Your Tuesday Briefing

A barrage of missiles hits cities across Ukraine

In Russia’s largest aerial assault since the early days of the war, missiles rained down on at least 11 cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said it was retaliation for a blast that destroyed sections of a bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

More than 80 cruise missiles and 24 self-destructing drones exploded in cities in nearly every corner of the country, killing at least 14 people and wounding almost 100 more. The attacks changed little or nothing on the battlefield, where Russia has been losing ground for weeks. But the assault left neighborhoods across Ukraine battered and bloodied, and without power and water. In Kyiv, the smells of gas and fire lingered in the air.

Russia’s targeting of civilian areas drew condemnations from leaders across the West, including Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and President Biden, who vowed to stand with the people of Ukraine. Even countries that have generally avoided criticizing the Kremlin, like China and India, spoke out against the strikes.

In other news from the war:

The Russian state media flaunted images of the damage in Ukraine after months of insisting that troops were hitting only military targets there.
The attacks are expected to add pressure on the Biden administration to send more sophisticated air defenses to Ukraine more quickly.
In southern Ukraine, Russian soldiers are dug in more securely, though there are signs of declining morale.

Britain’s young hobbled by inflation

Many young Britons had hoped that after two years of the pandemic, they could finally start enjoying their lives. Instead, many are moving back home and staying in — this time for financial reasons, as they confront rising costs and a slowing economy. Affordable housing in major centers is limited, socializing is expensive and energy bills are set to increase.

The Conservative government’s vow to revive the economy after its proposed tax cuts has shaken Britain’s financial markets, sending the pound plunging and forcing the Bank of England to intervene. For young people, who are less likely to be insulated against financial shocks and for whom wage growth has been weak, the situation is precarious, economists say.

With six in 10 young Britons holding low-paid jobs, young people have been hit harder by inflation than most. Local youth centers, some of which began providing free hot meals during the pandemic, are experiencing a drastic uptick in interest for their services, just as they face higher costs because of the energy crisis.

Related: Britain’s government said that its next fiscal policy announcement would be released on Oct. 31 and that it would provide an independent assessment of the policies’ impact on the nation’s economy and public finances.

Intelligence concerns about China

Jeremy Fleming, the head of the British electronic and cyber intelligence-gathering agency GCHQ, has warned about the urgent threat to the West from China’s expanding use of technology to control dissent, as well as its growing ability to attack satellite systems, control digital currencies and track individuals.

GCHQ plays an increasingly central role in tracking Russian communications and preparing for the day when China’s advances in quantum computing may defeat the kinds of encryption used to protect both government and corporate communications. The U.S. and its allies may soon discover that they cannot maintain a military or technological edge over Beijing, Fleming said.

China’s technological power — in particular its central bank digital currencies — may allow it to evade the sort of sanctions being applied to Russia because of the war in Ukraine, Fleming said. In the event of military action against Taiwan, those digital currencies could limit the international community’s ability to isolate China economically.

Context: Last week, the Biden administration announced sweeping new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, hoping to cripple Beijing’s access to critical technologies that are needed for supercomputers, advanced weapons and artificial intelligence applications.

THE LATEST NEWS

Around the World

A blizzard of research in the last decade on black holes has mind-bending implications, including the possibility that our three-dimensional universe — and we ourselves — may be holograms, like the ghostly anti-counterfeiting images that appear on some credit cards and driver’s licenses.

In this version of the cosmos, there is no difference between here and there, cause and effect, inside and outside or perhaps even then and now.

SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC

Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol and the ‘I’m gay’ tweet that covered no one in glory: Joke gone wrong? Twitter hacking? Either way, the furor around Casillas ‘coming out’ served as a reminder soccer has a long way to go.

Why Liverpool’s Premier League title hopes are gone: Jurgen Klopp’s side have become their own worst enemies. A quarter of the way through the Premier League season his side sit in 10th place, and hopes of a title are out the window.

A fight over equal pay: The success of the U.S. women’s soccer team on the field and at the negotiating table has been a model for players elsewhere, The Times reports. Now, in countries like Britain and Spain, those battles are heating up.

ARTS AND IDEAS

‘Sensation’ at 25

Twenty-five years ago, an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London alerted the world to the radically new kind of art being made by young, working-class graduates like Angus Fairhurst, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Jake and Dinos Chapman. It drew 300,000 visitors and set off a media storm.

These days, the artists shown at “Sensation” are middle-aged. Most are no longer the innovators they once were. Hirst is now a quasi-industrial-artistic brand, and the Chapman brothers have parted creative ways. Emin, who is creating a free art school, is arguably the only one who is still at the forefront of British contemporary art.

Britain has also changed. It has had four Conservative prime ministers in 12 years, left the E.U. and abandoned free study at universities and art colleges for those who could not otherwise afford it. And the optimism that pervaded 1997 has been replaced by dawning pessimism among many Britons.

“They were reflecting the concerns of young people at the time,” Norman Rosenthal, a co-curator of the “Sensation” show, said of the artists. “They were an art movement. Now it’s broken up: They’re different; times change.”

Read more about an epoch-defining exhibition.