Belkis Wille met a boy who wouldn’t open his eyes at a shelter in Lviv, Ukraine. There, she was recording potential war crimes for Human Rights Watch and had started interviewing the boy’s mother, a beauty salon owner whose face wore new lines of stress and exhaustion.

The day before, the boy, his mother, and his grandmother had fled Kharkiv amid shelling. His father and grandfather stayed in case they needed to fight. Leaving on the train, all three generations of this family watched their home city being bombarded, as their own apartment had been. The youngest, barely 2 years old, had decided he no longer wanted to see. 

“Look at my son,” his mother told Ms. Wille. “He hasn’t opened his eyes since we left Kharkiv.”

Ms. Wille listened and asked for more details, talking next to 20 or so other Ukrainians who had just reached Lviv and needed a place to rest. When they finished, she had three more pages in her notebook to archive on her laptop that night at the long kitchen table in her apartment, where she and her team worked into the late hours.   

Ms. Wille, speaking to the Monitor by phone, is a senior conflict researcher for Human Rights Watch. Those pages were just three out of the hundreds her team – conducting more than 150 interviews over three weeks – compiled in Ukraine in March. From those interviews, they wrote reports on human rights abuses and war crimes that Ms. Wille hopes will help hold the Russian military accountable. 

More than any conflict before, the war in Ukraine is on the record. Around 70% of the country has internet access, which means almost anyone with a smartphone can watch. And prosecutors are. 

In the past five weeks nongovernmental organizations, governments, intelligence units, and international investigators have all started documenting alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Each group has a different mandate, and their work isn’t all coordinated. But the number of people investigating, combined with near-limitless open-source information – from videos of Russian strikes to satellite images of troop movements – makes it more likely that specific charges are filed, a rarity in these investigations.

“It’s impossible today to conduct any small-scale, let alone large-scale, military operation or to violate human rights ... without outing yourself and who you are,” says Scott Edwards, senior adviser for crisis response at Amnesty International.

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Human Rights Watch investigator Belkis Wille interviews a resident of west Mosul, Iraq, in 2017 about possible war crimes committed in the battles between Islamic State and anti-ISIS forces. She and her investigative team conducted more than 150 interviews in March in Ukraine, producing reports on human rights abuses and war crimes that she hopes will help hold the Russian military accountable.

A nationwide crime scene

Russia outed itself when it invaded Ukraine this February. Now, its soldiers, officers, and leaders have become suspects in a nationwide crime scene. Millions of civilians experiencing attacks are witnesses. Everything from missile containers to military communications is evidence.

The detectives are dozens of investigators rushing to preserve that evidence while they still can. 

“There’s a lot of work to be done, and it will not be easy to do that work in circumstances where there’s shooting and shelling all over the place,” says Chile Eboe-Osuji, president of the International Criminal Court from 2018 to 2021.

That work starts with documenting the “crime base,” or the actual offense. Through witness testimony and open-source information available online, investigators build a detailed record of the war crime – or, more often in an actual case, a series of crimes.

In effect, Ms. Wille and her fellow investigators were in Lviv to do just that. Each day, she woke up around 7 a.m. and visited the train station to find witnesses fleeing Kharkiv who could confirm reports of civilian shelling and cluster-bomb attacks. Inside the station was too chaotic – too many people, moving too quickly, making too much noise. So she stood near the street out front, facing the station's columns, statues, and giant gray dome, and watched thousands of Ukrainians with pets, bags, and other personal possessions stream in and out.

She approached people who’d stopped for a break and, asking through an interpreter if they could speak and where they were from, explained the investigation. Each witness was different. Some had spent the previous week sheltering in a basement; others had taken videos of the attacks or even watched. Some had started processing the destruction; others were still in shock. 

“These interviews are very difficult because you’re talking to people who are quite traumatized and obviously you don’t want to do harm when doing the interviews,” says Ms. Wille. “But getting those crucial details is really important.”

She asked what the attacks sounded like, distinguishing the rumble of cluster munitions from the singular boom of other shells. Often, she pulled up a map on her phone and confirmed precise locations. 

Then she asked sources for photos and videos – shared over cables, AirDrop, or email to maintain the metadata, or digital fingerprint – which would help verify their testimony before the team used it in a report. All this she filed into a digital archive each night, so Human Rights Watch analysts could review and supplement her work. 

Mr. Edwards leads a similar team of analysts at Amnesty. On Feb. 24, soon after the war began, Amnesty researchers spoke with local sources to document a hospital strike in the southeastern town of Vuhledar. They sent their notes, along with photos and videos, to Amnesty’s weapons investigator, who identified the kind of missile used and noted that it was too inaccurate a weapon to responsibly fire near civilians.

These are the components of a crime base. Once investigators establish one, they can start building their case. 

Ole Solvang/Human Rights Watch

Belkis Wille, shown here in 2015 doing her job as a Human Rights Watch war crimes investigator interviewing residents of Saada, Yemen, recently spent three weeks in Ukraine interviewing dozens of displaced civilians about Russian attacks.

A clue as tiny as a rifle serial number

That’s the easy part, says Bill Wiley, executive director of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, who’s investigated war crimes for decades in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In all, he says, establishing a crime base should take up around 10% of an investigation. The other 90% is connecting the crime base to specific perpetrators through “linkage evidence.”

“The challenge from an investigation’s perspective is it’s not enough to just show that the crimes have happened,” says Rebecca Hamilton, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and a former lawyer for the International Criminal Court. “You need to figure out who can you hold criminally responsible.”

More than 10 years ago, on one of his first cases, Mr. Edwards received evidence of a clear war crime: a five-minute video of a mass execution during Nigeria’s fight against the terrorist group Boko Haram. 

The killers wore Nigerian military fatigues, but Mr. Edwards knew the Nigerian leaders could claim they weren’t government soldiers. He needed, somehow, to confirm their identity. Watching the video carefully, he caught just a few frames in which a serial number on a soldier’s rifle became visible. Through Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense, he confirmed that the rifle hadn’t been reported stolen and belonged to a specific unit. 

“If we hadn’t noticed just in the two or three seconds that the serial number presented itself, that information would have been lost forever,” he says.

The war in Ukraine won’t offer such smoking guns, says Dr. Wiley. Unlike prosecuting an individual incident, cases built around the way a war is being fought – called a “conduct of hostilities” case – require piecing together evidence like an amorphous puzzle. 

The key is looking for the right information and the right sources, says Dr. Wiley. 

“You have to take a cold, practical approach to this stuff, rooted in the requirements of the law,” he says. Witnesses may have powerful stories about an attack and its effects. But they can rarely help link it to specific perpetrators. In most cases, the law demands proof of knowledge or intent. If Russians bomb a theater, investigators need to show a specific leader ordered it, that it wasn’t near a military target, and that it didn’t house military assets. Without that, they would need to show a leader was aware such abuses were occurring but didn’t stop them. 

In the past, evidence like that has almost only come from the enemy, making it difficult to collect and difficult to preserve, says Dr. Wiley. He suggests Ukrainian soldiers should fleece prisoners and casualties for “pocket debris,” like notes, cellphones, encryption keys, and laptops. They should also monitor Russian military cellphone and radio communication, which so far has often been unencrypted and easy to hack.

Connecting dots from bomb back to launch 

The advent of open-source investigations helps solve the linkage evidence problem. Researchers like Eliot Higgins, founder of the open-source investigative group Bellingcat, can now compensate for distance from the conflict with the volume of information available online.

Early in March, Mr. Higgins played connect-the-dots with remnants of cluster munitions dropped on Kharkiv. 

These weapons hit the ground in three stages, and each piece points back toward the other. From abroad on a computer, Mr. Higgins marked the three points, drew a straight line through them, and repeated the process with nearby impacts. Altogether, he could trace the attacks to a single artillery site – geolocated on a map Bellingcat helped develop – with the right number of launchers, in the right range, pointing in the right direction. 

“If we can complete that kind of chain of responsibility, it means it’s a lot easier for accountability processes to actually accuse specific units, governments, and commanders, which is often what’s missing,” he says. 

Bellingcat started monitoring Russia’s military buildup this February through satellite images and later through TikTok videos of troop movements, tracking and indexing specific attacks. “We’ll dig for every single possible scrap of information that we can find,” says Mr. Higgins. 

Those scraps may link all the way up Russian leadership, which is perhaps already accountable for not stopping existing attacks, says Dr. Eboe-Osuji, the former International Criminal Court president. “What everybody’s seeing on television ... I’m sure Mr. [Vladimir] Putin is seeing,” he says. “That is, Russian fire directed at apparently civilian facilities.”

Justice isn’t always enforceable

That doesn’t mean he will face consequences. Russia is already ignoring a “provisional measure” from the International Court of Justice to stop fighting. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin once quipped, “‘How many divisions has the Pope?’” says Stephen Rapp, the U.S. State Department’s ambassador-at-large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice. 

In other words, justice isn’t always enforceable.

But Ambassador Rapp, who prosecuted former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, has seen it enforced. Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milošević too would likely have been convicted for war crimes in Kosovo had he not died in custody. 

Mr. Putin may not reach trial, but the war he began will be recorded. 

After speaking for an hour with the family in Lviv, Ms. Wille could see they needed to stop. The son had started crying. His mother and grandmother looked drained. She thanked them for their time, asked if they could speak again if necessary, and left.

But the moment stuck with her. The boy was too young to understand what was happening or why he had to leave his father and home. He couldn’t understand an investigation, war crimes, or accountability. He could only feel the trauma, and show what it felt like – forcing his eyes shut in snow pants and a thick jacket on his mom’s lap.

Maybe, that feeling would help other people see.

Anna Afanasyeva, a fifth-year nursing student at St. Petersburg’s Pediatric University, admits she was feeling vague anti-war emotions as she went about her business in the city center March 2. But she says she had no intention of participating in any protests.

Nevertheless, she suddenly found herself grabbed by police near the Gostiny Dvor metro station in downtown St. Petersburg, where no rally even seemed to be happening, and thrown into a police van along with several other people.

Editor’s note: This article was edited in order to conform with Russian legislation criminalizing references to Russia’s current action in Ukraine as anything other than a “special military operation.”

She spent two nights in police detention before being taken to court. A sympathetic judge considered the charge of participating in an illegal assembly, noted that Ms. Afanasyeva had no previous record, and let her off with a light fine. That was just the beginning of her troubles.

“Without even waiting for the court decision, my university summarily expelled me,” she says. “There was no due process according to the rules for expelling a student. I was just told to leave. I am trying to solve this, hopefully without suing the university. If I go that way I can lose a year or more of studies. ... I am just so upset about all this. I’ve heard that there is a blanket order to expel all students who participate in anti-war activities, and I just fell victim to it.”

Welcome to Russia in the second month of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, where the social and political atmosphere – never very receptive to dissenting opinions – is rapidly chilling. Military conflict can have harsh effects on any society, proscribing criticism and tarring anti-war sentiments as treason. But for many Russians trying to find their feet and feel their way through frightening political restrictions not seen in the lifetimes of most, the dangers remain the source of deep uncertainty.

Timur, another St. Petersburg student, was briefly detained by police for alleged illegal protesting and let go. But he has been expelled from his university. The vice rector called Timur into his office and told him that “you are the kind of person who would stab us in the back and spit on the graves of our soldiers. ... You are not wanted here.” Timur has retained a lawyer to appeal the expulsion, and faces military conscription if he can’t get the decision reversed. “I really want to finish my studies,” he says.

According to the Latvia-based online news service Zerkalo, a dozen members of Russia’s National Guard from the southern region of Krasnodar refused to deploy to Ukraine in late February on the grounds that their duties were confined to Russian territory, and were immediately fired. They appealed to lawyers and sued for reinstatement.

One of the lawyers, Mikhail Banyash, says that of the original 12 guardsmen, most have quit and only 3 are still pressing the case.

“The pressure they have been subjected to testifies that their case is sound,” says Mr. Banyash. “But it’s a complicated case, and I can’t predict how it might turn out.”

“True patriots” vs. “scum and traitors”

The tone has been set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently adopted rhetoric that hasn’t been heard in Russia for a very long time. Apparently referring to Russians with a pro-Western point of view as internal enemies, he said: “The collective West is trying to divide our society using, to its own advantage, combat losses and the socioeconomic consequences of the sanctions, and to provoke civil unrest in Russia and use its fifth column in an attempt to achieve this goal. ... But any nation, and even more so the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth, spit them onto the pavement.”

So far the police crackdown on people who allegedly express opposition to the ongoing military operation has been relatively mild by Russian standards. According to the protest-monitoring group OVD-Info, about 15,000 people have been detained by police since the operation began, the majority of them receiving administrative fines rather than prison sentences.

The main impact to date of the crisis has been the shock and emotional dislocation that has been disproportionately suffered by more youthful, educated, and professional Russians, with many thousands quitting their jobs or even leaving the country. Critical media voices, both independent and mainstream, have been effectively silenced, with Novaya Gazeta being the last independent outlet to close its doors.

Ironically, the same segment of society has also been affected most immediately and deeply by the intensifying Western-imposed sanctions regime, as a result of being cut off from family, property, work, and travel to the West.

Polls suggest popular support is actually consolidating behind Russian authorities as the conflict intensifies, though Lev Gudkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center, says that under-30s tend to be far more skeptical of official claims than their elders.

“Russian youth are far more negative toward the military operation, those between 15 and 30,” who make up about 15% of the population, he says. “They are scared of the consequences of war, particularly young men who face the prospect of military service. ... Perhaps half of the youth are opposed to the operation, but many are also indifferent, who don’t want to notice events. But on the whole, there seems little appetite for public protest.”

“I don’t believe that I should hide”

For the moment, at least, many politically active young people seem to think that they can adapt to the situation and navigate around the increasingly draconian laws against “fake news” concerning the special military operation.

Nikita, a liberal political activist, publishes carefully calculated criticism on social media, but says he would rather his full name not appear in a U.S. newspaper “under these circumstances.” Still, he’s happy to discuss the dangerous ambiguities that regulate any sort of political speech in Russia today.

“We are faced with new rules. We just don’t know where the boundaries are, or what it’s going to be like tomorrow,” he says. “I am just not sure what I can say. Will I be punished or not? On the first day [of the operation] I posted a note on one of my social media pages that I believe in diplomacy, but not the diplomacy of the tank. It doesn’t seem to have been noticed, but who knows? ... I think we just have to wait, survive, until this operation ends. Then we will see what Russia has changed into, what is the new Russia? Then we’ll have a better idea about how to go forward.”

Egor Kotkin is a left-wing activist who has no problem with speaking plainly. He has long lived an openly gay lifestyle in Moscow, and says he finds Russians to be generally much more tolerant and open-minded than their leaders.

A promotional writer for IT companies, Mr. Kotkin says he never watches TV, has generally opposition-minded co-workers, and mainly encounters pro-Kremlin views through his partner’s family and his relationship with his mother. She is a big fan of Mr. Putin, he says.

“My mother has formed a relationship, through the media, with Putin and the regime. She sees them as part of her life; she trusts them on a personal level. I try not to touch that, because it would spoil my relations with my mom. I guess a lot of families are like that,” he says.

“I don’t believe that I should hide. But we seem to be living under something like martial law. So, anything can change.”

Alexander Thompson/The Christian Science Monitor

A view of downtown Glens Falls, New York, on Feb. 15, 2022. The town of 14,000 was named "hometown, U.S.A." by Look magazine in 1944. Now residents are debating its place in state politics after Democrats in the Legislature drew new district maps.

If Democrats manage to hang on to their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives after this fall’s midterm elections, it will be because of places like Glens Falls, New York.

Dubbed “hometown, U.S.A.” by Look magazine in 1944, Glens Falls has for years been a small spot of blue in a mostly red Adirondack district. But under a new map passed last month by New York Democrats, it will become part of a newly redrawn Democratic-tilting district based in Albany, which now snakes an arm up Interstate 87 to grab the quaint town of 14,000.

Critics are calling the New York congressional map, which has been signed into law by the governor, one of the most blatant gerrymanders in the country. It could potentially take the state’s eight Republican House members down to as few as four.

On Thursday evening, a Republican state court judge in Western New York agreed. The judge tossed the map, writing that it showed clear political bias, adding: “in a democracy it is rare if ever that one party has all the right answers.”

But experts say the Democrats’ New York map may well be preserved on appeal, at least for the current cycle. And New York isn’t the only blue state with warped lines. After years of decrying partisan gerrymandering and pushing for legislation to outlaw the practice, Democrats in states from Illinois to Maryland to Oregon have passed congressional maps that attempt to shore up their own incumbents and eliminate GOP seats. Having had little say in the last redistricting cycle a decade ago, thanks to the shellacking it took in the 2010 elections, the party has taken advantage of more recent electoral gains to go on offense, aggressively redrawing district lines in certain states in its own favor.

Republicans have produced equally gerrymandered maps elsewhere, in states from Texas to Florida. At the same time, a growing number of states have turned to independent commissions or courts to produce their maps. The result is a national playing field that, on paper at least, increasingly looks something like a draw. Although a few states’ maps are still being debated and court challenges are ongoing, the overall House map now appears almost evenly balanced between Democrat- and Republican-leaning districts for the first time in decades.

SOURCE:

New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Some analysts say Democrats had little choice but to be aggressive where they could – unless they wanted to unilaterally disarm, since Republicans have steadfastly opposed redistricting reform proposals at the federal level.

“Do [Democrats] impose redistricting rules on themselves? Or do they try to do what Republicans are doing in some states?” asks Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist.

Still, Republicans are raising cries of hypocrisy.

“Anytime you accuse your opponents of doing something, and then turn around and do the exact same thing, you’re a hypocrite,” says John Feehery, a Republican strategist based in Washington.

The battle for seats

At the outset of this year’s reapportionment, Republicans had appeared poised to gain as many as 10 seats nationwide from the process. But several GOP maps, such as in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, have been overthrown by courts.

Democratic maps are also facing legal challenges – which could potentially restore Republicans’ edge. Days before New York’s map was tossed, Maryland’s map was rejected by a state court as well. Only one seat likely hangs in the balance for Democrats in Maryland; New York is a far bigger prize. But not everyone is convinced the Empire State’s map is doomed.

Courts in New York have historically been loath to intervene in political fights – and all the justices on the state’s highest court were appointed by Democratic governors, noted Shawn Donahue, a University of Buffalo redistricting expert, before the New York ruling came out. He’s skeptical Republicans can win the appeals that are sure to follow the ruling.  

Many Democrats see this year’s efforts as a necessary corrective, after the last round of redistricting gave Republicans a significant structural edge. In 2012, Republican gerrymanders helped the GOP maintain control of the House by a 33-seat margin, despite receiving 1.4 million fewer votes for the House overall.

Of course, rejiggering lines can only accomplish so much. Most polls indicate Republicans will have a strong advantage heading into this fall’s midterm elections, given concerns about inflation and President Joe Biden’s weak poll numbers, which could tip swing districts as well as weaker Democratic ones to the GOP.

And some Democrats reject the idea that their party is relying on gerrymandering to try to offset the political head winds.

“Democrats are drawing maps that reflect the census and the population growth,” says John Bisognano, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which was formed after the last round of redistricting by former Attorney General Eric Holder to guide the Democrats’ efforts nationwide. In a statement to the Monitor, Mr. Bisognano points to states that lost congressional seats because of population declines in rural, Republican areas. New maps ought to reflect that shift, he says.

Others seem more conflicted, however. When a Nashville Scene reporter asked retiring Tennessee Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Democrat, about the New York map, he responded, “Are you asking me to be proud of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’?” 

Of course, many feel the GOP is taking eyes and teeth of its own – including eliminating Mr. Cooper’s Democratic Nashville district, splitting it up between three rural Republican ones. 

New York’s mapmaking was originally supposed to be handled by a bipartisan commission, approved by voters in 2014. But as in several other states, the commission deadlocked, sending the process to the state Legislature, where Democrats have gained a supermajority in recent years. 

The resulting map cuts the number of congressional districts where former President Donald Trump would have won from seven out of 27 to four out of 26 – in a state where 37% of voters overall pulled the lever for the former president. That has raised eyebrows even outside the ranks of Republicans. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a nonpartisan research center, gave the New York map an F grade.

“It’s an outrageous, blatant, partisan gerrymander that is clearly contrary to our state constitution,” says former GOP Rep. John Faso, who is leading a lawsuit against the map in state court. An amendment passed by New York voters in 2014 prohibits districts drawn “to discourage competition” or to favor “particular candidates or political parties.” The state judge relied, in part, on that amendment in striking down the map on Thursday.

Alexander Thompson/The Christian Science Monitor

Michael Borgos, chair of the GOP committee in Glens Falls, discusses New York's new congressional map with Warren County Democratic Party Chair Lynne Boecher at SPoT Coffee in Glens Falls, New York, on Feb. 15, 2022.

A coffee shop debate

Critics argue the New York map also fails a “compactness” test, prioritizing partisanship over geography – and ignoring the ways in which local concerns often unite communities more than national politics.

Sitting in SPoT Coffee, next to the old First National Bank building in Glens Falls, Michael Borgos – chairman of the Republican Party committee in Glens Falls – argues that grouping his small town with Albany will just make it “a little fish in a big pond.”

Current GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik’s district office is just a short walk away, he notes. To local townsfolk – whether they love or loathe her – she’s just “Elise.” A Democrat representing a safe, Albany-based district, Mr. Borgos predicts, won’t give Glens Falls the same kind of attention.

Moreover, the town has been historically and culturally tied to parts north, as the gateway to the Adirondacks, he says. “So to separate us, from a political standpoint, doesn’t make any sense.”  

“I disagree,” Lynne Boecher cuts in from across the table. The chair of the Warren County Democratic Party, Ms. Boecher contends Glens Falls faces many of the same challenges that the state capital does, like poverty and housing affordability. The town, which voted for Mr. Biden by 23 points in 2020, has far more in common politically with Albany than with the heavily Republican Adirondacks, she says.

Ms. Boecher and Mr. Borgos, often at odds on issues, know each other well. Mr. Borgos is a high school friend of Ms. Boecher’s son.

While they disagree about the new map, there’s one thing they do agree on – they’d likely be able to hash out better lines than the powers that be in Albany.

“Michael and I could probably sit down and draw the 21st and the 20th [districts],” Ms. Boecher quips.

“There you go,” Mr. Borgos chimes in. “Call Albany, tell them we’ll figure it out.”

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect the ruling by a New York state court judge on Thursday evening throwing out the state’s new map.

Science is slow: It’s doing the same difficult thing over and over, observing, changing, doing it again. It’s setting up a thousand little things while waiting for the big thing to finally happen. 

The quest for nuclear fusion – a carbon-free, potentially limitless power source – is exactly that. Aspirations have endured for decades. The path has been long, winding, and full of frustration. 

But with an eye on the vital role that energy plays in humanity’s future, researchers are continuing to come together to try to make it happen. In the fight against climate change, they have been making headway, including with an important milestone reached just last month. 

“Climate change is endangering our world’s future,” says Deirdre Boilson, a division head at ITER, a massive fusion feasibility project in southern France. “The most important thing we must do to halt climate change is move from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy alternatives.”

Still, the estimated launch of the world’s first fully operational fusion power plant is at least three decades away. Yet after decades of dismissal as a fringe pipe dream, fusion power is starting to look like it just might happen.

A win for Earth’s climate?

Like renewables such as wind, solar, and geothermal power, fusion has the potential to be abundant and virtually inexhaustible. And backers say it wouldn’t depend on whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. In theory, one kilogram of fuel from a potential fusion plant could provide as much power as 10 million kilograms of fossil fuel.

One more thing: Where traditional nuclear power (in fission reactors) has resulted in tragic plant meltdowns, a fusion power plant would be fundamentally safer. Fusion brings atoms together, while fission forces them apart. Unlike fission, fusion is a self-limiting process, not a chain reaction: Without fuel, it quickly comes to a stop. And though a fusion power plant would generate radioactive waste, it would be classified as either “very low” or “low” activity waste and “cannot pose any serious danger,” the International Atomic Energy Agency says. Skeptics, however, counter that fusion is far from perfect: It’s expensive, to start.

For now, fusion power remains a dream. No fusion experiment has been able to fuel itself. Instead, researchers must use energy to make energy. They inject heat to help the system react and fuse, like how steam heats milk in a cappuccino machine. As the plasma gets hotter, it releases energy using hydrogen. But once it runs out of hydrogen, it can’t keep itself going. It fizzles out.

The lab that has come closest to this break-even point – make energy versus take energy – is JET, the Joint European Torus in the United Kingdom, which generated 16 megawatts of fusion power, versus 24 megawatts of power that was used to heat the plasma (a so-called Q ratio of 0.67). 

In February, JET announced that its reactor experiment achieved a new milestone: It generated more than twice as much heat as its last record (59 megajoules in 2022, versus 21.7 megajoules in 1997). JET’s reactor is a tenth of the volume of the still-unfinished ITER, where Dr. Boilson works. So it loses heat faster.

“One must be open to continuous learning and growth,” she says, and try to maintain a steady “resilience in facing issues.” 

Scientists say that if today’s experiments are modest in scale, creating energy for just a few seconds at a time, they are steppingstones toward the goal of sustained energy production.

“Every day brings new challenges,” says Akko Maas, a division head at ITER who like Dr. Boilson was interviewed by email. “This requires both discipline and resilience from us all.”

Collaborative, cooperative, global

Like fusion, the construction underway at ITER is an effort that brings things together, rather than pushing them apart. It’s a highly structured international blend of labor and resources. 

“Working at ITER, knowing that your day job helps to address one of the biggest challenges our world is facing – climate change – is in itself an inspiration, and a good reason to get up in the morning motivated to give your best to this project,” Dr. Boilson says. 

Climate change is a global issue, and therefore “needs a global response,” she adds. 

The United States is working alongside six other members: China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the European Union. (The war in Ukraine’s impact on ITER is at this point unclear, but the project was built in the spirit of international collaboration, so the scientific community is hoping for peace.) 

“The international aspect ... is one of the major challenges,” Dr. Maas says. “At the same time it provides opportunities through the cooperation. ... We are trying all together to make our contribution for a better world.” 

Wrangling plasma, creating energy

The project is essentially cobbled together, as the members must work collaboratively. Components are constructed across the globe and shipped to France. The machine itself is built and assembled on-site, and integrating these components can take time and perseverance.  

Construction is currently 75% complete toward “first plasma,” which is when experiments can begin. That milestone is slated for 2025.

“ITER is a very complex machine with more than a million components,” Dr. Maas says. “To make sure that everything will fit together requires a lot of discipline.”

He adds: “As I always say to my children, I am proud to work on something that might (and I believe it will) provide a solution to the energy problems that we have today.”  

A fusion experiment is powered by the same nuclear reaction that  fuels the sun. ITER runs on two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. A doughnut-shaped structure, known as a tokamak machine, turns gaseous hydrogen into a superhot, charged plasma that brings hydrogen atoms together to form a heavier element (helium), releasing energy (neutrons) using strategically placed magnetic coils. It’s essentially an artificial star: It runs on continuous fusion reactions fueled by plasma, a super high-energy, charged gas. 

“The magnets basically keep this superhot plasma away from the walls of the vessel and therefore don’t damage it,” Dr. Boilson says. “It’s like creating a suspended sun inside a cage.” 

Heat is an essential ingredient. It’s part of the recipe. So scientists find themselves acting like Goldilocks: The temperature of the plasma must be “just right” – not too hot, not too cold. That “just right” plasma temperature at ITER will reach 150 million degrees Celsius – a very, very hot “porridge.”

Discipline, faith, hope

Sometimes, the discipline of doing science can feel like hope: It’s all about working toward something, waiting for it to be revealed. There’s hope in that. There may even be faith in that. 

This is not rolling a rock up a hill for eternity. The goal at ITER is to demonstrate that the machine can make more energy than the energy it takes to keep it running. Although setbacks have accompanied the progress, and years of persistence lie ahead, these researchers see the goal as achievable. 

“As a scientist, it is easy to have ‘faith’ when the science is understood,” Dr. Boilson says. “The understanding of the physics of fusion is already there,” she adds. “The combination of different devices and collaborative scientific endeavors brings experience, which allows us to have confidence in the machine we are building, and the physics behind it.”

Andrey Kurkov is the author of "Grey Bees," which will be published in the United States this April.

Andrey Kurkov is one of the most acclaimed Ukrainian writers of the post-Soviet era. The author of 19 novels, as well as television scripts and books for children, he is also a frequent commentator on Ukraine for European and American media. His 2018 novel, “Grey Bees,” has just been published in the United States. Mr. Kurkov and his family left their home in Kyiv the day after Russia invaded Ukraine. He exchanged email messages with the Monitor recently from western Ukraine, where the family is sheltering.  

What is life like for you now? 

We left Kyiv at the beginning of the war, on the second day, and moved to our village house 60 miles to the west. From there we moved to Lviv. It took 22 hours to drive 260 miles. Then we stayed in a small tourist hotel in the Carpathian mountains. Now we are in the Transcarpathian region. 

Are you doing any writing?

I was working on a novel but stopped after the Russian invasion. Now I write only articles and essays about what is happening in Ukraine. I am in touch with many of my friends in different cities and regions. Some of my friends and colleagues are in the occupied territories and there is no more connection with them. Russians take away computers and mobile phones from those they suspect to be an activist or intellectual.

You wrote “Grey Bees” in 2018, before the current crisis. The novel is set during the war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in 2014. What was the impetus for writing it?

In Kyiv I met many refugees from Donbas. One of them told me that he is driving once a month back to Donbas, to a village on the frontline, to bring seven families that remained there medicines and whatever they need, because they have no shops, no pharmacies, no infrastructure at all. Then I realized that there are thousands of people who are in the same situation in the gray zone between the positions of the Ukrainian Army and those of pro-Russian separatists. That was the reason to write the novel. By that time there were already more than 200 books about soldiers, but none about ordinary civilians caught up in the war. 

The two main characters in “Grey Bees,” a beekeeper and his neighbor, live in a war zone, but go about their daily lives. Have they simply adapted to war? 

People in Donbas are adapted to the war and try sometimes to ignore distant explosions. They can understand when the danger is approaching and only then react. They can differentiate many military sounds and different kinds of explosions.

Since the Russian invasion, have you seen a similar attitude in Ukraine?

It takes months to adapt to living in the dangerous situation of war. It happens when you become indifferent to your own fate and to everything else and you stop making plans for the future and stop dreaming.

What do you hope readers of “Grey Bees” learn about Ukraine today? 

They can see the war through the eyes of ordinary people of Donbas. They can understand the situation in Crimea after annexation. They can understand the mindsets of ordinary people for whom the war came as a great and horrible surprise. 

How has war, particularly since 2014, affected the literature produced in Ukraine?

Before 2014, Ukrainian literature was about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, but then it became very militant, very politically engaged. Now there are hundreds of books about the war, dozens of historical novels.  

It has been said that Ukrainian literature is one means of defiance in the face of imperial domination. Do you agree?

Yes, I agree, Ukrainian literature was, from 1991 [when the Soviet Union collapsed], independent from both the influence of Soviet literature and from Ukrainian politics. It developed sporadically and quickly became European. Russian literature remained in the Russian/Soviet tradition under the patronage of [President Vladimir] Putin’s administration. 

Why do you write your novels in Russian and not Ukrainian?

Literature in Ukraine is written in several languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, and Hungarian. My mother tongue is Russian. I am ethnically Russian, was born in Russia and grew up in Russian-speaking Kyiv. In Ukraine, my books are published in Russian and then translated into Ukrainian. My books are not published in Russia and were banned twice. Since 2014, it has been illegal to bring my books in Russian to sell in Russia. So I am one of many Ukrainian writers who writes in Russian.

What message would you most like to convey to the world about Ukraine and the current conflict?

Ukrainians and Russians are very different. For Ukrainians, freedom is more important than stability. For Russians, it is the opposite. Ukrainians change their presidents at each election, Russians keep their czars until the czar is dead. Ukrainians and Russians are not the same people, as Putin claims.

“Death and the Penguin,” one of your best known novels, features a penguin as a main character. Most of your novels have animals as characters. Why?

Animals are excellent natural protagonists. They help me to convey what I want to say about society, about the situation, about people. And they are very symbolic. Penguins live in groups, not pairs, so they need to be part of something bigger. They are like the Soviet people, who lost themselves after the U.S.S.R. collapsed.

AP

Republican and Democratic canvas observers watch workers count ballots in Allentown, Pa., during the 2020 election.

One characteristic of countries with high voter confidence in the integrity of elections is public trust in the people who run elections. When that trust breaks down, as it has in much of the United States, restoring it can lead to hard questions – about the technology for ballot counting, as an example, or the role of private money in government-run elections – but also a flurry of attempts at reform.

Since the 2020 presidential election, at least 19 states have enacted nearly three dozen laws to regulate access to the ballot box and expand public monitoring at polling stations. Those measures are designed to renew public confidence either by making it easier to vote or by eliminating opportunities for fraud. Court cases and the House probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, meanwhile, aim to restore democracy through accountability.

But in communities across the country, local election officials are weaving a perhaps more consequential tapestry of trust. Instead of focusing on what has gone wrong with American democracy, they are engaging more vigorously in what makes it right. “One of the things that I always try to do is make sure that I’m not using triggering language, that I’m not using the language that automatically puts us on one or the other side of the aisle,” said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser to the Democracy Fund and former county election official from Arizona, in an interview with the website Governing.

The public remains deeply divided over the results of the 2020 election. The most recent Monmouth University Poll, from last November, found that a third of Americans – including 75% of Republicans – still believe Joe Biden did not win the presidency fairly. That skepticism has helped fuel a troubling rise in threats against local election officials. In Pennsylvania, according to the Pew Research Center, a third of local election officials have left their jobs in fear for their safety. Lawmakers in at least 10 states are debating new criminal penalties to curb those threats. 

But doubt about the last election also appears to be stirring a new era of civic participation. More people – including more minorities – are either running for local offices or learning how to be volunteers at polling stations. Town clerks and county election officials are banding together to produce public education videos about how elections are held and votes are counted. Some have started podcasts. Others are holding town hall meetings and hosting webinars and public tours in their offices. For some, threats of violence have deepened their resolve.

“Am I scared? Yes, I’m not going to lie. I am scared,” Linh Nguyen, a town clerk candidate in DeKalb County, Illinois, told the Iowa Capital Dispatch. “But as a minority woman, to be honest, in a room of raised hands, mine will never be picked, and I learned to look for opportunities where other people see obstacles.”

That courage underscores what makes democracy more solid and enduring than it sometimes seems. “Almost one-third of citizens vote at town halls staffed with election workers volunteering their time to help fulfill the promise of democracy,” said Mike Koles, executive director of Wisconsin Towns Association. “They are the same people we see in church, we rely on to respond to emergencies, and that cheer on the local team on Friday night. Nobody can be trusted more than these local public servants.”

As the U.S. moves toward its next elections, the renewed spirit of civic service among election managers may be the best way to restore trust in the outcomes of ballot counting.