Your Monday Briefing: Russia strikes a Ukrainian city after attack on a key bridge

By Daniel E. Slotnik

Metro Reporter

Good day. We’re covering Russian strikes on an important Ukrainian city, funerals for rampage victims in Thailand and the legacy of a Chinese food pioneer in America.

Russia strikes key city after bridge attack

Russia fired 20 missiles at residential areas of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, killing at least 13 people and injuring 60, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

The strikes came after an explosion on Saturday destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, the only bridge that connects the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. A senior Ukrainian official said the blast was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services.

The 12-mile bridge is the most important supply line for Russian troops fighting in southern Ukraine, and destroying part of it was a personal affront to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who presided over its opening in 2018 and described the explosion as a “terrorist attack” on Sunday.

What’s next: Russian news reports said that some road and rail traffic had resumed, but trucks were backed up on either side of the bridge. After the attack, celebrations in Kyiv gave way to apprehension over possible Russian reprisals.

Response: “These areas have no military purpose,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “The only goal of Russia’s deliberate attacks was to cause death and destruction to civilian people, sow terror and fear.”

In other war news, a former U.S. diplomat said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a deal would be reached to release Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, two Americans imprisoned in Russia. And a former U.S. Marine Corps colonel has built one of the largest private military companies in Ukraine.

Thailand mourns

The 19 coffins lined an entire wall of the Wat Rat Samakee temple. A long white string, a Buddhist symbol of purity and protection, ran across their tops. Placed around each coffin were items to carry the young children into the afterlife: a Spiderman outfit, a plush kitty, juice boxes, grilled pork, and toy trucks, many of them.

The town of Uthai Sawan on Saturday started formally mourning the 36 victims, 23 of them young children in a day care center, who died after a former police officer attacked them in a rampage on Thursday. The funerals had to be split across three temples, and monks from neighboring provinces traveled to the town to help with the rites.

The body of the gunman, Panya Kamrab, was cremated in Udon Thani, after no temple in Nong Bua Lumphu Province, where the attack occurred, was willing to carry out his last rites, local news media reported.

Related: Access to guns in Thailand is uneven, with lax rules for people in the police and military and stricter ones for civilians. The disparity, coupled with guns smuggled across the border, has led to a thriving black market and far greater gun ownership than in most Asian countries. One 3-year-old escaped the attack unscathed, Reuters reported.

Covid flares up in China

Coronavirus cases are on the rise in China, even though officials have ramped up restrictions that many have already deemed excessive. Daily Covid counts have more than doubled in the past week, to around 1,400 cases on Friday — a tiny tally by global standards but still high for China.

Authorities in China are sticking closely to their “zero Covid” policy before an important Communist Party congress starts on Oct. 16, at which China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to expand his authority and claim another term in power.

The elevated case counts are leading to new lockdowns and more mandated testing and quarantines. Lockdowns have been punishing for the residents of less-developed regions, where shortages of food and medicine have been common.

Details: On Tuesday, Xinjiang effectively barred residents and visitors from leaving, stopping all trains and buses from departing and canceling most flights out. In the tropical island province of Hainan, the authorities ordered mass testing after just two cases.

Quotable: China’s pandemic strategy is “almost a political campaign to show loyalty to Xi Jinping himself,” said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor of politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

ADVERTISEMENT

THE LATEST NEWS

• North Korea has tested a record number of missiles this year, an indication that the country needs to gain leverage over the U.S. and “is frustrated, isolated and uncertain about its future,” said Choe Sang-Hun, The Times’s Seoul bureau chief.
• The U.S. is imposing sanctions on several businessmen and companies in Asia that officials said help support the development of North Korea’s weapons and military.
• A giant pumpkin sculpture by the artist Yayoi Kusama has been reinstalled on the Japanese island where it was thrashed by a typhoon last year.
• My colleagues at DealBook examine what China’s Communist Party congress could mean for global business.

• A war is escalating in the Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia despite months of American and African Union diplomacy.
• Record numbers of Venezuelans are risking death to reach the U.S. border.
• Rwanda has opened its borders to refugees, but critics say that the country is trying to deflect attention from its own human rights record.
• Vehement protests followed the Greek government’s attempt to station police officers at four universities.

• A month from Election Day, the 2022 midterm elections in the U.S. are surprisingly unpredictable.
• Harvey Weinstein’s second sex crimes trial begins on Monday in Los Angeles.
• America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multibillion-dollar nightmare.

Lil Nihilist, Shy Boogie and MoistPB were among the individuals The Times’s tech and privacy reporter Kashmir Hill spoke with during months exploring Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual reality-based social network. She found gamers, parents, children, insomniacs, trolls and comedians roaming the digital space on which Meta has bet its future.

Grace Glueck, a reporter who made the art world a distinct beat at The New York Times, and who then helped bring an important sex discrimination lawsuit against the paper, died on Saturday. She was 96.

Subscribe Today

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times with this special offer.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Madame Wu’s adaptable Chinese cuisine

When Sylvia Wu opened Madame Wu’s Garden in Los Angeles in 1959, chop suey houses still dominated American Chinese food.

Wu, who died last month at the age of 106, came from a wealthy family and studied at Columbia University. Appalled by the Chinese food she found in the U.S., she had the idea to build something closer to the extravagant places she went to in Hong Kong. Madame Wu’s catered to stars like Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, and Wu became a celebrity in her own right, appearing on television, writing books and driving a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud with vanity plates that read “MMEWU.”

Her generation of chefs expanded American ideas of what Chinese food could be. “Her enthusiasm for the new was as strong as her reverence for the old, and she was always landing on another way to please her audience, grow her business and show off the finesse and beauty of Chinese cooking,” writes my colleague Tejal Rao.

“Chinese friends would criticize the food, saying it wasn’t authentic,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “But I told them, ‘Look around. Do you see any Chinese dining here?’”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

This velvety mole negro is traditionally served over roasted poultry, but it also pairs perfectly with roasted vegetables and fish.

Cate Blanchett stars as a world-famous conductor and composer heading for a fall in “Tár,” which our critic called “cruelly elegant, elegantly cruel.”

“Index, A History of the,” explores the development of the textual map through the ages (and has several indexes of its own).

Play the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Wowed, just wowed (4 letters).

Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s all this morning. See you tomorrow. — Dan

P.S. Rick Rojas was named The Times’s next Atlanta Bureau Chief.

Listen to the “The Sunday Read,” about the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life.

You can reach Dan and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

ADVERTISEMENT

Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.

You received this email because you signed up for Morning Briefing: Asia Pacific Edition from The New York Times.

To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences.

Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app

Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices

The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018