The Week Magazine October 14, 2022

Vladimir Putin has a recurring nightmare. The treacherous West undermines his grip on Russia, ambitious rivals stage a coup, and the rabble drag him from the Kremlin and beat him to death in the same humiliating way Libyans disposed of dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. In his book All the Kremlin’s Men, Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar reported that Putin was “apoplectic” when his fellow strongman was killed; William Burns, the director of the CIA, writes in his book The Back Channel that Putin was obsessed with the gruesome video of Qaddafi’s killing. Russia’s czar thought he could insulate himself from that fate only through ruthless aggression and the promotion of a rabid, quasi-religious Russian nationalism. But his overreaction to his deepest fears has managed to create the conditions for them…

What happened With growing confidence, Ukrainian troops forced the retreat of crumbling Russian forces in the country’s south and east this week, even as Russia formalized the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions. Ukrainian forces recaptured Lyman, a strategically important railway hub in the eastern Donetsk region, crippling Russian supply lines and creating a staging ground for an advance into the Russian-held Luhansk province. The reclamation of Lyman came just hours after a ceremony in which Putin claimed the town and the entire Donetsk region as Russian territory, and followed an abrupt retreat by Russian forces. “They are running, and we are running after them,” laughed a jubilant Ukrainian tank commander, Ihor Nazarenko. As the eastern counter-offensive pushed forward, Ukrainian troops also regained a large swath of territory in…

What happened Hurricane Ian’s death toll climbed past 100 as Florida sifted through the wreckage of the Category 4 storm and launched massive recovery efforts. Over half of the casualties were in Lee County, with the barrier island towns of Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel sustaining extensive damage. A week after the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, more than 500,000 people remained without power. Rescue crews went door-to-door to find survivors, and over 1,900 trapped residents were rescued by boat and aircraft. However, many Floridians still could not contact family members. One woman said she last spoke to her uncle, who’d decided to ride out the storm in Lee County, as water was filling his home; his body was found in a canal two days later. It will take…

As an only child growing up in Philadelphia, Marguerite Koller always dreamed of having a big family. Now, at age 99, she’s achieved her wish, and then some: She has 11 children, 56 grandchildren, and 101 great-grandchildren, with more on the way. “She is there for every high school and college graduation,” says grandson Greg Stokes. “She always makes an effort to be present.” As a teenager, Koller considered becoming a nun, but her boyfriend convinced her to marry him instead. She says she never regretted her decision. As floodwaters rose in hurricane-battered Naples, Fla., Johnny Lauder, who was riding out the storm with his two sons, saw water gushing inside. He moved his sons and one son’s girlfriend to the attic, thinking they’d be safe. Then the phone rang.…

The Supreme Court term that ended in June with the repeal of Roe v. Wade was “the most consequential—and for progressives the most damaging—in living memory,” said Ed Kilgore in New York magazine. The justices returned this week for a new term of possibly momentous cases, with the liberal and conservative justices openly debating whether the court’s radical assault on precedent “had risked its legitimacy.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson begins her tenure as the first Black woman in the court’s history—but she will be powerless to stop a 6-3 conservative supermajority from rewriting U.S. law to match the policy preferences of the Republican Party. Their targets this term will include affirmative action in college admissions, anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to protect water. Most ominously,…

Good week for: Bargains, after Will Sideri of Maine, paid $75 at an estate sale for a page of sheet music that has now been verified to date from the 13th century. The find could be worth $10,000. Humility, after actor Tom Hanks said in an interview that of the 94 films he’s made, “four of them are pretty good.” Hanks, 66, who has been nominated for six Academy Awards and won two, didn’t specify which four “pretty good” films he meant. Incels, with the launch by Trump supporters of The Right Stuff, an “invite-only” dating app for right-of-center singles. The Right Stuff encourages users to open up by completing the sentence, “January 6th was…” or by sharing their “Favorite liberal lie.” Bad week for: Visitors, after a resident of…