Windows smashed, the halls of Congress destroyed, and hundreds of furious citizens storming the country’s capital to fight what they say was a stolen presidential election: This might seem a recap of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the United States. Instead, almost exactly two years later, Brazil witnessed an uncannily similar event over the weekend, throwing the stability of its democracy into question and presenting tall hurdles for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just one week into his new term.

For months, political analysts have warned that Brazil could face something similar to Jan. 6. Much like former President Donald Trump, former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro spent years sowing unfounded doubts about Brazil’s electronic voting system. Mr. Bolsonaro never explicitly recognized his loss in a razor-thin October 2022 presidential runoff; following his loss, highways were blocked, and for weeks military buildings across the country were surrounded by small groups of pro-Bolsonaro protesters insisting the election was invalid.

Now Brazil has been violently jolted by the realities of its deeply divided populace. Sunday’s attack is seen as the gravest threat to Brazilian institutions since its return to democracy in the 1980s, and the country faces the daunting question of how to move forward from here.

But unlike the U.S. two years ago, Brazil has already sworn in its new president. And the swift reaction of the federal government, from condemning the attacks to suspending the pro-Bolsonaro governor of Brasília for 90 days while an investigation takes place into security failings in the capital, sends a clear message that President Lula won’t let the destruction and attacks on democracy slide. In some ways, the aftermath shows that Brazil’s democracy itself may be sturdier than previously understood.

“Brazil’s democracy has proven it’s stronger than people thought,” says Thomas Trebat, director of Columbia University’s Global Center in Rio de Janeiro, who points to a stable tradition of free press, an independent Congress and Supreme Court, and a vibrant civil society. “You can see the repudiation of the rioters; you can see the strength of those institutions. But it’s not invulnerable, and I think the government is going to have to be very vigilant,” he says, underscoring Brazil’s history of military dictatorships. 

Adriano Machado/Reuters

Supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro break into a building during a demonstration against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brasília, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023.

“Fanatical fascists”

President Lula arrived to evaluate the damage in Brasília Sunday night. “These vandals, who we could call ... fanatical fascists, did what has never been done in the history of this country,” he said in a press conference. “All these people who did this will be found and they will be punished.”

Some 1,500 protesters – many clad in the vibrant yellow and green colors of the Brazilian flag – have been detained since Sunday, and capital police are under the microscope for their inability to halt the rioting in Brasília.

Lula, as he is commonly called, has a long track record as an established politician and leader; this is his third, nonconsecutive term as president of Brazil. But his reputation was tarnished by corruption scandals under previous administrations, and after Sunday’s riots, some see an even steeper uphill battle to govern.

The protests pose a “sinister threat” to Brazil’s democracy, says Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank focused on security and development. “While it may unify parts of society against the radical fringe, it could also deepen polarization in this already bitterly divided country. Many ... feel emboldened by their assault on the capital.”

“The parallels between this week’s violent protests in Brazil and the U.S. insurrection two years ago are by design not default,” Dr. Muggah says. “The targeting of the National Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace was not spontaneous. ... Conspiratorial plots and appeals for a military coup [have] been circulating on far-right social media channels for months.”

Yet the attack could end up consolidating President Lula’s authority in the eyes of the populace, argues Andre Pagliarini, assistant professor of history and Brazil expert at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. “I see this as a moment of moral rallying for this government. It underscores Lula’s legitimacy, which could be politically powerful: He clearly won the election. He’s clearly the rightful leader. It’s in his rights to defend democratic order,” he says. “This gives the government a real leg to stand on in governing the next few days, weeks, and months ahead.”

One week after Lula’s inauguration, protesters began gathering Sunday morning on the lawns in front of Congress and down the central avenue that’s flanked by government ministries and national monuments in Brasília. By roughly 3:30 p.m. local time, initial reports of the invasion broke on Brazilian news sites, but it took about three hours for security forces to retake the three breached buildings, which included the Supreme Court and presidential palace. Inside, angry protesters ransacked spaces where justices discuss cases and decisions, a deeply symbolic target as the court was seen as a thorn in the side of Mr. Bolsonaro. They destroyed priceless artwork by national talent, like modernist painter Emiliano di Cavalcanti and sculptor Bruno Jorge, and set off sprinkler systems.

“We need to reestablish order after this fraudulent election,” one demonstrator named Lima, a young production engineer, told AFP news agency Sunday. “I’m here for history, for my daughters,” she said.

Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Brazilians walk among damaged furniture on Jan. 9, 2023, the day after supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro rioted at Planalto Palace in Brasília, Brazil.

Global condemnation

International leaders have condemned the attacks, including U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who issued a joint statement Monday saying they “stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions.”

Although Sunday’s chaos was largely contained to the capital, tent cities have popped up across the country since the election, made up of Brazilians convinced the presidential vote was stolen. Mr. Bolsonaro, who lost by just 2 percentage points on Oct. 30 last year, left Brazil in late December, just days before the transition of presidential power. He is believed to be in Florida and denounced yesterday’s attacks on Twitter, denying any responsibility.

For many Brazilians, Sunday’s attack is a wake-up call for more functional governance needed ahead. “For Brazil to see better days, everyone needs to unite,” says Lucas Rocha, a martial arts teacher who voted for Lula. Mr. Rocha is from an impoverished neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, and says he represents the non-privileged people who wanted a change from Mr. Bolsonaro.

“We all need to get behind Lula ... so things can get better for Brazilians,” he says. “But it’s going to be really hard. The left and the right are in a full-out war nowadays. They can’t speak to each other.”

Anthony Borneo, a jewelry store owner in Rio de Janeiro who abstained from voting last fall sees the violence as a result of the nation’s deep divides.

“The right is thrashing things now, like spoiled children, because they lost,” he says. But, “before, the left used to do the same thing. To me, they’re all the same.”

Lula has recognized the deep divisions he inherited as president, pledging in his acceptance speech to govern for all Brazilians. “There are not two Brazils. We are a single country, a single people, a great nation,” he said.

“He wants to govern for everyone, including those who didn’t vote for him,” says Clara Morais, a high school senior in Rio de Janeiro, on Monday. But it’s going to be tough for everyone to make that goal a reality, she says.

“These people, who are the minority, want to speak for the majority.”

Ana Ionova contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

Andrew Harnik/AP

Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California receives the gavel from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, on the House floor at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, early Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023.

GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California became Speaker of the House last week, in large part by agreeing to new rules that will give more power to the rank and file, while weakening his own position. 

The wrangling, which put internal GOP divisions on full display, contrasts starkly with the tight ship run by former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. For many, the disorder has fueled concerns that the House is headed for two years of dysfunction – including a possible government shutdown and a debt ceiling standoff that could potentially damage the U.S. economy. Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts quipped to ABC’s Boston affiliate that Mr. McCarthy “put the inmates in charge of the asylum and he’s put himself in a straitjacket.”

But a number of Republicans contend that the impassioned negotiations have in fact opened the way for the House to be run more democratically. That may look messy at times, but ultimately it will allow more members to shape the laws that come out of Congress – and that’s a win for the American people, they argue. 

“What all of us have been witnessing in Pelosi’s House has been one person dictating everything. ... Those days are over, and that’s a good thing,” says Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican on the powerful Appropriations Committee. “Dictatorships are more efficient,” he continues, but with democracy, “you get much better results.”

Whether Speaker McCarthy is indeed able to get better results remains to be seen. The first test will be a vote tonight on the rules package that will outline how the GOP will run the House. Amid rising polarization in recent years, previous speakers – both Democrats and Republicans – have also promised a more democratic style of governance only to backpedal quickly when some members took advantage of the opportunity to throw sand in the gears. 

The House, designed to reflect the passions of the people through 435 representatives, is a much more unwieldy chamber to govern than the 100-member Senate. It’s a fine balance between making the process more democratic and bringing everything to a standstill with round-the-clock deliberations on endless amendments. Keeping a party’s factions together is particularly tough for speakers when they have such a narrow majority.

“Pelosi did that masterfully,” says Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. 

It’s harder for Mr. McCarthy, he adds, because many on the far right “don’t care much for the institution,” and will be much harder to keep under control. Plus, the Senate and White House are controlled by Democrats, with whom Mr. McCarthy will also need to work to get anything done.

“It would be difficult for anyone,” Mr. Ornstein says, but he adds that he’s never seen a “weaker” leader than Mr. McCarthy. 

Institutional change?

For the past century, the House has elected every one of its speakers on the first ballot. It took Mr. McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to get the gavel, despite weeks of negotiations leading up to the opening day of Congress last week. 

About 20 right-wing members blocked his bid for days, arguing that he had little vision and would be beholden to the status quo, marginalizing conservative priorities. As Mr. McCarthy’s bid flailed and other names were floated to lead the raucous GOP caucus, McCarthy supporters grew increasingly angry with the holdouts. 

GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas said he refused to vote for anyone else on the principle that Freedom Caucus members shouldn’t be able to dictate the agenda. “We cannot let the terrorists win,” Mr. Crenshaw, a Navy SEAL, told Fox News – a comment for which he later apologized.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas talks to reporters as he walks out of the House chamber as voting continued for a second day to elect a speaker, on Jan. 4, 2023. Mr. Crenshaw said he refused to vote for anyone but Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, on the principle that Freedom Caucus members shouldn’t be able to dictate the agenda.

In the end, Mr. McCarthy made a series of concessions to persuade the holdouts to either vote for him or to simply vote “present,” as a few did. 

The new rules package, as posted by the Rules Committee at press time, lowers the threshold for introducing a vote on removing the speaker to just one member. In addition, it ensures the debt limit cannot be raised without an explicit vote in the House, applies a “cut as you go” budget approach rather than “pay as you go,” sets caps on spending, and requires a three-fifths majority in the House to approve any tax increases. It also establishes a select subcommittee to investigate COVID-19 origins and the impact of various pandemic policies including vaccine development, and establishes another subcommittee to look at what House GOP leadership characterizes as the “weaponization” of the federal government for political purposes.

Conservatives hailed other concessions as well, which do not appear to be in the rules package. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a freshman Republican from Florida who was among the holdouts, provided some highlights in a memo, arguing that they opened the way for “the start of a transformative shift in our country.”

“These changes are not just for us. It really is about institutional change,” Congresswoman Luna told reporters. “Had we not had these discussions, this wouldn’t be possible.”

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida talks to reporters as she walks to the House chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 5, 2023. One of the Republican holdouts who forced concessions from Kevin McCarthy in his bid for the speakership, the freshman Republican said the fight was about positive “institutional change.”

A key institutional change touted by Republicans is shifting some of the power from the speaker back to committees, which historically proposed and refined bills before bringing them to the floor. “Let’s make committees meaningful again,” says Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, another member of the Appropriations Committee.

“Ultimately I believe it’s going to lead to a better, a more committee-driven legislative process,” agrees Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, who is likely to become chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “One that is actually restoring more power and decision-making to the members.”

As for last week’s drama? “There were underlying issues that needed to be addressed,” she says. “I’ll leave it at that.”

Fast approaching debt limit threshold 

Exhibit A for many of the Republicans pushing for a more open legislative process and a commitment to spending limits was the rushed passage of a $1.7 trillion bill last month that was 4,155 pages long. One of their demands was to require 72 hours for members to read any bill before voting on it – a provision that’s included in the new rules package. 

A key test for Mr. McCarthy is likely to come when U.S. spending is poised to exceed the currently authorized debt limit of $31 trillion, a threshold expected to be crossed sometime after July 1. Conservatives have said any raising of the debt limit must be accompanied by spending cuts. If they get into another protracted standoff, it could weaken America’s credit rating or potentially plunge the U.S. government into default.   

And this time, thanks to the concessions they extracted, the holdouts will have the ability to call a vote on ousting Mr. McCarthy as speaker should they feel he reneged on any promises. To achieve that, however, they would need a majority of the House’s 435 votes, meaning nearly all 222 Republicans would need to back it – or Democrats would need to join in. 

“We firmly believe that overspending is the cause of the inflation and it’s hurting the American people. And frankly, we’re spending money from Americans yet to be born to fund our spending habits today,” GOP Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, one of the alternative nominees for speaker last week who eventually backed Mr. McCarthy, told reporters. “So we are committed to getting to a balanced budget.”

That process, he said, would be transparent “so that the American people can clearly see the necessary priorities.”

“It’s good for a body that needs to open up its processes to make sure that average members actually get to participate,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, a key McCarthy ally tapped to chair the House Financial Services Committee. “I think that that is a healthy sign for the tough work that is to come.”

Whenever money, power, and politics are on the line, there are not just a few who will lie or steal to grab as much as they can.

That’s been true since the dawn of human civilization, which is in many ways defined by its particular social contracts and the layers of safeguards and systems of rewards and punishments that create incentives for citizens to abide by their terms.

The ongoing saga of newly elected Republican Rep. George Santos, however, has highlighted how much various social arenas rely on the value of personal integrity. Many of the ebbs and flows of human interactions are beyond the scope of the systems designed to encourage people to follow the rules. Clothed in notions of honor and social mores, including honesty and citizenship, that contribute to the common good, personal integrity often underlies a healthy, well-functioning society.

Mr. Santos appears to have fabricated most every part of the person he presented to voters, including his entire education and employment history, his property holdings, and especially his family history and ethnic background. He falsely claimed to be the grandson of Holocaust survivors, falsely claimed his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, falsely claimed to have founded a charity for animals, and falsely claimed that four employees of an unnamed company he said he owned were killed during the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Perhaps most legally perilous: It is unclear what the source is for the more than $700,000 he loaned his campaign last fall. Mr. Santos is now being investigated by Nassau County, the Eastern District of New York, and the country of Brazil, which has reopened a 2008 fraud case involving a stolen checkbook. Despite all that, he was sworn in Saturday morning with the rest of the 118th Congress.

“Part of the reason that George Santos slipped through is because the kinds of lies that he told were not just over-the-top lies; they were the kinds of lies that people don’t even think to check most of the time, because who tells lies like that?” says Justin Buchler, professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “When somebody just makes up the kinds of lies that a normal, sane person would not think to lie about, then few are going to check it.”

On Monday, the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing the congressman of violating campaign finance law. Given his fabricated biography, the complaint said, the commission should investigate “what appear to be equally brazen lies about how his campaign raised and spent money.”

For his part, Representative Santos has admitted to fabricating his education and “embellishing” his employment history, but says he is not a criminal.

A failure of the system?

But there is also what might be called systematic integrity. On the one hand, there can be questions about whether institutions and systems are actually designed to serve the values embedded within a social contract – like racial fairness and equal justice for all. But in the case of George Santos, there are also questions about why the traditional layers of political vetting didn’t identify such an apparent fabulist in time.

“I kind of feel sorry for him in some ways – not as a politician, but as a human being,” says William Yousman, professor of communication and media studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. “This is someone who clearly has some deep-seated problems.”

“But since he’s a member of Congress now,” he continues, “obviously, this is not something that we can abide.” Professor Yousman also criticizes “the astounding neglect” of journalistic research or opposition research by his Democratic opponents. 

Mary Altaffer/AP/File

George Santos (left) talks to a voter while campaigning outside a Stop and Shop, Nov. 5, 2022, in Glen Cove, New York. Media critics say his election is an example of the dangers of news voids and low news literacy in modern America. While a hyperlocal site did uncover a number of his fabrications, larger publications missed the story.

“There’s always been people who are not truth tellers in politics and who embellish their reputations,” says Patrick McGinnis, a venture capitalist who is part of the Leadership Now Project and BridgeUSA, which work to strengthen American democracy. “But I think in this day and age, the institutions that we expect to do due diligence did not.”

“One of the roles of political parties is to vet their candidates,” he says. “Why is that? Because not only are they putting them forward for consideration, they’re encouraging people to send all this money to them so they can represent your voice,” Mr. McGinnis says. “So much about elections these days is simply focused on fundraising, so much energy goes into raising money and then running ads [rather] than finding good candidates.”

“For me as a business person, it’s like, who is your fiduciary responsibility to?” he asks. “To me, it’s to the people who support them, and therefore it’s incumbent upon parties to do the work that they clearly haven’t done to vet their candidates in this case.”

There is at least some evidence that Republicans were indeed concerned about some of Mr. Santos’ claims. Before the election, The Cook Political Report quoted an unnamed senior Republican House aide wary of the candidate’s business background who said, “We’re not touching him with a 10-foot pole.”

In its detailed 87-page opposition research dossier on Mr. Santos in July, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee presented its findings, emphasizing Mr. Santos’ participation in Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, his own claims of election fraud during his loss in 2020, and details of his conservative positions on abortion, guns, and tax policy. The report included his work for a financial company exposed as a Ponzi scheme, and the animal rescue nonprofit he claimed to have launched, even though the IRS had no record it was ever registered.

“People might find opposition research unseemly, but it is something that everybody has to do in today’s political environment,” says Professor Yousman. “Were the Democrats just distracted by other races? Was it hubris on their part?” he says, since President Joe Biden won this New York district by over 8 percentage points in 2020. “With so much at stake, the control of the House, to me, that’s the most mysterious and the most inexplicable failures here.” 

The cost of news voids

Mr. Santos’ election has also brought attention once again to the state of the news media, especially the long and precipitous decline of local news organizations, which have traditionally served as the first line of independent political vetting. A hyperlocal newspaper did uncover a number of Mr. Santos’ falsehoods before the election, but regional and national news failed to magnify the reporting.

In the history of liberal democracy, the guild of journalism has from the start understood itself as a kind of guardian over the integrity of politics and governance, one of its roles being to verify whether what candidates say is true. As journalists sometimes like to quip, “Your mother tells you she loves you? Check it out.”

“From a journalism standpoint, it’s clear to me that what many of us feared could happen, as news voids are created at an alarming rate, has in fact happened,” says John Roche, professor of journalism at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. “This isn’t meant as an excuse for us, the news media, in allowing Santos’ record to go unchecked. But the fact is, the news media, especially local news, has been decimated by fiscal cuts, newspaper shutdowns, and ill-conceived corporate choices.”

The news media, too, is just a part of a digital media landscape in which misinformation and angry, partisan vitriol is algorithmically fed into individual’s personal feeds.   

“Politics has become almost like one of those superhero movies – people see it as this battle of good versus evil,” says Professor Yousman. “And of course, both sides see the other side as the evil ones, so it becomes justified then to do anything you can to defeat them because they represent such a threat.”

How much is the truth worth?

Political scientists such as Professor Buchler, however, believe voters make more rational calculations when considering candidates with rough edges, and whose competence, honesty, and integrity might be lacking.

“Polarization is part of this complicated moment, but I think it’s not so much about reflexive partisanship,” he says. He sees a number of competing forces at work.

On the one hand, voters do consider a candidate’s honesty and competence as two essential traits. “But let’s say I’m a voter who leans slightly to the right, and I’m looking at a candidate very far to the left. The fact that this candidate is very far to the left means that the policy costs for me is really high, so I might look at a Republican who is dishonest.”

“If the Democrat were more centrist, I would be more willing to make a concession and vote for a slightly less liberal candidate of the opposing party, and that cuts both ways,” Professor Buchler says. “So as the parties move further apart ... incentives for competence and honesty go down.”

The scope and kind of Representative Santos’ fabrications, however, could challenge even the most partisan of nose-holding calculations, since nearly all of his campaign biography has proven false. 

“Will all that’s happened with the ongoing Santos saga prove to be a red flag for what needs to be done about preserving integrity in politics, governance, and democracy?” asks Professor Roche. “Or will it be a white flag signaling our collective surrender in the fight to demand a functional truth?”

Late last October, soon after Ukrainian forces had recaptured his village from the Russians, Anatolii jumped on his bicycle and rode to the small town of Sviatohirsk. He had an old-age pension to collect, along with leukemia medicine for his wife.

For months, shifting front lines in eastern Ukraine had left Anatolii – who, like many in the region, was cautious about sharing his last name – cut off not only from pensions and medicines, but also from basic goods and services.

Fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces partially destroyed Anatolii’s home in Yarove, a village of 600 people. The electricity went off in April, obliging him to cut firewood in the forest. He and his wife survived, he says, thanks to a dairy cow, a vegetable patch, and an orchard.

“It was anarchy in our village,” recalls Anatolii, a retired factory worker with a wiry frame and an unkempt, silver beard. “We had neither Russians nor Ukrainians in charge. No one asked us anything. Nobody helped us.”

Nationwide, about 1 in 4 Ukrainians are over age 60, but across eastern Ukraine, the majority of those who did not evacuate when fighting broke out were older people for whom the rigors of Russian occupation were often augmented by frailty, ill health, and isolation.

Many of them underestimated the risks until it was too late to leave. Sometimes evacuations were organized with no consideration for the needs of older or disabled people: Evacuation notices came digitally and at short notice, but older villagers did not necessarily have smartphones, or any way of getting quickly to designated assembly points.

Others never even considered leaving home – unwilling to leave properties and orchards they’ve owned since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“There just wasn’t a lot of information,” notes Jane Buchanan of HelpAge, an international organization providing support for older people in Ukraine. Residents were simply told “we are going to evacuate you,” she points out. “To where? To what? It wasn’t an obvious choice.”

Dominique Soguel

Anatolii stands with his bicycle on a road in the town of Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, after collecting his pension. “It was anarchy in our village," he says about the period of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in his area of eastern Ukraine. “Nobody helped us.”

Counting on divine protection

That doesn’t stop Ukrainians from other regions of the country from viewing with suspicion those in the east who stayed in their homes throughout the Russian occupation.

“How was the food under Russia?” quips one soldier as older people wrapped against the cold in now loose-fitting coats line up for food parcels.

But the state maintained their pension rights, and paid six months of back pensions when the Kyiv authorities retook control of the Sviatohirsk region, says Anatolii, even if they were worth only $60 a month.

The fighting around Sviatohirsk has left a wasteland of fallen trees, charred buildings, and broken families. Anatolii has a daughter who has been living in Russia since 2009. He has lost touch with another daughter living in Ukraine, but knows that Russian shelling during an advance in May killed his granddaughter Katja. Recounting the pain of that loss still brings tears to his eyes. “There is nothing good about this war,” he says.

Eastern Ukraine has been the scene of conflict since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists created two breakaway republics in the mineral-rich, industrial regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The east has also been at the heart of some of the fiercest battles since full-scale war began last February, among them the battle for Sviatohirsk.

During that battle, 75-year-old Lidiya Staritskaya was hit in the face by shrapnel while out in her garden collecting raspberries to share with monks, nuns, and civilians sheltering at a nearby monastery. 

Dominique Soguel

Lidiya Staritskaya at her house in Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, Oct. 27, 2022. She credits the Virgin Mary with sparing her life during the battle for Sviatohirsk.

Her home, like the Orthodox monastery, which is loyal to the Orthodox patriarchate in Moscow, sits on a high bank of the Donets River, which was in the line of Russian fire. But she never thought of going anywhere else. “The only way I leave my home is dead,” she says, handing out homemade savory pastries.

Deeply religious, she credits the Virgin Mary with sparing her life. It is a sentiment shared by others who point to the shattered hands of a Virgin Mary statue at the monastery gate as evidence of divine protection.

Pinned down for weeks by cross-river shelling, Ms. Staritskaya survived by eating produce she grew in her garden and drinking water from her well, she says. “Once a soldier brought me bread,” she remembers. “He said he did it only because he believed in God.”

“I think he was angry because I did not leave,” she reflects. “But if I had left, I wouldn’t have a home anymore.”

She now shares her pastries with Ukrainian soldiers newly stationed in the area, but makes little secret of her sympathies for Moscow and for Russia, fed by a nostalgic worldview in which the Soviet era is remembered as the good old days of unity between Slavic peoples.

When the news is bad ...

The escalation to all-out war in 2022 reconfigured the map yet again and left family members cut off from each other for months on end. Phone networks went down in many of the areas that came under Russian occupation last year. Now that they are working again, news can bring temporary relief from the pain of isolation, or it can mean heartbreak.

Dominique Soguel

Alevtyna Shlynkina stands in the hallway of her mother's apartment in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, moments after discovering that she had died, alone, in the bathroom, Oct. 25, 2022.

The Ukrainian advance, which liberated the city of Lyman, gave Alevtyna Shlynkina a chance to travel to Kramatorsk; it had been some time since she had heard from her mother, who lived there.

Nervously, she struggled to turn the key to the front door of her mother’s apartment. Inside, the upside-down state of the rooms, belongings and food scattered all over the floor, testified to the challenges of looking after yourself at an advanced age in wartime. Ms. Shlynkina found her mother’s crumpled, lifeless body in the bathroom, dressed in a floral nightgown.

“Oh mother, mother, mother,” she wept. A neighbor, Vera Lysenko, peered in from the doorway, her wide-eyed expression suggesting both sympathy and her fear of suffering a similar fate.

Back in Sviatohirsk, Galina Gontarenko, about to turn 80, shuffles down rubble-filled streets. The ordeals and indignities she endured during occupation included drinking radiator water from her heating system and being shot at by Russian soldiers near her apartment.

Offered the use of a telephone to call her son’s family in Dnipro, she breaks down in tears of gratitude. Her daughter-in-law seems happy to hear from Ms. Gontarenko at last, but there is no talk of her joining the family.

“I’d be a burden on my son,” Ms. Gontarenko says bluntly. “He has three kids already and he’s serving in the army. I am on my own.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported the reporting of this article.

On the menu recently at the Los Angeles restaurant Flavors From Afar: Maria Esther Galban’s favorite recipes, inspired by her native Venezuela.

“My heart felt very, very happy,” she says of working with the eatery where refugees and asylum-seekers like her get to keep a connection to their homelands and improve their lives in the United States – one plate at a time. 

Ms. Galban never thought she’d be starting over at the age of 60. She had already found her paradise on earth – working in her art studio in Venezuela making pottery, jewelry, and natural soaps, and spending time with family and friends. Her large property by the Caribbean Sea held animals, a garden, and a home where she indulged a passion for cooking. 

Outside the paradise though, life was becoming unlivable. Soaring poverty, violent crime, and political persecution made Venezuela one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Six years ago, a neighbor’s death prompted Ms. Galban to join her daughter – who had been pleading for her mother to leave Venezuela permanently – in Pasadena, California. She left behind her beloved property and other family members. 

“The first challenge was that you feel like you have no roots,” says Ms. Galban, who now lives in Florida. 

Matthew Palanca/Mythos One Media/Courtesy of Tiyya Foundation

Chef Maria Esther Galban from Venezuela created dishes that are featured on the Flavors From Afar menu.

What she did have was resilience and determination to live a productive, dignified life again. As she navigated the formalities of settling in, learning the language, and finding a new purpose, Ms. Galban was also building a new community and introducing others – including Flavors From Afar diners – to the tastes of Venezuelan cooking. The unique restaurant in Los Angeles’ Little Ethiopia district offers refugee chefs a chance to share their recipes, earn a portion of the profits, gain experience to propel their careers, and be around people who can relate to what they’re going through. The Los Angeles Times named it one of the city’s best restaurants.

“It was like therapy because I was feeling useful,” said Ms. Galban.

“Stories, traditions, and fullest humanity”

Meymuna Hussein-Cattan and her business partner, Christian Davis, opened the restaurant in 2020 after a stint in catering to support the work of her Tiyya Foundation. Each year, the nonprofit organization, founded in 2010, helps about 250 families of refugees and asylum-seekers with economic advancement through a variety of programs, from peer support to life skills and job training. It also provides a space for refugees to connect with each other and feel understood. 

“All of us want to be acknowledged and celebrated for what we can contribute, and organizations like Tiyya play a vital role in ensuring that people who have been forcibly displaced are not only meeting basic needs, but sharing and exchanging their stories, traditions, and fullest humanity,” said Rachel Perić, executive director of the nonprofit Welcoming America who comes from a refugee family herself. 

Matthew Palanca/Mythos One Media/Courtesy of Tiyya Foundation

Christian Davis and Meymuna Hussein-Cattan co-founded Flavors From Afar restaurant, where refugees contribute recipes and talent.

Ms. Hussein-Cattan knows plenty about the refugee experience. Born in an Ethiopian refugee camp in Somalia, she came to the U.S. in 1984 as a 3-year-old with her parents. For years, she watched them struggle to find themselves in a new country. 

Many of the refugees she works with are forced to take a step back in their careers as foreign degrees or professional certifications don’t transfer to America. Many start over with any jobs they can find to pay the bills, setting aside passions and professional aspirations. Flavors From Afar aims to bring some of that hope back.  

“We just want to give people a sense of relief,” said Ms. Hussein-Cattan, who was named a CNN Hero for her work. “We want to highlight them and their talents.”

Re-creating favorite flavors

Refugees working with the restaurant are mostly home cooks who teach the head chef and staff how to re-create dishes the immigrant cooks grew up with in their native countries. In addition to money, the new chefs get a marketing package with headshots, food photos, and a professional résumé that they can use if they choose to work in the restaurant industry. Nineteen people have been featured so far, and most of the staff are refugees or asylum-seekers themselves. 

Chef Sonia Ortiz escaped economic scarcity and an alcoholic father in Guatemala and found asylum in the United States in the late ’70s. Prior to Flavors From Afar, she worked as a waitress at another restaurant where she says she often felt discriminated against. 

“They gave me the opportunity to cook here and discover ‘Oh wow, this is my dream. Cooking,’” says Ms. Ortiz, who now creates Guatemalan dishes and re-creates recipes from other chefs. 

Marisa Vitale Photography/Courtesy of Tiyya Foundation

Somali rice is one of the most popular dishes at Flavors From Afar restaurant in Los Angeles, which helps refugees transition to new lives in America.

Head Chef Kenna Copes says cooking at Flavors From Afar takes on a deeper meaning as she carefully follows the recipes to respect the refugees’ willingness to share their food as well as their stories. The training sessions can get emotional when certain dishes bring up powerful memories. It’s something she often thinks about while working in the kitchen. 

“It’s just like their voices are still in my head,” Ms. Copes says. 

“I’ll never give up”

The most memorable voice is Malia Hamza’s. Flavors From Afar’s first official refugee chef brought her take on Somali dishes that were so successful they became a part of the restaurant’s permanent menu.

Ms. Hamza escaped Somalia’s civil war when she was just 7. Her mother, who stayed behind, sent the young girl with her sister to a refugee camp in Kenya. After two years of dire living conditions, the girls made their way to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1997. There, she faced a new set of challenges: learning English from cartoons and other TV shows, being married at age 12, and having six children, whom she raised largely on her own. Through it all, she found the strength to keep going, her resilience driven in large part by wanting her kids to have a better life. Eventually she moved to Southern California where she connected with Tiyya Foundation.

The organization helped her get a high school degree and provided donations, tutoring, and youth programs for her children. The support meant she could use the culinary skills she learned at the refugee camp to help with Tiyya’s catering. It was a chance to move on from warehouse and waitressing jobs to something that nourished her soul as much as her body and propelled her career ambitions. 

“When someone takes that bite, and they love your food, it just makes you feel better, like you did something,” Ms. Hamza said. “It was making me forget a lot of things.”

As she learned more about the restaurant business, Ms. Hamza moved her family from California to Minneapolis to open her own place, Malia’s Kitchen, in a local mall. She says her food was a success and she often ran out before closing time, but she couldn’t keep up with the high cost of operations and closed after a few months. Still, she’s determined to do it again. 

“I still fight for my dreams and my hopes,” says Ms. Hamza. “I’ll never give up.”

AP

With authorities in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in the background, President Joe Biden talks with U.S. Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Texas, Jan. 8.

The return of divided government in Washington has put immigration on the table – and the need to find common ground. The time is also ripe because of a rapid influx of migrants at the southern border.

A basis for unity is, in fact, already evident, and not just in the United States. From Chile to Texas, diverse efforts to address migrant crises and their causes reflect a common emphasis on the rule of law. What that shows, as Ali Noorani, former president of the Washington-based National Immigration Forum, has argued, is that “there is a clear border security narrative that balances compassion with security. One that acknowledges and addresses fears, but still advances values.”

American border agents intercepted a record 2.2 million migrants and arrested 143,000 people attempting to cross in the United States from Mexico during the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. That mirrors a trend elsewhere in the world as more and more people uproot themselves or are forced to flee as a result of conflict, persecution, climate change, and economic hardship. In Italy, the number of migrant arrivals has tripled since 2020.

The migrant crisis in Honduras has helped motivate a series of legal reforms, a key point of origin for many seeking new opportunity in the U.S. Since taking office a year ago, President Xiomara Castro has sought to uproot systemic corruption and address violence against women – two commonplace causes of displacement.

In the United States, Republicans see a crisis of security in the current wave of illegal migration. On Saturday, newly installed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Republicans would make border security their priority.

Many Democrats see a crisis of official cruelty on the border. More than a quarter of migrant encounters reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2022 involved people caught and expelled multiple times under a pandemic-era health law that allows the government to send migrants back before they can apply for asylum.

This law is at the center of the partisan divide. The Supreme Court is set to decide later this year if the rule, an emergency health provision, can be used to override the legal asylum process. Migrant experts expect a surge if it is overturned.

Criticized from the left and right, President Joe Biden announced a new asylum policy for migrants from four distressed countries – Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba – designed to streamline applications before they arrive at the border. Mr. Biden made his first presidential trip to the border on Sunday and then went to Mexico City today for two days of talks on trade and migration with his North American counterparts.

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat turned independent, has vowed to reintroduce legislation she sponsored last fall with North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis that, combined new financial resources for borders security, would provide 2 million so-called Dreamers – people who were children when they arrived in the U.S. with parents entering illegally – a pathway to citizenship.

That bill, South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds told Bloomberg, showed that border security and compassion are not incompatible. “You can’t give up when you’re talking about archaic laws right now that need to be repaired,” he said.

The last time Congress seriously considered immigration reform, in 2013, the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain argued that “the status quo threatens our security, damages our economy, disregards the rule of law, and neglects our humanitarian responsibilities.”

Those same concerns may be resonating once again.