Yvan Daniv has parked his white delivery van filled with donated medical supplies at a closed gas station in Ukrainian-held Donetsk, about 15 miles from the Russian-occupied part of the region.

His goal: deliver his bounty to the soldiers engaged in the initial stages of Ukraine’s much-discussed summer counteroffensive, which aims to take back as much as possible of the 20% of Ukrainian territory held by Russia.

“Right now I think our forces are mostly testing the occupiers to see where they might be weakest,” says Mr. Daniv, who beginning even before Russia’s full-scale invasion 16 months ago has made a weekly drive from Lviv in western Ukraine to the front lines with first-aid items and medications for wounded troops.

“But,” he adds, “I’m expecting big advances soon.”

Mr. Daniv may be but a civilian volunteer, but his observations about the counteroffensive track closely with that of military analysts, and with the scant information that military and government officials, as well as soldiers engaged in the fighting, have been willing to disclose.

Ukrainian forces have retaken a half-dozen villages and perhaps 100 square miles of territory this month in the initial days of the assault.

Advances have generally been reported in meters rather than in kilometers, as Ukrainian forces take on Russian adversaries who have had many months to fortify their defenses and are backed by anti-tank weapons, mortar and artillery fire, warplanes, and attack helicopters.

A noticeable calming of operations over recent days suggests to some analysts that the Ukrainians have at least partially paused their initial counteroffensive forays to assess performance and reevaluate tactics.

Russian forces not idle

In the meantime, Russian forces have not simply hunkered down, but have launched their own counterstrikes. Last week Moscow announced it will pay soldiers a bonus for destroying any of the much-ballyhooed advanced weaponry the West has sent Ukraine: the Leopard tanks, the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, the HIMARS missile launchers.

Moreover, the Russians over the past two weeks have stepped up missile strikes, drone attacks, and shelling of civilian infrastructure – in large cities like Odesa and Kyiv, but also on the well-kept villages along the southeastern front.

Indeed, it’s the huge boom and ensuing black smoke of a Grad rocket attack on a power plant in the Donetsk village of Kurakhove that has Mr. Daniv running for his truck, yelling, “I want to go in that direction!”

His plans are foiled, however, by an olive-drab vehicle carrying three soldiers from Ukraine’s 79th Airborne Division, who pull up and prohibit the man they affectionately call “Mr. Yes” from approaching the danger.

Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/AP

A Ukrainian tank is hit by a Russian missile, June 6, 2023, in what appears to be part of an initial Ukrainian attempt to probe Russian defenses.

Instead, they entice Mr. Daniv away to greater safety with the promise of an impressive artifact for the war memorabilia museum he is assembling.

Once in the adjacent village of Dachne, the men proudly present their “Mr. Yes” (for his ability to deliver supplies they request) with the wing of a Russian attack drone they recently shot down. Hugs and, for Mr. Daniv, tears ensue.

Then the broad smiles and backslapping turn serious as the soldiers discuss the counteroffensive underway.

“From what we see, this is not the main thrust of the counteroffensive,” says Sergei, call sign Casper, a contractor with the 79th Airborne. “We’re still probing and pushing forward at different points of the front lines to figure out what strengths and weaknesses they have.”

His colleague Dmitry, call sign Fox, offers what he sees as the bigger picture.

“The scale of operations and deployment of weaponry that we are seeing here can only be compared to the big battles of the Second World War,” he says. “So much is depending on this; they [commanders] have to know it’s the best possible moment, and then they will launch the breakthrough.”

The men say they know expectations for impressive gains are high. That’s true among the Western powers that have supplied much of the advanced weaponry and training that the Ukrainians are expected to deploy, they say. But they also sense it among civilians who in large numbers describe “success” in the counteroffensive as a return to Ukrainian sovereignty of much if not all of the territory that Russia has occupied since 2014.

“We know the expectations of the country are huge, but the reality is that it’s not going to be like last year. It’s going to be much harder, because this time our adversary is better organized and better prepared,” says Sergei. He’s referring to last fall, when the military impressed Ukrainians and the world with lightning-strike offensives that took back the occupied territories of Kharkiv region and Kherson city.

Most military analysts are also careful not to encourage the public’s hopes for unrealistic successes in this counteroffensive, mindful of the prospects for what some senior Ukrainian officials have warned could be an “emotional letdown.”

“We will have big territorial gains with this counteroffensive, I am confident, but it will not be this year that Ukraine will take back all of the territories occupied since 2014,” says Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military and political analyst with the Informational Resistance Group, a Kyiv-based think tank.

“Liberation of all the territories occupied since 2014,” he adds – meaning all of the Donbas and the Crimean Peninsula – “will not occur until 2024.”

In market town, snapping up junk

Traffic on the two-lane country highway that links the villages stretched out on the Ukrainian-held side of the front is a strange mix of military vehicles and John Deere-green tractors and combines – the latter indicating that the Donetsk region’s early wheat harvest is about to commence, war or no war.

In the buzzing market town of Pokrovske, soldiers with an afternoon of R&R consume pizzas with names like “PATRIOT” and “HIMARS” and load up on the junk foods that they crave but are not available in their camps.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Vlad Shevchenko, part of the air reconnaissance unit of an artillery brigade, uses his limited free time to purchase two bags of his favorite bacon-flavored chips, in the Donetsk region market town of Pokrovske, June 18, 2023.

“We like chips!” says Vlad Shevchenko, part of the air reconnaissance unit of an artillery brigade, who has just purchased two bags of his favorite bacon-flavored chips.

As for the counteroffensive, he says he too worries that Ukrainians will anticipate a repeat of the quick successes of the fall lightning strikes in Kharkiv and Kherson.

“A lot of hard work went into preparing that counteroffensive, but people didn’t see that part,” he says. “They remember the successes, and they expect the same now.”

If not on a junk-food run, the soldiers take their free hours to repair the personal vehicles they’ve brought with them to war.

It’s the case for Vadym Khokhol, who is supervising buddy Serhii as he replaces the burned-out generator in the vehicle that the two use to get to their battle positions.

“We’ve pushed the Russians back about a kilometer over the past month, and this is not yet the big counteroffensive,” crows Mr. Khokhol, who along with Serhii is part of an “assault brigade” of a Dnipro regional Territorial Defense unit that was integrated into the Ukrainian army.

The two say they can see the buildup of vehicles and weaponry on the other side of the lines. But if that worries them, they don’t show it.

When the “big counteroffensive” is launched, Mr. Khokhol says he expects the objective in this area to be ambitious: “the complete liberation of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and to get as close to Crimea as possible.”

Rose gardens and covered windows

All along the front-line highway, the one-story, corrugated-steel-roofed farmhouses typical to the area sport neat vegetable gardens, fruit-laden cherry trees, and palace-worthy rose gardens. The only obvious indications of a nearby war and nearly daily rocket attacks are the plywood coverings over windows.

“Donbas is always with roses; it’s not a garden without them,” says Tetiana, who is proud to show passersby outside her Dachne home her 50 rosebushes, all of them in riotous bloom.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Vadym Khokhol (left) helps buddy Serhii, both from an assault brigade of a Dnipro regional Territorial Defense unit, replace the generator in the personal vehicle that Serhii brought with him to the war, June 18, 2023.

She is more reticent about the war, which last year left an unexploded shell in her back garden, and which has sent her three grandchildren and their parents to Switzerland for refuge.

“We just want the war to end as soon as possible; we just want peace,” she says carefully.

But when she is pressed on her expectations for the counteroffensive, her tone hardens slightly. “Ukraine is Ukraine,” she says. “It can’t be any other way.”

A similar initial reticence marks a conversation with Valentyna Kotolovets, one of three volunteers who keep Dachne’s 48-shelf public library operating.

At first she offers little of her opinion on the war. “People like to read as a distraction,” she says. “I will say that books in Ukrainian are becoming more popular,” she adds.

But after a tour of the once-glorious community center where now only the modest library hangs on, Ms. Kotolovets opens up.

“The two most important men in my life, my husband and my son-in-law, are fighting in this war,” she says. Both are in difficult places where fighting rages, her husband near the Russian-held city of Bakhmut, her son-in-law outside the Donetsk regional city of Kramatorsk.

“We sit here and we wait for our boys to come back with the victory,” she says with pride. “And we have told them, ‘When you do come home, we will greet you with our flag of Ukraine!’”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

A long-overdue, top-level dialogue eased U.S.-China tensions this week, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held what he called “candid” talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, and both sides broached deep sources of distrust.

A vital component of the meetings, officials on both sides said, was to clarify each country’s intentions in fundamental areas of disagreement – discord rooted in Beijing’s view that the United States seeks to curb China’s rise, and Washington’s belief that China aspires to undermine the U.S.-led post World War II order.

The trip by Mr. Blinken, the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit China, pulled the superpowers’ relations out of a nosedive. President Joe Biden said on Sunday that he hopes to meet with Mr. Xi in “the next several months.”

“The world needs a generally stable China-U.S. relationship,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Blinken on Monday, as they met before a vast, verdant mural at the Great Hall of the People. “Planet Earth is big enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the United States.”

Although great challenges remain, the meetings mark a new opportunity for U.S.-China relations. Diplomacy that addresses each side’s suspicions and mistrust head-on could help identify where the true conflicts lie and where there is room for compromise, experts in U.S.-China relations say.

“Without trust, everyone sees each other from their own imagination or concern,” says Wang Yiwei, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “What is the meaning of ‘change the international order’ or ‘containment’? We need to clarify the ‘new cold war.’”

At times, Mr. Xi and Mr. Blinken spoke directly to these issues.

“China respects the interests of the United States and will not challenge or replace the United States,” Mr. Xi said. Noting progress on specific issues, he said, “This is good.”

Ng Han Guan/AP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken holds a news conference in the Beijing American Center at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, June 19, 2023. The United States and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by Mr. Blinken.

Mr. Blinken, speaking later, also reported “progress” and said his talks with China’s leaders, including Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi, had steadied a relationship that was “at a point of instability.”

“One of the most important things for me to do on this trip was to disabuse our Chinese hosts of the notion that we are seeking to economically contain them. We’re not,” Mr. Blinken told reporters before his departure Monday evening.

“We are not about decoupling; we’re about de-risking and diversifying,” he said.

More high-level U.S.-China engagement will unfold soon, Mr. Blinken said. Mr. Qin accepted his invitation to go to Washington and other U.S. officials are expected to visit Beijing as well.

Mr. Blinken highlighted agreements to increase the number of commercial passenger flights and people-to-people exchanges between the U.S. and China, and to explore ways to restrict the trafficking of fentanyl precursor agents. But he acknowledged much work remains. “Progress is hard. It takes time,” he said. “It’s not the product of one visit, one trip, one conversation.”

One top-priority U.S. goal that Mr. Blinken raised repeatedly during his meetings, but failed to achieve, was to restore military-to-military and reliable crisis communications channels with Beijing. “At this moment, China has not agreed to move forward,” he said, later indicating discussions on the topic would continue. Recent close calls between U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft make this need “imperative,” he said.

Beijing shut down military-to-military dialogue last year to protest the August visit of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the self-governed island off mainland China’s southern coast that Beijing claims as a province. Although three U.S.-China hotlines set up since 1997 still exist, they are ineffectual because when Washington calls, Beijing often declines to answer.

“It’s in our mutual interest to make sure that the competitive aspects of the relationship don’t veer into conflict,” Mr. Blinken stressed.

Beijing has been reluctant to talk with Washington – even at times of crisis – in part because it believes U.S. military operations in the vicinity of mainland China and Taiwan are intended to constrain China and undermine its territorial claims over not only Taiwan but also the South and East China Seas.

Leah Millis/Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken walks with China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, June 18, 2023.

“As far as China is concerned, America shouldn’t be in those parts of the western Pacific that China regards as its sphere of influence,” says Nigel Inkster, a China expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and former British intelligence officer. “So any disposition by China to accede to U.S. requests for crisis communication or guardrails has the effect of legitimizing a presence that China does not want to legitimize.”

Indeed, China believes that Washington is waging a broad campaign to contain its rise not only geographically and militarily, but also economically and politically. “Western countries – led by the U.S. – have implemented all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” Mr. Xi said in March, according to state media.

China suspects that Washington intends to “stop China’s rise, prevent China’s reunification, and delink with China to slow its growth,” says Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based expert on international relations.

In his meetings, Mr. Blinken sought to lay out more clearly what the U.S. does and does not seek to contain.

He stressed that “decoupling or economic containment” was not a U.S. goal. On the contrary, it would be “disastrous,” he said. “China’s broad economic success is ... in our interest,” he argued, noting that bilateral trade last year reached a record of nearly $700 billion.

But Washington is curtailing China’s access to what he called “narrowly focused” technologies used for advanced military items such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, as well as for repressive purposes, he said.

Mr. Blinken reiterated that Washington does not support Taiwan’s independence nor any unilateral change to the status quo by either side. But he did push back on what he called China’s “provocative actions in the Taiwan Strait, as well as the South and East China Seas.”

“With the Chinese exerting a greater level of military display, deterrence, signals of resolve, and the United States, in turn, showing its own deterrence,” both sides are eroding confidence in the agreements that have kept the peace in the Taiwan Strait for more than 50 years, says Michael Swaine, a China defense expert and senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington. “There’s been a lot of confidence lost.”

Moreover, Washington views China’s increasingly aggressive military maneuvers as not only risky but also indicative of a larger push by Beijing to advance territorially while undercutting international maritime law and freedom of navigation – challenging the existing international order in the Indo-Pacific.

“The U.S. suspicion is that China wants to replace America as the next generation of global leader,” says Dr. Shen.

In some regards, he says, China does indeed harbor this ambition. “China says, ‘I want to be even richer’,” he says. “The only consequence when China becomes richer and richer is to replace America, to make America the next No. 2.”

Given the growing rivalry between the two superpowers, several experts say Washington and Beijing could benefit from quiet diplomacy and extended leadership summits that might contribute to a more candid airing of views.

“Can we reassure China that we’re not trying to change the regime?” wonders Lyle Goldstein, Director of the Asia Engagement Program at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank. For its part, can China “reassure the world ... and the United States that they are not after some kind of hegemony?” 

In the absence of trust, experts suggest the two sides could move toward a more transactional relationship that stresses reciprocity and predictability.

When two major powers enjoy such significant influence around the world, “you’re not going to be able to have a situation where one is going to give in and the other side is dominant,” says Dr. Swaine. “You’ve got to find middle ground.”

Andrew Harnik/AP/File

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, speaks to guests during the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, April 18, 2022, in Washington.

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses and admit to the facts of a gun charge in a deal with prosecutors that will likely not require him to spend time in prison, according to documents filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

The tentative agreement – which must still be approved by a federal judge – comes from a lengthy Department of Justice investigation into the president’s second son. Hunter Biden has previously admitted to spiraling into a dark period of drug use and other personal misbehavior around the time his older brother, Beau, died in 2015.

But it is very unlikely that any such deal will put a stop to the separate efforts of Republican lawmakers to probe the younger Mr. Biden’s actions, including his foreign business dealings in Ukraine and China and some allegations that he cut his father in on deals.

“Actually, it should enhance our investigation because the DOJ should not be able to withhold any information now,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday.

Thus “Hunter Biden,” as an issue and political symbol, will almost certainly figure in the presidential election race to come.

What’s in the deal?

Over the past five years, federal prosecutors have sifted through the events of a chaotic period in Hunter Biden’s life. A Yale-trained lawyer, Mr. Biden made large sums of money as a businessman and investor through the early 2000s. But he struggled with addiction problems during that time, particularly after the death of his older brother, Beau.

In 2017, he earned more than $1.5 million, but did not pay owed taxes of more than $100,000, according to court documents. In 2018 he made a similar amount – and owed a similar unpaid tax debt.

Mr. Biden eventually paid the taxes in 2021. But court papers indicate that he has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time. Prosecutors in return plan to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, according to media reports.

The gun charge stems from a purchase Mr. Biden made on Oct. 12, 2018 – a .38-caliber pistol. Filling out a federal form at a gun store in Wilmington, Delaware, he answered “no” to the question of whether he was using drugs at the time.

That period of time was in fact a low point in Mr. Biden’s life as he struggled with addiction to crack cocaine. 

Court documents indicate he is being charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user and addicted to a controlled substance. But Mr. Biden has agreed to enter a pretrial diversion agreement on the charge, an option often given to first time, nonviolent offenders. If he successfully completes a diversion program, commonly involving treatment or education, the gun charge is likely to be expunged from his record. 

“I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life,” said one of his attorneys, Chris Clark, in a written statement.

Is he getting special treatment?

Republicans quickly charged that Mr. Biden was receiving favorable terms from a Department of Justice overseen by his father. They compared it to the recent federal indictment of former President Donald Trump on charges related to misuse of classified documents and obstruction of justice.

They noted that the Justice Department filed no charges related to Mr. Biden’s relationship with foreign entities. He sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukranian energy firm, at a time when his father served as vice president and was involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, and served on the board of a China-based private equity fund from 2013 to 2020.

The House Oversight Committee under Rep. James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, is currently investigating what members say is evidence that Mr. Biden was funneling foreign money to his father.

“This is the epitome of the politicization and weaponization of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice as they give a slap on the wrist to President Biden’s son – a tax fraud and corrupt pay-to-play criminal,” said Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, on Tuesday.

Democrats charged in return that the allegations concerning President Biden and his son’s activities have proven much less than convincing under close examination. Some legal experts add that the charges prosecutors have brought against Mr. Biden seem typical for a first-time offender who has paid back his taxes and attempted to turn his life around.

“The plea deal looks fairly standard in that it involves an individual with substance abuse problems that will be required to abide by a variety of conditions as part of the plea deal, such as drug testing,” says Paul M. Collins Jr., a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, via email.

What happens now?

The deal must be approved by a federal judge to enter into force.

It is possible that this represents the end of the Justice Department’s Biden investigation, which has been carried out by the U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, a Trump appointee. Biden attorney Mr. Clark said in a statement that “it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved.”

But there is at least one hint that it is not entirely closed, as a Department of Justice press release announcing the charges on Tuesday noted that “the investigation is ongoing.”

Meanwhile, the president and first lady reiterated their support for the long-troubled youngest son of the family.

“The president and first lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams in a statement. “We will have no further comment.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Hassan Amini (left), director of the documentary "Starting From Zero," and Afghan evacuee Seema Rezai, a boxer featured in the film, pause for a photo in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 1, 2023.

During her scramble to get out of Kabul, Seema Rezai didn’t get to hug her family goodbye. 

It was August 2021. Ms. Rezai, then 18 years old, had received a written death threat from the Taliban. The militant political movement, then on the cusp of reclaiming rule of Afghanistan, had received a tip about the teenage girl who’d taken up boxing. Ms. Rezai had shaved one side of her head. She’d tattooed the word “boxer” on her right hand. Her coach was male. So when a U.S. photojournalist reached out to offer the athlete safe passage out of the country, her family urged her to go. 

“When the plane started taking off, everyone was crying,” recalls Ms. Rezai. “I was getting far from [my] country, from Kabul, from my family. ... And it was really hard for me to imagine what will happen when I leave and what will happen to all of us and where we are going.”

Ms. Rezai is a principal figure in a new documentary, “Starting From Zero.” It chronicles how she and two male expatriates from Afghanistan resettle in new countries. Among the challenges they face: being separated from their families, surmounting language and cultural barriers, and trying to reinvent themselves. “Starting From Zero” is currently searching for a distributor. But director Hassan Amini, who attended its April 30 premiere at the Independent Film Festival Boston, believes audiences will respond to the brave determination of the three individuals. Though the movie is about Afghan evacuees, it’s also a window into challenges that many migrants experience.

“To see that there’s such resilience ... that really impressed people,” says Susanne Ebbinghaus, a museum curator at Harvard University, originally from Germany, who was in the audience at the film festival. “People who have been here for a while forget about that kind of spirit that immigrants bring and all the contributions that they could make.”

Courtesy of Evergreen Media, LLC

Khalid Andish, once a television reporter in Afghanistan, is highlighted in the film "Starting From Zero." When he got to the United States, Mr. Andish was initially hired for late-night shifts at a McDonald's in Buffalo, New York. He has since rented a spacious apartment from a kind Turkish woman and found a new job as an editor.

The documentary tells three consecutive stories. Ahmad Wali Sarhadi, a garrulous journalist, evacuates to Germany. Ms. Rezai, who gets reunited with her family, relocates to Seattle. Khalid Andish, a young television reporter, arrives in Buffalo, New York. In a snowstorm. Without a winter coat. 

“Now, I have a job. I have friends and a jacket also,” Mr. Andish says with a laugh, while sitting in the lobby of a hotel near Boston. It’s the morning after the documentary’s premiere at the Independent Film Festival. Ms. Rezai, who also flew in for the event, and Mr. Amini are elated that the movie received a standing ovation. Afterward, one viewer told the director how much she appreciated that the subjects of the movie weren’t portrayed as victims.

“That was intentionally done,” says Mr. Amini, whose formative childhood experience was leaving Iran with his family during the 1979 revolution. “That resilience was on show. We were just fortunate to be there to film it.”

Important steps

That’s not to sugarcoat the trials the three individuals experienced. Mr. Sarhadi endured months alone before his family was able to join him. During the interim, the journalist studied German on YouTube. In upstate New York, Mr. Andish was hired for late-night shifts at McDonald’s. He’s since rented a spacious apartment from a kind Turkish woman and found a new job as an editor. On the other side of the United States, Ms. Rezai and her father were the only members of the family who were bilingual.

“When we arrived here, I just decided with myself and my family that we all should learn English because that’s the important step,” she says between mouthfuls of a breakfast bagel. 

Ms. Rezai was thrust into the role of becoming the family’s prime caretaker. There’s a moment in the movie in which the teenager concludes a job interview by asking for more than minimum wage because she has many mouths to feed. In time, Ms. Rezai managed to find jobs for her mother and sister. Ms. Rezai’s father landed a job in a factory that manufactures ovens but was later laid off. Now he’s an Uber driver.

“My other step was to take my brothers and my sister to school,” says Ms. Rezai. “I worked to find the best schools near us.” 

Then she discovered that one of her brothers was getting bullied.

“The school students were pushing him a lot because he was new in the school and he was not able to speak English,” she says. 

Andrea Bruce, an award-winning photographer for National Geographic who got the ball rolling to evacuate Ms. Rezai from Afghanistan, recalls that the magazine once asked the prodigious athlete what she would do if the Taliban returned to power. “I will just box them,” the teenager replied.

“She’s just not afraid,” Ms. Bruce says during a phone interview. “I think part of that has to do with her family and growing up as a minority group in Afghanistan.” 

Courtesy of Evergreen Media, LLC

Seema Rezai, who had boxed in Afghanistan, picks up her training again in a Seattle gym in the documentary film "Starting From Zero."

Ms. Rezai, whose family belongs to the Hazaras ethnic group, was born with a left foot that wouldn’t move properly. People teased her about it. When Ms. Rezai was a teenager, she saw American mixed martial arts fighter Ronda Rousey on television. Thinking of the bullies who made fun of her, she told herself, “I should do something to show that I’m strong.” 

She not only took up boxing but also aspired to represent Afghanistan in the sport at the Olympic Games. 

“I bought a bicycle to get to the Olympic [training facility], and I was wearing boys’ clothes because people will make it hard for you when you wear something girly,” she says. “And then that’s why I think I was tough, because I was cycling inside the streets between the cars to get to the Olympics [gym]. It was an hour of cycling.”  

“So welcoming”

“Starting From Zero” documents how Ms. Rezai resumes boxing in Seattle. It offers her a respite from the grind of tasks such as filing taxes for her family. A tough-love coach, Manuel “Manny” Dunham, cheers her on from the corner of the ring. 

“They were so welcoming,” says Ms. Rezai. “I didn’t have a car and it was really hard to go to my home. And I was finishing my training at night and he always patiently took me to my home.”

The documentary shows what a difference a local support network can make for migrants.

“One of the big takeaways for me was just the kindness of strangers across the board – from the Turkish woman who takes in Khalid, and Seema’s coaches, and the care workers who help Ahmad,” says Mr. Amini.

Even so, the past 1 1/2 years have been extraordinarily challenging for Ms. Rezai. Ms. Bruce, the photographer, observed a change in the young woman when they met up in October.

“She’s stoic now,” says Ms. Bruce. “I think that that is just a result of everything she’s been through. There’s like very little emotion that comes through, which is so different than the young woman that I saw in Kabul [who] was cracking jokes and super cocky and just really vivacious.” 

In person, Ms. Rezai is visibly more mature than the girl in the movie. She’s wearing an elegant black jacket and winged eyeliner. Although she’s self-conscious about the metal braces on her teeth, she beams when she introduces Haroon, an Afghan immigrant whom she met through her boxing network. The two are now engaged. 

When Ms. Rezai watched the movie premiere with Haroon, it gave her a grateful perspective of how far she and the others have come. The boxer is still pursuing her Olympic dream. She hopes to compete for a spot on the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, which consists of displaced athletes from countries around the world.

“At the end, I saw that Ahmad was with his family in Germany, and I was with my family, and Khalid was in another city and we were all successful,” she says. “I’m proud that Hassan made that documentary. We were able to show our history to the world and how life was tough for us and how we can have a great life here.”

Staff writer Alessandro Clemente contributed to this report.

AP

Children in Uttar Pradesh, India, look at a mobile phone next to a bullock cart, June 18.

When the interests of nations align, do values follow? That is the cautious hope in Washington as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives this week on an official state visit.

As the world’s most populous country and fourth-largest economy, India has become an attractive partner for the West amid rising tensions with China and Russia. Yet under Mr. Modi, who rose to power nearly a decade ago, the country’s constitutional principles – like civic secularism and freedom of speech – are in retreat.

The former, however, may be providing corrective leverage to the latter. As India seeks to assert its newfound clout abroad, it is also acknowledging the primacy of international rules and norms.

“Our job today is to bring global awareness into the minds of Indians,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs, told The Economist last week. "To me, security is such an enormous landscape out there, a whole very intricate set of connections and interactions and relationships."

Mr. Modi arrives in Washington on strong political and economic tail winds. He is gliding toward reelection next year, his personal popularity soaring as a result of vigorous domestic investments in education, health care, and housing. Trade with the United States reached $191 billion last year, surpassing China to become India’s largest economic partner. India is negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Union. A similar accord with Australia went into effect late last year.

But his reception in the West is complicated firstly by his refusal to lessen India’s close ties with Moscow – Mr. Modi has steadfastly refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and secondly by increasingly anti-democratic practices at home that have diminished the rights of women and religious minorities.

Those trends leave Western powers with a discomfiting choice, argues Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the United States Institute of Peace, in Foreign Affairs: Unless India changes, the West must “cooperate with India on the reality of shared interests, not on the hope of shared values.”

That is why Mr. Jaishankar’s acknowledgment matters. Transparency is the starting point for trustworthiness. In Beijing on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken emerged from meetings with leader Xi Jinping saying that “direct diplomacy is the best way to advance US interests and values and responsibly manage competition.”  In the way that nations speak to each other, his message may have been meant as much for Mr. Modi.

“When you speak of a world of trusted collaboration, because that’s the world we are heading towards, which countries will be able to work with which other countries?” Mr. Jaishankar asked. In Washington this week, the answer to that question may rest on whether President Joe Biden and his counterpart from India find common principles to build on.