Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry walks with members of law enforcement at the New Orleans site where people were killed by a man driving a truck in an attack during New Year's celebrations, Jan. 2, 2025.

New Year’s Day attacks on busy entertainment districts in New Orleans and Las Vegas not only struck symbolic American targets but also confirmed the gravity of official warnings that risks from political violence are rising.

Even if they turn out to be separate attacks by individuals, experts say the dramatic acts at the dawn of a new year, and within weeks of a new U.S. presidency, signal an increasingly complex set of dangers for Americans.

The growing use of vehicles as weapons, a seemingly expanding set of domestic and international grievances, and the embrace by some Americans of violence as acceptable political currency are part of a changing threat matrix for American cities.

“We’re seeing incrementally and materially a diversification of the terror threat relating to not just ideology but also tactics, instrumentality, and how these attacks are organized,” says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “In these attacks it appears we have ideology, psychological or situational distress, and then revenge or personal vengeance – it’s a diverse threat matrix.

“We’re in such a fertile environment because aggression is now considered currency with regard to politics, and it’s mirrored in violent conflicts that we see around the world,” he adds.

Two events, both with deadly intent

In New Orleans, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a man drove a truck into large crowds gathered on the city’s famous Bourbon Street. The city was crowded for New Year’s celebrations and a college football playoff, and the attack killed 14 people and injured another 30, according to authorities.

The driver of the truck was identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen in his 40s who lived in the Houston area. He was killed after engaging in a shootout with police.

Hours later, in Las Vegas, a Tesla Cybertruck laden with fuel canisters and firework mortars exploded in front of the Trump International Hotel. The driver died and seven people were injured, according to authorities. The driver has been identified as Matthew Livelsberger, a Colorado resident in his 30s. The Cybertruck is an iconic product of the automaker founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, a high-profile supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, whose real estate empire includes the Las Vegas hotel and who will assume office later this month.

The New Orleans attacker claimed in social media videos to have been inspired by the Islamic State – a transnational radical Islamist terror group – President Joe Biden said. Authorities say they found a flag representing the group tied to the truck’s tow hitch. They also found explosives in the vehicle and the surrounding area.

Ken Cedeno/Reuters

President Joe Biden pauses as he delivers remarks regarding an attack in New Orleans in which a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year's Day, at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, Jan. 1, 2025.

In a press conference Thursday, the FBI and New Orleans police said that all their evidence suggests the attacker acted alone. The New Orleans attack is being investigated as an act of terrorism, and the FBI said it is working through a Joint Terrorism Task Force to determine if the Las Vegas explosion was an act of terrorism, The Washington Post reported.

A search for motives

Authorities have been investigating whether there could be any relation between the two events, but so far no connection has emerged.

Still, there are some similarities between the two men involved. The New Orleans attack also shares commonalities with recent domestic terror attacks in the United States and overseas.

Both men rented their trucks through Turo, a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace, and both men have experience in the U.S. military. Mr. Jabbar spent over a decade in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve, serving as a human resources and information technology specialist and deploying to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, the Houston Chronicle reported. Master Sergeant Livelsberger, meanwhile, was an active-duty soldier who served in the U.S. Army since 2006, including in Special Forces. He was on approved leave when he rented the truck, according to Pentagon officials quoted by The Associated Press. He appeared to have died by self-inflicted gunshot before the explosion.

Whether the attacks were related or not, both targets may speak volumes about the attackers’ political intent and thought processes.

Authorities are still investigating the motives, but for example, ”In Las Vegas, it could be a critique or grievance about the merger of ... tech billionairism with governmental power,” says David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. In his view, “This was a very intentional kind of attack – to rent this particular car and blow it up” in front of a Trump Organization-owned hotel. And potentially in New Orleans, “In terms of Islamist ideology, it’s about sin, debauchery, drinking – a very symbolic target to lash out at American excess and immorality.”

Defending cities against vehicle attacks

A recent study found that vehicle-ramming attacks have increased since 2010, with over 60 attacks in cities including London, New York, Berlin, and now New Orleans, acts that killed over 240 people and injured more than 1,000. On Dec. 20, an attacker smashed a car into a crowd in Magdeburg, Germany.

Cities, including New Orleans, have responded by using concrete barriers, sometimes temporary, to prepare for entertainment events. New Orleans was in the process of installing such bollards to prepare for next month’s Super Bowl when the attack occurred. Such preparations require balancing safety requirements with the accessibility that is integral to city parks and squares.

Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

Workers clean the street at the site where a man driving a truck killed revelers during New Year's celebrations, in New Orleans, Jan. 2, 2025.

Attacks by lone individuals are also more difficult to prevent than larger conspiracies involving multiple actors, experts say.

“We don’t have an X-ray for a man’s soul,” says Brian Michael Jenkins, an analyst at the Rand Corp. “It’s much more difficult to see what an individual is planning.”

Is extremism on the rise in military?

The twin incidents put a new spotlight on radicalization in the nation’s military ranks.

One study found that, each year since 2011, an average of just over 40 people with U.S. military backgrounds have committed crimes related to extremist beliefs, up from about seven per year between 1990 and 2010. About 16% of those criminally charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot were military or ex-military.

Other studies have concluded that the share of extremists and support for extremism are no larger in the U.S. military than in the public at large. Indeed, the Pentagon has been winding down a post-Jan. 6 effort to root out extremists in the military, given the many gray areas such an effort revealed.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that there are problems of extremism in the military,” says 20-year U.S. Army veteran Danny Davis, director of the graduate certificate in homeland security at Texas A&M University. “Not that there aren’t issues,” he adds. “But I could show you examples from any sector of society who have used terror tactics.”

Over the past year, FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is set to resign at the end of the Biden administration, has warned of elevated threats of international terrorism, largely tied to the war in Gaza. He told The Associated Press in August that he was “hard pressed to think of a time in my career where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once.”

The general challenge is not a new one, however. Laura Dugan, a sociologist and terrorism expert at the Ohio State University, says the key is what choices the public makes.

“Do we want to live in a police state and be safe? Or do we want to not live in a police state and then take the risks of things like this?” Professor Dugan asks. “We’re not going to be 100% secure from attacks, we’re just not. ... But I personally don’t think it’s worth living in fear, either.”

On paper, Republicans have it all in Washington: A trifecta of the White House and both houses of Congress, undergirded by a conservative Supreme Court. President-elect Donald Trump has promised a blitzkrieg of executive actions and legislation after he takes office Jan. 20.

But as the new Congress convenes on Friday, questions hover over the GOP’s ability to govern effectively the House of Representatives, which it controls by the thinnest of margins. The chaotic passage of a year-end funding bill by the outgoing Congress, into which Mr. Trump and his advisers inserted themselves, could be a preview of a bumpy two years ahead.

The party’s first order of business is to elect a House speaker, with current Speaker Mike Johnson the only declared candidate. He needs a majority of the full House, in which Republicans hold 219 seats to 215 for Democrats after the resignation of Florida’s Matt Gaetz, who was under investigation by the chamber’s ethics committee.

On Monday, Mr. Johnson’s pathway appeared to clear when Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Mr. Johnson “has my Complete & Total Endorsement” as the next speaker. But while only Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky publicly opposes Mr. Johnson’s candidacy, others remain on the fence and could abstain or vote against. (Democrats are expected to vote en masse against a GOP speaker.)

The uncertainty over the speakership exemplifies the GOP’s broader challenge in the House where razor-thin margins, factional feuding, and ideological rifts have already led to dysfunction and drift in the last Congress, which passed the fewest bills in decades. The departure this session of two more members, Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz, to join the Trump administration will shrink the party’s margin further (down to 217 seats to 215) until special elections are held and make it even harder for Republicans to pass legislation without Democratic votes.

Allison Robbert/AP

Rep. Elise Stefanik smiles and House Speaker Mike Johnson applauds at a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and House Republicans in Washington, Nov. 13, 2024.

“In the end, everything in Congress comes down to numbers, and they [Republicans] have no wriggle room at all,” says Julia Azari, a politics professor at Marquette University.

Failure to elect a House speaker this week could delay the Jan. 6 certification by Congress of President-elect Trump’s victory. Analysts say the House could pass a resolution to empower the clerk, or elect a speaker on a temporary basis, to fulfill the chamber’s constitutional role.

“They could muddle through that way. But it won’t be easy,” says Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “If you can’t get all the people in the party on the same page for picking a speaker, there’s no guarantee they’re going to agree [to] some sort of workaround plan.”

Still, analysts say Mr. Johnson is likely to prevail as speaker, both because of Mr. Trump’s endorsement and because his right-wing opponents lack a viable alternative. He has argued that he’s the right leader to navigate the House’s choppy waters. “We know how to work with a small majority. That’s our custom,” he told reporters last month. “This is a team effort. ... We’ve got to all row in the same direction.”

Divisions among congressional Republicans

Mr. Johnson became speaker in October 2023 after California Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his own caucus under a rarely used “motion to vacate” measure. Ten months earlier, Mr. McCarthy had needed 15 ballots to win the speakership contest and had to make concessions to right-wing members, which included allowing any member to trigger a motion to vacate. Mr. Johnson is proposing to amend the rules to require that a minimum of nine GOP members be needed to force a vote.

The tumult under Mr. McCarthy, who left Congress last year, was driven by the House Freedom Caucus, whose lawmakers align with Mr. Trump on many issues but are deficit hawks. Many balked last month at supporting a stop-gap funding measure that would have raised the debt ceiling. The president-elect wanted Congress to raise the ceiling before he took office so that Republicans would have more flexibility to pass tax and other fiscal bills.

Two versions of the bill failed to pass due to Republican opposition in the House. Congress finally averted an imminent government shutdown by passing a bipartisan bill Dec. 21 that President Joe Biden then signed into law. That bill, which included $100 billion for disaster relief and an extension of a farm aid package, was opposed by 34 GOP lawmakers in the House.

This fiscal battle presages more bruising votes to come, since Congress will be asked to authorize more spending this year. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that the United States will hit its borrowing limit in January, forcing the government to use “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting. These measures will buy time for Congress to extend borrowing limits, with a looming deadline anticipated in the summer.

Republicans who ran for office promising to reduce the size of the federal government aren’t minded to cut deficit-financed deals, says Mr. Kosar, a former staffer at the Congressional Research Service. Forcing Congress to pay for its spending “is kind of an existential issue to them. It’s also a part of their brand. And so it’s very difficult, I think, for some of them to compromise on things like raising the debt limit.”

Pressure from Trump and Musk

The rise of the Freedom Caucus and infighting within the GOP caucus predate Mr. Trump’s first presidency. But he has sought to leverage these divisions to impose his will on Republicans in Congress in ways that previous presidents haven’t been able to, or have done behind closed doors. Lawmakers who cross him know they could face primary challengers at the next election, given his popularity with the party base.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, joins a group of conservative Republicans to criticize an interim spending bill crafted to avoid a shutdown of federal agencies, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 18, 2024.

That the president-elect wields an effective veto over whom the House elects as speaker is unusual, says Jeffery Jenkins, a political scientist at the University of Southern California and co-author of “Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government.”

“Trump has remade the GOP – and Republican leaders are very aware of that. So there is more of a recognition that they must work with him – and seek his approval,” Professor Jenkins says via email.

Managing party factions has traditionally been the role of congressional leaders, since they are supposed to understand the priorities of their members and their constituencies, says Professor Azari, who studies the relationship between presidents and parties.

Mr. Trump’s becoming the point of coordination in his party has “erased the internal logic of speaker politics, which is distinct from presidential politics,” she says. “Now the expectation is that the president is the focal point of the political system. I don’t know what would reverse that.”

As with much of how Congress operates, this power dynamic is all about the numbers, says Mr. Kosar. “If you’ve got a 30-member margin, it doesn’t really matter if 10 people are crossing their arms and making demands, or running to the president and saying, ‘Hey, can you help back us in this fight?’” he says.

By contrast, a speaker who can’t afford to lose a single member in a floor vote is in a perilous spot. Mr. Johnson’s challenge to pass a spending bill last month was exacerbated by criticism from Elon Musk. The billionaire Trump ally, and co-leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, had whipped up opposition to it on his social media platform X. After the final bill passed, Mr. Johnson said that he had spoken to Mr. Musk and got his approval.

Mr. Johnson told reporters that he’d jokingly asked Mr. Musk if he wanted to be the speaker. “He said, ‘This may be the hardest job in the world,’” the speaker recounted, adding, “I think it is.”

Ken Makin

Bev Johnson (left), veteran host at WDIA, poses with iHeartMedia's Karen McCrary, Oct. 18, 2024, in Memphis.

Communication has always been essential and innovative in African culture, from the creation of papyrus to the decoding prowess of the Rosetta stone.

It’s fitting that the home of the blues shares the name of the capital city of ancient Egypt – Memphis. It’s also remarkable that, as with the hallmarks of communication in the land of the pyramids, there’s a group of beacons at the top of the Mississippi Delta who are standard-bearers in sharing information with the community through Black radio.

Like other Black institutions in America, Black radio stations often are in peril. And yet, that serious and strenuous reality always makes room for soulfulness. These Memphis, Tennessee, icons offer an example of how true legacy media survives – and thrives.

“So many stories”

Since October 1948, WDIA has been the longest-running radio station programmed for Black people in the United States.

“There are so many stories,” says Bev Johnson, one of the station’s decorated hosts. “WDIA saved the Lorraine Motel – the National Civil Rights Museum,” she adds, of the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Mrs. Johnson has been involved in radio for almost 50 years. At WDIA, she’s had her own show since 1987, when a program director was inspired after Oprah Winfrey’s TV debut to create it. Both women share the nickname “the queen of talk.”

The host is vivacious and bold. On a recent Thursday afternoon, she’s wearing a black jacket with Greek letters Delta Sigma Theta, and a shirt underneath that reads, “Black mixed with crimson and cream since 1913.” A Delta from the Mississippi Delta.

A small reprinted turquoise-colored poster sitting just behind Mrs. Johnson offers insight into WDIA’s proud legacy. It features Nat D. Williams, who became the station’s first Black disc jockey in 1948. He also pioneered what was then called “Black appeal radio,” which factored greatly in how Black listeners were courted in terms of media and advertising. “Nat Williams tells them what to buy,” reads the colorful poster.

But Mr. Williams was more than a pitchman, explains Mrs. Johnson.

“He was a history teacher. ... One of things that I love about WDIA – the on-air personalities were educated Black folk,” she says.

Her own career started similarly to those of most African Americans, with roots at a historically Black college or university. Mrs. Johnson was a graduate student in mass communications at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, who aspired to be a TV news reporter. She filled in for one of the students on the college radio station, WJSU, and performed so well that she was repeatedly offered a job by the radio station down the street, WJMI.

Nearly five decades later, Mrs. Johnson’s bona fides and résumé speak for themselves. There’s the casual discussion about working for Sam Phillips, the man who “discovered” Elvis Presley and produced recordings for the likes of B.B. King and Johnny Cash. She talks about everything on the air from relationships to politics, and, specifically, encouraging people to get out the vote. It’s the kind of intimacy and community that fit WDIA.

What truly has set WDIA apart, and made it worthy of its nickname, “the goodwill station,” is the way it has rallied behind the community. The April 13, 1982, issue of The New York Times has an article about a fundraising drive from WDIA that raised $120,000 for Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all-Black town that faced bankruptcy. The image, which remains in folks’ memories, is the 800-vehicle caravan that crowded Highway 61 in support of Mound Bayou.

“They said you couldn’t even see the end of the cars,” says Karen McCrary, Memphis’ market president for iHeartMedia, which owns WDIA. “This all happened on the back of WDIA, because that was the only way that people would have even known to [give money].”

“It’s always been a goodwill station,” says Mrs. Johnson.

Memphis’ first Black-owned radio station gives back

The gleam off a silver historical marker might catch one’s eye en route to the National Civil Rights Museum. At the top, the marker reads, “WLOK Radio Station.” Toward the bottom, it reads, “A Family Tradition” – the station’s motto.

Ken Makin

WLOK owner Art Gilliam Jr. is pictured in front of a painting of his likeness, which was given to him by one of the station's listeners, in Memphis, Oct. 18, 2024.

The oldest – and first – Black-owned radio station in Memphis is owned by Gilliam Communications. It carries the surname of President, CEO, and owner Art Gilliam Jr., a man of “many firsts,” as the WLOK website notes. He was the first African American to write for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and was the first Black reporter and anchor on television in Memphis. In 1977, guided by civil rights activist and former leader of the NAACP Benjamin Hooks, Mr. Gilliam purchased WLOK.

Close to a half-century later, WLOK has been known to give back in the community through its annual scholarship and various events, such as its Stone Soul Picnic and Black Film Festival. The Stone Soul Picnic, which has been a fixture for decades, is a free gospel concert that has featured the likes of the Bar-Kays and The Canton Spirituals. Investment is a way of life for the Gilliams, as evidenced by the elder’s choice of career.

“My dad worked at Universal Life Insurance Co. ... Before you had full integration, or even the beginnings of integration, there were a number of Black businesses that were huge. Universal was one,” he says. “He got promoted a couple of times, and we came to Memphis. ... My dad was the most influential person in my life.”

Migration wasn’t just a source of mobility and opportunity for Black people. As Mr. Gilliam explains, it was a necessity.

“I’m 81. When Emmett Till was killed in Mississippi, I was a little bit younger than [he was],” Mr. Gilliam says somberly. “I ended up getting my education in Connecticut; then I came back to Memphis.”

Once he returned home – and later purchased WLOK – the goal was to provide that sense of home throughout the community.

“We’re a commercial station, but we consider ourselves a community station because we do a lot of things that are in service to our community. That’s been our philosophy ever since the beginning,” Mr. Gilliam says. “Because you’re so close to the community and people are listening, you get an opportunity to advocate for things that are important, such as education and housing.”

“A responsibility to the community”

Howard Robertson shares a birthday with WDIA: June 7. Considering the fact that both he and the station are in their 70s, they’re practically twins.

Like WDIA, Mr. Robertson, who is the co-founder of Trust Marketing & Communications, has a legacy of upward mobility and media. His mother was an educator, and his father worked for the U.S. Postal Service. Most notably, Mr. Robertson worked for the iconic Stax Records, that famous house of Southern soul and blues.

Ken Makin

Family members (clockwise from front left) Howard Robertson, Adrienne King, Ryan Robertson, and Beverly Robertson are the innovators behind Trust Marketing & Communications, in Memphis, Oct. 17, 2024.

Even as a child, he knew what he wanted to do in life. In essence, he became a DJ of a different order.

“I’m in this business because I was, apparently, a weird kid, and something appealed to me at a very young age about advertising.” Mr. Robertson defines the job as “being able to get inside folks’ heads and get them to do something they weren’t thinking about doing in the first place.”

“The first national radio ad that I ever heard was a Tide [detergent] spot. Tide advertised on WDIA, and I used to listen to the commercials,” he adds. “They were smart enough back then to advertise [on Black radio]. They would give the radio announcers some copy points and let them improvise.”

Creativity became a hallmark of Mr. Robertson’s career, but more importantly, so did family. He co-founded a media empire with his wife, Beverly Robertson, who also has worked as the president of the National Civil Rights Museum. Including Trust, they’ve built a media triumvirate – with Spotset Radio Network, which comprises more than 100 stations, and Play Ode, a Black-owned radio-streaming app geared toward podcasting and news.

While the couple have been a part of Memphis’ media and commerce landscape for decades, they have also remained true to their neighborhood roots. Through her previous work at the Greater Memphis chamber of commerce, Ms. Robertson started an initiative in 2019 called Taking It to the Streets, in which she and other community leaders held public forums in neighborhood centers. Later, she spearheaded From Protest to Progress, which challenged community and corporate leaders to find solutions to racial and generational discrepancies.

Their children are also prominently involved with the business. Adrienne King, their oldest daughter, is Trust’s corporate vice president and project manager. Ryan Robertson, their youngest, is corporate president. Howard III, or “Trey,” works for the Library of Congress. The message of serving the community was not lost on the next generation.

“You have to entertain, but you can’t stop there. We have a responsibility to the community to empower and ensure that the information that gets out there is true and accurate,” Ryan says. “I think what keeps a lot of Black media from going further in the empowerment space is investment. That’s why our mission is ensuring that national advertising dollars are flowing to local Black-owned broadcast stations.”

Celebrity chef Yevhen Klopotenko has a theory as to why the use of cooking spices was banned in Ukraine under Soviet rule.

“If you allow people to use spices, you are allowing them to be creative,” says Mr. Klopotenko, whose signature shaved head – save for a riotous top of blond curls – is reminiscent of a legendary Cossack warrior emblazoned on anti-Russia T-shirts here.

“And if you are allowed to be creative,” he adds with a grin, “you might also learn to do a revolution.”

Mr. Klopotenko offers that anecdote as a way of explaining his passion for Ukrainian cuisine. Like many budding chefs with international educations and ambitions, he focused early in his career on mastering the world’s renowned cuisines.

Then came Ukraine’s Maidan revolution in 2013, when tens of thousands of Ukrainians filled Kyiv’s Maidan square for days before toppling the pro-Russia regime. A year later, Russia occupied Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and launched the first operations aimed at occupying Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“Something changed inside me” as a result of those events, he says. “I didn’t want any part of the old Soviet system; I knew I wanted to be in the real Ukraine.”

Thus began a decadelong search for old Ukrainian recipes, lost food-preparation practices, and ingredients introduced to Ukraine by foreign traders plying Black Sea trade routes but later suppressed by Soviet rulers.

Mr. Klopotenko is at the forefront of a growing movement – a revolution, one might say – to jettison the bland and standardized cooking imposed during the Soviet era and to rediscover the rich, varied – and even sometimes spicy – traditional Ukrainian cuisine.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Celebrity chef Yevhen Klopotenko presents a tray of roasted beets, the staple of borsch, Ukraine's national dish, at 100 Rokiv Tomu Vpered.

This food movement is part of a broader quest to uncover and fortify Ukrainian identity – through language, art, literature, music – in the face of a war launched by a foreign leader who claims Ukraine does not exist except as part of Russia. Asserting that food is inseparable from national identity, a variety of chefs, community kitchen organizers, food producers, and researchers are making food a key element in a cultural reawakening.

“The war we are facing now, that seeks to erase Ukrainian culture and raze it, is nothing we haven’t faced before, but it is a reminder of how food has been used in the past to suppress the Ukrainian spirit and way of life,” says Olena Braichenko, a Ukrainian food researcher and author.

“Food is the real language of love and a basic part of how people show their care towards their loved ones,” she says. “When so much of that part of us was taken away, it buried who we are as a people,” she adds. “But now as we uncover these food traditions, we are reestablishing who we are.”

Food as identity and culture

Ms. Braichenko, author of “Ukraine: Food and History,” cites borsch as an example.

In the Soviet Union, borsch – the signature Ukrainian soup with beets as a base – was standardized and limited to a few ingredients. “But when we look into past references and recipes,” she says, “we find that in Ukraine, it is in fact a dish of tremendous regional variety based on local ingredients and time of year. It can be green or red,” she adds, “based on the harvesting season, and it can have meat, or no meat, or fish, or mushrooms.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Mr. Klopotenko once thought it a "joke" that traditional foods like borsch, which he has prepared above, would be considered part of Ukrainian gastronomy; now he's passionate about his borsch.

(And in Ukraine, just don’t write it or pronounce it as “borscht” with a T, the Moscow spelling.)

When Ms. Braichenko says Ukraine has lived through earlier Russian efforts to “erase” identity, she is referring to laws during the Russian Empire banning the public use of the Ukrainian language. Then came the Holodomor, the human-engineered famine of the early 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians as Soviet leader Josef Stalin collectivized private farms.

Ukraine’s is a village-based culture where survival has long been linked to keeping a productive garden, the noted food author says. That instinct for survival by garden plot explains why so many Ukrainians insist on maintaining their vegetable gardens in the midst of war, she says – and why so many refuse to evacuate their villages despite the dangers they face.

The sense of community engendered in villages where the cuisine was based largely on garden produce and other locally sourced ingredients is the main point of the restaurant Trypichcha (whose name means “three ovens”) in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and a frequent target for Russian bombs.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Mykyta Virchenko, chef and co-owner of Trypichcha restaurant in Kharkiv, Ukraine, sits at a table of food Nov. 3, 2024. Mr. Virchenko says the community-building his restaurant helps encourage is at least as important as the food served in it.

“We’re like a museum of food for people to experience and remember the foods and preparations of the past,” says Mykyta Virchenko, Trypichcha’s chef and co-owner. “But we’re not only about food,” he adds. “More important to me is that we are about creating a community based on our identity and our culture.”

After responding to Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 by setting up a community kitchen serving soldiers and war victims, Mr. Virchenko opened a four-table restaurant that August. His objective: provide a besieged city with a place to gather over a meal inspired by both Ukraine-specific dishes and a rich tradition of absorbing the influences of other cuisines.

Two years later, Trypichcha is five times larger and often packed with diners sampling a traditional beef-and-pepper stew, or a tahini made from the seeds of Ukraine’s signature sunflower.

But what matters most to Mr. Virchenko is how his food is the vehicle for creating “connections” and strengthening identity.

“Someone eating here said to me once that we are helping to bring about the birth of a new community, but to me that community was already there,” he says. “We are just providing the place for that community to come together and be nurtured.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

People enjoy their food at Trypichcha restaurant in Kharkiv Nov. 3, 2024. The dining room is intended to be cozy and familiar like a village home.

Rediscovering disregarded recipes

The idea that traditional Ukrainian cooking would one day be part of a movement to assert national identity might have amused many Ukrainians in the postindependence era of the 1990s, Ms. Braichenko says. “As we opened up to the world and craved so many things from the West, we turned our attention to French cuisine and lived in the shade of an inferiority complex about our simple village foods,” she says.

Even Mr. Klopotenko, who had earned international cooking honors, admits he thought the idea of “Ukrainian gastronomy” was “a joke” – until that change inside him after the Maidan protests and Crimea’s occupation.

He started combing old church libraries for recipes and lists of locally produced foods from before the Russian Empire. He investigated 19th-century food market offerings, discovering that before Soviet rule – which imposed strict limits on which crops farmers could grow – Ukrainians had access to a wide variety of products from around the world. He visited used-book shops looking for cookbooks and food histories.

And he opened his restaurant 100 Rokiv Tomu Vpered (whose name means “100 years back to the future”) in Kyiv’s Potil district on the site of the ancient castle grounds of the kings who ruled Ukraine more than a millennium ago. The menu celebrates the Ukrainian gastronomy Mr. Klopotenko once thought laughable with dumplings, pickled vegetables, and braised meats.

And of course, it features borsch.

“When I was a boy, my grandmother prepared borsch, and since she was cooking in Soviet times, I thought it was a Soviet dish,” he says. “Now I know she was cooking Ukrainian all along.”

Oleksandr Naselenko assisted in reporting this story.

REUTERS/Yamam Al Shaar

A man pastes a photograph of his relative beside pictures of missing people believed to be prisoners under Syria's ousted dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Dec. 22, 2024.

At the outset of the new year, assessments of global security warn that conflict is spreading across more countries worldwide and a new scramble for nuclear weapons is underway. Yet a more encouraging trend is worth noting: In unlikely places, higher ideals of justice and equality are poking through.

On Tuesday, Zimbabwe joined the growing list of nations – now 149 – that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The reform marks a significant step in strengthening the rule of law. Since 1980, the southern African country has been governed by a single party with a long record of corruption and human rights abuses.

Courts will now review each case, revising sentences one by one based on a range of factors, including compassion and forgiveness. It is “more than a legal reform,” said Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi. “It is a statement of our commitment to justice and humanity.” Similar measures have been adopted in recent years in Ghana, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka – to name a few.

In Syria and Bangladesh, two societies emerging from decades of violent dictatorship are starting to reshape themselves based on the tenets of what is often called transitional justice. After the fall of the Assad government in Syria last month, the country’s liberating forces immediately opened the regime’s network of prisons and began preserving documents showing the scope of its abuses.

The interim government in Bangladesh, meanwhile, established a commission to investigate disappearances and extrajudicial killings just two weeks after the country’s long-reigning autocratic leader, Sheikh Hasina, was deposed in a student-led uprising. In the panel’s first report last month, it documented more than 1,600 cases and identified eight secret detention centers in or near the capital.

“We are working anew to return our dear Bangladesh to the road of equality, human decency, and justice,” said Muhammad Yunus, head of the transitional government, in an interview with the website Big News Network on Dec. 29.

While no hard evidence exists that adopting more transparent and compassionate forms of justice diminishes the prospect of a country engaging in warfare, a correlation may yet exist. As the Death Penalty Information Center notes, capital punishment and extrajudicial killings disproportionately affect ethnic, religious, and racial minorities. Such inequality fuels grievances and radicalization. It encourages violence.

But the opposite is also true. The first step South Africa took after ending apartheid in 1994 was to abolish the death penalty. That decision set the country’s new democratic era on a foundation of equality and reconciliation. “Retribution cannot be accorded the same weight ... as the right to life and dignity,” declared then-Justice Arthur Chaskalson, who was also president of the Constitutional Court.

Zimbabwe, Syria, and Bangladesh may now be building on that example. When societies base justice on a recognition of the inherent value of every individual, their neighbors reap peaceful dividends.