Today's WorldView: A Republican winter may be coming for Ukraine

Also: The Taliban wants to segregate women. So it's training female doctors. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Try four weeks FREE, then $4 every four weeks the next year  Sign up for this newsletter Read online Developments from Ukraine, global analysis and top reads.       By Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall  Email   A Republican winter may be coming for Ukraine A serviceman rests in a dugout at his position on a front line in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine on Thursday. (Reuters) (Stringer/Reuters) "Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) declared at a stump speech last Thursday in Iowa. The far-right politician was looking forward to what may be the imminent future: Her party is poised to make significant gains in Tuesday's midterm elections and possibly revamp the United States' whole approach to supporting Ukraine's resistance to Russia's invasion. Greene emerged from the extremist fringes of the Republican base, initially known for promoting the hysterical conspiracy theories of QAnon, an extremist ideology based on false claims. But her brief stint in office has catapulted her into the national spotlight; she has become an embodiment of the energies driving the right-wing movement in the United States. While there's no uniform consensus within the Republican caucus on how to best support Ukraine, Greene represents as much of a constituency as more establishment figures like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has urged the Biden administration to deliver military aid to Kyiv at greater scale and speed. And she may have reinforcements in Congress after Tuesday. A Republican-led House is expected to, among other things, turn up the heat on the Biden administration over its handling of the U.S. withdrawal of Afghanistan, as well as step up political pressure on Iran. But Ukraine may feel the pinch, too, given that Congress has already greenlit upward of $60 billion in aid and Kyiv is pleading for more from the West. It remains locked in an existential conflict with Russia, its cities struck by indiscriminate missile attacks, and whole communities displaced or besieged. Ahead of the election, various GOP lawmakers and candidates have indicated the fire hose of funding needs to be turned off. "I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they're not going to write a blank check to Ukraine," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently told Punchbowl News. "They just won't do it." "I think we're at the point where we've given enough money in Ukraine, I really do. … The Europeans need to step up," said J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio. "And frankly, if the Ukrainians and the Europeans, more importantly, knew that America wasn't going to foot the bill, they might actually step up." The current mood marks a striking departure from not-so-distant paradigms. For years, the Republicans have been the party more inclined to militarism and hawkish foreign policy. That arguably is still the case on numerous fronts, but the war in Ukraine has unraveled a curious seam in American politics. The Biden administration's energetic and effective — at least, according to European diplomats in the U.S. capital — approach to bolstering Ukraine's defense and rallying Western partners to its cause has created what seems an open-ended mission. President Biden and his allies all cast the fight for Ukraine as a fight for the future of democracy and the liberal order itself. Meanwhile, Democrats on the left flank of their party struggle to even voice skepticism about the ongoing effort to back Ukraine's prosecution of the war — a situation best illustrated last month by the tormented saga surrounding a mostly anodyne letter put forward by a bloc of progressive Democratic lawmakers that called on the Biden administration to work toward negotiations and a cease fire with Russia, even as the United States continues to back Ukraine militarily. The irony, as my colleagues reported this weekend, is that the Biden administration is indeed quietly pressing the Ukrainians to drop their refusal to engage in dialogue with the Kremlin, as part of a bid "to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come." Nevertheless, the letter last month triggered a heated backlash from other Democrats and was awkwardly withdrawn, with some of its signatories stressing they didn't want to be seen in the same light as Republicans who seem more eager to pull the plug on support to Kyiv. About those Republicans, Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Republican Senate foreign policy staff member, told the New York Times that McCarthy's comment about not giving a "blank check" to Ukraine "was just a toe in the water of this growing divide inside the Republican Party between the traditionalist, internationalist wing and the populist, Orban wing of the party." She was referring to the illiberal Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who commands a curious level of devotion among the American right and is Europe's leading Kremlin-friendly statesman. Democrats have warned that as former president Donald Trump returns to center stage — it seems he may soon announce his 2024 presidential run — the winds will shift in Washington. "I just see a freight train coming, and that is Trump and his operation turning against aid for Ukraine," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on MSNBC last month. "House Republicans, if they were to take the majority, being preternaturally against anything Joe Biden is for — including the war in Ukraine — and there being a real crisis where the House Republican majority would refuse to support additional aid to Ukraine." Ukraine casts a long shadow over Trump's time in office. His first impeachment by a Democratic-led House was provoked by Trump's attempts to strong-arm Ukraine's government into aiding his own domestic political feuds. And going back further, Trump and his circle had a thicket of connections to Ukrainian and Russian operatives bent on overturning a political dispensation in Kyiv that was unfavorable to the Kremlin, as laid out in great detail in this week's New York Times Magazine. For whatever that's all worth now, many in Ukraine are concerned about the road ahead. "The U.S. midterms are one of the factors that have us concerned about the winter," a senior Ukrainian official told my colleagues last month, speaking on the condition of anonymity as Ukrainian forces armed almost wholly by the West sought to reclaim more territory lost to the invaders. "Russia will gain an advantage with the new Congress and with Europeans as they blackmail them on energy policy. That's why the current offensive is so important." There's also fear of a reduction in U.S. aid to Ukraine in Europe, where many governments may not be able to muster either the capacity or political will to fill the gap. "You'd be playing into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's hands," Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the defense committee in Britain's Parliament, told my colleagues. "If America pulls back, Putin could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat." A similar awareness is on view among the Kremlin's soothsayers. "Trump's formula 'Make America Great Again,' MAGA, those are the guys who are starting to say, 'Why are we funding not only America's interests, but Biden's personal interests, the interests of puppeteers who are standing behind Biden's back?,'" said Russian political scientist Sergey Sudakov on a state television news show last week. He added: "I'm sure that Republicans will win."   1,000 Words Mahmoud Shawky and his wife, Rana Ragab, 32, with their five children in their home in Cairo on Nov. 1. (Sima Diab for The Washington Post) GIZA, Egypt — In Rana Ragab's crowded neighborhood on the west bank of the Nile River, her friends call her "the mother of children." Her sixth kid is on the way. She and her husband, a butcher, are thrilled. The Egyptian government, though, sees families their size as a grave threat to the country — and has spent millions of dollars over the past several years trying to persuade parents to have fewer children. In public speeches, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has repeatedly scolded families for having more than two children, calling the population crisis a national security issue that has hindered progress on development goals. Cairo says the issue is more urgent than ever, as rising temperatures increasingly threaten the country's food and water supplies — topics that will be near the top of the agenda during the U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, that begins Sunday in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh.   Talking Points • The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine's leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power, according to people familiar with the discussions. • In becoming the first far-right head of government in postwar Western Europe, Italy's Giorgia Meloni has emerged as a celebrated point of reference for MAGA Republicans, who've interpreted her ascent as an affirmation of their own values and goals. A clip on Twitter of the far-right Italian prime minister issuing a clarion call went viral among Trump-aligned Republicans. "I can't define myself as Italian, as Christian, mother, woman — no!" Meloni says in a 2019 speech. "I must be citizen x, gender x, parent 1, parent 2."  • Despite its furious reaction to Saudi Arabia's decision last month to cut oil production in the face of global shortages, the Biden administration is looking for signs that the tight security relationship between Washington and Riyadh can be salvaged, reports The Post's Karen DeYoung. • Iran's Foreign Minister acknowledged that the nation supplied Russia with a "limited number of drones" months before the invasion of Ukraine. Tehran had previously denied that it had provided Moscow with drones used in Ukraine, despite Washington's and Kyiv's assertions that they have evidence otherwise.   Top of The Post These are the men running Elon Musk's Twitter By Gerrit De Vynck and Hamza Shaban ●  Read more »   Democrats look to centrists in final hours while GOP amps up its base By Annie Linskey, Cara McGoogan and Colby Itkowitz ●  Read more »   A cowboy, the icon of manliness, grips the rope and hopes to hang on By Jose A. Del Real ●  Read more »     Viewpoints The 10 most pressing questions the midterm elections will answer By Marc A. Thiessen | The Washington Post ●  Read more »   Good at being bad By Sheri Berman | Foreign Affairs ●  Read more »   Is this America's last real election? By Emily Tamkin | The New Statesman ●  Read more »     Treating Afghanistan's women Medical residents watch and assist during a Caesarean section at the Rabia Balkhi public women's hospital, one of Kabul's busiest, on Oct. 23. (Elise Blanchard for The Washington Post) KABUL — After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year, nearly a third of the resident doctors in Omeida Momand's class at a Kabul women's hospital fled the country, she said, leaving the staff stretched thin. Momand decided to stay, to finish the last step in her 11 years of training to care for Afghanistan's women. By day, she examines gynecology patients and monitors mothers with high-risk pregnancies in a room sometimes so crowded that patients lie on the floor. Night shifts are spent performing emergency Caesareans. Her determination to practice medicine in her home country has aligned, ironically, with the Taliban's own interests. In the highly conservative Islamic society the Taliban hopes to create, officials say, women should be cared for by other women. That means educating more female doctors. This marks a rare instance of the Taliban publicly and loudly promoting women's education and employment. Training female doctors and nurses is part of the movement's effort to prove it can provide essential services while building a society structured on gender segregation. A girl and women sit in the waiting room of the pediatric outpatient department at the Maidan Shahr hospital, which is run by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan. (Elise Blanchard for The Washington Post) Muhammad Hassan Ghyasi, acting deputy minister of public health, said in an interview that his ministry has received "clear instructions from the top level" to bring policies in line with the Taliban's strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law. A new policy submitted recently to the Taliban's supreme leader for approval would formalize a rule already applied in some hospitals that female health workers should treat women, while male health workers should treat men. Ghyasi said the policy will stipulate that if there is no qualified female doctor available, a female patient can see a male doctor. But with Afghanistan's health system under strain — and an economic crisis fueled by Western sanctions exacerbating hunger and sickness — the need for qualified medical professionals of both genders is greater than ever. The Taliban effort to expand medical education for women, especially in fields traditionally dominated by men, contrasts with the government's draconian restrictions on girls and women. Since taking power, the Taliban has barred many girls from secondary school and shut women out of most professions. This fall, authorities prohibited female university aspirants from enrolling in subjects including journalism, engineering and economics. The educational restrictions seem certain to limit the number of women in the coming years who can train as doctors. Other Taliban policies, such as requirements in some areas that women only travel with male guardians, have hamstrung the efforts of female doctors to practice. But at several government-run institutes for nursing, radiology and other health fields, the proportion of women admitted — at least 46 percent this semester — represents a slight increase compared with 2020 figures, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which supports the institutes. — Claire Parker Read more: The Taliban wants to segregate women. So it's training female doctors.   Afterword top-tier welcome   We think you'll like this newsletter Check out Coronavirus Updates for news to help you stay safe and informed during the pandemic. Sign up »

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