Good morning. We’re covering a drone attack on Moscow and efforts to avert a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea. |
 | | Workers repairing a damaged residential building after a drone attack in Moscow.Maxim Shipenkov/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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At least eight drones targeted Moscow yesterday, the first attack to hit civilian areas in the Russian capital. The assault caused minimal damage, shattering some windows in three residential buildings and lightly injuring two residents, according to local officials. |
The assault came after another overnight bombardment by Russian forces of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which has faced a barrage of attacks in recent weeks. Kyiv was attacked with at least 20 drones early yesterday, leaving one person dead. |
Russia blamed Ukraine for what it called a “terrorist attack.” An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Kyiv was not “directly involved” but was “happy” to watch. |
The strike in Moscow exposed Russia’s vulnerabilities ahead of Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive. Earlier this month, a drone strike hit the Kremlin and the U.S. said that attack was most likely orchestrated by Ukraine’s security services. |
More than a year after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, a series of attacks on Russian soil have shown that even its citizens can be vulnerable. |
Quotable: “If the goal was to stress the population, then the very fact that drones have appeared in the skies over Moscow has contributed to that,” wrote Mikhail Zvinchuk, a pro-war Russian military blogger who posts under the moniker Rybar. |
U.S. response: Officials in Washington said the U.S. does not generally support strikes inside Russia, but noted that Moscow’s aerial assault on Kyiv was the 17th this month. |
 | | The rusting oil tanker, the FSO Safer, holds more than 1 million barrels of oil.Holm Akhdar/via Reuters |
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The race to avert a vast oil spill |
The tanker holds about four times the amount of oil leaked in the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. Experts warned that it could explode or disintegrate at any moment, ravaging marine life as well as the livelihoods of fishermen and coastal communities. It could also shutter crucial ports and force the closure of desalination plants that supply water to millions. |
The tanker was used as a floating storage facility for oil from eastern Yemen, but years of war left it poorly maintained. The tanker is moored north of the port city of Hudaydah, once the site of fierce battles. |
Timeline: A crew plans to inspect the rusting tanker this week to prepare for an operation to transfer the oil to a seaworthy tanker purchased by the U.N. Preparations may take one to two weeks, and the transfer itself could take around three weeks. |
 | | Devout women encouraged their friends and relatives to vote for President Erdogan in large numbers.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times |
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A pillar of Erdogan’s victory |
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey beat back the most serious threat to his two decades in power thanks in part to an often underappreciated constituency: conservative religious women. |
Since he arrived on the national stage in 2003 as an ambitious Islamist politician, Erdogan has sidelined Turkey’s secular elites and pushed to loosen head scarf restrictions. The rules were lifted on university campuses in 2008, and in 2013 four veiled women from Erdogan’s party became Parliament members, a first. |
Now, there are many more, and conservative women who were barred from universities and government jobs for wearing head scarves still thank Erdogan with their votes. |
 | | Cathay Pacific has fallen behind its competitors, the chief executive said.Anthony Kwan for The New York Times |
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- Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flagship airline, is struggling to recover from Covid lockdowns and Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
- As China’s young people face record unemployment, our columnist writes, the Communist Party is telling them to embrace hardship.
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 | | Lucy Siegle is one of multiple women to accuse the British columnist Nick Cohen of unwanted sexual advances and groping.Andrew Testa for The New York Times |
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- After a successful mission to Mars, the United Arab Emirates wants to launch a spacecraft to tour the asteroid belt in 2028.
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 | | Meiko Sano told The Times that she was in therapy trying to recover “my ability to say no.”Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times |
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The tangled story of an art history student and her professor shows the state of sexual power dynamics in Japan, where laws on assault do not mention consent and where the #MeToo movement has not taken off as it has in the West. |
The student, Meiko Sano, said that her professor had sexually harassed her and taken advantage of the power imbalance between them for years. She lost her case, and the professor was fired last year. Then, she had to pay damages to the professor’s wife, who accused her of adultery. |
 | | Illustration by The New York Times. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images, via Getty Images; Imagno, via Getty Images. |
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The van Gogh that vanished |
“Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” by Vincent van Gogh, was sold in 2014 for $61.8 million to a buyer calling from China. |
It was the highest-ever auction price for a van Gogh still life and was seen as a sign — after a Picasso was purchased a year earlier by a Chinese real estate tycoon — that China was now a force in the global art market. |
But now the painting’s whereabouts is unknown, and the movie producer who claimed to be the owner may be lying. The trail leads to a middleman based in Shanghai, Caribbean tax havens and a Chinese billionaire now in prison. There are reports that the artwork may be back on the market. |
 | | Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. |
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That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Justin and Amelia |
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