me about internet security. I’m a little bored. How about we hack into the phone of Miss Sweden and check out her selfies? When I’m elected I’m going to have a whole team on that. …”

Scientists Ponder an Evolutionary Mystery: The Female Orgasm

Carl Zimmer NY TIMES

Evolutionary biologists offered a new way of thinking about the female orgasm based on a reconstruction of its ancient history. 

An eye is for seeing, a nose is for smelling. Many aspects of the human body have obvious purposes.

But some defy easy explanation. For biologists, few phenomena are as mysterious as the female orgasm.

While orgasms have an important role in a woman’s intimate relationships, the evolutionary roots of the experience — a combination of muscle contractions, hormone release, and intense pleasure — have been difficult to uncover.

For decades, researchers have put forward theories, but none are widely accepted. Now two evolutionary biologists have joined the fray, offering a new way of thinking about the female orgasm based on a reconstruction of its ancient history.

On Monday, in The Journal of Experimental Zoology, the authors conclude that the response originated in mammals more than 150 million years ago as a way to release eggs to be fertilized after sex.

Until now, few scientists have investigated the biology of distantly related animals for clues to the mystery.

“For orgasms, we kept it reserved for humans and primates,” said Mihaela Pavlicev, an evolutionary biologist at University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and an author of the new paper. “We didn’t look to other species to dig deeper and look for the origin.”

The male orgasm has never caused much of a stir among evolutionary biologists. The pleasure is precisely linked to ejaculation, the most important step in passing on a male’s genes to the next generation. That pleasure encourages men to deliver more sperm, which is evolutionarily advantageous.

For women, the evolutionary path is harder to figure out. The muscle contractions that occur during an orgasm are not essential for a woman to become pregnant. And while most men can experience an orgasm during sex, it’s less reliable for women.

In a 2010 survey, 35.6 percent of women said that they hadn’t had an orgasm the most recent time they had sex. Part of the reason for this is anatomy: the clitoris is physically separated from the vagina.

Still, a number of scientists suspect that the female orgasm serves some biological function favored by natural selection. They just need to figure out what it is.

“My gut instinct is that something that matters so much at an emotional level — the intense pleasure of orgasm — would seem to have reproductive consequences,” said David A. Puts, an evolutionary anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University.

Many hypotheses have been put forward. Dr. Puts and his colleagues have carried out studies to test the possibility that orgasms increase the odds that a woman’s eggs are fertilized by a genetically attractive male.

Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher at Indiana University, isn’t buying it. In 2005, she published a book called “The Case of the Female Orgasm,” in which she reviewed 18 published theories about its function.

None had strong evidence in its favor, she concluded, and many were undermined by other findings about human sexuality. Years of further research have only strengthened her skepticism.

Dr. Lloyd thinks the best explanation for the female orgasm is that it hasn’t served any evolutionary purpose at all. It’s nothing more than the byproduct of the development of the male orgasm. The orgasm is to women, she believes, as nipples are to men.

But now Dr. Pavlicev and her colleague, Günter P. Wagner of Yale University, are making the case that the human female orgasm has a deep evolutionary history that reaches back to early mammals.

They began by getting better acquainted with the sex lives of other animals, poring through obscure old journals to gather information on species ranging from aardvarks to koalas.

They noted that many female mammals release oxytocin and prolactin during sex — the hormones released by women during orgasms. What’s more, in many of those species, females use a radically different kind of reproduction.

While women release an egg each month, other female mammals, such as rabbits and camels, release an egg only after mating with a male.

Ovulatory cycles evolved in only a few lineages of mammals, including our own, Dr. Pavlicev and Dr. Wagner found. Before then, our ancient mammal ancestors originally relied on ovulation triggered by sex with a male.

Those early mammals developed a clitoris inside the vagina. Only in mammals that evolved ovulatory cycles did the clitoris move away. Based on these findings, Dr. Pavlicev and Dr. Wagner argue that the female orgasm first evolved as a reflex to help females become pregnant.

When early mammals mated, the clitoris could send signals to the brain, triggering hormones that released an egg. Once the egg became fertilized, the hormones may have helped ensure it became implanted in the uterus.

This arrangement has worked well for mammals that rarely encounter males. It helps females make the most of each mating.

But eventually some mammals, including primates like us, started spending their lives in social groups. Females had access to regular sex with males, and orgasm as an ovulatory mechanism was no longer so useful. Our female forebears instead evolved a new system: releasing eggs in a regular cycle.

As the original purpose of the orgasm was lost, the clitoris moved away from its original position. Dr. Wagner speculated that this shift was part of evolution’s dismantling of a sensor system: “You don’t want to have the old signal sending noise at the wrong time,” he said.

“Basically, we don’t know why this happened,” he added. But across mammalian species, “it’s just a very strong evolutionary pattern.”

Dr. Lloyd and Dr. Puts welcomed the new study as a provocative addition to the debate over the female orgasms.

“I’m pretty excited that it’s being published,” Dr. Lloyd said, “because people are going to start talking about female orgasms and getting a fresh look at how much we don’t know about female orgasms, and thinking hard about what we need to know.”

The new theory may shed light on how the human female orgasm first evolved, but Dr. Pavlicev and Dr. Wagner said that it doesn’t settle the debate about its current role in women. “All directions are open,” Dr. Wagner said.

Dr. Wagner said that deciphering the history of the female orgasm might improve reproductive medicine.

“I think you’re looking at the whole woman’s reproductive system a little differently when you have a model for how it might have evolved,” he said.